Any school kid can tell you that our system of government was designed with checks and balances in place, in order to keep its participants from straying too far from the straight and narrow path.  And most folks can even tell you that the triumvirate of legislative, executive, and judiciary branches is the embodiment of checks and balances.  It's in our elementary school textbooks.  Everybody knows this.

On occasion we see division between those three branches, reflective of some aspect of "check" coming into play.  The recent Supreme Court ruling in United Citizens v. Federal Elections Commission is an example of this, where the judiciary issued a decision that most decidedly rubbed the Executive and members of the Legislature the wrong way.  In the past, when we had a Party majority in opposition to the Party of the President, we often saw evidence of "checks" at work.  It's probably a safe bet that we will see more of this "check" action come into play this election year, as some members of the President's majority Party place their bets either for or against his current popularity (or lack thereof) with the electorate in their bids to win election.  But somehow, it has always been a bit of a struggle for me to find comfort in this one example taught to us early on, division of the three branches, as being the safety net we have against a too-powerful, oppressive government.

That's because it wasn't the only method of checks and balances designed into our system of government by our Founders.  To understand the beauty of design, the genius that went into the creation of our government, we have to look at what was then, what is now, and how changes over time have robbed us of protection, resulting in the strained, partisan system of infighting we now call 'government'.

Consider this:  Congresscritters are elected for a two year term, the President for four years, and Senators for six.  These are not arbitrary numbers.  They were selected to establish state control and influence and continuity in the function of the federal government while allowing for more frequent updating of local opinion at the same time.  Remember that senators were not initially elected by popular vote, they were appointed by the governors of each state to represent the interests of that state.  Presidents were, and still are, elected by vote of the Electoral College, whose members represent the interests of the people as reflected in the presidential election process.  Only Congresscritters were, and still are, elected by a direct vote of the people to represent them at the federal level.  (Hence, our representative form of government; we are not a democracy, which is majority rule, which historically has facilitated the trampling of the rights of minorities.) The design was to make Congress (who holds the purse strings of the federal government, who can declare war, etc.) most representative of the wishes of the people, most answerable to the people, and most vulnerable to removal from office via the shortest term of office.  The number of Congresscritters allowed per state is based on the size of population, as determined every ten years by the National Census.  Senators, whose six year terms varied from the four year terms of governors, were there to advocate on behalf of their represented states, whose interests undoubtedly persisted beyond those of its elected governors.  A certain amount of consistency and stability resulted from the longer senatorial terms.

The office of President, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the federal government, has always contained the element of politics to it.  The number of electors representing each state in the electoral college system is the combined total of the number of Senators and Congresscritters each state has.  Electors are selected by the political parties of each state, usually immediately following their respective national conventions, when candidates for President and Vice President have been selected as well.  When folks vote in presidential elections, what we are really doing (and what we once understood we were doing) is voting for the electors, NOT for President and Vice President.  Originally, there was no requirement that candidates for President and Vice President be of the same party.  When electors met in their representative states to cast their votes following the popular vote, the candidate receiving the most votes became the choice for president, and first runner-up for Vice President.  This didn't work very well; some candidates won as President in some states and as Vice President in others, without the necessary clear majority -- note the election of 1800 -- leading to ratification of the Twelfth Amendment in 1804 that changed the process to election of a Party "ticket" of President/Vice President.  This change, although necessary, had the effect of strengthening the roles of political parties in the election process, something the Founders did not want and would have found to be both corrupting and distasteful.  There is nothing in the Constitution that dictates how each state will design its selection of electors, nor how those electors will cast their votes.  Electors are independent and do not have to necessarily vote to reflect the popular vote in their states, although almost all have done so.  Most states have a "winner take all" approach to assigning electoral votes, but a few now use a "district system" that assigns two electors at-large and the rest by congressional district.  Votes are cast by the at-large electors on the basis of majority of the statewide popular vote and in each district on the basis of majority in that district.  This has the effect of neutralizing the overwhelming effect in populous individual districts (such as where large cities are located).  When the Founding Dads came up with the idea of the Electoral College, they designed a system that

• Reconciled differing states and federal interests
• Provided a degree of popular participation in the election process
  
• Allowed less populous states additional leverage in national decisions
• Made the presidency independent of Congress for election and re-election, except in the case of an unresolvable tie vote
  
• Insulated the selection process for the presidency from political manipulation, to some degree

It was the desire of the Founding Dads to create a process that would allow for the selection of the most qualified person for CEO of the country, rather than the most popular or the most politically-connected.  The Founders distrusted politics, viewing it as the impediment of special interests on the operation of effective and even-handed government. They designed a system they hoped would minimize the effects of politics on the selection of the President, and for a time it seemed they had succeeded.  This all changed with the re-election campaign of President Andrew Jackson in 1832.

At issue was the extension of the charter of the Second Bank of the United States, which served as the nation's central bank (much as the Federal Reserve system does today).  There had been disastrous experiences for the country with the first Bank of the United States, and with its predecessor, the Bank of North America, making folks wary of another central bank; the bank was given a 20 year charter which would expire in 1836.  Nicholas Biddle, President of the Second Bank of the United States, wanted an early extension of the charter while he had (he believed) the votes to do it.  An obliging Congress passed the extension bill, and because it was an election year, it was expected the President not want to make waves.  Instead, President Jackson vetoed the bill, making the bank the Number One campaign issue of the election.  Biddle's influence in Congress and with the press was strong.  In order to mount an effective challenge, Andrew Jackson did something that had never been done before:  he took his argument to the people. In campaign stops all over the country, Jackson warned voters of the danger to the economy the Bank posed (and Biddle obligingly confirmed as he punitively tightened the money supply, causing economic chaos on purpose, thinking it would scare people into opposing Jackson).  Jackson won, the Second Bank of the United States went away at the end of its charter, and the perception of the role of the President was forever changed in the minds of the voters:  it went from 'public servant' to 'national leader', and that politicized interpretation is what we've had ever since.

It's fairly easy to recognize what effect this change in perception of our nation's CEO has wrought.  The President is called "the leader of the free world", the leader of his (and someday, her) political party, and is perceived as being synonymous with the country itself.  The amount of power any given president holds is awesome.  And the amount of control over the country in general the president holds has exploded in scope, far outside that specifically granted in the Constitution.  Gone is the focus on state government and its more personal relationship with its constituents.  Today we have a situation whereby a miffed California Senator Feinstein can respond to the plea of California Governor Schwarzenegger for the state's Senators to reject a plan for national health care because of its onerous cost to the state by essentially telling him to stay out of Washington and mind his own deficit.

We lose.  We lose because we've made changes to what was a thoughtful, carefully designed plan, incremental changes made without regard to the safeguards that were eliminated, without understanding of the beauty of the design.  Instead, we get all-politics, all the time.  Presidential campaigns never come to an end.  Political parties and incumbent candidates raise astronomical sums of money in their attempt to dominate the game, and voters agree to one abridgment of their rights after another in a futile attempt to find peace and security.  We are now the public servants.

O.K., so Mr. Mo and I were having a discussion about the War On Terror this morning and he was pretty pessimistic about it all. We were talking about al-Qu'eda's shifting of operations to Yemen, since we're crawling all over Afghanistan at the moment and we've done a pretty effective job of slapping them down in Iraq. (And Bush/Cheney were absolutely right to go into Iraq, since it is the crossroads in the ME and part of the ancient roadways Islamafascists take to get from, say, Afghanistan to Yemen). Mr. Mo was saying that we can't keep opening up new fronts everytime al-Qa'eda moves headquarters, that Americans will burn out on war, the military will be stretched too thin, the expense yada yada. I had said that we took a military approach to their shores when Jefferson was President and it was effective for a couple of hundred years, but he reminded me that back then we dominated them in weaponry and in naval ops; today they have been given the means to use some pretty mean weaponry themselves and they've avoided any naval conflict by keeping the fight on familiar turf. Talk then turned to the fact that the religion itself is so basically flawed as to foster the sort of abuse and disregard for fellow folks these devils demonstrate, and that it is waaaaayyyy overdue for a reformation. Without a reformation, fundamentalist fanatics will continue to fire up the uneducated and economically downtrodden to blow themselves up in the blasphemied name of Allah.

The thought occurred to me that what we need is a CIA that once existed in the 1950s to early 1960s; the one that thought up all those things that could be done to harass Castro and Kruschev, like lethally exploding cigars, contaminants to make the beard fall out, diseases, etc. I suggested that THAT sort of CIA could bring about a reformation by tackling the clerics and mullahs. They wouldn't have to assassinate through violence. They could introduce a bit of HIV here and there, a spot of vitiligo (see: Michael Jackson skin disorder), incurable TB (uncontrollable coughing prevents religious rants), and perhaps some necrotizing fasciitis (think Jim Henson). Then they could spread the rumor that Allah is P.O'd!

Is this wrong? Is it bad?

Not to me it isn't. The more liberal/progressive of our leadership have steadily been eliminating our available options for protecting ourselves until all we are left with is war/military strikes vs. diplomacy (and we all know which option they prefer; it's the one that makes us weakest and most vulnerable). But we used to have so many options!

I can live with some social engineering of our enemy, in lieu of sending our young off to die in a senseless endless battle. And I can enjoy the embarrassment of the righteously wrong bearing the physical evidence of an Allah slap, courtesy of the US CIA. Sure! Why not?

Something happened the other day.  Something BIG.  Something most of us don't understand the first thing about.  The Supreme Court of the United States tossed out a chunk of the McCain-Feingold Act, or as it is properly called, the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA) by reversing earlier court rulings done in 1990 and 2003.  Media outlets all over the country are reporting that corporations can now make massive donations to election campaigns because the Supreme Court says they have the same rights as people.

Not exactly true.  In fact, a real reach!  Let's look at the whole story, and then you decide for yourself:

In 1975, in a court case called Buckley v. Valeo the Supreme Court considered campaign reform legislation that imposed some pretty expansive controls over what a candidate, an individual, and corporations and unions may and may not do in respect to contributions and expenditures.  The Court considered each situation on the basis of two considerations: 1) The First Amendment  says "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech..." and 2) Are there legitimate overriding concerns of government that should be considered in regulating the campaign process?  In this case, the Court considered government concern that there not be a corruptive quid pro quo (Latin, meaning "something for something") situation between corporations or unions and a candidate as being a valid concern.  As a result, the section of law that banned corporations and unions from taking money out of their general treasuries and donating them to a candidacy, and the one banning them from paying a candidate's expenses advocating voting for or against someone was upheld as constitutional.  Limitations on how much money a candidate could contribute to his or her own campaign were struck down, but limits of $1,000 per individual and $5,000 per political action committee were upheld (and later amended) because of the concerns for undue influence and its effect on a candidate's outcome.

In 1977 a court case called First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti (who was the Attorney General for the State of Massachusetts) was decided on the basis of those same two questions.  The Bank wanted to run ads about a ballot measure that would introduce a graduated income tax to the state of Massachusetts, but state law banned corporations from doing so.  The Supreme Court ruled that Massachusetts' law was unconstitutional.  In the ruling the Court acknowledged the contribution corporations may make to discussion of public issues and dissemination of information, and affirmed that the Constitution's First Amendment limits government, not corporate or union entities.

But in 1990 a Supreme Court ruling called Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce reversed the course the Court had taken in the past, identifying a threat in corporate participation in the election process.  Corporate wealth was likely to become "undue influence in the political marketplace" because of "resources amassed in the economic marketplace", ignoring the fact that all campaign contributions, regardless of amount and of whom it comes from, originate in that same economic marketplace.

In 2002 the McCain-Feingold Act was passed and was almost instantly challenged by such diverse folks as Senator Mitch McConnell, who vehemently opposed the Act from the get-go, and the California Democratic Party.  This resulted in McConnell v. Federal Elections Commission in 2003, which upheld the provisions of McCain-Feingold and was based on the decisions rendered in Austin. 

But in 2007 the Court began to reverse again, ruling in Federal Elections Commission v. Wisconsin Right To Life, Inc. that nonprofit corporations could be broadly exempt from the provisions of McCain-Feingold if the ads they ran in that golden 30-60 day period immediately prior to an election engaged in a genuine discussion of the issues.  Clearly the Court was having second thoughts about curtailing corporate free speech, but this particular case only addressed one aspect of McCain-Feingold.

During the 2009 presidential election a nonprofit group called Citizens United compiled a video production about then-candidate Hillary Clinton.  The production was highly unflattering and argued that Mrs. Clinton was not only corrupt but unfit to be President.  Citizens United distributed copies of the production and wanted to arrange for pay-to-view patrons to be able to download and watch the production in that prohibited 30-60 days immediately prior to the primary.  They were unsure how McCain-Feingold would apply to them (they were nonprofit and possibly exempt) and they didn't want to find out they were wrong after the fact because of the risk of penalties and fines.  They brought the suit to have the Court determine their exemption, or lack of it.  In his writing of the Court's decision, Justice Kennedy made mention of the fact that the McCain-Feingold rules were so onerous and confusing that Citizens United had to resort to a lawsuit in order to protect themselves from penalties, and that they were deprived of their ultimately-decided free speech right because of the long period of time it took to decide the case.  The Court overturned Austin and McConnell in favor of what they called "ancient" First Amendment case law, meaning all the rulings prior to Austin that deferred to that restriction of government from abridging freedom of speech.  What they rejected was a division made between individual and collective campaign donors.

What has actually been changed now in  McCain-Feingold because of the Court's ruling?  Corporations and unions can once again expend funds from their general treasuries for political ads.  They still have to identify themselves as paying for those ads, and they still can't make direct contributions to candidates' campaigns; there is validity in the government's concern about quid pro quo.  Political action committees are not affected by this ruling.

So what is the big deal?  Why is the Left mourning and so many others rejoicing (Rush Limbaugh has been positively giddy!)?  Because the Supreme Court has affirmed loudly and clearly that the nature of the Constitution is to restrict government from controlling its citizens.  You bet the Progressive Liberals are upset!  This flies in the face of all they have been trying to slowly, incrementally do since the days of Woodrow Wilson.  It slashes the web-like constraints they have been wrapping around the American people.  It also rejects the expansion of government authority they've been trying to substitute for personal freedom.  They've just had a 40 year setback!

There has been a lot of talk about corporations buying elections, about the "powerful" stealing elections, about the rich getting what they want, to the detriment of the country.  But corporations don't vote.  People do.  If we want to limit the power of corporate money in elections, all we have to do is not listen ... and vote to support our Constitution, as the Supreme Court just did.

Yesterday's blow-out win by Scott Brown over Martha Coakley in Massachusetts is the stuff movies are made of.  Harkening to the call of Ronald Reagan's now-famous character, Massachusetts voters turned back the tsunami of Progressive-Leftist-Statist advancement to win one for the current-day Gipper; the American republic.  Still in denial, the Dem leadership now ponders whether they should push for the health care goalpost or tactically retreat.  President Obama has called for the retreat.

All this upheaval telegraphs an incredibly important message:  2010 is there for Republicans to win...or throw away.

There is great danger in Republicans believing some sort of tide has turned to favor them.  The tide has turned, all right, but not in the direction of the Republican Party.  Scott Brown is a rational, sensible populist with an "R" after his name who has given voice to the non-extreme faction of the electorate (the definition of "moderate", "centrist" and "independent").  That seat in the Senate was won by honest talk about the cost of taking over the health care system by our government, both in dollars (or yuan, if we're not careful!) and in humanity.  It was won through the expression of reason regarding abortion; by recognition that, like it or not, it's now recognized as one of those 'rights' government isn't supposed to have power over, but that partial-birth abortion  is not in the acceptable purview of government, and parental controls are.  It was won by a firm affirmation that tax money is used best when in the hands of the taxpayer and the business owner, and that leaving money there is what fosters job creation (take a note, Mr. President!).  Scott Brown recognized the priority of concerns voters have: jobs, taxes and the effects on future generations, defense in all aspects (military, Second Amendment, energy policies, national obligations to veterans, illegal immigration), and rational international politics, especially  when it comes to bully nations, like in the Middle East.

So, the secret to winning is based upon the old-fashioned bell curve, with Left and Right extremes on either side of the massive raise in the middle.  Once upon a time membership in both the Democrat and Republican Parties was at a more-or-less equal 40%, with 20% of voters undeclared -- the so-called "swing voters" who swayed voter outcome.  But at some point in the past couple of decades, those percentages changed, with the undeclared numbers swelling to 40%.  That vast Middle of average Joes has a track record of rejecting the Party that assumes a mandate and trots off in its own direction, only to turn and find it is alone.  The only thing different this time is how quickly America turned away from the party in power.  Been there, done that, got the FDR teeshirt.

I'm absolutely NOT saying the Republican Party should now advocate abortion as part of its platform.  I do want to remind Republicans, however, that inclusion of abortion as a plank in the party platform is something that has occurred in my lifetime. It  did not exist in the Republican Party before that, largely because it was considered a personal issue, not a party or government issue.  Once upon a time, Republicans advocated less government interference in the lives of citizens, and on that basis, abortion was an issue left to the individual.  As Scott Brown has said, "this decision should be made by the woman in consultation with her doctor".  I would add "and her spiritual adviser and the father, if at all possible" to that, but yeah, there's no mention of government there.  If Republicans really want to snatch the American republic from the jaws of creeping socialism, all they need to do is back candidates who follow Scott Brown's priority of concerns and leave the divisive issue of abortion to the spiritual arena from whence it came.

People all over the country are saying the same thing:  It's the lack of jobs, stupid!  Nobody buys this "jobless recovery" crap, not for an instant.  With over-regulation, us-first union demands, and over-taxation of the country's businesses, there are no jobs.  Without jobs there is no saving and no spending.  Without savings the nation's banks are floundering.  Without spending the nation's businesses are floundering and the taxpayer takes each new proposal for a tax or 'fee' creation or increase as another punch to the jaw.  We can't afford it.  Period.  Is it any wonder so many folks are speculating about ulterior motives on the part of the elected majority, when they persist in prodding the country into economic disaster down the Lefthand trail?

It has been argued by others that the policies supported and the spending enacted by the Obama administration is an attack on the middle class.  That may well be true.  I'm certainly one of those in that class, and I certainly feel the slap.  But there is also an attack on this nation's poor that has not been recognized.  The poor in this country live lives the poor in other countries can only dream of.  Our poor own cars, clunkers though they may be.  They live in housing, government-owned though it may be.  They have food, paid for by the swipe of the debit card that has now replaced food stamps so they won't be embarrassed at the check-out stand.  They are clothed, by charity organizations such as My Sister's Closet, churches, by welfare allowance, and many of their children wear $100+ athletic shoes.  They ride free on public transportation systems and their children are cared for at day care centers while they work or try to find work.  They have cell phones, even though they may be turned off temporarily for nonpayment or while awaiting the next purchase of block time.  They simply do not suffer like their brethren in other countries do.  But what happens to that if they are required to pay even a minimal amount of their health care coverage or face a fine and/or imprisonment?  What happens to today's poor when the bar for "poor" moves up?  Can they get by on less if more have to share the resources now exclusively allotted to them?

I have long said that liberalism is only something people can afford when the economy is doing well, and that never happens when a liberal party controls government.  Never.  Not once.  Not ever.  Right now voters recognize this and may well be willing to let Republicans have another go at it, but we're running out of chances.  The Party talks about fiscal conservatism, then tries to outspend Dems and grab as much or more earmarks (read: public baksheesh) than their counterparts.  The Party talks about keeping government out of private life, but then tackles abortion at the federal level and tries to legislate against homosexuals. (That's just as wrong as gays trying to force acceptance of their lifestyle under the guise of "protection" via laws.) The Party pays lip service to "all men are created equal" and then signs on to one preference program after another to avoid being labeled "racist".  The Party calls itself supporter of the Rule of Law, then plays footsies with amnesty for those who broke the law in getting here, in the hopes of gaining future voters.  And so on.  And so on.  These are social issues, outside the purview of the federal government, and folks in Boston know this as well as folks in Des Moines or Fresno or New Orleans.  There are other, appropriate venues to argue these issues.

I'm warning my Party now to pay attention.  There is great danger to our republic in reading these tea leaves wrong.  Just as the robot in Lost in Space said, "Danger!  Danger!", I am giving the warning.  We are just as likely to do this thing right as we are to muck it all up.  Listening with an open ear and without bias is half the battle.  And should the electorate reward the Republican Party with another chance to fix things, we must remember to base all actions on the assertions made in our Declaration of Independence, and to take no action outside our Constitution.  If that happens, Dems will become the Party of the Past.  If not, we all will lose to some as-yet not formed third party, one of the future that will listen.

All indications now are that voters will seek to reverse the leftward swing of the political pendulum this year in the upcoming elections, snatching away the Iron Fist both Ms. Pelosi and Mr. Reid have been yielding allegedly on behalf of said voters.  Some really hopeful pundits are even -- dare I say it? -- positing an outcome where Republicans might turn out Ms. Pelosi in favor of Mr. Cantor as Leader of the House.  And it's most likely there won't even be a Mr. Reid in the Senate!

With a great sigh of relief, the American collective will be able to once again melt back into its uninvolved, apathetic, disinterested fugue state, secure in the belief that the brakes have once again been applied to the runaway Progressive Machine.  President Obama will just have to do what every other President has done:  compromise.

But what exactly can Americans expect from the prayed-for upcoming newly reformed Congress?  What can be done to reverse the near-fatal damage inflicted on our economy and our Constitution?  Where to begin?  And what to do first?

Congressman Jason Chaffetz of Utah has an idea.  Borrowing from former Congressman Newt Gingrich's idea for a Contract With America, Mr. Chaffetz has proposed his Contract For The American Dream, which subscribes to the concepts of fiscal discipline, limited government, accountability, and a strong national defense as the basis for job creation, opportunity, an improved quality of life, and more freedom.  He, at least, is attempting to design a plan to reverse the devastation-in-the-name-of-who-knows-what President Obama's administration has imposed on us.  But his plan is not free of politics, and it falls short of what is so drastically necessary right now.  He calls for an inadequate 10% reduction of federal payroll (sans military), assuming this will force agencies and departments to seek out and eliminate waste.  Given the groupthink mind of today's civil servants, it is far more likely cuts will be made based solely on seniority and the good will be tossed out with the bad in the manner of happenstance.  He also calls for an across-the-board budget reduction of inflation-plus-3%, which is totally divorced from the increases that have taken place in just this past year alone.  He includes a balanced budget amendment, and a 2/3 majority vote for any tax increase, but he does not extend that majority requirement to new tax creation.  He calls for a moratorium on the inclusion of all appropriations earmarks, but only until the Legislature can revamp the rule pertaining to them.  The politician in him says Congress will "work to maximize openness and transparency with filters, to ensure only expenditures with a federal nexus," instead of mandating a federal nexus finding in any expenditure bill.  He also wants to deny federal funding to any for-profit company, which leaves one puzzling over how the military will augment its operations using only non-profits, how medical and pharmaceutical research will be done only in university and other non-profit settings, etc.  He wants to reduce the capital gains tax to 10% to boost revenue, instead of eliminating it entirely.  And he wants Congress to "engage in entitlement reform", which is sufficiently vague to allow the Potomac Two-Step to continue unimpeded.

His ideas for limiting government are the same sort of mix of concepts and politics.  He would repeal TARP, appoint a "Sunset Commission" to identify 100 federal programs/departments to be eliminated by the end of next year, change the corporate tax to a flat 10%, reject Cap & Trade and remove all funding to the EPA related to carbon policy, and sell to private ownership 3 million acres of land identified by the Clinton administration as having no federal purpose.  All good, except TARP cannot and should not be repealed, since we already spent the money, since banks have mostly paid it back, and since it is what secures repayment by GM, Chrysler, GMAC, and AIG.  Instead, there should be no further expenditure of TARP funds.  Period. (This means that when the existence of billions of toxic assets are once again recognized, some other means -- preferably a free market one -- will have to be utilized to neutralize them.)  He wants no more "stimulus bills that are merely a ruse to grow government" (but ones that are not merely a ruse are O.K.?), he wants the "Sunset Commission" to be bipartisan, which will guarantee that the committee will have no recommendations ready by the end of next year or even the year after that; he believes the corporate flat tax is good because it eliminates loopholes and simplifies the tax code, and he mentions absolutely nothing about the personal income tax cuts put into place by President Bush that are set to expire soon.

To achieve accountability, Congressman Chaffetz advocates the admirable plan to fire all Czars and to adhere to Constitutional requirements for Senate confirmation of leadership positions.  He wants all laws to apply equally to Congress, but does not also advocate that Congress should have no benefits in excess of that which is available to the private sector.  He wants records of all committee proceedings to be posted online within 24 hours of the meetings, and proposed text for Bills and Conference Reports to be posted 72 hours prior to a vote before the House.  This, of course, is something that was promised by Leaders Pelosi and Reid and backed by President Obama, but it did not come to pass.  He wants the federal E-Verify program to be up and running properly and required to be used in every instance of employment, but does not clarify if that applies only to the federal government's hiring practices or for all employers, including the federal government.  He wants to "deny" card check but only "participate" in labor law reform to some unspecified degree.  He wants 100% reporting of all campaign contributions to the Federal Elections Commission for public review, and to prohibit any Congresscritter serving on the Appropriations and Ways and Means Committees from seeking earmarks; for everyone else it's O.K. apparently.  And, like so many before him, he believes fervently in the waste, fraud and abuses of the Medi/Medi programs and wants that to be attacked -- as if that hasn't been the stated goal of each and every President since the blessed programs first began!

Mr. Chaffetz's proposals for strengthening our national defense are the most specific and the least deserving of disagreement, in my opinion.  He wants the government to honor all commitments made to our veterans, secure our borders, deny citizenship to those illegally here in the country, and enforcement of our current immigration laws.  He advocates sustaining the Second Amendment (whatever that means), keeping Guantanamo Bay open and continuing with military tribunals (by which I believe he means keeping the prison open at Gitmo and prosecuting enemy combatants via military tribunals over there instead of in our criminal justice system over here.  He identifies energy independence as being vital to our national security and advocates an "all of the above" approach to achieving it, including 'green' sources, renewable sources, nuclear AND natural resources.  And finally, he wants to dedicate 4% of the GDP to defense and adoption of a "Go Big or Go Home" game plan for overseas deployment.  These last two items make me the most uncomfortable.  I live in a state where mandated percentages for this program or that have firmly tied the hands of government to the extent that it has prevented it from responding to extraordinary crisis.  Better to kick the bums out when they fail to do the right thing for funding apart from the extraordinary than to mandate.  Money mandates always backfire.  And "Go Big or Go Home" has so much wiggle room in it, is so nonspecific and vague, that it takes no imagination at all to foresee misuse of that policy.  (Sorry, we can't Go Big enough just now, so you'll have to go it alone, England/Israel/Estonia/Poland/etc.)

Please don't misunderstand.  I am critical of elements of Congressman Chaffetz's plan, but not of his foresight in seeing the need for one, nor in its basic tenets.  I applaud him for taking the time to put his thoughts into a call for action.  But the ills of the country need a much more comprehensive blueprint to reverse over 100 years of our detour to the Left.  Voters know it now.  We're too close to losing that which is most precious to us, and there is no mistaking it.  Politics, whether of the "as usual" or of the "omigoshcrisis" type will not cut it.  Voters will not be voting reflexively, not this time.  Candidates who make their opposition to what's been happening in government will definitely have a leg-up, but unless they can come to this next election as real people, not as politicians with a "better" idea, they will not win over voters.  There is a very real divide in this country.  It's not the "haves vs. have-nots", as progressives would have us believe.  It's "us-as-everyday-people-who-need-an-American-Dream-to-get-up-every-day" vs. "I-know-what's-best-for-you-because-I'm-better/smarter/more educated/slyer-than-you".  Congressman Chaffetz does not define what the American Dream is.  Unfortunately, it's been suppressed for such a long time now that not too many can actually say what it is.  I can, and I will:  It is the American Dream for I/myself/me/not-the-government to do better, to be better, to live better.  For that, government must get out of my way.

I am resisting the urgings of others to increase the frequency of my posts.  There are far too many folks out there already displaying the finite machinations of their little gray cells in response to the endless inanities of these days for me to want to join that crowd.  I'll save that sort of commentary for the forums I post at, where I can be assured my off-the-cuff reactions will not cause others to pass hasty judgment. 

When I have something to say, I'll say it.

Yuppie.  It used to stand for "upwardly mobile young person".  When was the last time you heard that word used, apart from in a joke?  I'm dating myself, I know, but I remember when the word first came about.  I liked it.  I was not quite yet an adult and I liked the idea that my youth would know no limits, that I too could work my way to the top of whatever it turned out I wanted to do with my life.  In the late 60s and into the early 70s the word came to be known as a negative buzzword for materialism, illustrative more of the GenXers (known primarily for their self-centered, selfish outlooks on life) than for eager-to-get-ahead, ready-to-make-their-mark, bright, young achievers.  Achievement itself came under attack, nailed as the means to corruption of one's soul via Thingaling, the driving force behind wanting to own the latest of whatever, the very demon whipping the shallow-thinking into believing having a lot meant success.  Or so we were all told.  The wet blanket of oneness/sameness/all-should-be-equal stole the glitter and spark from the concept of "yuppie" and left it with the rather embarrassing connotation of one who rejects the warmth of humanity's embrace for the sterility of ownership.

Patriot.  The definition of this word used to mean one who loves one's country, who supports and defends it with devotion.  There is an altruistic quality to this definition, one that invokes a parental non-conditional type of love, of pride at its achievements and even of its attempts.  For the past couple of decades the definition has changed to mean one who regards himself or herself as a defender of minority interests, especially against interference by a strong government.  There is an element of altruism here too, but it is a completely different scenario.  Here the government is seen as the abuser of individuals and weaker groups, as the taker of rights.  There is nothing admirable about such a government; it is one to be hated, feared, sabotaged and overcome.

Consider, if you will, the two differing definitions as you think about the saying, "My country, right or wrong".  Some fool has posted in Wikipedia that the source of this phrase comes from Carl Schurz, a German immigrant to this country and a Union Army officer during the Civil War.  The fool has depicted Mr. Schurz as an impartial unimpeachable source whose love of country and wisdom in Things Politic make his interpretation of patriotism the only reasonable one.  And yet, Mr. Schurz set forth his thoughts quite clearly in a speech he made at an Anti-Imperialistic Conference in 1899 at (of all places!) Chicago, Illinois, when he said "I confidently trust that the American people will prove themselves...too wise not to detect the false pride or the dangerous ambitions or the selfish schemes which so often hide themselves under that deceptive cry of mock patriotism, "Our country, right or wrong!" They will not fail to recognize that our dignity, our free institutions and the peace and welfare of this and coming generations will be secure only as we cling to the watchword of true patriotism, "Our country -- when right to be kept right, when wrong to be put right."  Rather a more conditional type of love, wouldn't you say?

But it was not Mr. Schurz who first gave voice to "My country, right or wrong".  It was Stephen Decatur, leader of the US Naval forces that attacked and vanquished the "musselmen" (Muslims) of Tripoli, the so-called 'Barbary Coast pirates', freeing 1038 imprisoned Christians in the process.  In a celebration held upon his return to this country he raised his glass and gave this toast:  "Our country!  In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right, but our country, right or wrong."  No conditions here.  Just love for a country --this country, expressed by a man who had fought for her in foreign lands.  Definitely in keeping with the first definition of patriotism.

Today it is considered weird or strange or abnormal or somehow shameful to feel love for this country by far too many people.  There is a nod of the head and a tolerant smile given to active duty or recently retired military; after all, it's all part of the pomp and circumstance, but really who in their right mind...  Uh huh.  As if serving the country in the military subjects one to a brainwashing that will soon subside once one rejoins Normal.  As if coming to everyone else's defense requires mind-alteration and the hormonal stimulation of whip-cracking discipline-instilled emotion.  It is a given that all should recognize the blemishes on Lady Liberty and know them to be a fatal cancer.  It's steeped in media news presentations, it's said in the halls of Congress by those exuding confidence that everyone agrees, it's taught in our schools.

And yet...and yet...

Freedom.  Most people think the word 'freedom' is synonymous with the word 'liberty'.  It is not.  'Freedom' is somewhat a newer word, with its source in the Old English word "froedom", its origins occurring at some point prior to the year 900.  Freedom has been defined as the power or capacity to choose among alternatives or to act in certain situations independently of natural, social, or divine restrictions.  Sounds good, eh? 

Liberty.  Derived from the Latin word "libertas" and dating back to the earliest of times, liberty has been defined as the right and power to act, believe, or express oneself in a manner of one's choosing.  So what's the difference?

There is an element of responsibility that is linked to the word 'liberty' that is absent in the word 'freedom'.  One chooses what one will believe, what one will do, what one will say if one has liberty.  One selects among alternatives offered by some other unnamed one, even when one is blowing off status quo in the form of natural law, social law or divine law (law being another word for restriction).  One may have the freedom to walk to the arena even if one is a slave and owned by someone else, but one who has liberty may choose to go to the arena or not, without anyone else's permission.  One who has liberty may choose wrongly and will suffer the consequences with no one else to blame, but one who is free to select can always blame the selection when the wrong choice is made.

We don't hear much about 'liberty' today; it's all about 'freedom'.  In fact, if you look up the two words in the dictionary (which offers the most common usage of words today) you will find the same words defining both.  That is not true for the 1950 Oxford dictionary I used to find the definitions I first gave above.  (Interesting aside:  When I first encountered the word "altruistic" I looked it up in this same dictionary and the first definition given was "love of country".  Look it up now and see what you get.)  You will remember that it wasn't "...give me freedom or give me death" that Patrick Henry said.

Sovereignty.  "Would we be wrong if we defined  [sovereignty] as a political community without a political superior?" President Abraham Lincoln asked Congress in a special address in 1861.  Compare that with a contemporary dictionary definition that says "a nation's or state's supreme power within its borders."  What we see here is a vast difference in the idea of what constitutes sovereignty.  Lincoln's version is absent national boundaries while today's version acknowledges supremacy of authority only within a national boundary.  Why is this difference important?  Because the contemporary version subjects all nations to worldwide authority, stripping away the authority acknowledged in our Constitution for those 'God-given' rights.  It renders the Constitution impotent.

Dr. Jeremy Rabkin, Professor of Law at George Mason University, has demonstrated the genius of thought that went into the design of our Constitution in a lecture he gave earlier this year in Washington, DC.  He pointed out that our Constitution does not grant us rights, but acknowledges them; additionally, it obligates our government to defend us and our rights, and to perform certain tasks on our behalf (only 1/4 of the federal budget today goes to implementing Constitutionally-mandated purposes, per Dr. Walter Williams).  Even treaties are secondary to the Constitution itself because the authority for our government to enter into treaties lies within the Constitution; thus, the Constitution cannot take a subservient position to a treaty.  Dr. Rabkins warns of the example of the European Union, which has a constitutional-like sovereignty and authority, but no Constitution, and no constitutional obligation to defend member nations.  He warns this country against entangling itself in treaties that have the force of sovereignty within the European Union and want to extend that same sovereignty to this country, without regard to our Constitution and the rights it protects.  He recalls past efforts of Congress to pass off its authority and responsibility to govern through the treaty process, considering approval of a treaty sufficient grounds for whatever foreign or multinational body established and empowered by the treaty to dictate rule of law to this country's citizens.  American courts have disagreed, and Congress has once again had to do its own work.  He cautions Americans that the big problem with the Kyoto Treaty was that it claimed sovereignty over our Constitution, that President Bush was constitutionally correct in rejecting it, and that such threat remains in Copenhagen and in other treaties President Obama has said he would support.  He particularly warns that the current trend in considering human rights transcendent over national laws is alarming for this country.  This is the school of thought that President Obama and his far Left supporters are following when they call for the close of the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay.  It explains a lot about this President and his administration.

So.  Today it is passe' to be an upwardly mobile achiever, a patriot with love for one's country, granted God's gift of liberty and the freedom that flows from it, living is a sovereign nation that sets the standards for what can be, what should be, for the rest of the world.  I don't like it, not one bit.

I plead guilty of negligence in writing anything more about Democrat proposals for health care.  That's because the Dems have been doing what amounts to a shell game with health care.  They've floated any number of plans, avoided putting their proposals into the form of actual legislation or alternatively, putting out such a massive proposal it was impossible to read and digest prior to voting.  All of this has conveyed the unmistakable message:  they don't want the public to know what they are up to.  One thing that is for sure,  all plans result in the eventual termination of private insurance, cost astronomical amounts of money, and create a brand new entitlement that will be impossible to revoke once it's shown we can't pay for it.

The health care industry in this country constitutes about 6% of the overall economy.  That makes health care a lynch-pin industry in the progressive march to create a fascist economy (and I don't mean 'fascist' in the WWII politically-charged definition, I mean it in the Mussolini government-corporate entity partnership in which government is the dominatrix and corporations the dominated).  Thus we see the sleight-of-hand tactics of Dem leadership, along with the arm-wrenching of resistant moderate Dems and piecrust promises to the one red-light district Republican.  Clearly, the Dem leadership is willing to gamble on future electability of those members who give it its majority today in order to get through this progressive agenda...out of concern for America's uninsured?  Hardly.

The heavy hand of progressive fascism is seen in the onerous penalties carried in the recently-passed health care bill, which can be described as "Lose a policy, go to jail".  Burdensome fees and fines ranging from $25,000 to $250,000 come complete with jail time ranging from 6 months to 5 years.  A "middle income" family of 4 must provide coverage that will cost no less than $15,000 per year --that's $1,250 a month in new costs! -- or else.  And how exactly does that work in a job-lacking, consumer-shy economic crisis?

It doesn't, of course.  It removes whatever disposable income might be left to middle income America and directs it into a "pool" to subsidize the nation's do-nothing population and its enabling alien worker population.  This is a sure means of prolonging our current economic crisis, and `a la Rahm Emanuel, this particular crisis is certainly not going to waste! 

We took a distinct jump to the left when social security was created in spite of FDR's initial declaration that "...this is the same old dole under another name.  It is almost [almost?  ALMOST??] dishonest to build up an accumulated deficit for the Congress of the United States to meet in 1980.  We can't do that.  We can't see the United States short in 1980 anymore than in 1935."  And yet he did, out of political expediency.  He hoped that many of the nation's older workers would retire and leave more jobs for younger workers; that was one way to lessen the unemployment figure quandary that dogged him till the nation's entry into WWII.  Truckin' along that left-hand road, LBJ picked up where Truman and JFK had failed before him, and in the name of JFK's memory, finally got Medicare/Medicaid passed in 1965.  Opposition to a government-run health care plan included the AMA, President Eisenhower (who did agree with Republican plans to subsidize private insurance companies to cover seniors), and Ronald Reagan, who was spokesman for the AMA in 1963.  Reagan organized Operation Coffee Cup, a grassroots plan that involved the wives of physicians who brought neighbors together to write letters, sign petitions, and integrate efforts with other organizations to block a government health plan, recognizing it to be "socialized medicine".  In a speech at the time, Reagan said "...behind it [government health insurance for seniors] will come other Federal programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country.  Until one day, as Norman Thomas has said, we will awake to find we have socialism.  And if you don't do this and I don't do it [oppose the plan], one days you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it once was like in America when men were free."  Prescient, no?

Progressive Dems continued to press for a nationalized health care system, but willingly targeting employers as being the primary providers of health insurance in the interim.  Yet another step toward the left involved Senator Ted Kennedy's passage of a 1973 bill mandating employers offer HMO coverage in addition to PPO plans.  As a result Kaiser, the main provider of HMO coverage, found itself surrounded by upstart HMOs, most of which failed financially over time and became consolidated into larger plans or disappeared entirely.  Dems at the time believed HMOs would be easier to evolve into a government provided plan in the future, once political power inured on their behalf.  It was an easy transition, they thought, to substitute government for administrator, delusionally believing management of costs without sacrifice to services provided was possible by both entities.  When it didn't work well on the private level, (by 2001 Kennedy was condemning denial of service by HMOs and advocating a single payer system) they decided it was because the scale of operation wasn't large enough, and a government plan was the only option.

Roosevelt considered but eventually discarded the idea of government-provided health insurance, favoring unemployment insurance and social security instead and confident the mercurial rise in union membership caused by his Wagner Act would grow employer-provided health insurance.  Truman, the first serious banger of the government health care drum, made several attempts to pass his plan.  "The greatest gap in our social security structure is the lack of adequate provision for the Nation's health...I have often and strongly urged that this condition demands a national health program.  The heart of the program must be a national system of payment for medical care based on well-tried insurance principles...".  Although Truman's call for an all-inclusive plan was rejected, a scaled down version covering only the elderly gained a bit in popularity, triggering the Republican response of subsidizing private insurance companies to do so (something Dems rejected; both parties historically opposed each other for no other reason than they were the opposition, something that is unchanged today).  JFK's approach was to liken government-provided senior health care insurance to social security, saying "We're not asking for anybody to hand this out, we are asking for a chance for the people who will receive the benefit to earn their way - the same principle established under the Social Security system in the 30s."  Except today we know that the system established in the 30s was a Ponzi scheme, that FDR's concerns about sloughing off a deficit to the future was real, and that Social Security will be running a deficit in just a couple of years from now.

When my grandmother died in 1972 my father received the final billing from her last hospital stay.  The cost was over $100,000, an amount that caused astonishment (over the cost) and gratitude (over the cost) that Medicare was picking up the tab.  My grandmother left no estate.  She lived her final years off social security and a military widow's pension from my grandfather because of his WWI service.  That final hospital bill would never have been paid, if not for the government.  So.  Is it any surprise that hospitals and their administration have not come out against the Obama administration's plans for government health care?

But what about doctors, who have been reduced in Medi/Medi reimbursement rates to the point that many of them no longer receive their expenses back?  What will happen to nurses' salaries, the hands-on lifesavers whose hourly rates are so much less than those of auto mechanics?  Why on earth are medical associations representing both groups supporting this nonsense?  How could the AMA have done such a 180 on this issue?  The answer is in numbers.  The AMA membership today is only about 17% of all doctors in the country, as opposed to over 96% in 1963 when Reagan represented them, and support by its leadership for regulation that is detrimental to the well-being of the membership is a big reason for this.  The same situation applies to nurses, who are represented by various unions who behave as most unions do now -- in support of progressive politics over the interests of members.  It has become a progressive tactic to infiltrate existing organizations, such as League of Women Voters, AMA, and AARP, take over the leadership, and then speak on behalf of a membership that simply does not agree.  (AARP's support of Obamacare is only surprising if one forgets that plans in Congress today call for abolishment of the Medicare Advantage plan, something AARP as the #2 provider of Medigap insurance will be only too happy to supply; that's income PLUS political power, an unbeatable enticement.)

In spite of evidence to the contrary at every step along the Leftist Way, progressive Democrats insist government is the only entity that can effectively run health care in this country. I can only conclude that this has nothing to do with a desire to make health care available to all Americans and everything to do with destroying a capitalistic economy.

Yet another Ponzi schemer bit the big one this past week.  Boca Raton investment advisor Michael Riolo told over 80 investors he was putting their money into foreign markets.  Instead, he used over $44 million to finance his lifestyle and to pay off earlier investors.  He's been sentenced to 24 years in Pen Fed.

This comes on the heels of Above-The-Fold big-timer Bernard Madoff, who is now in prison for the next 150 years of his life, whose scale of defrauding dwarfs that of Michael Riolo in the same way a gas giant planet dwarfs a comet.  But this is not the end of the Ponzi story.

Earlier this year  similar scenarios played out in Pennsylvania, Boston, and New York.  In another case, three men in south Florida have been charged by the SEC with defrauding Haitian-American investors to the tune of $14.7 million; this on the heels of a conviction last December of George Theodule, who scammed another $23 million from Haitian-Americans, as well.  On October 7 Michael Zelener of Tarzana, California, was sentenced to 2 years in federal prison and ordered to pay $2.6 million for bilking 200 investors in his version of the Ponzi scheme.  On the same day Gregory Bell, a hedge fund manager in Northbrook, Illinois, pled guilty to his role in another Ponzi scheme based out of Minnesota, in which businessman Tom Petters took investors' money allegedly to pay for bulk purchases of electronics goods to sell to "big box stores"; in reality, it was the tired "new investors' money to pay previous investors' returns" scheme.  A Weston, Pennsylvania man has been charged by the SEC in yet another Ponzi scheme involving $20 million and 50 investors; he was paying back investors he'd defrauded between 2003 and 2008 in order to finance his lavish lifestyle.  In yet another case, Edward P. May has been charged with defrauding investors in Detroit of over $200 million in ten years, as well as investment manager Frank Bluestein, who is charged with bringing May at least $74 million from over 800 investors.  Bluestein claims he believed it was a legitimate investment and had no idea May was defrauding everyone.  A Brighton, Michigan man, John Bravata, has been charged by the SEC with running a Ponzi scheme to the tune of $53 million. And last week Kevin Carney of Elk Grove Village, Illinois, was charged with defrauding over 300 investors of an unstated amount of money in his version of a Ponzi scheme -- one that purportedly used his own novel software to scoop Wall Street with a 3 minute delay and paid a hefty 20% guaranteed return.

In Monterey, California over 1500 investors anxiously await the outcome of bankruptcy proceedings and the newly-filed fraud charges against investment advisor David Nilsen and his sidekick Manoel Errico in the amount of $150 million of their hard-earned money.  Nilsen, a real estate broker and arranger of hard money loans for over 20 years, is accused of using the money to finance his lifestyle and to pay off earlier investors, with the help of Manoel Errico, who handled the paperwork end of the scheme.

This is the third time since 1985 that a fraudulent scheme of this nature has emerged on the Monterey Peninsula.  Each time the story is the same:  a broker who starts off legit, gains the confidence of wary investors, starts to live high on the hog off the success of the venture, begins to break laws to sustain the lifestyle (to the benefit and delight of family and personal friends), starts recruiting new investors on the strength of a good reputation in order to continue paying the previous ones, and eventually financial ruin results for all involved.  You'd think by now regulators, (in California that is often the Department of Real Estate; ultimately it usually involves the SEC) would know better by now and would have come up with some sort of safeguard for the public.  But noooooooo!

David Nilsen was investigated by the California DRE a year before his Ponzi scheme broke down.  Evidence of mishandling of trust funds and commingling of investor funds with his own was found.  Nilsen's broker's license was suspended, but instantly redeemed when he paid a fine.  The year that followed this action was the most costly for victims, as he stepped up his fraud to unprecedented levels, taking in over 1,000 new investors.  The DRE likes to claim responsibility for ending Nilsen's ruinous rampage, arguing that their monitoring of his business practices is what eventually brought his fraud to light and to an end.  But the truth is the failure of the DRE to stop Nilsen the previous year, or even to let his investors know of the action taken against him at the time, enabled his acceleration of fraud in the year that followed; and the exact same thing happened in both previous instances of fraud.  The problem?  The Department of Real Estate is a sort-of self-policing agency that operates to protect consumers without jeopardizing the industry overall.  That works, until there is a clash of purposes; then the consumer loses.

I knew victims of the 1986 defrauder, George Jercich.  One friend told me of his retired father, who had invested his entire savings with Mr. Jercich, attending every single court proceeding, hoping to understand how he'd been taken and praying he would recover something.  He never did.  He suffered a massive heart attack the day after all proceedings concluded.  George Jercich lost his real estate license, but my friend lost his father.  I have very good friends today, who will likely lose their home while waiting for some sort of resolution to David Nilsen's bankruptcy filing and his criminal case.  These people did their homework, personally inspecting each construction project brought to them for investment, meeting the contractor involved, demanding and receiving a filed deed of trust and note for every loan they participated in.  Their payment for doing due diligence is to be sued by the bankruptcy trustee, who wants to recover some of the money they were legitimately paid in fulfillment of the terms of their agreement with Nilsen so it can be "fairly" distributed to those who did not do their due diligence investigation.  This, too, is a trend. 

Irving Picard, the trustee representing victims of Madoff, has sued some investors who unwittingly brought victims to Madoff's scheme, in order to recover some of the profit paid to them by Madoff.  The SEC and California's Attorney General Jerry Brown (who never lets a good crisis go to waste!) have also sued on behalf of Madoff victims. And attorney Chapman and Associates out of Chicago are soliciting alleged victims of May and Bluestein, vowing to sue all beneficiaries of moneys paid in order to try to recover losses to victims, whether recipients knew of the fraud or not.  So, who are the victims again?

It is clear that Ponzi schemes in this country at this time are rampant.  This is demonstrating a few truths, among them:

1. Many, many Americans have had a lot of disposable income with which to invest in these schemes; unfortunately, many investors, including a lot of elderly investors, took equity from their homes to make these investments.
2. There has been, at least up till now, a great deal of belief in the financial stability and soundness of American finances on the part of these investors, who allowed this belief to subjugate prudent suspicion when it came to their own economic picture.  Congressional diddling with home mortgage laws undermined the stability of the home sales market, artificially twisted it into something unsustainable and foreign, and hands-on created the poison pill that manifested at the end of President Bush's term in office.  With the slide of the home mortgage market came the slide of the American economy.  This is not the first time we have seen this happen.  In the time following the stock market crash of 1929, when deflation arose, the exact same thing happened.  There was no secondary market for which banks might value and sell home mortgages, and when sales prices crashed and were redefined by foreclosure prices, the job market crashed along with it, creating the Great Depression that was sustained for a decade by an ignorant but passionate FDR.  Today, we have a secondary market that has been fatally manipulated by Congress so as to no longer function as it was intended and an equally ignorant but passionate president; there is no real difference between now and then.
   
3. There has been, especially in the elderly, little desire to rely on government to provide a satisfactory retirement standard of living.  No doubt media stories of the elderly eating cat food and having to chose between medications and food or housing have contributed to that, as well as dire warnings that the social security and Medicare systems are barreling into insolvency, with no remedial action being taken by elected representatives or government officials; no one seems purposed to fix the problems.  In fact, all that is being discussed and done by those who claim responsibility for saving the day is clearly perceived to be making things much worse.
   
4. There is an overall deficit in the system of checks and balances that has allowed so very many bottom feeders to pop up with these schemes undetected until it is way too late.  This is, I recognize, a form of market meeting demand, with susceptible victims providing the demand and unscrupulous schemers providing the market.  But in a nation where financial education is so absent from the schooling process, we are manufacturing victims with each and every high school graduation class; students who cannot recognize a balance statement, read a profit-and-loss report, understand revolving credit, or even balance a checkbook.  Note:  Replace "How can I be overdrawn when I still have checks in my checkbook?" with "How can my debit card be declined when I have $1,000 overdraft?"
5. If it's too good to be true, it probably isn't.

My friends urged me and my husband to join them in investing with David Nilsen.  We didn't, thank God.  While I couldn't cite any specific reason for them about David Nilsen, who had an upstanding reputation at that point, I did tell them I needed to be able to sleep at night.  At some level, I knew there was something wrong with investments that paid a return so much higher than the norm.

So.  Prime rate manipulation.  Stimulus spending.  So-called "green" industry.  Bank bailout and bank failure. Government ownership of private companies.  "Jobless recovery."  Can anyone sleep at night?

Now there's concern that nursing homes will have to close their doors in massive numbers because funds to them have been cut to the point of insolvency. (Link:   www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/10/05/funding-cuts-threaten-nursing-homes/?test=latestnews) Now?  Why is this a surprise?  This is exactly what liberals have been trying to bring about for years!

Called "a perfect storm" of scheduled Medi/Medi cuts at both state and federal levels, combined with a lousy economy that, counter to propaganda, is not recovering, experts have only just now recognized that we will find ourselves in deep kimshee if suddenly Grandma and Grandpa have to come home because there is no place else to go.

Or is there?  Those facilities will still be there.  The employees will still be there.  The only thing that might not be there is...

...the owner.  The creator.  The entrepreneuer.  The one who took the initial risks.  The one who saw the need and filled it.  The business operator who made the facility in the first place.

Liberals/progressives have been convinced for a long time now that no one should make a profit from health care services.  That is the basis to everything we've seen from them, starting with the implementation of Social Security by FDR (who intended to tackle health care next but was distracted by a war), Medicare and Medicaid under LBJ, to the changes proposed by Hillarycare as well as the changes actually implemented under the radar under President Clinton's regime, and to both the 'public option' and 'reform' plans being debated right now in Congress (as well as those plans not being debated, but on the table nonetheless).  First intended for the chopping block was privately owned long term care facilities. 

Most of the American population today does not remember a time when there was no Medicare or Medicaid, but in reality it hasn't been all that long.  What did people do with Grandma and Grandpa before Medi/Medi?  They brought them home to live with the family or they were cared for by charities.  When one views other LBJ programs, such has his massive welfare program that ended the need for low income level fathers, one sees that Medi/Medi is yet another destructive blow to the family structure that was the basis of the strength of this country since its founding days. 

For most of the public, specific details of Hillarycare remain shrouded under the same secrecy with which it was created.  Compared to what is on the table today, however, it was a relatively minor step on the Road To Government Healthcare.  It called for "universal coverage" that really meant a mandate for employers to cover all employees, and for government-dominated HMOs to provide coverage for everyone else, with government subsidies covering the costs in a Medi/Medi manner.  In 2007 Mrs. Clinton revised her health care proposals to something that sounds suspiciously just like the health care proposals being promoted by Democrats right now, including a mandate that everyone be covered.   

When HillaryCare collapsed under the deluge of Democrat alternatives and a court case focused on its secret origins, the Clinton administration continued to put into place changes that took aim at the owners of long term care facilities.  An extremely complex computerized billing system was initiated, one that required patient medical data as part of the billing and that made continuous comparisons of patient medical data between facilities, regions, and states.  Any so-called deviation, ranging from input error to patient weight loss was identified as "fraud".  No longer was the HHS Inspector General in charge of investigating possible fraud, referring actual fraud cases to the Department of Justice; that responsibility was given over directly to Janet Reno's department for investigation by the FBI.  There was no such thing as an error.  Period.  It was, and is, all 'fraud'.      

In California monitoring of long term care facilities is a function of the Department of Health Services (DHS).  Part of that monitoring, in compliance with federal regulations, is an inspection of each facility, called a survey, every two years.  Among the inspectors who conduct surveys are those who are notorious for espousing their belief that government should own and operate all facilities; these inspectors are also notorious for finding the most 'violations', especially severe ones with huge monetary penalties, forcing facility owners to pay large sums of money in their own defense during an appeal process or in fines because it is less costly.  These people believe they are hitting the profits of the owners when they do this, but in reality there has been so very little profit left that what happens is facilities have had to do more with less a long, long time now.  It is the patients who are deprived, who suffer.  Owners are already stretched too thin.  Of course, this is exactly the situation that contributes to violations.

The health care debate that has garnered so much attention under the Obama regime must be viewed as the next step in a process begun a long, long time ago.  The goal championed by liberals/progressives for a healthy America is cushioned in their steadfast belief that the state should be in control of All Things People.  But, to paraphrase a popular saying of the sixties, government control is not healthy for children and other living things.

Know this as fact:  Emergency rooms and doctors' offices around the country never stopped treating patients for flu this year.  Normally flu vanishes as a chief complaint when warm weather envelopes the nation, but this year clinics, offices, and ERs received a steady flow of patients with flu symptoms continually throughout the summer.

But this is also true:  Patients treated for flu symptoms generally were NOT tested to see if they had the H1N1 strain of flu.  Tests to confirm the presence of the organism are expensive.  Instead, medical practitioners presumed the presence of H1N1 because symptoms appeared in patients in the "off season".  In many, many instances, hundreds of presumed cases have contributed to the worldwide toll being kept by WHO and in this country by the CDC.  Only when symptoms required hospitalization was testing done to confirm the organism, and even then this was not done consistently.

So.  Do we have an epidemic, a pandemic, or not?  The truth is, nobody knows for certain.

Another fact:  This summer was one of the coolest on record for many parts of this country.  Flu organisms flourish in cold, damp weather when immune systems are somewhat compromised by lowering of body temperatures.  Just a wee bit of decrease enables many flu organisms to overcome the body's defenses and to flourish.  Was this a contributing factor to the unusual continuous flu season this year?  Once again, nobody knows for certain.

Although the very few deaths in this country that have resulted from H1N1 flu (and yes, once someone dies from flu, they definitely test for the virus) have occurred in people with compromised immune systems because of other serious health conditions, the initial fear is that the virus will mutate into something far more virulent and deadly, just as the flu epidemic of 1918 did.  THAT is the real concern, NOT the current form of H1N1.

So.  This immunization that's been rushed to market.  Is it safe?  Is it necessary?  Once again, nobody knows for certain.  But looking at the track record of the 1918 pandemic, by the time you discover you should have had the immunization, it's too late.  In 1918 the so-called "Spanish flu" affected a number of people in the spring and into the summer, the "off-season".  Very few people suffered more than 3 days from this version of the virus, and almost all recovered.  But by autumn the virus had mutated.  Over 25% of the nation's population had the flu.  It killed approximately 50 million people worldwide, and in one year the average life expectancy in this country dropped by 12 years because of it.

I really hate it when health officials, from private doctors to representatives of the CDC, buy into scare tactics and champion a pandemic that simply has not been factually verified.  The LAST thing we need out of people we want to trust is manipulation without basis and scare tactics.  In this case, all they had to do was mandate confirmatory testing whenever health care practitioners diagnosed off-season flu in order to determine if it really was H1N1 virus.  Cost, unfortunately, was prohibitive, or so we're told.  That leaves me with this sinking suspicion that there are other irons in this fire.

What would the nation's 'vast' uninsureds do in the face of a deadly epidemic?  Where would they get health care to save their lives if there is not a public plan in place?  Isn't this upcoming, seemingly guaranteed pandemic compelling evidence we need to adopt the President's plan, however nebulous it may be, for health care?  Uh huh.

What if we had a pandemic and nobody participated?  Yes, that's a play on words for that wonderful sentiment of the 60s, "What if there was a war and nobody came?"  The government has put a lot of time, effort and of course, money into developing an immunization to combat this possibly upcoming pandemic.  New York is the first state to tell its health care workers it is mandatory they be immunized or they will lose their jobs, but they are rebelling in droves.

I am not here to tell you yes, you should immunize or no, you should not immunize.  That is a decision you must make for yourselves, preferably with the advice of your doctor.  But make sure you ask your doctor ALL the questions, because far too many of them have been content to let the CDC, the WHO, and the Obama administration's HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius do their thinking for them.  Besides, there is matter of runaway malpractice lawsuits...

FBI Arrests Jordanian For Downtown Dallas Bomb Plot...(Hosam Maher Husein Smahdi)
Illinois Man Charged In Plot To Bomb Federal Offices...  (Talib Islam)
Terror Suspects Accused of Targeting Marine Base At Quantico...(Daniel Patrick Boyd, Hysen Sherifi)
Men Vanish After Taking Photos Of Philly Subway System...

Oh dear God.

They're scenting weakness and they're back, with a vengeance they haven't before shown.

Then there's this one:

Link:  www.cnsnews.com/news/article/54514

"Administration Will Cut Border Patrol Deployed on US-Mexico Border

"Even though the Border Patrol now reports that almost 1,300 miles of the US-Mexican border is not under effective control, and the Department of Justice says that vast stretches of it are "easily breached", and the GAO Accountability Office has revealed that three persons "linked to terrorism" and 530 aliens from "special interest countries" were intercepted at Border Patrol checkpoints last year, the administration is nonetheless now planning to decrease the number of border patrol agents deployed on the US-Mexico border..."

The US Department of Homeland Security has reported that the Border Patrol will relocate 384 agents to the US-Canada border in what can be called nothing more than a shell game.  The southern border is 1,954 miles long, only 697 miles of which are called "under effective control".  The US-Canadian border has a shocking 32 miles under effective control, and the coastal sectors of the country have the remaining 165 miles under effective control.  The goal, the administration has said, is to keep the number of miles under effective control and not allow any loss. 

What about gaining on it, for heaven's sake???  "The intention is to take back the border incrementally, and make gains we can keep," a Border Patrol spokesman said.  "We do not intend...to give back miles we have gained control over."

Oh good.  That makes me feel so much better.  NOT!

In the days following the attacks of September 22, 2001 there were numerous reports of foreign-looking men, almost always wearing white shirts and dark slacks, filming military installations, water systems, chemical and nuclear plants, and transportation systems.  I spotted one such man myself, filming away outside the gated entrance and guard shack at the Naval Post-Graduate School in Monterey.  Surprisingly, no one knew who to tell or what to do about it when I called the Monterey PD, it being nighttime and phones at the NPGS being forwarded to answering machines, but they assured me they'd figure something out in a hurry.  No follow-up attack took place there, but the beautiful grounds became off-limits to the non-military public for a long time, and that was a real loss to the community. (The NPGS is located on the former grounds of the famous Del Monte Hotel; it's simply stunning to see, and the Navy has a long tradition of being quite generous in allowing use of many of its buildings for community events.)

I've been afraid for my country these past 9 months.  I've feared the loss of the foundations of liberty as the growth of government has exploded.  But now I'm trembling for myself, my loved ones, and the innocents who believe, who expect they will be kept safe by this Big Daddy Government.  I am afraid of the change I see coming at us now, and I hope I'm wrong...

I have known for a long time now that Democrats do not win elections; Republicans lose them.  I know that this was never more true than in 2008, when Republicans argued over their candidate, Senator John McCain:  was he conservative enough, was he too conservative?  Each voter answered that question to his or her own satisfaction and either voted for or against Senator McCain and Governor Palin, or stayed home in silent protest over the selection offered by the party.  And so, we got the Obama administration, along with its disastrous agenda.

It has never been more imperative that we figure out what happened in our party in 2008 and address it before the 2010 elections take place.  The very survival of our country and form of government is at stake if we do not put a straitjacket on the classical fascist actions of this administration.  The only way to do so is to eliminate the power of the Pelosi House and the Reid Senate.  To understand what we did in 2008 we need to look back in history, because the contentious discord we've experienced and continue to experience is not new; nor is its solution.  Disputes originate in the differences between traditionalist and libertarian conservatives, and the solution lies in the shared tenets of fusionist conservatives.

In the 1950s few debates rang louder in America than that between conservatives.  It was an issue that had Russell Kirk calling libertarians (then referred to as "individualists") such as Frank Meyer "anti-Christian" and "social atomism", claiming individualism was the road to anarchy.  Meyer responded that traditionalists such as Russell did not comprehend the ideas and institutions of a free society, and that they lacked a "clear and distinct principle".  Friedrich Hayek, the economist and self-proclaimed libertarian, jumped into the fray and wrote a provocative essay entitled "Why I Am Not A Conservative".  In it he wrote that what was wrong  with conservatism was practically everything:  it does not understand economic forces, mistrusts anything new, and is comfortable using the power of government to prevent change, and lacking any basic principle, hopes that the "wise and good will rule".  Whittaker Chambers, a traditionalist, wrote a scathing review of libertarian Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, and Ayn Rand responded that National Review was "the worst and most dangerous magazine in America".

Recognizing value from both factions, Frank Meyer brought together several leading conservatives at the time and asked them to write on "What Is A Conservative?".  He then looked for commonalities in the writings of Hayek, Kirk, William F. Buckley, and others, and found that conservatives of all sorts shared these ideals:

1. They agree there should be "an objective moral order" of "immutable standards by which human conduct should be judged";
2. They value "the human person" as the main target and beneficiary of political and social thought;
3. They oppose use of the State "to enforce ideological patterns on human beings";
4. They reject necessary centralized power and authority required for a planned society;
5. They support the Constitution, as it was "originally conceived" (remember that much interpretation of the Constitution had changed abruptly and dramatically starting with FDR and Chief Justice Hugo Black's Supreme Court, favoring a strong centralized federal government for the first time).
   
6. They acknowledged and supported Western civilization as the necessary basis for a free society, and the need to defend it against the totalitarianism of communism.

Out of this study, Frank Meyer concluded that conservatism was "reason operating within tradition", the basis of fusionism.  M. Stanton Evans, also a fusionist, has pointed out that the same sort of conclusion was arrived at by our Founding Fathers at the Constitutional Convention, when the traditionalist/authoritarian ideas of Hamilton and the libertarian/classical liberal ideas of Jefferson were rejected in favor of the fusionist ideas of Madison, who wrote in The Federalist that in designing a system of government where men will govern men "the great difficulty lies in this:  You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself".  Their solution was to not trust in the goodness of man, but to create a system of checks and balances to limit the authority of any man who might govern.

The next to pick up the fusionist mantle was Senator Barry Goldwater, who outlined his ideas in his The Conscience of a Conservative, published in 1960.  Ironically it was ghostwritten by L. Brent Bozell, a traditionalist, who nonetheless found common ground with Goldwater on minimal government, support of the Constitution, and recognition of the dangers of communism.  Goldwater wrote that each person is unique and therefore provision must be made for the development of differing abilities, that neither the economic nor the spiritual aspect of man can be free if the other is not, and that man's spiritual and economic development must be self-directed, not through outside sources.  Goldwater's description of man as a spiritual being as well as an economic one captured the minds of America, including one Ronald Reagan.  Reagan won his own landslide with the votes of conservatives from both parties because of the appeal of his fusionist conservatism.  Remember that "Big Tent" he spoke of?

Conservatives still recognize the need for the Constitution as written, as opposed to the "living document" promoted by Hugo Black's court in support of FDR's trial-and-error government.  We still want minimal government, even more so today, when we are drowning in debt, taxes, and out-of-control irrational laws and rules.  And we still see the threat of totalitarianism, whether it comes from the communism of a Putin-controlled Russia, a fanatical Islamafascist bunch of clerics, or an Obama administration hellbent on reorganizing our government into something decidedly more socialistic and fascist.  We need to recognize the fusionist principles that unite us in order to stop this runaway administration in 2010.  We need to put fiscal adults into the governors' mansions across the country.  And we need to remove the unfounded charges against conservatives of bigotry and selfishness from political lexicon in this country, once and for all.  It's critical!

I don't like to mince words.  An illegal alien is an illegal alien, and use of such terms as "undocumented worker" is as purposely misleading as it can be inaccurate.  Today my stance towards more perfect speech is supported by none other than UCLA School of Law's Professor Eugene Volokh, whom I admire greatly.  Says Professor Volokh:



YEAH!

HR 3200:  It's not gone yet.  *sigh*

It's almost impossible to read the 1017 pages of this bill without nodding off repeatedly; Congressman Conyers was clearly speaking with this bill in mind when he complained about having to vote in two days on bills over 1,000 pages long and needing two lawyers to interpret.  It does help to know that this magnum opus constitutes the synthesis of Congressman Henry Waxman's decades-long efforts to take health care out of the private sector and deliver it, once and for all, firmly into the grasp of government.  It represents his final abandonment of mandated employer-provided health care coverage, something begun by unions in the post-WWII era, picked up by politicians starting with the Nixon administration and every successive administration since, and something Waxman championed throughout the 1980s.  A 1988 Issue Brief prepared by the Congressional Research Service identifies the number of uninsured as being either 25 million or 37 million, depending on which study you believe, which coincides entirely with the 47 million (less 12 million illegal aliens) being touted today.  In the document, pending bills regarding health care coverage are listed, including a Kennedy/Waxman bill that mandates employers to pick up 80% - 100% of health insurance premiums for their employees; a bill by Congressman Pete Stark taxes employers who do not provide insurance to their employees, establishes a tax credit for payment of premiums, and creates federal and state insurance pools (today's so-called Exchanges); finally, a Jenkins/Chafe bill denies tax credits to any employer-provided insurance plan that does not provide "dollar-first" payment for child health care -- a term in use today meaning insurance covers payment for well-baby coverage, not the parent.

The bill is comprehensive in its establishment of a brand new bureaucracy within the federal government, something that is needed because of its creation of health care coverage for many not currently covered, the so-called "public plan".  It is stop-gap in its changes proposed to Medicare and Medicaid billing and provider mandate methods.  And it is premature, as evidenced by the incredible number of pilot programs that will be funded under it.

Much has already been said about certain distasteful provisions in the bill, and I won't waste a lot of time repeating them, but I do want to clarify a couple of inflammatory points:

1. Nothing in the bill flatly calls for or prohibits abortion coverage.  Issues of coverage beyond the mandatory general categories listed as part of the Essential Benefits Plan are left to the Health Benefits Advisory Committee, which has already been created under the Stimulus Bill.
   
2. Nothing in the bill prohibits coverage from being extended to illegal aliens; however, there is language that prohibits extending health care tax 'credits' to illegal aliens, but explicitly exempts them from the requirement to pay a tax for failure to have insurance.
3. It increases funding to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to the tune of $100,000,000 in order to decrease waste, fraud, and abuse without presenting any plan or mechanism for doing so.  Ironic, that, eh?
4. It mandates creation of and exclusive use of electronic patient records and "Electronic Administrative Transactions", this in spite of the theft of tens of thousands of veterans' records when the VA went to such a system, and in spite of thousands of children in Florida recently being denied health care services because of a computer glitch.  No adequate protection exists today that can 100% safeguard against hacking of electronic networks.  Period
   
5. It mandates creation of a new Trust Fund, to be funded by both taxes paid within the system and automatic appropriations from the US Treasury General Fund to replace non-reimbursed funds spent.
6. The volume of mandatory reporting, penalties, excise taxes, reserves, and coverage mandates that will apply to existing private insurance plans guarantee their necessary end in the not-too-far future, beginning with self-insuring employers who pay their employees' bills in lieu of buying insurance from an insurance company.  No changes to existing policy coverage is allowed, with the exception of adding new dependents; changes automatically cause the employer to have to provide the public plan.

The bill creates the position of Health Choices Commissioner, who is empowered to set rates, establish standards for networks in private plans, set the "Medical Loss Ratio" (MLR) for private plans at the "highest ratio possible" (which means limit the amount of profit insurers can make), establish marketing standards, define terms like "employee" "part-time" and "full-time" even though they are already defined under labor laws and the IRC, manipulate private and public plan premium amounts to control 'adverse selection' (having a bunch of costly patients all choose the same plan, loading it up) among enrollees, make from and receive payments into the Trust Fund, audit all insurers and charge them for the audits, gather confidential information and data from all insurers, issue reports to Congress such as one comparing self-insured and subscriber plans in areas of capital reserves with emphasis on the form of ownership (whether corporate or not), risk, and effects of rating rules (but being prohibited from making recommendations for changes that might increase the number of self-insurers), and terminate or take over state Exchanges.  The Health and Human Services Secretary is responsible for creating and administering the public plan, but the Health Choices Commissioner is responsible for administrating the federal insurance Exchange (a group of qualifying plans offered to the public, including the public plan).

The bill defines who appoints whom to the Health Benefits Advisory Committee, chaired by the Surgeon General.  The President appoints 9 non-federal employee members and either 2, 4, 6, or 8 members who are federal employees or officers, all for 3 year terms.  The Comptroller General appoints 9 additional members.  Members are supposed to include providers, consumers, employers, insurers, experts in health care finance and delivery, experts in racial and ethnic disparities, experts in disabilities, government agencies, at least one doctor or health care professional, and one expert on children's health care for balance.  These are the folks who will decide what is covered or not covered in the public plan.

A great deal of the plan involves changes in policies pertaining to Medicaid and Medicare, mostly involving what can be charged and how it can be charged, and how providers will be mandated to provide more services for less money, including the ever-popular "bundling of services" technique that requires a doctor or other care provider to receive a flat fee for providing complete care to a patient.  For example, a neonatal cardiac surgeon is reimbursed $2900 in Missouri for performing open heart surgery on an infant, and that covers all pre-op visits, the surgery, post-op medications, visits, procedures, and treatments for 30 days after the surgery. Disproportionate Share Hospital (DSH) dollars, which are distributed to hospitals to offset their costs for non-reimbursable treatment of patients, will be phased out and eliminated because, theoretically, those costs should diminish and go away once everyone is insured.

Pilot programs, funded to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, include Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), a sort of small-time HMO done at the doctor level (approximately 5,000 Medicare patients and/or 15,000 private insurance patients per ACO); one to bundle Post Acute Care by skilled nursing facilities, in-patient rehab center, long term care facilities and the like; one to convert emergency care to a single episode via bundling -- meaning, doing away with paying for readmissions within days of discharge, even though it is Medicare/Medicaid who dictates when that discharge will happen, NOT the doctor; grants for language services where needed, along with the mandate that "entities (providers) must provide for culturally and linguistically appropriate communication and health services" (none of which is defined), a Medical Home pilot program, and a host of others too numerous to continue mentioning.

The last part of the bill is dedicated to housekeeping; changing language in pre-existing programs and laws to incorporate them into this new bureaucracy, and it fleshes out the system by creating funding for such things as birthing centers that are separate from hospitals (cross your fingers, Mom!), family planning services to non-pregnant low income women (not couples), Medicare funding for smoking cessation, nurse home visits to low income pregnant women and to children under the age of two to prevent abuse and neglect, public health clinics to provide children's vaccinations, rebates to states who pay for graduate medical student schooling, and funding of the Health Care Comparative Effectiveness Research Trust Fund to the tune of $670 million between 2010 and 2013, and $375 million each year thereafter, purpose unstated and unclear.  It increases the amount of money paid to doctors who become licensed via the National Health Service Corps from $35,000 to $50,000 but doubles the amount of mandatory service time and reduces credit for assigned service to half -- a sort of indenture to government.  It increases a stipend paid to civilian employees and officers in the regular or reserve corps working in the Public Health Work Force Corps to $1269 per month, in addition to their educational scholarship and increases their service period to 2 years.  And on.  And on.

There is a one-time $10 million payout, called "reinsurance" in the bill, to be paid to retirees and spouses not yet Medicare-eligible to reimburse 80% of their out-of-pocket costs between $15,000 and $90,000.  This money is paid directly to the retiree/spouse and NOT to the employer who provided the coverage.  This money goes into a separate trust fund.  There is no mechanism for sustaining the trust fund.  Rumor is that this is payback money for union retirees who tend to retire much earlier than the rest of us, thus making them not yet Medicare-eligible.  There is nothing in the bill to substantiate or deny that charge, however.

When one adds up the numbers spelled out in HS 3200, one quickly leaves earth for the ionosphere, keeping in mind that numbers are only spelled out as far ahead as 2019, but usually not beyond 2013.  The $88 billion figure that is thrown about by news commentators who prove by doing so that they never read the bill is just not supported; it is far too low.  And the only identified mechanisms for compensating for lack of money in the program is to automatically take from the US Treasury's General Fund; read: increase taxes, or raise premiums. But raising premiums is what private insurers have had to do.  Where's the improvement?

In my next installment I will cover some of the points of other health care bills that are up for consideration today, including Senator Baucas' Bipartisan Six non-bill, the Affordable Health Choices Act (Kennedy/Dodd), the self-identified "Tuesday Group" Patient's Choice Act of 2009, and some plans in place now in such states as Massachusetts, Florida, and West Virginia.