“The Affordable Care Act addresses a fundamental and enduring problem in our health care system and our economy. For most Americans, for more than 80 percent of Americans, the insurance system does provide effective access. But for more than 40 million Americans who do not have access to health insurance either through their employer or through government programs such as Medicare or Medicaid, the system does not work.”

Mr Verilli’s “insurance system” is mostly health plans provided by employers.  So how did these plans plus government become “our health care system?”  It’s not as if several competing ways to finance medical services have been offered.  It’s not as if a majority of customers chose employer-provided insurance plans over any alternative.  In fact, employer health plans came about almost by accident.

Employers began providing health plans during World War II as a work-around because  war-time regulations banned salary increases.  From the beginning, tax law permitted employers to treat the cost as a business expense, like wages.  But, unlike cash wages and other forms of non-cash compensation, tax law also allowed the employee to receive the health plan tax free.  To this day there is no payroll tax or income tax on the dollar value of health insurance, as long as it is provided by one’s employer.

Through the years federal and state governments imposed upon the health care market additional incentives to enshrine employer-provided plans as the politically preferred arrangement and to penalize other ideas by making them more expensive.  Today, most Americans are too young to remember a time when government didn’t heavily regulate and influence health care finance.

Mr Verrilli continued:

Those individuals [who do not receive employer-provided insurance] must resort to the individual market, and that market does not provide affordable health insurance. It does not do so because it — because the multi-billion dollar subsidies that are available for the employer market are not available in the individual market.

By “subsidies” he means the tax free treatment of employer-provided health plans.  People who purchase their own plans must pay with after tax income.

So why aren’t individuals who don’t receive insurance from an employer entitled to the same tax treatment as those who do?  It’s not as if there were some holy principle that can’t be breached.  Congress changes the tax code almost every year and could immediately empower individuals by deleting the tax punishment they suffer for the offense of buying health insurance.  Instead Congress enacted 2,700 pages of impenetrable legalese that will ramp up scores of new government agencies and bureaus, and compel every American to purchase a health plan that complies with new government commands.

According to a CBO analysis part of the new revenue ObamaCare will raise will be in the form of higher income tax payments from people whose employers elect to terminate health insurance benefits as a result of the high cost compelled by ObamaCare.  The CBO assumed those employers would increase the cash wages of those employees by an amount equal to the cost of the terminated health plans.  Thus, ObamaCare punishes even more people for the sin of buying insurance individually instead of through their employers.

While supporters don’t openly acknowledge it, ObamaCare’s underlying assumption is that the status quo, mostly employer-provided health plans, is the last, best idea best idea there will ever be.  Indeed, the effect of ObamaCare is to permanently entrench the most expensive type of health plan, mostly employer provided as the only means of financing outside of Medicaid, which is already on life support.

ObamaCare effectively blocks all future health care financing ideas or innovations by making them illegal.

If the government had obeyed the Constitution in the first place there would be no tax punishment imposed on those who purchase their own insurance.  If the government obeyed the Constitution the challenges of health care finance would be met by competing ideas offered to voluntary customers by private sector entities.  Each incremental step in expanding government’s role in controlling how medical services are delivered and financed has been sold as a problem solver.  But each has brought with it a new set of problems to be solved by yet more government intervention.  The process won’t end until every hospital belongs to the federal government and every health care professional is a government employee.  And when that finally happens the problems will be more intractable than ever.

But, after the Solyndra scandal and Obama’s slide in the polls the media are more interest in government loans for green boondoggles.

ABC news just published a long article examining loan guarantees for both Fisker and another, similar venture.  We reviewed the ABC News piece and found it to be consistent with our original reporting two years ago:

Fisker Automotive, Inc. is a start-up car company in California. Fisker has just begun to build the Karma, a hybrid/electric, luxury sports car that will sell for $97,000.  So far only two copies of the Karma have been delivered to retail customers.  According to ABC, production is running a year behind schedule.

Al Gore, former Vice President and grand ayatollah of the dogma of global climate change is a partner in Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a venture capital firm.  Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers is an investor in Fisker Automotive, Inc.  According to ABC other Fisker investors were large donors to the Obama campaign.

In 2009 The Obama Administration enhanced the value of Gore’s investment by loaning $529 Million to Frisker Automotive.  This money was, of course, borrowed from the private economy, leaving that much less to be invested in genuine, job creating business ventures.

Fisker Automotive predicts the Karma will be able to travel thirty two miles on a charge.  Then, it will have to be recharged, or it can continue, powered by its gasoline engine that delivers 20 miles per gallon, about the same as a typical SUV.

This utterly impractical, high-end, rich man’s toy is being built:

• Not in Fisker’s home state of California where the unemployment rate is 11.9%;
• Not in Michigan where the unemployment rate is 11.1% and 100,000 experienced auto workers are idle;
• Not in the politically critical, must-win Presidential swing state of Ohio where unemployment is 9.1%

Fisker Automotive is building it’s new car in Finland.

Well, if the labor cost is higher here in America, maybe it makes business sense to move the manufacturing offshore, right?  Wrong.  According to the Labor Department’s International Labor Comparisons manufacturing labor costs, including wages and benefits, insurance and taxes average $33.53 in the US.  But  in Finland the average is $43.77!

Like traditional auto companies, Fisker supplements engineering accomplishments with generous doses of hype.   Last week was the big introduction shindig for the Karma.  But it wasn’t at a high profile auto show or a race track.   Fisker picked a venue that would honor it’s most important financial patrons by unveiling the Karma at the Mandarin Oriental luxury hotel (rooms starting at $750 per night) in… Washington D.C.

Political deals like this used to be done in secret and were called “corruption.”  Sometimes government officials were caught and prosecuted for corruption.  That was when the political establishment worried that a majority of Americans would oppose such imperious defiance of the U.S. Constitution and of common sense.

But that was then.  Today’s openly corrupt Political establishment no longer fears the voters.  Instead, voters have begun to fear an increasingly authoritarian and powerful central government, led by arrogant and ruthless politicians, bent on imposing their will on the people – at the people’s expense.

In its defense Fisker offers the assurance that funds from the taxpayer backed loan were spent on design and development costs within the US, and the Finland operation is financed by private investments.  But this is an utterly specious rationalization because there would be no manufacturing in Finland or anywhere else had the taxpayers not first risked the investment in design and development!

ABC News quoted the following from a written statement it received from the Office of Vice President Biden who has been the Administration’s front man in promoting the Fisker investment:

the Office of the Vice President did not encourage the Department of Energy to choose any particular company over any other but, like others in the Administration, supported the Department’s loan program and the creation of car manufacturing jobs in the United States.

So, the Administration’s position is that all is fine as long as voters believe Biden didn’t order funding of a specific company.  The media seem to believe this deal would not be a problem if the factory were here in the US.

But Americans should be outraged because it’s immoral and Unconstitutional for government to use its power to force The People to risk tax dollars on development of a selected product, because the product is favored by the political elite and/or because an establishment good-old-boy (Gore) is an investor.  The Constitution does not allow and has never been amended to authorize the government to invest in any private business for any reason.

If $98,000 electric cars were desired by enough real customers who were able and willing to pay the price the private sector would gladly make the investment and produce them without any help from government.  Investors putting their own money at risk, would make the decision, not government officials tasked with promoting a political agenda, involuntarily funded by taxpayers.

That taxpayer funds will be sunk into foreign manufacture of this absurdly expensive and useless vehicle that will never sell enough units to recover the initial investment only supports our suspicion of de facto corruption.

The picture was of me and I sent it.

Congressman Anthony Weiner finally confessed.  His Twitter account was not “hacked” as he had been claiming for a week.  And, hoping to head off more damage from additional salacious photos waiting in the wings to be splashed over the Internet, he admitted to several on-line dalliances.  The details and several of the titillating photos are at BigGovernment.com

I usually don’t write about personal scandals.   My goal is for Liberty Works to be known for excellence and we aren’t set up to do an excellent job of monitoring, verifying, and then reporting what usually turns out to be a series of breathless revelations – some true, some not – popping up as “breaking news” every few hours for several days. Other websites are set up for and do an excellent job of sifting out the baseless rumors and reporting the facts.

But now that at least some of the truth has been verified this episode calls for some sober reflection:

• Congressman Weiner is a strident and combative progressive, who sells his big government ideas by demonizing those of us who want less intrusive, more limited government that obeys the Constitution.
• The core principle of progressive/liberal politics is unyielding faith in “experts” to reorganize society and the economy, making them perform “better” than millions of large and small businesses, churches, charities, families and 300 million individuals can perform without government supervision.
• Progressives don’t compete in the open market, and don’t want to be burdened with having to persuade us to participate in or pay for their schemes.  So they don’t start businesses and try to attract voluntary customers.  They don’t start charities and ask for voluntary donations.  They work through government because government operates by the use of force and coercion.

Weiner-Gate should serve as a stark reminder to anyone who is seduced by the progressive concept of “expert” overseers manipulating the lives of the masses for “the greater good” that government officials are, like the rest of us, fallible human beings.  Often, as in the case of Mr. Wiener, they don’t have superior expertise.  They could not run an insurance company or a medical practice or a bank or an oil company or a school more effectively than those who manage those enterprises now.

The ability to use the power of government to force businesses and individuals to do or pay for what they would not do or pay for voluntarily does not make politicians smarter or less fallible than the rest of us.  It simply makes them more dangerous, more likely to cause harm.

Wiener has demonstrated himself especially unfit to be trusted with power over his fellow citizens. He has demonstrated himself to be too stupid or gullible or reckless to realize that:

• A photo sent out over the Internet will never cease to exist and can be republished without limit;
• Anyone can, and many do create phony Twitter or Facebook accounts with fictitious names, bios and pictures of attractive young women copied from elsewhere on the net;
• Participating in tawdry, juvenile on-line interactions make him vulnerable to career ending scandal and even blackmail as a Congressmen with access to classified intelligence and the power to enrich or harm individuals or businesses through legislation.

Weiner says his actions didn’t violate so-called ethics rules of the House and therefore he need not resign.  In his defense he offered the assurance that his Blackberry isn’t government issue, as if it mattered.  He will most likely be “persuaded” to resign by fellow progressives, armed with additional photos.

TV news continuous to regale us with video of Wisconsin’s Democratic State Representatives on the floor of the state Assembly screaming “shame! shame!” at their Republican colleagues after the state Assembly voted to pass Governor Walker’s finance bill.   For two weeks the establishment media has supported the protesters and their vitriolic denunciation of Walker and the Republicans, comparing them to Nazis, terrorists, etc.  So what’s this all about?

The chart explains why the Wisconsin labor union issue is so important to the national Democratic Party.  Membership in unions, the Party’s number one source of money, has been shrinking for decades and could all but disappear from the private sector.   Only in the public sector are unions still strong.

Since the Seventies the Democratic Party and public employee unions have had a symbiotic relationship with no equivalent on the Republican side.  The unions donate a portion of membership dues to ensure the continuous re-election of Democrats, who ensure the continuous expansion of government, creating more union jobs which then generate more dues revenue, and even larger campaign donations in return.

Most of the media support the party line that the hysterical protests have something to do with “fundamental rights” of hapless, hard pressed teachers and state employees.  But the real crisis is the potential loss of campaign money and with it the progressive dream of continuously expanding, ever more authoritarian government.

Public employees in Wisconsin and across the nation enjoy higher wages and far more generous benefits than employees in comparable private sector jobs.  In addition, public employees are protected by civil service laws that ensure greater job security than anyone in the private sector would expect.   Civil Service law is independent of, and not dependent upon unions.

Under existing Wisconsin law labor unions now “collectively bargain” with state, county and city officials to develop contracts that establish the wages, benefits and working conditions of state, county and city employees.  When those officials owe their jobs to campaign funding by the unions everyone sits on the same time of the bargaining table and the system screams conflict of interest.

A union’s power to represent and bind employees to the contract it negotiates and to force them to pay dues via payroll deduction stems from an election wherein a majority of employees voted to “certify” it as their representative.  In Wisconsin, those elections were held decades ago, binding then current and all future employees unless/until a majority sign a petition calling for a new election.  Of course the union applies coercive pressure to discourage anyone from circulating or signing petitions.

Governor Walker’s bill now goes to the Senate for a vote, whenever the Democratic Senators who have fled the state finally return.  If passed by the Senate it will:

• Reduce employees’ take-home pay by requiring them to contribute more of the cost of their retirement and health insurance benefits.
  

• Restrict collective bargaining only to a percentage of base wage no greater than the increase in the consumer price index.  So, if there was 3% inflation last year the largest wage increase the new law would allow the union and the state/county/city employers to negotiate would be 3%.  Benefits and working conditions would not be subject to collective bargaining.

• End the practice of forcing employees to pay union dues via payroll deduction.  Dues payment would become voluntary.

• Require an annual re-certification election in each bargaining unit, beginning this year.  The union will not continue in power without a yes vote from a majority of the employees in the bargaining unit.

It seems very unlikely that the unions could survive these restrictions.  Virtually all the people who voted in the original certification elections have already retired or died.  Current employees had no choice.  The unions are unlikely to win re-certification elections without the power to bargain for ever more generous benefits and wage increases.  People are not going to voluntarily pay the dues unions have always had to collect by forced payroll deduction

The Democratic-union-media side of the argument is that Governor Walker’s real agenda is union busting.  That’s true as far as it goes.  The rest of the truth is that the union-Democratic Party alliance exists to concentrate wealth and power in federal and state governments resulting in less individual liberty and greater economic misery.

• Pass a budget for fiscal year 2011, which began October 1, 2010.
• Pass 12 appropriations bills that break the budget down to more manageable pieces and grant each department and agency the budget authority to continue operations.

Thus, Congress has given us another of its infamous crises.  Without appropriations the government’s various departments and agencies have no authority to do anything and the government “shuts down.”  Congress passed a “Continuing Appropriations Act” in September that authorized the government to continue operating at 2010 budget levels.  The September bill was “clean” in that it was only ten pages and not packed with special interest subsidies and earmarks.  But it expires Saturday and the government will shut down if Congress does not act.

Senate Majority Leader Reid sought to exploit the crisis to the advantage of Democratic constituencies with a two thousand page “Omnibus” bill.  Described in the previous post the Omnibus combines 12 appropriations into one, incomprehensible monstrosity.

Today Senator McConnell offered a common sense alternative to Reid’s 2,000 page obscenity: A single page that extends the September Continuing Appropriations Act until February 18, giving the new Congress time to enact a proper budget and proper appropriations.  Here it is:

Senator McConnell called it “one last spending binge.”  It’s 1,924 pages of emergency spending authority totaling about $1.1 trillion that must be passed this week to prevent a government shut down.

Politicians love a budget crisis because it gives them an opportunity to sneak some home state pork and special interest subsidies into a bill nobody will have time to read.

According to media reports there are more than 8 thousand earmarks, inserted into the bill by both Republicans and Democrats.  Some of the Republicans whose sanctimonious indignation is now heard in dramatic soundbites were the authors of some of the earmarks.

The obvious question is, of course: Why is there an emergency?

Incompetence and malfeasance in Congress created this emergency.  The circumstances require some sort of “stop-gap” spending legislation because Congress failed to accomplish its most basic, Constitutional responsibilities:

• Pass a budget for fiscal year 2011, which began October 1, 2010.
• Pass 12 appropriations bills that break the budget down to more manageable pieces and grant each department and agency the budget authority to continue operations.

Without appropriation bills the government’s various departments and agencies lack permission from Congress to do anything, resulting in a government “shut down.”  Perhaps the most famous shut-downs were in the 90s when the new Republican majority in Congress could not reach a compromise with Democratic President Clinton.

Of course there is no such disagreement this year as the President’s own party has super-majorities in both houses.  Yet somehow, the Democrats could not find time for their Constitutional duty until this last moment.  So now they gleefully load up the earmarks and special deals for politically connected constituencies even as they act as if they are heroically rescuing us from yet another crisis.

Thirty Second Video

Vice President Biden blames lack of public approval on lack of public comprehension due to the size and complexity of Obama legislative packages.

As is his wont the Vice President makes an inadvertent admission.  “The people really involved” are the Senators and Congressmen who voted to enact these “gigantic packages.”  We, The People will have to suffer the consequences over many years as we, The President, The Vice President and the Senators and Congressmen who enacted “gigantic packages” learn by living through them what the consequences will be.

Most Americans know that most of the Senators and Congressmen who voted to enact thousand of pages of new law and changes to existing law in the ObamaCare bill, the energy bill, the recently enacted financial regulation bill and the $800 Billion Recovery Act (AKA “stimulus”) did not read them, and could not comprehend them if they did.

These bills are so “gigantic” and complex that it’s simply not possible to even consider all the consequences, even if one read every page.  Consider this one paragraph example from the Stimulus/Recovery Act about Transit Assistance.

To figure out what this means one would have to:

• read section 5302 of title 49, US Code to learn what kinds of grants are authorized, and
• Read section 5307 of Title 49, US Code to learn what types of grants 80% of the money is to be spent on, and
• Read subsections i, l,  and j to see what kinds of grants are prohibited, and
• Read section 5340 to learn how 10% of the funds are to be spent, and
• Read section 5311 to learn how the last 10% of funds are to be spent.

To be careful and thorough a Congressman should look into the historical performance of each of these grant programs to determine if they have been efficient and cost effective in the past.  Conscientious due diligence on just this one-half of one page could take a Senator and his staff a week to complete.

Each of Biden’s “gigantic packages” includes thousands of amendments to other laws and programs.

• Nobody in the Administration or Congress could possibly imagine all the potential consequences, intended, or unintended that could result.
• Nobody could possibly imagine all the ways changes in different, disparate programs could combine with changes in other programs to produce unanticipated consequences in the broader economy.
  

The Bottom Line

The best word to characterize enacting these “gigantic packages” without any way to understand the consequences is:

Negligence.

Even as President Obama castigates BP, he and the oil giant earned the same comeuppance as fallout from the oil spill.

As the oil spill catastrophe drags on and on the President suffers his most virulent attacks from his leftist base, including the media and the environmental movement.  These are the folks who fell for the hype and believed that Barack Obama was The One.  During the campaign they provided the money, the cheering crowds at a thousand rallies and the groveling,  slobbering TV coverage.

They believed that experience as a community organizer, which is little more than making petulant demands of the local establishment, was appropriate qualification for President.  They believed government could do anything if only that evil Bush wasn’t in charge.  Now they are disillusioned and angry.

Obama briefly fell back into community organizer mode when he demanded, petulantly, that someone “plug the damn hole.”  But he now is the establishment.  Now he is the target of the petulant demands he used to hurl at others, and because he has absolutely no relevant experience he is incompetent to respond.

We’re told that BP is representative of the free market over government.  But the truth is not really consistent with this narrative.  BP is as much or more a creature of government as of the market.

Today, politicians are in full stampede, all competing  to condemn BP in stronger terms than the others.  But before the oil spill banned it from membership, BP was a major player in the game of insider politics in Washington.  Indeed, BP was often mentioned favorably by the same politicians and activists who continuously demand ever increasing government power over the private sector.

In a speech last March, a month before the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, BP CEO Tony Hayward gave a speech to some of the most influential politicians, lobbyists, and activists in Washington.  He won their respect and admiration by giving full support to cap and trade, the energy taxing and rationing scheme Obama and the Democrats in Congress have been trying to enact since early last year.  He said in part:

BP has been calling for action for more than a decade—preferably via creating a price for carbon through market mechanisms…I’d suggest there are clear signs that governments around the world are sensitive to this and are beginning to do something about it.

The process may seem somewhat disjointed—even frustrating—at times, an example being Congress’s inconclusive attempts to pass a cap-and-trade bill.

Creating a price for carbon through market mechanisms is code for a government imposed, artificial, energy shortage.  This would be accomplished by requiring energy producers to purchase government issued permission slips.

The cost of permission slips would be added to the cost of energy production, raising energy prices for all businesses and households.  The law of supply and demand would increase the price even more because  government would CAP energy production at less than is now consumed by limiting the number of permission slips.  The big winners would of course be the federal government that would rake in Billions, and politically favored companies that would get to buy permission slips directly from the government and then resell them at a higher price.

Hayward continued…

And these are more than just words. At BP we factor a carbon cost into both our investment choices and the engineering design of new projects. This is our way of ensuring that our investments are competitive not only in today’s world, but in a future where carbon has a more robust price.

Translation, BP is setting itself up to profit not so much from selling energy to customers but from a cap and trade scheme that politically favors its “investment choices.”

On April 22, two days after the explosion but before the world became aware of the uncontrollable oil belching, Senator John Kerry, principle author of the latest version of Cap and Trade announced he had the support of three major oil companies, including BP, for his bill.  This came after weeks of closed door meetings with lobbyists from the three companies.

More excerpts from Hayward’s speech reveal what BP would get in return for supporting the Kerry cap and trade bill:.

Looking at the power pathway, we believe it makes sense to use much more natural gas. Gas offers the greatest potential to achieve the largest CO2 reductions—at the lowest cost and in the shortest time…It’s easily the cleanest burning fossil fuel—around 50 percent cleaner than coal…

“Cleaner” means less CO2, the naturally occurring gas that the global warming crowd claims will cause a world-wide climate catastrophe – unless of course government oversees and controls all energy production and consumption – and pretty much everything else.  Hayward continued…

Given these facts, it seems extraordinary that the United States is still focused on building coal fired power plants…We see natural gas as a key ingredient of a secure pathway to lower-carbon power…

At BP…in our low carbon energy business [natural gas] we have invested over $4 billion to date, and we’re continuing to invest more than $1 billion a year.

So there it is.  The Kerry version of cap and trade would diverge from leftist dogma that  all fossil fuels are bad and all must be banned in order to “save the planet.”  Instead the government would, in the name of reducing carbon and global warming, force electricity producers all across the mid west to switch from one fossil fuel, coal, to a different fossil fuel, natural gas.  And BP, would just happen to be in the right place at the right time to make the most from its natural gas investment – at the expense of coal the producers who lost the game of political horse trading in Washington.

Of course BP’s investments in years of lobbying have all been washed away by the oil slicked waters of the Gulf of Mexico.  Now a pariah in Washington, BP may be forced to become a lot more free market oriented in the future – assuming it survives the current political offensive.

Obama and BP both staked their futures on their skills as manipulators of government policy.  Both are now learning how random events can bring political high fliers crashing back to hard ground.

Update March 21:  Obviously, we were wrong.  The House has passed the Senate version, and ObamaCare and it is now the law of the land.

March 13, 2010:

The conflicts and lack of trust within the their own Party make it impossible for President Obama and the Democrats to enact their sweeping government take-over of health care without violating the Constitution.  In an earlier time, before citizens had the means to scrutinize Congress as closely as we now have, politicians got away with extra-Constitutional schemes like Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Barack Obama are now contemplating.

But we don’t believe they can pull it off in the era of the Internet, talk radio, cable news channels, and the Tea Party movement.

The Constitution’s procedural requirements for enacting new laws is clear.  Both the House and the Senate must pass exactly the same legislation, and then it must be signed by the President.  More often than not, four steps are required:

1. The Senate passes its version of new legislation.
2. The House of Representatives passes passes its version of the same legislation.
3. Since the bills are not exactly the same, as required by the Constitution, members of the House and Senate meet together in a conference committee to edit and combine the two bills.  The goal of the conference committee is to write language that can attract enough votes in each body to pass the legislation.
4. The conference committee version goes back to the House and the Senate.  Each body must pass it, as written, with no amendments.

If the conference committee version cannot attract enough votes in each body the legislation dies.

For ObamaCare, steps 1 and 2 have been completed.  But the the Senate version was passed on Christmas Eve when the Democrats had the required sixty votes.  Now, since Republican Scott Brown was elected, the Democrats have only 59 votes and thus could not pass any conference version.  Even before Scott Brown, passage of the Senate version required the now infamous “special deals” for individual Senators that could not survive the conference committee process.  Thus, the Democratic leadership ruled out the conference committee process weeks ago.

This chaotic health care debate has exposed two fundamental weakness in the Democrat party:

1. It won it’s substantial majority in the House of Representatives by fielding candidates in swing districts who campaigned on Conservative themes that party leaders don’t believe in.  But it has been attempting to govern as if it had a sweeping mandate to dramatically expand government’s size and power.  The basic concept of ObamaCare, that absolute government control will bring about better results than the status quo, simply does not sell in those swing districts.
2. It is largely a coalition of disparate and unpopular causes that manage to stifle their differences just long enough to win elections, but not long enough to govern.  These causes include:

• • Greater rights, privileges, and public benefits for illegal immigrants;
  • Gay marriage and public school indoctrination in favor of homosexuality;
  • Publicly funded abortion on demand for any female of any age without condition;
  • Maintaining and expanding the benefits enjoyed by union members, especially teachers and government employees;
  • Extreme environmentalism, including efforts to reduce the birth rate in order to reduce the size of the human population;
  • Enriching trial lawyers by passing legislation that creates pretexts for more lawsuits;
  • Shrinking the U.S. military and blanket opposition to any military operation.

At least half of Democrat House members owe their careers to, and cannot vote in favor of a bill that looks like it may weaken the supporters of one of these causes.  Some examples:

• One liberal Democrat, Luiz Gutierrez of Illinois, who would otherwise be a reliable vote in favor of government health care, told CNN he would vote no because the bill, as now written would deny benefits to illegal immigrants.
• Approximately 12 Democrats are pro-life and so far have been unwilling to vote for the Senate version because it would allow government funding of abortion.  But many more Democrats are aligned with the abortion-on-demand movement and are loathe to vote for any restriction on government funding.
• Representative Bart Stupak, who has been the most outspoken pro-life Democrat told reporters that he was urged by Democrat leaders to vote in favor of public funding of abortion because reducing the number of babies born would reduce government spending on health care.
• The Senate version of the bill includes a tax on the most generous and expensive health plans that are usually found in unionized organizations.  House members who are beholden to unions are unwilling to vote for a bill that includes this tax.
• Some Democrats agree with Republicans that curtailing lawsuits and limiting money judgments to actual losses suffered would decrease the cost of Health Care.  But most Democrats are too much indebted to the trial lawyers to go along.

Democrat leaders have been trying to sell House members on a two step process that begins with the House passing the Senate version as written.  The President would then sign the Senate version and it would become the law of the land.

The second step would be pass a bill of amendments that would somehow “fix” the Senate version so it would no longer offend house members trying to be loyal to the causes that support them.  That second bill would then have to pass both the House and the Senate.  Democrats claim they can use a process called “reconciliation” in the Senate that would require only 51 votes for passage.  However, that claim is very much in dispute.

Reconciliation, if used for this legislation, would violate the rules of the Senate, which would be a violation of the Constitution.  Besides, it is doubtful that a bill that satisfied enough House Democrats could win even 51 Senate Democrat votes.

Another idea being floated by House leadership would be to pass the “fixit” bill under a contrived “rule” that would deem the Senate version also passed, but without a vote.  Obviously, this would violate the Constitution.

In reality, House Democrats who vote in favor of the Senate version, would have to do so either because it is acceptable as is to them and to the pressure groups who support them, or because they have to trust leaders to write a fixit bill that will be acceptable and can actually be enacted by both bodies.  And that would take a lot of naive trust, by sleazy politicians in other sleazy politicians!

Does he want them to promise to resurrect government run health care?  NO!

Does he advise them to promote other programs from the President’s agenda, including:

• big tax increases on small businesses?
• Cap and trade, an artificial energy shortage imposed by government regulation, coupled with a new energy tax?
• new laws that will coerce employers and their employees into union contracts they don’t want?

NO!

Mr. Menendez advises Democrats to try to stir up conflict between Republican candidates and tea party activists.  He urges Democrats to force Republican candidates to publicly answer what he believes will be divisive questions. Here’s an example,

Do you think programs like Social Security and Medicare represent socialism and should never have been created in the first place?

The honest answer is obvious.  Of course they should never have been created.  Not because they “represent socialism,” but because they exceed the authority granted to Congress under the Constitution, because they have proven to be financially unworkable, and because they will cause a lot of misery in the future.

Social Security was sold to the voters of the 1930s with a lie that it was a retirement savings program and there would be a “trust fund.”  Today, most Americans realize there never was any savings, and the trust fund is and always was an accounting fiction.

In reality, Social Security is a payroll tax that collects cash from wage earners and small business owners and immediately pays it out to retirees.  Since 1984 the payroll tax has collected more than was needed to pay retirees.  According to the continuing political lie, the surplus was “borrowed,” from the “trust fund,” and spent on other government expenses.   The so-called trust fund now consists entirely of IOUs, signifying the fiction that the government owes itself about $4.4 Trillion.  Beginning in 2014 payroll tax revenue will be less than benefit payouts and Congress will have to choose either benefit cuts or tax increases because the “trust fund” is worthless.

When the payroll tax began in 1937 it was 2% of the first $3,000 in wages, half paid by the employer and half paid by the employee.  Voters tolerated the new tax because it was small and the promises were big.  Adjusted for inflation, $3,000 would be about $45,000 today.  At 2%, today’s Social Security payroll tax on $45,000 would be $450 each on employer and employee, for the whole year.

But after a dozen tax rate increases, the tax on a $45,000 salary is now $2,800 each, on employer and employee.  By the way, $2,800 dos not include the additional payroll taxes that were added to fund Medicare and SSI.  Those add-ons raise the total to $3,442 each on employer and employee.  Even after all those increases the current tax rate is not nearly enough to fund baby boomer retirement benefits.  Government has done nothing to prepare for the boomers even though the benefits have been promised and scheduled for 50 – 64 years.

Republican candidates should demonstrate honesty by openly stating what most voters already know, that Social Security is looming train wreck.   There will be no clever, painless, political adjustment that keeps everyone happy.  The only responsible course of action is to gradually phase out this dishonest program.  A phase-out will entail a lot of pain, but it has to be done.  Social Security is simply unsustainable.

Mendenez and the Democrats seem to think voters will, as they did in the past, turn against a candidate who is honest about the looming, painful, Social Security/Medicare crisis.  But in 2010 we’ve embarked on a new era when voters are loath to trust Utopian promises from the Left, including the usual promise to sustain Social Security without causing any pain, except maybe to “the rich.”  Voters in Massachusetts elected Scott Brown who vowed, unconditionally, to kill ObamaCare even though the President and the Democrats had promised it would improve medical care and lower costs for everyone.

If the Republicans nominate strong honest candidates, 2010 will be remembered as the beginning of a new era when brutal honesty became the winning political strategy in America

Well, a list of all the politicians who previously solicited Governor Blagojevich to give their friends cushy state jobs or other favors has come out in the open.  And it includes a certain B. Hussein Obama  (Mmmm, mmmm, mmmm).

Yes, it turns out that Mr. Hope-and-Change-You-Can-Believe-In, during his term as Illinois state senator went to bat for a number of people to get state jobs or promotions in Blagojevich’s administration, according to records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times.

Obama made his pitch for 16 people, according to the records. Five got hired. ??This Chicago based commentator has noted for over a year now that President Obama rose out of the very same cesspool of Illinois politics that gave us Pay for Play Rod.  The national media have chosen to ignore this association.  As far as they are concerned, Obama is squeaky clean.  Right.  Except when it comes to the game of political clout.  It also turns out that White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, then a congressman, had seven people he wanted placed in state government.

I sure am glad that when the Blagojevich scandal broke this spring, and concerns about Emanuel surfaced, the Obama Administration conducted an exhaustive (snicker) 3 day investigation, clearing him. Because as you can see, Emanuel and Obama would never ever get involved in favors for people with political clout.  No way.

Sadly, in today’s world of the establishment media’s slobbering worship, if they choose not to cover it, it never happened.

Why, after nine months of deliberations has the Senate not produced genuine legislation to vote on? It seems Senate Democrats  learned a lesson from the mistakes of House Democrats.  The House Health Care bill, HR 3200 was posted on the Internet in July.  It spread fear and alarm throughout the land as Internet based analysts, echoed by several media outlets, helped millions of Americans see for themselves the ya wning gap  between the consequences of the actual legislation and President Obama’s extravagant, Utopian promises.

Tens of thousands of people showed up at town halls across the country carrying portions of HR3200 on clipboards as they demanded clear answers to specific questions.  It became obvious from the reactions of stupefied Senators and Congressmen that they had not read legislation they came home to sell, and they could not justify the draconian restrictions on health insurance policies, or the way ObamaCare would use brute force against most Americans.

This week the senate Finance Committee plans vote out its conceptual paper.  The next step is for Majority Leader Harry Reid to merge it with another conceptual paper from another Senate Committee and assign staff lawyers to transform concepts into legislative language, creating a real bill, which then will be brought to the Senate floor for debate.  The merging will be done behind closed doors by Reid, two or three other Senators, and some Senate staffers.  Obviously, this small group of people will have virtually total discretion, to write anything they want into the final bill.  In spite of all the months of deliberations by two committees, the bill that will change the way every American pays for and accesses medical services will be written in a few day by just a few people.

After some period of debate will be “Cloture,” a vote to close debate so Senators can vote yes or no on the bill.  This is the step that requires sixty votes. Without sixty votes debate cannot end and eventually Senate leaders will have no choice but to abandon the effort, and withdraw the legislation from consideration.

It’s often said that sixty votes are required to pass a bill in the Senate, but that’s not completely accurate.  Sometimes Senators will vote yes for Cloture and then vote no on the bill.  This is what Democrat leaders hope to accomplish.  They hope to persuade Senators who will be opposed to the final bill to vote yes on Cloture anyway.  Then they hope to pass the bill, with only 51 votes if necessary, allowing those Senators who represent states where voters oppose ObamaCare to cover their butts by voting no on the final bill.

You can help prevent passage of this government take-over of health care, designed in haste, by a few unqualified politicians and Senate staff, in open defiance of the Constitution.

Call the Senate and demand that the final bill, complete with an estimate of future costs, or “scoring” by the Congressional Budget Office be posted on the internet at least 72 hours before debate begins.  The number is (202) 224-3121.  The operator will connect you with the offices of your state’s Senators.

We reported that the loan was to fund development and production of a plug-in hybrid sports car that will cost $89,000, will travel only 50 miles on a charge, and be assembled in Finland.

A comment added to the first article begins with “Some corrections to your misstatements:”  and goes on to assert:

The loan was for a more modest priced [sic] next generation car that would be closer to $39,000. The production of the Karma is in Finland as you say, but it wasn’t stated where the next generation car would be produced.

Accuracy is extremely important to us at Liberty Works so we did some checking.  We found a press release from the Department of Energy, the agency that made the loan,  announcing that it would fund development of two cars:

• $169 Million to develop the $89,000 Karma, the plug-in hybrid luxury sports car, and
  
• $359 Million to develop another plug-in hybrid car.  The press release does not describe the other car, or project a price.
  

So our commenter is partially correct and we were partially incorrect.

Our purpose in reporting on this loan from the government to Fisker was to call attention to Unconstitutional interference in the market place by government.  It is immoral and unproductive and Unconstitutional for government to use tax revenue to fund development of a selected product, because the product is favored by the political-media establishment and/or because an establishment good-old-boy (Gore) is an investor.

If plug-in cars become cost effective and desired by customers then the private sector can and will produce them without any help from government.  Investors putting their own money at risk are far better at due diligence than bureaucrats tasked with promoting a political agenda.

That taxpayer funds will be sunk into foreign manufacture of this absurdly expensive and useless vehicle that will never sell enough units to recover the initial investment only supports our charge of de facto corruption.

This kind of thing used to be done secretly in back rooms, out of public view.  Those involved feared public exposure because it would lead to prosecution.  But in 2009 the political establishment is so arrogant it writes legislation empowering the bureaucracy to do a deal like this right out in the open, and to even put out a press release bragging about it!

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]]> http://libertyworks.com/corruption-in-plain-sight-2/feed/ 27 http://libertyworks.com/noxious-corruption-in-plain-sight/ http://libertyworks.com/noxious-corruption-in-plain-sight/#comments Fri, 25 Sep 2009 18:49:11 +0000 BoomerJeff http://libertyworks.com/?p=5048 Fisker Automotive, Inc. is a start-up car company in California. Fisker is about to build the Karma, a hybrid/electric, luxury sports car that will sell for $89,000.

Al Gore, former Vice President and grand ayatollah of the shrine of global climate change (formerly, “global warming,” before the earth cooled for twelve years)  is a partner in Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, a venture capital firm.  Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers is an investor in Fisker Automotive, Inc.

The Obama Administration just enhanced the value of Gore’s investment by loaning $529 Million to Frisker Automotive to fund production of the Karma.  This money was, of course, borrowed from the private economy, leaving that much less to be invested in job creating business ventures.

Fisker Automotive predicts the Karma will be able to travel a whopping fifty miles on a charge.  Then, it will have to be recharged.

This utterly impractical, high-end, rich man’s toy will be built:

• Not in Fisker’s home state of California where the unemployment rate is 12.2%;
• Not in Michigan where the unemployment rate is 15.2% and 100,000 experienced auto workers are idle;
• Not in the politically critical swing state of Ohio where unemployment is 10.8%
  

Fisker Automotive will be building it’s new, American taxpayer funded car in Finland.

This kind of thing used to be done in secret and it was called “corruption.”  And sometimes government officials were caught and prosecuted for corruption.  That was when the political establishment worried that a majority of Americans would oppose such imperious defiance of the U.S. Constitution and of common sense.

But that was then.  This is now, and all the facts in this article came from The Wall Street Journal, not from an undercover investigation, or confidential interviews of whistle blowers.

The openly corrupt Political establishment no longer fears the voters.  Instead, voters have begun tp fear an increasingly authoritarian and powerful central government, led by arrogant and ruthless politicians.

Is it “racist” to disagree with President Obama, or to oppose his ideas, or the ideas of his appointees?   Recently, former President Jimmy Carter, speaking for  much of the political-media establishment, asserted that it was.  A gaggle of media talkers and writers surged forward to agree.

In the wake of Carter’s preposterous assertion we’ve had to endure yet another round of the same old chant:  “There’s still racism in America.”

Well, yes there is.  There’s racism in every nation on the planet.  For all of human history, some humans have disliked and fought and killed other humans only because they were different.

Sadly, along dishonest politicians, a corrupt pressure group called ACORN, and a corrupt media that won’t report news unless it can be twisted to support a certain agenda, there still are some racists in America.

• That doesn’t make Barack Obama an infallible diety whose wisdom and motives are above question or challenge.
• That doesn’t mean it was right for Senators and Congressmen to pass Obama’s $787 Billion “stimulus to save or create jobs” without reading it.  In fact, as the latest unemployment statistics demonstrate, the “stimulus” has utterly failed.
• That doesn’t mean the quality and availability of  health care will improve if the government takes over.
• That doesn’t mean Americans should or do prefer to be ruled by authoritarian bureaucracies instead of living in freedom and practicing individual responsibility.
  

Those who smear  the racism charge over the face of dissenters have one goal:  To silence dissent.

America is the most racially and ethnically diverse nation on earth.  If you don’t believe it drive slowly the fifteen miles of Wilshire Blvd., from Downtown Los Angeles to the beach in Santa Monica.  You’ll be regaled by more  cultures and ethnicities than you ever dreamed existed on one planet.

At the same time, America has worked harder to achieve racial equality and harmony than any society in history.

To borrow a cliche from President Obama, Americans should, from now on, “call out” Jimmy Carter, or anyone else who accuses sincere political dissenters and advocates of liberty of being motivated by insidious bigotry.