Breath in – Breath out

Is it me, or is there something in the drinking water?  There seems to be a movement afoot in social settings – industry, churches, government, designed around the concept that we are a bunch of stultifying dunderheads.  We need to be taught how to do things we’ve been doing reasonably well for years.  There is a “How to” guide now for just about everything from counting socks to boiling an egg.  Need to run a little group?  There’s a guide for that, and yes, oh, by the way, you must take the online course for that.  Need to manage a small team?  There’s a guide for that. Need to (fill in the blank).  Yup, we’ve got a self teaching tool for that too.

Where did all this come from?  I think we older (more senescent) folk can determine the answer when we go out to our driveways, get into our automobiles, start them up and head on into traffic.  No one – I mean NO ONE follows any rules, not even the laws of physics.  By the way, if you would like to live to see your grandkids, drive like everyone around you are aliens from Mars who have no idea what a stop sign is, let alone a turning signal.

It wasn’t long before managers and leaders from mega-churches to post offices figured out that they had better retrain us and retrain us fast – and they want to do it the same way the Republicans want to address healthcare reform: starting from “a clean piece of paper.”  Care not a wit, and make no assumptions that you might be teaching an auditorium of neurosurgeons about how to put ointment on a mosquito bite.  Just follow the teaching guide.

My theory is that this really all began because someone noticed the caliber of what is coming out of our education systems.  Easy solution: RETRAIN EVERYONE!

I have another theory: that this will meet up with a swift demise.  Something similar, perhaps, to when Jack Welch hit GE and determined that the business was running a tad inefficiently with all this type of nonsense going on, the layers it made in the structure, and the general “statist” approach on the factory floor.  Not to mention that relatively normal people (i.e., normal smart people) didn’t need to be given a guide on how to breath.  Suddenly, a Ronald Reagan or William F. Buckley character will come on the scene like a hero in the white hat who arrives just before the train runs over the victim and stands athwart history yelling stop!

In the mean time, as for me, I’ll duck my head, learn about how to count my socks and make a boiled egg, then move on to the next insipid, sophomoric guide to a better life.

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Projo Sucker Punches Scott Brown

This morning’s Projo carries a rabid commentary from The Boston Globe’s Yvonne Abraham against Scott Brown, making the despicable charge that Brown is somehow against raped women.  The Democrats are pretty desperate to do this, and the Projo’s complicity should be condemned roundly by level headed, middle class Rhode Islanders.

With printed media on the rocks, I think the Editorial board at the Projo has gone mad.  They must have hired a bunch of recent grads and fired all the experienced regulars to save money.  It’s bad enough that they raised prices by 50% in the last year – they now must subject us with hyper-liberalism and no balance to it.

In the mean time, a more interesting irony is that President Obama comes today to support the mindless Coakley, who in 2008 was rebuffed Obama, sticking tenaciously to the already defeated Hillary Clinton.

Scott Brown needs to win on Tuesday just to return sanity to a few of New England’s institutions, not to mention the nation’s health care reforms.

Go Brown!

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The Real Hypocrites

There is a “news” piece from the Associated Press written by a reporter, Charles Babington, on the “double standard” of the GOP in the healthcare debate.  The essence of Babington’s so-called “news” piece is that Republicans hypocritically voted FOR a Medicare expansion that includes pharmaceutical drugs back in 2003 when they had control of the US Senate.  The claim is that the addition of drugs to the already existing federally funded health care entitlement added half a trillion in costs all by itself, and is actually “worse than” the current expansion in government run healthcare because the half trillion dollars was “deficit financed” which is purportedly unlike the current deficit financed bill because back in 2003 we had no way to finance the drug benefit expansion, and you see this new government entitlement is paid for (out of Medicare?!?!?)

Anyway, what royals me here is that first of all, this is NOT a news item.  It is pure, unadulterated, left of center biased opinion.

Secondly, there is an answer to this kind of sideswipe.

Mark Steyn says that, unlike the add on of drug benefits to an already existing entitlement, as bad as that may have been perhaps, what the Democrats have done is essentially turned over control of over one-sixth of the US economy to the government, and has placed government in between the patient and the doctor:

The monstrous mountain of toxic pustules sprouting from greasy boils metastasizing from malign carbuncles that passed the Senate on Christmas Eve is not the last word in “health” “care,” but the first. It ensures that this is all we’ll be talking about, now and forever.

Government can’t just annex “one-sixth of the U.S. economy” (i.e., the equivalent of annexing the entire British or French economy, or annexing the entire Indian economy twice over) and then just say: “Okay, what’s next? On to cap-and-trade . . . ” Nations that governmentalize health care soon find themselves talking about little else…

…My Republican friends often seem to miss the point in this debate: The so-called “public option” is not Page 3,079, Section (f), Clause VII. The entire bill is a public option — because that’s where it leads, remorselessly. The so-called “death panel” is not Page 2,721, Paragraph 19, Sub-section (d), but again the entire bill — because it inserts the power of the state between you and your doctor, and in effect assumes jurisdiction over your body. As the savvier Dems have always known, once you’ve crossed the Rubicon, you can endlessly re-reform your health reform until the end of time, and all the stuff you didn’t get this go-round will fall into place, and very quickly.

As I’ve been saying for over a year now, “health care” is the fast-track to a permanent left-of-center political culture. The unlovely Democrats on public display in the week before Christmas may seem like just a bunch of jelly-spined opportunists, grubby wardheelers and rapacious kleptocrats, but the smarter ones are showing great strategic clarity. Alas for the rest of us, Euro-style government on a Harry Reid/Chris Dodd/Ben Nelson scale will lead to ruin.

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The Church Shares in Blame for Catholics who Publically Support Abortion

The public argument between Rep. Patrick Kennedy and Bishop Tobin in RI begs the question,…

Why do so many Catholic politicians favor “abortion rights” when the Catholic church itself is clearly in support of the life of the unborn?  Many who call themselves Catholic have supported abortion for decades and very publically. Organizations like Catholics for Choice for example, have been around since the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973.  So why the dichotomy, and how has this odd contradiction survived for so long?

In the early 1970’s, when the court ruled for abortion, Catholic pols often hid behind arguments like “As for me, I am personally opposed to abortion, but I do not favor government coercion of others to follow what I think is a matter of personal faith or conscience.”  Or “I do not wish to ‘force my religion’ upon anyone else.”

Other arguments would be aimed at having the freedom to choose (even though a bad choice which brings harm to another human being), or the rights of the mother to control her own body (at the expense of another).

In reality, Catholics who favor abortion are really political liberals who have “libertarian” views about their personal freedoms to the point of it being at the expense of others.  Such ideas overstep the bounds of personal liberty and the age old maxim that my right to swing my clench fisted arm in the direction of your nose ends a nanosecond from its surface.

One could apply the vain reasoning of these liberal Catholics to a lot of other bad behaviors, which, when attempted, can be plainly seen as patently absurd arguments.  For example, can anyone imagine a leader from the era of the Third Reich saying something like “As for me, I am personally opposed to death camps, but I consider their existence as a moral issue which is a matter of personal faith upon which I refuse to coerce others to follow.”  Or an anti-bellum Slave owner: “I am personally an abolitionist in my heart of hearts, but cannot in good conscience force my fellow plantation owners to give up their free help.”  Or “I should have the personal freedom of choice to decide what I do on my plantation – whether I have slave labor or not.” These arguments are laughable of course, yet we accept them on the subject of abortion all the time and go on our merry way. 

One reason they have survived is that the leaders of the Roman Catholic church have generally acquiesced in them and continue to this day to allow its members who are pro-abortion to remain members or “receive communion.”  In 1973, the Catholic church, had it really had the courage of its conviction, would have begun the wholesale expulsion of politicians and non-politicians alike with such beliefs.  They would have tossed them out the front doors of their cathedrals, and with great fanfare.  The views really cannot coexist.

So why has the Catholic church has been so tolerant? Why has it for the most part turned a blind eye to the masses who continue to support abortion yet continue to fill their pews?  It is in my opinion the church’s support on other so-called “social justice issues.”  The church opposes capital punishment, and it favors a more tolerant position on illegal immigration and the social justice and welfare of the indigent.  Many of these views are charitable at their core, and right for a church to foster, but are often on the very same agenda as the politically liberal social agenda with the only thing missing from that laundry list of social issues being a “woman’s right to choose…”

So what happens?  Those in the Church with the energy and momentum in supporting the churches social agenda are themselves caught up in the whole liberal social agenda. For that reason, the church should have long ago clearly and decisively incised the pro-abortionists from their roles.

I have an idea.  Do it now.  Use the Patrick Kennedy public debate as a moment in time where the Church comes forward with a public pronouncement, confesses its error for being so acquiescent in the past, and now sends a clear warning to other politicians and lay people to discontinue their support for government sanctioned abortion or be handed their walking papers.

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A Tally on the Vote for Obama Care Last Night – The Fight Isn’t Over

Here is the complete tally on the final vote last night in favor of establishing socialized medicine in this country. 

RI’s Langevin and Kennedy, of course, both voted with the slim majority.

Below are some other interesting cuts of the voting data.

The first is from Red Elephant who tracked the Democrats that have the most to lose (and we hope so) for supporting Obamacare.  The number next to their names is the percent of the vote McCain received in their Congressional District in 2008.  The list is also color coded to denote Freshman, 1+ Term and 3+ Term incumbents and includes McCain’s performance in 2008 in that congressional district.

MS-04 Taylor         67
TX-17 Edwards      67
OK-02 Boren         66
TN-04 Davis          64
AL-02 Bright          63
ID-01 Minnick        62
MS-01 Childers      62
TN-06 Gordon       62
AL-05 Griffith         61
LA-03 Melancon    61
MO-04 Skelton      61
AR-01 Berry          59
VA-09 Boucher      59
AR-04 Ross           58
MD-01 Kratovil     58
UT-02 Matheson    57
WV-01 Mollohan   57
GA-08 Marshall     56
TN-08 Tanner        56
WV-03 Rahall        56
KY-06 Chandler   55
PA-04 Altmire        55
AR-02 Snyder        54
AZ-01 Kirkpatrick 54
FL-02 Boyd           54
PA-10 Carney        54
ND-AL Pomeroy    53
SC-05 Spratt          53
AZ-05 Mitchell       52
AZ-08 Giffords       52
NC-07 McIntyre   52
NC-11 Shuler         52
OH-18 Space         52
FL-24 Kosmas       51
IN-08 Ellsworth      51
NY-13 McMahon  51
NY-29 Massa        51
PA-17 Holden        51
VA-05 Perriello      51
CO-03 Salazar       50
CO-04 Markey      50
IN-09 Hill               50
MN-07 Peterson    50
NM-02 Teague      50
OH-06 Wilson       50
OH-16 Boccieri     50
PA-12 Murtha       50

And this is from the Weekly Standard: The thirty-nine Democrats voted against it:

1. Rep. John Adler (NJ)

2. Rep. Jason Altmire (PA)

3. Rep. Brian Baird (WA)

4. Rep. John Barrow (GA)

5. Rep. John Boccieri (OH)

6. Rep. Dan Boren (OK)

7. Rep. Rick Boucher (VA)

8. Rep. Allen Boyd (FL)

9. Rep. Bobby Bright (AL)

10. Rep. Ben Chandler (KT)

11. Rep. Travis Childers (MS)

12. Rep. Artur Davis (AL)

13. Rep. Lincoln Davis (TN)

14. Rep. Chet Edwards (TX)

15. Rep. Bart Gordon (TN)

16. Rep. Parker Griffith (AL)

17. Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (SD)

18. Rep. Tim Holden (PA)

19. Rep. Larry Kissell (NC)

20. Rep. Suzanne Kosmas (FL)

21. Rep. Frank Kratovil (MD)

22. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (OH)

23. Rep. Jim Marshall (GA)

24. Rep. Betsy Markey (CO)

25. Rep. Eric Massa (NY)

26. Rep. Jim Matheson(UT)

27. Rep. Mike McIntyre (NC)

28. Rep. Michael McMahon (NY)

29. Rep. Charlie Melancon (LA)

30. Rep. Walt Minnick (ID)

31. Rep. Scott Murphy (NY)

32. Rep. Glenn Nye (VA)

33. Rep. Collin Peterson (MN)

34. Rep. Mike Ross (AR)

35. Rep. Heath Shuler (NC)

36. Rep. Ike Skelton (MO)

37. Rep. John Tanner (TN)

38. Rep. Gene Taylor (MS)

39. Rep. Harry Teague (NM)

So, for Obamacare to become the law of the land, first the Senate needs to pass a bill, and Harry Reid can't afford to lose a single Democrat if the Republicans stick together. And then the House and Senate would need to reconcile the two bills in conference committee and each vote on the conference report before it goes to Obama's desk. This fight isn't over.

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Kill this Bill!

To all my friends: Tell Rep. Langevin and Kennedy what’s really in the Pelosi Health Care Bill.  They may vote on it as early as today, Saturday, November 7.  Or over this weekend.

Tell them, if they haven’t the four ream bill, just read this excerpted from the WSJ…

Here are some important passages in the 2,000 page legislation.

By BETSY MCCAUGHEY

The health bill that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is bringing to a vote (H.R. 3962) is 1,990 pages. Here are some of the details you need to know.

What the government will require you to do:

• Sec. 202 (p. 91-92) of the bill requires you to enroll in a "qualified plan." If you get your insurance at work, your employer will have a "grace period" to switch you to a "qualified plan," meaning a plan designed by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. If you buy your own insurance, there's no grace period. You'll have to enroll in a qualified plan as soon as any term in your contract changes, such as the co-pay, deductible or benefit.

• Sec. 224 (p. 118) provides that 18 months after the bill becomes law, the Secretary of Health and Human Services will decide what a "qualified plan" covers and how much you'll be legally required to pay for it. That's like a banker telling you to sign the loan agreement now, then filling in the interest rate and repayment terms 18 months later.

Associated Press

Protestors wave signs in front of the Capitol on Thursday.

On Nov. 2, the Congressional Budget Office estimated what the plans will likely cost. An individual earning $44,000 before taxes who purchases his own insurance will have to pay a $5,300 premium and an estimated $2,000 in out-of-pocket expenses, for a total of $7,300 a year, which is 17% of his pre-tax income. A family earning $102,100 a year before taxes will have to pay a $15,000 premium plus an estimated $5,300 out-of-pocket, for a $20,300 total, or 20% of its pre-tax income. Individuals and families earning less than these amounts will be eligible for subsidies paid directly to their insurer.

• Sec. 303 (pp. 167-168) makes it clear that, although the "qualified plan" is not yet designed, it will be of the "one size fits all" variety. The bill claims to offer choice—basic, enhanced and premium levels—but the benefits are the same. Only the co-pays and deductibles differ. You will have to enroll in the same plan, whether the government is paying for it or you and your employer are footing the bill.

• Sec. 59b (pp. 297-299) says that when you file your taxes, you must include proof that you are in a qualified plan. If not, you will be fined thousands of dollars. Illegal immigrants are exempt from this requirement.

• Sec. 412 (p. 272) says that employers must provide a "qualified plan" for their employees and pay 72.5% of the cost, and a smaller share of family coverage, or incur an 8% payroll tax. Small businesses, with payrolls from $500,000 to $750,000, are fined less.

Eviscerating Medicare:

In addition to reducing future Medicare funding by an estimated $500 billion, the bill fundamentally changes how Medicare pays doctors and hospitals, permitting the government to dictate treatment decisions.

• Sec. 1302 (pp. 672-692) moves Medicare from a fee-for-service payment system, in which patients choose which doctors to see and doctors are paid for each service they provide, toward what's called a "medical home."

The medical home is this decade's version of HMO-restrictions on care. A primary-care provider manages access to costly specialists and diagnostic tests for a flat monthly fee. The bill specifies that patients may have to settle for a nurse practitioner rather than a physician as the primary-care provider. Medical homes begin with demonstration projects, but the HHS secretary is authorized to "disseminate this approach rapidly on a national basis."

A December 2008 Congressional Budget Office report noted that "medical homes" were likely to resemble the unpopular gatekeepers of 20 years ago if cost control was a priority.

• Sec. 1114 (pp. 391-393) replaces physicians with physician assistants in overseeing care for hospice patients.

• Secs. 1158-1160 (pp. 499-520) initiates programs to reduce payments for patient care to what it costs in the lowest cost regions of the country. This will reduce payments for care (and by implication the standard of care) for hospital patients in higher cost areas such as New York and Florida.

• Sec. 1161 (pp. 520-545) cuts payments to Medicare Advantage plans (used by 20% of seniors). Advantage plans have warned this will result in reductions in optional benefits such as vision and dental care.

• Sec. 1402 (p. 756) says that the results of comparative effectiveness research conducted by the government will be delivered to doctors electronically to guide their use of "medical items and services."

Questionable Priorities:

While the bill will slash Medicare funding, it will also direct billions of dollars to numerous inner-city social work and diversity programs with vague standards of accountability.

• Sec. 399V (p. 1422) provides for grants to community "entities" with no required qualifications except having "documented community activity and experience with community healthcare workers" to "educate, guide, and provide experiential learning opportunities" aimed at drug abuse, poor nutrition, smoking and obesity. "Each community health worker program receiving funds under the grant will provide services in the cultural context most appropriate for the individual served by the program."

These programs will "enhance the capacity of individuals to utilize health services and health related social services under Federal, State and local programs by assisting individuals in establishing eligibility . . . and in receiving services and other benefits" including transportation and translation services.

• Sec. 222 (p. 617) provides reimbursement for culturally and linguistically appropriate services. This program will train health-care workers to inform Medicare beneficiaries of their "right" to have an interpreter at all times and with no co-pays for language services.

• Secs. 2521 and 2533 (pp. 1379 and 1437) establishes racial and ethnic preferences in awarding grants for training nurses and creating secondary-school health science programs. For example, grants for nursing schools should "give preference to programs that provide for improving the diversity of new nurse graduates to reflect changes in the demographics of the patient population." And secondary-school grants should go to schools "graduating students from disadvantaged backgrounds including racial and ethnic minorities."

• Sec. 305 (p. 189) Provides for automatic Medicaid enrollment of newborns who do not otherwise have insurance.

For the text of the bill with page numbers, see www.defendyourhealthcare.us.

Ms. McCaughey is chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths and a former Lt. Governor of New York state.

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Rod Dreher: Glenn Beck’s world order endangers the right

I usually discover that the Projo is off its rocker.  But here is an op ed piece that appeared in today’s printed version of the Projo that I agree with.  As a conservative, Glenn Beck concerns me when starts heading for deep waters.  Dreher is with the Dallas Morning News, affiliated with the Projo:

YOU CAN SAY THIS for Glenn Beck: He’s charismatic, he was right on ACORN and Van Jones, and he’s correct to point out that the government in Washington doesn’t work for the common good. The affable Beck articulates the legitimate anger and frustration that millions of Americans feel when faced by the fact that the country is in a hot mess of trouble.

But here’s the thing: Beck is a white Jeremiah Wright, a crazy-pants conspiracy theorist whose world-view is rooted in the paranoid teachings of a far-right Mormon political guru named W. Cleon Skousen. Before signing up as a recruit in Beck’s army, conservative Becketeers had better think long and hard about where their affable leader is taking them.

A few weeks back, the red-hot Fox News Channel phenom spent nine minutes on the air leading a seminar on public artwork in New York City. By the time he was finished, Beck had illuminated a propaganda conspiracy linking communists, fascists, the Soviet Union, the Rockefeller family and the United Nations. This is the sort of weirdo rant you expect to encounter on fringey Web sites. You don’t expect to see it on national television.

But that’s a big part of Beck’s shtick. He’s always carrying on about sinister Obamaite conspiracies threatening to overthrow the constitutional order. On the Fox & Friends morning show, Beck declared: “The Manchurian Candidate couldn’t destroy us faster than Barack Obama. If you were planning a sleeper to come in and become president of the United States, this is how he would do it.”

How is it that a man can call the American president a traitorous subversive and not be laughed, or booed, off the national stage? He’s a happy-go-lucky Howard Beale (from the movie Network). Paddy Chayefsky, you should have lived to see this moment.

Beck’s paranoia doesn’t come from nowhere. His man Skousen was a fanatical Mormon reactionary so far to the right that the Latter-day Saints Church finally felt compelled to distance itself from his teaching.

Beck, an enthusiastic Mormon convert, pushes Skousen’s 1981 book, The 5,000 Year Leap, a tendentious pseudo-history of the U.S. that interprets the founding in religious terms. Texas Gov. Rick Perry recommended it at the recent Values Voter Summit in Washington. And if the pious nationalism of that book were all you knew about Skousen, you would be hard-pressed to see what the big deal was.

But Skousen wrote many less anodyne books about politics — and held views far darker than revealed in the hokey but harmless Leap. In a 1976 lecture, the audio of which is available on the pro-Skousen Web site AwakeAndArise.org, Skousen rails like an Old Testament prophet, quoting Mormon scriptures and detailing how Satan is working with “secret combinations” — a Mormon theological term — within political parties, churches, labor unions and the wealthy elite, especially the Rockefeller family, to bring about the “One World Order.”

Skousen, like his follower Beck, is obsessed with the idea that these secret combinations are conniving to overthrow the U.S. Constitution. Though it is not part of official LDS doctrine, some Mormons believe in an apocalyptic prophecy attributed to church founder Joseph Smith, who supposedly taught that the Constitution would one dark day be hanging by a thread and that Mormon elders would rescue it.

The pudgy, sweet-natured Beck offers a more palatable form of this paranoia — but all his fruit and sugar can’t hide the Skousenite firewater. How ironic that conservative Christians who unjustly dunned conventional Mitt Romney because of his LDS faith are uncritically backing the squirrelly Beck, who looks like he’s casting himself as hero of a prophetic Mormon melodrama.

There are conservatives who know perfectly well that Beck is an unhinged buffoon who traffics in crude, ridiculous ideas. But unlike the hapless GOP, he’s popular and effective in the political war against Obama. So these conservative cynics adopt a “no enemies to the right” approach to Beck, even though he’s mainstreaming the ooga-booga worldview of a crank prophet who believed, with the John Birch Society, that Eisenhower was a closet commie.

This is foolish. Not every enemy of Obama is a friend to conservatism. In 1962, in a time when conservatives needed all the help they could get, William F. Buckley nevertheless published in National Review a lengthy denunciation of paranoid Bircher Robert Welch. How long, Buckley asked, can the right tolerate his malicious gibberish without losing credibility? National Review eventually sidelined the Birchers for good over their “psychosis of conspiracy,” thus doing the right an enormous service by making conservatism more credible with the American mainstream.

Today, poor Bill is in the grave, Glenn Beck’s ratings are soaring, and most conservatives don’t see what the problem is. One way or another, they will.

Rod Dreher is a columnist for The Dallas Morning News ( rdreher@dallasnews.com).

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