Honduran 'Coup' Provides Glimpse of Consistency in Obama's Foreign Policy

From America's Right blog:
Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Many say that the administration's approach to foreign policy is non-existent or, at best, inconsistent -- in reality, it's quite the opposite

Since the weekend, I've been following the ongoing political situation in Honduras with interest and curiosity. Reading that the United Nations adopted a resolution today mandating that all U.N. member states refuse to recognize any Honduran government other than that of the nation's ousted leader finally was enough for me.

As it turns out, the transition of political power in a small Central American nation has perhaps taught me more about our own president and his foreign policy--not to mention how that foreign policy is embraced by the rest of the world--than any other occurrence or set of events so far, and the way it has been handled by the rest of the world has sent chills up my spine -- quite different, I assure you, than a thrill up the leg.

So far, the goings-on in Honduras has been widely reported by pretty much everybody as a "coup" but, in reality, such a characterization could not be further from the truth. In fact, what we've seen in Tegucigalpa has been a nation upholding its constitution, peaceably taking action to maintain the rule of law. And it is that distinction which lends so much insight into our own president's designs, goals, aspirations and mere tendencies.

Like in the United States of America as it stands now, Honduras is a nation bound by a constitution. And, much like in America, a head of state in Honduras is bound by term limits, though in that country it constitutes a single, four-year term. For a better understanding of exactly what is going on in Honduras, I want to play a little "make-believe," venture a few steps into the realm of God-I-hope-not:

The year is 2016, four years after American President Barack Hussein Obama won a decisive re-election victory over the Republican Party's Colin Powell, a moderate candidate foisted upon the American political right by means of a constant bombardment of misinformation, specifically that the GOP could only see success by abandoning its conservative roots. The American economy is in shambles, but the state of crisis only leads the poor and politically ignorant to believe that government cures all, and that contrary to what Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin warned of back in January 2008, blind faith in the state's omnipotence is the only key to renewed prosperity.

As a result, Obama has pushed for a special vote intended to serve as a litmus test determining public support among the politically ignorant for the possible repeal of the 22nd Amendment, thus lifting the provision for term limits added to the U.S. Constitution in the wake of the exponential expansion of government during the four terms of former President Franklin D. Roosevelt and allowing Obama to serve as president in perpetuity. The proposed vote is met with opposition from concerned Americans on both sides of the political spectrum, and the twice democratically-elected president of the United States is forced out by judicial and legislative branch officials simply honoring their sworn obligation to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States of America.

Almost instantaneously, people from across Europe--where Obama is loved second only to David Hasselhoff--and leftist leaders from across the globe denounce what they deem a "coup." Obama himself travels to New York City and addressed the United Nations; shortly thereafter, the world body adopts a resolution demanding that all 192 member nations refuse to recognize any government in the United States other than that led by Barack Hussein Obama.

Given the hypothetical, what business would the United Nations have in determining whether or not a sovereign nation upholds its Constitution? Yet, in the case of today's resolution, that's exactly what the United Nations is doing with regard to the situation in Honduras. That nation has a constitution, its people are looking to uphold it, and yet the rest of the world is siding with an ousted leader fraught with dictatorial aspirations.

And our president has joined dictators like Cuba's Fidel Castro, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega in embraced him. Not only that, but the very same Barack Obama who, purportedly afraid to "meddle," waited for ten days before voicing support for those in Iran seeking freedom from a tyrannical regime--and waited days after that to rescind an invitation to celebrate July 4th with Iranian diplomats--almost immediately came to the aid of ousted Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, trying to stop the so-called "coup" and later denouncing the action as "illegal."

Here's the very same American president who, just six months before in his historic inaugural address, called upon the American people to "let it be said by our children's children that . . . we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations" and yet, instead of championing freedom, Barack Obama has done nothing but support dictatorships and tyranny, whether it be through his fervent protests in terms of those seeking to uphold their constitution in Honduras, or those laying their lives on the line for freedom in Iran.

It is the root of Obama's selective action and inaction which is so telling, and which worries me. While conservative pundits everywhere are beginning to argue that the American foreign policy under Barack Obama is aimless, that it is non-existent, I find myself worried because I see its stark consistency.

For Obama, see, it's all about justice, and the resulting worldview has been bred into him from his beginnings, and reinforced by those in his inner circle. (After all, it's the concept of "justice" which made Michelle Obama so "proud of her country" for the first time after her husband began to gain popularity during last year's campaign.) Previously, I led myself to believe that our president's yearning for that nebulous goal of "justice" only affected his domestic policy -- I saw it as the reason for his nomination of Sonia Sotomayor for the seat on the U.S. Supreme Court vacated by Justice David Souter; I saw it as the inspiration for increased goverment control over the banks and automakers; I've seen it as the driving force behind the socialist aspects of the cap-and-trade legislation currently working its way through Congress. Yet striving for "justice," whatever that may be, greatly affects his approach to foreign policy as well.

Previously, I had dismissed Obama's approach to foreign policy as "detente-at-all-costs," an unintended homage to former President Jimmy "Dhimmi" Carter. But I don't think that's it. Detente, it seems, is just a desired side effect of Obama's justice-driven foreign policy. After all, it's that hope for his brand of "justice" which allows him to weigh in on where Jews can build homes in Jerusalem and embrace a wanna-be dictator in Honduras but not want to "meddle" with affairs in Iran.

The question, however, remains: what, exactly, is Barack Obama's definition of "justice?"

I don't know. But I'm starting to understand it. When he finally broke silence on the uprisings in Iran, President Obama never once spoke of the protests in terms of freedom, choosing instead to define them in terms of a frustrated people seeking "justice." And his statements on Iran, of course, come weeks after he spoke to the Muslim world in Cairo, delivering a speech during which he weighed the moral equivalency between Palestinians wandering the desert for six decades looking for a home and the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust.

Justice, to Barack Obama, seems to hinge upon government being the ultimate arbiter with regards to fundamental rights bequeathed upon an obedient people. The Palestinians had no such government to trade in fundamental rights, so such an absence of governance was a travesty on par with the death of six million Jews. With regard to Iran, Obama echoed the mainstream media's argument that the protests were about elections, not freedom. And with regard to the ongoing situation in Honduras, in the interest of "justice" of course Obama will side with Manuel Zelaya, as government knows what is best for the people, even if that means scrapping the constitution in order to provide that government in perpetuity.

That's why the so-called "coup" in Tegucigalpa shed so much light, at least for me, on Barack Obama's own tendencies. Conservatives often argue that liberals are unable, in terms of foreign policy, to discern between good and evil. When Barack Obama is concerned, however, it is becoming increasing obvious that the struggle is not so much between forces of good and evil as it is between liberty and tyranny. Sadly, that consistency I've found in Obama's foreign policy, the consistency so many conservative commentators seem to believe to be missing, is that he will always side with the latter.

Read more...

Sen. Inhofe Calls for Inquiry Into'Suppressed' Climate Change Report

Republicans are raising questions about why the EPA apparently dismissed an analyst's report questioning the science behind global warming.

By Judson Berger

FOXNews.com

Monday, June 29, 2009

EPA analyst Alan Carlin raised questions about the impact of global warming on areas like Greenland. Shown here is an iceberg off Ammassalik Island, Greenland. (AP Photo)

A top Republican senator has ordered an investigation into the Environmental Protection Agency's alleged suppression of a report that questioned the science behind global warming.

The 98-page report, co-authored by EPA analyst Alan Carlin, pushed back on the prospect of regulating gases like carbon dioxide as a way to reduce global warming. Carlin's report argued that the information the EPA was using was out of date, and that even as atmospheric carbon dioxide levels have increased, global temperatures have declined.

"He came out with the truth. They don't want the truth at the EPA," Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., a global warming skeptic, told FOX News, saying he's ordered an investigation. "We're going to expose it."

The controversy comes after the House of Representatives passed a landmark bill to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, one that Inhofe said will be "dead on arrival" in the Senate despite President Obama's energy adviser voicing confidence in the measure.

According to internal e-mails that have been made public by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Carlin's boss told him in March that his material would not be incorporated into a broader EPA finding and ordered Carlin to stop working on the climate change issue. The draft EPA finding released in April lists six greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, that the EPA says threaten public health and welfare.

An EPA official told FOXNews.com on Monday that Carlin, who is an economist -- not a scientist -- included "no original research" in his report. The official said that Carlin "has not been muzzled in the agency at all," but stressed that his report was entirely "unsolicited."

"It was something that he did on his own," the official said. "Though he was not qualified, his manager indulged him and allowed him on agency time to draft up ... a set of comments."

Despite the EPA official's remarks, Carlin told FOXNews.com on Monday that his boss, National Center for Environmental Economics Director Al McGartland, appeared to be pressured into reassigning him.

Carlin said he doesn't know whether the White House intervened to suppress his report but claimed it's clear "they would not be happy about it if they knew about it," and that McGartland seemed to be feeling pressure from somewhere up the chain of command.

Carlin said McGartland told him he had to pull him off the climate change issue.

"It was reassigning you or losing my job, and I didn't want to lose my job," Carlin said, paraphrasing what he claimed were McGartland's comments to him. "My inference (was) that he was receiving some sort of higher-level pressure."

Carlin said he personally does not think there is a need to regulate carbon dioxide, since "global temperatures are going down." He said his report expressed a "good bit of doubt" on the connection between the two.

Specifically, the report noted that global temperatures were on a downward trend over the past 11 years, that scientists do not necessarily believe that storms will become more frequent or more intense due to global warming, and that the theory that temperatures will cause Greenland ice to rapidly melt has been "greatly diminished."

Carlin, in a March 16 e-mail, argued that his comments are "valid, significant" and would be critical to the EPA finding.

McGartland, though, wrote back the next day saying he had decided not to forward his comments.

"The administrator and the administration has decided to move forward on endangerment, and your comments do not help the legal or policy case for this decision," he wrote, according to the e-mails released by CEI. "I can only see one impact of your comments given where we are in the process, and that would be a very negative impact on our office."

He later wrote an e-mail urging Carlin to "move on to other issues and subjects."

"I don't want you to spend any additional EPA time on climate change. No papers, no research, etc., at least until we see what EPA is going to do with climate," McGartland wrote.

The EPA said in a written statement that Carlin's opinions were in fact considered, and that he was not even part of the working group dealing with climate change in the first place.

"Claims that this individual's opinions were not considered or studied are entirely false. This administration and this EPA administrator are fully committed to openness, transparency and science-based decision making," the statement said. "The individual in question is not a scientist and was not part of the working group dealing with this issue. Nevertheless the document he submitted was reviewed by his peers and agency scientists, and information from that report was submitted by his manager to those responsible for developing the proposed endangerment finding. In fact, some ideas from that document are included and addressed in the endangerment finding."

The e-mail exchanges and suggestions of political interference sparked a backlash from Republicans in Congress.

Reps. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., and Darrell Issa, R-Calif., also wrote a letter last week to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson urging the agency to reopen its comment period on the finding. The EPA has since denied the request.

Citing the internal e-mails, the Republican congressmen wrote that the EPA was exhibiting an "agency culture set in a predetermined course."

"It documents at least one instance in which the public was denied access to significant scientific literature and raises substantial questions about what additional evidence may have been suppressed," they wrote.

In a written statement, Issa said the administration is "actively seeking to withhold new data in order to justify a political conclusion."

"I'm sure it was very inconvenient for the EPA to consider a study that contradicted the findings it wanted to reach," Sensenbrenner said in a statement, adding that the "repression" of Carlin's report casts doubt on the entire finding.

Carlin said he's concerned that he's seeing "science being decided at the presidential level."

"Now Mr. Obama is in effect directly or indirectly saying that CO2 causes global temperatures to rise and that we have to do something about it. ... That's normally a scientific judgment and he's in effect judging what the science says," he said. "We need to look at it harder."

The controversy is similar to one under the Bush administration -- only the administration was taking the opposite stance. In that case, scientist James Hansen claimed the administration was trying to keep him from speaking out and calling for reductions in greenhouse gases.

Darned Flat-Earther

From America's Right blog:

Consider me unsurprised. A political agency such as the EPA would suppress information that counters its own views and political perspective? Ohmigosh. What I did find incredible was the derision with which the EPA dismissed the report.

"It was something he did on his own," the EPA official told Fox News. "Though he was not qualified, the manager indulged him and allowed him on agency time to draft up . . . a set of comments."

Indulged him? How positively condescending.

Personally, I don't care whether or not the EPA official who penned the suppressed report was a scientist, an economist or the guy who changes the urinal cakes in the agency's building. If the report contains facts, ran afoul of the "consensus" touted by the president and greenies everywhere, and was suppressed -- I'm crying foul.

We're about to pass legislation that will unreasonably ruin the American economy, perhaps the most harmful bill ever proposed in the 233-year history of our nation, based completely on a farcical theory founded on junk science. We need all of the information, not simply the information permitted us by those who buy into the global socialism underpinnings of the climate change issue.

An Open Letter to the President

Sunday, June 28, 2009
From America's Right blog

Dear President Obama:

I watched your address to the nation today. The one you made yesterday morning, one day after the House of Representatives passed the 1,500-page Waxman-Markey Cap-and-Trade bill without reading it, and after adding 300 pages just hours before. You looked great, and your charm showed through. You always do, and it always does. In fact, I dare say I'd like you -- if it weren't for your policies.

I'm sorry, Mr. President. There is "no longer a debate about whether carbon pollution is placing our planet in jeopardy?" It's happening? Really? Why then, Mr. President, is Mars warming while we're stuck in a 10-plus year-long cooling trend? I haven't seen any little green men driving Hummers. The cool photos sent back to Earth from the Red Planet sure haven't shown any coal plants, or industry, or anything else your people claim to be driving global warming here at home. Could it be, Mr. President, that mankind and whatever pollution we're emitting has much less to do with climate change than other natural forces? Perhaps we should look at the sun when talking about global temperatures, no?

Here are some other questions I'd really like you and your kind--your "kind" being socialist, globalist progressives hell bent on destroying American exceptionalism any way you can (with climate change being a convenient vehicle for that goal)--to answer before you go and ruin the American economy:

• Considering that a single volcanic eruption releases several times the amount of carbon dioxide than the entire human race releases in an entire year, how has the world survived countless such eruptions throughout the planet's 4.5 billion year history?
• Termites release ten times more carbon dioxide than every single man, woman, child, factory and automobile in the entire world. How is it that mankind's carbon emission is the determining factor on how quickly the planet is destroyed? Shouldn't your farcical energy bill focus on termites? After all, they also eat wood, and environmentalists absolutely love wood . . .
• Scientists are absolutely incapable of predicting the weather a week out with any significant accuracy. Why should we believe them capable of putting together accurate models looking forward by a century, or even a decade? If Glenn "Hurricane" Schwartz here in Philadelphia says it's going to be 86 degrees here tomorrow and it turns out to be 91 degrees, why trust a liberal idealogue masquerading as a scientist to predict global temperatures in 2050 to within six-tenths of a degree?
• In that same line of thinking -- why do existing climate models completely fail to predict the known past? In other words, if the same models used by your so-called experts don't work to predict known conditions, why should we bank our economy on those models and experts now?
• Staying in the past, why did the planet cool between 1940 and 1975, even though human carbon dioxide emissions were sky high? Could it be that human carbon emissions and global temperature have absolutely nothing to do with each other?
• Why don't we see, in core samples, actual empirical evidence over a broad span of time--not 100 year segments here or there--that carbon dioxide levels drive temperature? Why don't we see corresponding increases in such samples at the time of major volcanic activity?
• The planet's climate has always changed -- why are we so willing to destroy the economy (or even take the risk in doing so) in order to fight a natural cyclical process?

With all due respect, Mr. President, the debate is far from over. Yes, I absolutely, positively believe that we should be responsible stewards of our planet; but believing that, after 4.5 billion years of plate-shifting and ice ages and asteroid strikes and a climate that has ranged from incredibly hot to unbelievably cold, we suddenly are endangering Mother Earth because of our industrial activities and internal combustion engines is more than ridiculous -- it's unfathomably arrogant.

And yet arrogance seems to be a hallmark of your presidency and your administration, Mr. President. You travel around apologizing to the world for America, when it is our economy that drives the globe, when it has been our brave men and women who have liberated it. You believe that your meaningless and empty words, authored by someone else and read from a TelePrompTer, can somehow change the ideological struggle between Islam and the West overnight, taking credit even for the uprising in Iran. As much as I like you on a personal level--and I do--as president of the United States your arrogance is matched only by your popularity among the politically ignorant. Combine yours with the arrogance inherent among the cult-like believers in detrimental climate change, and I fear for our world.

Wouldn't it be ironic, sir, if the very same efforts which on their face claim to be done in the best interests of the planet actually end up destroying it? What of the hundreds of millions of people teetering on the edge of death from famine and disease, propped up only by a robust American economy and the generosity of a capable American people? What of the hundreds of millions of people whose only line of defense against ruthless oppression is our strong military, funding by a strong American economy, manned by a capable American people?

Yet your actions, and the actions of those in your party, are directly threatening the very heart of American exceptionalism. You claim that there is no contradiction between investing in clean energy and economic growth, yet study after study shows otherwise, that this legislation rooted so shamelessly in the expansion of political power will result in disaster for American business and industry and unsustainable, increased costs on American people from coast to coast. This legislation, and indeed your presidency as a whole, has been built on a web of lies on everything from transparency to policy and everywhere in between, and the price for those lies will be paid by an increasingly burdened American people. My three-year-old child, and her children after her, will be paying for your inexperience, ignorance, arrogance and malfeasance.

You acknowledge that "dependence on foreign oil is endangering our security" as if you've done anything at all to guide our nation to true energy independence. In reality, looking at energy independence in terms of the national security it provides, this horrific legislation is little more than the latest salvo in your ongoing war against the safety and security of America and the American people you are charged with protecting, be it the way you've handled our detainees, the way your party has disheartened our intelligence community, or the way your detente-at-all-costs approach to foreign policy has emboldened enemies of the United States of America and everything for which She stands.

If you truly wanted to become energy independent, if you truly wanted to facilitate economic growth, you would invest in the American people and the resources America is blessed to sit upon. You would create hundreds of thousands of jobs by drilling for oil off our coasts and on the northern plain of Alaska, and by increasing efforts to explore our vast oil shale deposits located under your hated flyover states. Knowing that the United States of America is essentially the Saudi Arabia of coal, you would pave the way for clean coal and expansion of the coal industry rather than overtly working to destroy it. You would build nuclear plants. But this disastrous piece of legislation is no more about clean energy or the environment as your stimulus package was about stimulating the economy -- it's about advancing your collectivist agenda, it's about expanding the size and scope and influence of the federal government, it's about trampling the values and principles upon which this nation was founded, and it's about taking what you view as an unfairly powerful and successful America down a peg or two relative to Europe and the rest of the slowly developing world.

The problem, Mr. President, is that--for now, at least--you're getting away with it. An obedient media and ignorant people are lost in your smile and ample charm. An embittered Democrat Party is making the most of what I promise will be an extremely short time in power. And a global community jealous of our freedom and our prosperity is clamoring for one of their own, a true Citizen of the World, to reduce America from the world's only superpower to a beholden nation which relies upon everyone else for energy, for goods and, soon, for food. And you're taking them up on it, quicker than any of us could have imagined.

Right now, when perhaps the greatest possible question is asked of those who believe wholeheartedly in the danger of climate change--what, pray tell, is the appropriate temperature for planet Earth?--the answer may very well be: "Whatever our Dear Leader says it should be." But it won't be for long. 2010 is right around the corner, 2012 is not far behind, and we're waking up. America is waking up, Mr. President, and I take comfort in knowing you'll be on the speaking circuit and measuring the drapes for your presidential library in no time.

Warmest Regards,

Jeff Schreiber
America's Right

Cap and trade vote today, complete with AP spin

Update: 300-page, last-minute amendment; Update: Greenpeace opposes

posted at 8:46 am on June 26, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
From Hot Air Blog

In pre-Norman England, King Canute once had his bearers carry him to the sea, where he ordered the ocean to recede. Often this story is told to indict Canute for having delusions of grandeur, but historians usually agree that Canute intended to teach a lesson to his court, whose profuse flattery had annoyed the king to distraction. Why does Canute come to mind today? For some reason, I thought of it when I read the AP’s lead to their coverage of the cap-and-trade bill coming to the House floor for a vote:

A handful of undecided Democrats hold the key to whether the House will confront global warming and begin a shift away from fossil fuels to cleaner sources of energy.

Well, that’s not biased coverage at all, is it? “Whether the House will confront global warming” implies that all debate has ceased on the subject, while in truth it has intensified. Kim Strassel notes the increasing skepticism in today’s Wall Street Journal:

Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as “deniers.” The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S.

In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming. In the Czech Republic, where President Vaclav Klaus remains a leading skeptic, today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country’s new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Mr. Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted. New Zealand last year elected a new government, which immediately suspended the country’s weeks-old cap-and-trade program.

The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. — 13 times the number who authored the U.N.’s 2007 climate summary for policymakers. Joanne Simpson, the world’s first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak “frankly” of her nonbelief. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming “the worst scientific scandal in history.” Norway’s Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the “new religion.” A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton’s Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled. (Both Nature and Science magazines have refused to run the physicists’ open letter.)

The collapse of the “consensus” has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth’s temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans. A global financial crisis has politicians taking a harder look at the science that would require them to hamstring their economies to rein in carbon.

Of course, the AP reports on this as part of its coverage, too. This comes in paragarph … er … oh, wait, it doesn’t appear at all. The AP does report on opposition to the bill on its fiscal insanity, but waters that down considerably:

Everyone agrees that under this “cap-and-trade” system the cost of energy is expected to increase as electricity producers and industrial plants pay for increased efficiency, move toward greater use of renewable energy, pay for ways to capture carbon emissions or purchase pollution allowances.

They disagree, however, on how much of the added cost would be passed onto consumers. Democrats argue that much of the cost increase could be offset by other provisions in the bill.

All of the increase will get passed to consumers. Democrats hope to buffer that through targeted subsidies, but the AP neglects to mention that mechanism — because that money also comes from consumers. Business costs always get passed to the purchaser in the form of higher prices, and anyone who argues that they don’t either have no understanding of business and pricing or has a desire to sell snake oil to the gullible.

Cap-and-trade is a tax, one imposed through an artificial scarcity model onto an industry that drives the economy. The AP reports the CBO and EPA cost estimates without mentioning that those predictions only cover the actual mechanical costs of cap-and-trade. They do not predict the economic impact on American families from the loss of economic power as energy becomes more scarce and expensive. This bill will lose the US 2.5% of its GDP each and every year in the years after the first decade of implementation.

King Canute knew better than to believe his advisers when they told him that he was powerful enough to affect ocean levels. Unfortunately, this administration and the Democratic Party don’t have the sense Canute did.

Call your Representative today to tell them not to strangle the American economy. Michelle has the numbers and names to call.

Update: Before today, the bill ran a little over 1,000 pages. Early this morning, Waxman dropped a 300-page amendment into it. Be sure to ask your Representatives if they plan to read either of these before voting on the bill. (via Mary Katharine Ham)

Update II: Greenpeace has come out in opposition to Waxman-Markey, too. However, conservatives should temper their enthusiasm:

“Since the Waxman-Markey bill left the Energy and Commerce committee, yet another fleet of industry lobbysists has weakened the bill even more, and further widened the gap between what Waxman-Markey does and what science demands. As a result, Greenpeace opposes this bill in its current form. We are calling upon Congress to vote against this bill unless substantial measures are taken to strengthen it. Despite President Obama’s assurance that he would enact strong, science-based legislation, we are now watching him put his full support behind a bill that chooses politics over science, elevates industry interests over national interest, and shows the significant limitations of what this Congress believes is possible.

“As it comes to the floor, the Waxman-Markey bill sets emission reduction targets far lower than science demands, then undermines even those targets with massive offsets. The giveaways and preferences in the bill will actually spur a new generation of nuclear and coal-fired power plants to the detriment of real energy solutions. To support such a bill is to abandon the real leadership that is called for at this pivotal moment in history. We simply no longer have the time for legislation this weak. “

In other words, Greenpeace is angry that it doesn’t get more confiscatory and economically suicidal. It makes Waxman-Markey look moderate, which is a bigger problem than a boon for conservatives.

The Climate Change Climate Change

The number of skeptics is swelling everywhere.

By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL - The Wall Street Journal

Steve Fielding recently asked the Obama administration to reassure him on the science of man-made global warming. When the administration proved unhelpful, Mr. Fielding decided to vote against climate-change legislation.

If you haven't heard of this politician, it's because he's a member of the Australian Senate. As the U.S. House of Representatives prepares to pass a climate-change bill, the Australian Parliament is preparing to kill its own country's carbon-emissions scheme. Why? A growing number of Australian politicians, scientists and citizens once again doubt the science of human-caused global warming.

Associated Press

Steve Fielding

Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as "deniers." The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S.

In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming. In the Czech Republic, where President Vaclav Klaus remains a leading skeptic, today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country's new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Mr. Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted. New Zealand last year elected a new government, which immediately suspended the country's weeks-old cap-and-trade program.

The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. -- 13 times the number who authored the U.N.'s 2007 climate summary for policymakers. Joanne Simpson, the world's first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak "frankly" of her nonbelief. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming "the worst scientific scandal in history." Norway's Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the "new religion." A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton's Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled. (Both Nature and Science magazines have refused to run the physicists' open letter.)

The collapse of the "consensus" has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth's temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans. A global financial crisis has politicians taking a harder look at the science that would require them to hamstring their economies to rein in carbon.

Credit for Australia's own era of renewed enlightenment goes to Dr. Ian Plimer, a well-known Australian geologist. Earlier this year he published "Heaven and Earth," a damning critique of the "evidence" underpinning man-made global warming. The book is already in its fifth printing. So compelling is it that Paul Sheehan, a noted Australian columnist -- and ardent global warming believer -- in April humbly pronounced it "an evidence-based attack on conformity and orthodoxy, including my own, and a reminder to respect informed dissent and beware of ideology subverting evidence." Australian polls have shown a sharp uptick in public skepticism; the press is back to questioning scientific dogma; blogs are having a field day.

The rise in skepticism also came as Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, elected like Mr. Obama on promises to combat global warming, was attempting his own emissions-reduction scheme. His administration was forced to delay the implementation of the program until at least 2011, just to get the legislation through Australia's House. The Senate was not so easily swayed.

Mr. Fielding, a crucial vote on the bill, was so alarmed by the renewed science debate that he made a fact-finding trip to the U.S., attending the Heartland Institute's annual conference for climate skeptics. He also visited with Joseph Aldy, Mr. Obama's special assistant on energy and the environment, where he challenged the Obama team to address his doubts. They apparently didn't.

This week Mr. Fielding issued a statement: He would not be voting for the bill. He would not risk job losses on "unconvincing green science." The bill is set to founder as the Australian parliament breaks for the winter.

Republicans in the U.S. have, in recent years, turned ever more to the cost arguments against climate legislation. That's made sense in light of the economic crisis. If Speaker Nancy Pelosi fails to push through her bill, it will be because rural and Blue Dog Democrats fret about the economic ramifications. Yet if the rest of the world is any indication, now might be the time for U.S. politicians to re-engage on the science. One thing for sure: They won't be alone.

Waxman-Markey Bill Is An Energy Tax That Doesn’t Work

From The Heritage Foundation:

Later today, the House of Representatives is slated to vote on the most convoluted attempt at economic central-planning this nation has ever attempted: cap and trade. The 1,200-plus page Waxman-Markey climate change legislation is nothing more than an energy tax in disguise that by 2035 will raise:

• Gasoline prices by 58 percent
• Natural gas prices by 55 percent
• Home heating oil by 56 percent
• Worst of all, electricity prices by 90 percent




Although proponents of the bill are pointing to grossly underestimated and incorrect costs, the reality is when all the tax impacts have been added up, the average per-family-of-four costs rise by $2,979 per year. In the year 2035 alone, the cost is $4,609. And the costs per family for the whole energy tax aggregated from 2012 to 2035 are $71,493.

But on second thought, cap and trade is much more than that.

It Kills Jobs: Over the 2012-2035 timeline, job losses average over 1.1 million. By 2035, a projected 2.5 million jobs are lost below the baseline (without a cap and trade bill). Particularly hit hard are sectors of the economy that are very energy-intensive: Manufacturers, farmers, construction, machinery, electrical equipment and appliances, transportation, textiles, paper products, chemicals, plastics and rubbers, and retail trade would face staggering employment losses as a result of Waxman-Markey. It’s worth noting the job losses come after accounting for the green jobs policymakers are so adamant about creating. But don’t worry because the architects of the bill built in unemployment insurance; too bad it will only help 1.5% of those losing their jobs from the bill.

It Destroys Our Economy: Just about everything we do and produce uses energy. As energy prices increase, those costs will be passed onto the consumer and reflected in the higher prices we pay for products. Higher energy prices will cause reduced income, less production and an economy that falls way short of its potential. The average Gross Domestic Product (GDP) lost is $393 billion, hitting a high of $662 billion in 2035. From 2012-2035, the accumulated GDP lost is $9.4 trillion. The negative economic impacts accumulate, and the national debt is no exception. The increase in family-of-four debt, solely because of Waxman-Markey, hits an almost unbelievable $114,915 by 2035.

It Provides Red Meat for Lobbyists: Businesses, knowing very well this would impose a severe cost on their bottom line, sent their lobbyists to Washington to protect them. And it worked. Most of the allowances (the right to emit carbon dioxide) have been promised to industry, meaning less money will be rebated back to the consumer. Free allowances do not lower the costs of Waxman-Markey; they just shift them around. In other words, every day Americans are going to be footing the bill. Although the government awarded handouts to businesses, the carbon dioxide reduction targets are still there, and the way they will be met is by raising the price of energy and thereby inflicting more economic pain. Prices have to go up enough to force people to use less energy, and so if anyone is bought off with free allowances, the costs for everyone else are that much higher.

There’s one thing the Waxman-Markey cap and trade bill doesn’t do: Work. All of the above-mentioned costs accrue in the first 25 years of a 90-year program that, as calculated by climatologists, will lower temperatures by only hundredths of a degree Celsius in 2050 and no more than two-tenths of a degree Celsius at the end of the century. In the name of saving the planet for future generations, Waxman-Markey does not sound like a great deal: Millions of lost jobs, trillions of lost income, 50-90 percent higher energy prices, and stunning increases in the national debt, all for undetectable changes in world temperature. Who’s buying that?

The White House Infomercial

From the Heritage Foundation:

Last night, ABC News aired ‘Questions for the President: Prescription for America‘ designed to be a town hall for doctors, patients and health care experts to ask President Obama challenging questions on his health care proposals. Many Americans protested before the program aired, in self-described “waiting rooms,” to challenge a perceived notion that ABC was simply giving the President one hour of prime time television to sell his program without an opposing view.

Conservative Members of Congress gathered on Capitol Hill during the hour to showcase their health reform plans at an event organized by Americans for Tax Reform, including Congressman Tom Price (R-GA), a former physician who said “If the fourth estate continues to be in the tank [for the Obama administration], it would endanger the future of the nation.”

The Heritage Foundation decided to be a part of the discussion and was granted two invites to the event by ABC News. Vice President for Domestic and Economic Studies, Stuart Butler and Nina Owcharenko, the Deputy Director of our Center for Health Policy Studies were at the White House hoping to engage the President on his plan for a massive government health care system, or exactly how he was planning on paying for his proposals. According to Stuart Butler, “ABC News promised a tough town hall meeting but delivered a White House infomercial.”

Nina Owcharenko said: “The stage-managed nature of the meeting, and preventing tough follow-up questions, meant President Obama could talk around the issues raised about his proposal rather than really answering them.” In fact, some of the audience members did have tough questions, including Dr. Orrin Devinsky who led off by asking the President if he would sacrifice the health of his own family by putting them in a government plan.

The President said “If it’s my family member, it’s my wife, if it’s my children, if it’s my grandmother, I always want them to get the very best care. But here’s the problem that we have in our current health care system, is that there is a whole bunch of care that’s being provided that every study, every bit of evidence that we have indicates may not be making us healthier.” In other words, the Doctor-in-Chief believes that the government could in fact make better decisions about health care than you and your doctor. Of course, he evaded answering whether he and his family would ever live under such a public plan.

Later, in the Nightline hour, after most viewers had gone to sleep, ABC finally got around to asking the President about his public plan. Up until a week ago, the President was adamant that anyone who wanted to stay in their current plan could and would. Shortly after Heritage President Ed Feulner delivered an Open Letter debunking this myth, the White House began to walk back this claim, continuing to do so last night.

First the President told Christopher Bean in the audience “If you’re happy with your plan, as I said, you keep it.” Then he said that a public plan wouldn’t create an unlevel playing field because the plan itself would have to play by the rules it sets. Got that?

Stuart Butler said “President Obama continued to argue that if a public plan does well against private insurers that’s just what competition is about, but if the government sets up a plan where it can drive down payment to doctors and hospitals, force doctors to join its plan on its terms, have Congress rig the rules of competition to favor its plan, and not have to balance its books – Medicare has $32 trillion in unfunded commitments – then I suppose it can do “well” in a competition with private plans.”

When specifically asked whether millions of people would be dumped into a public plan because their employers were incentivized to drop private coverage, he introduced a new concept: “firewalls.” This is where the government would decide which “large employers” had to pay more into the system, and who could and couldn’t join this great new plan. So, of course, millions would be dumped into government-run health care but he would design a system to pick winners and losers to slow the drain.

The President argued last night that the “status quo” wasn’t good enough. This is the new talking point of the left. Before, they argued there weren’t any alternatives, but then realized Congressional Republicans were the only ones with a complete proposal in the public domain. Now they argue that if you don’t want massive government intervention, you must be in favor of no change at all. In fact, the Heritage Foundation has been leading the charge for substantive health care reform for decades, and we wish we had the opportunity last night to share with him some of our ideas. For now, he’ll just have to visit www.FixHealthCarePolicy.com to learn better ways to provide quality care to all Americans.

Conservatives Counter ABC Obamacare Infomercial

By Philip Klein

6.24.09

The American Spectator

On a day when ABC News has turned over its programing to the White House so that President Obama can promote his health care agenda, Americans for Tax Reform gathered together a group on Capitol Hill to offer a competing, market-based vision for health care reform.

Sen. Jim DeMint was there to tout his health care proposal along with Rep. Tom Price.

Price, a former physician in Atlanta, said that, "If the fourth estate continues to be in the tank (for the Obama administration, it would endanger the future of the nation." Price outlined three "death knells" for the health care system: a government plan that would crowd out private insurance, coverage mandates, and "ceding quality to the federal government. He said patients need to make their own health care decisions and be able to choose plans that they own and control.

"We don't need an expansion of government," DeMint said, and he outlined his plan for health care that would maintain the employer-based insurance system, give vouchers to individuals that would replicate the tax advantages enjoyed by those who obtain coverage through their employers, and allow people to purchase insurance across state lines.

DeMint said his plan would be deficit-neutral because it would be financed by terminating the $700 billion TARP program. If the program isn't terminated, he said, it would just be used as a "slush fund" for the Treasury Department. However, when I asked DeMint how the plan would be paid for once the TARP money runs out, he replied, "We just have to see where we're going." He insisted that his reforms would bring down health care costs, and in any event would be less than the trillions that Obama's proposals would cost.

"We can win this if we engage the American people," DeMint said of the health care battle. "They are not stupid."

The event also featured a panel of activists, policy experts, and a Canadian woman who shared her horror story with their government-run health care system.

Merrill Matthews, the director of the Council for Affordable Health Insurance, took aim at the government option. He argued that Medicare and Medicaid are rampant with fraud and abuse and use their market share to impose price controls on doctors and hospitals, which providers then recoup by jacking up prices on individuals and private insurers. He noted that though proponents of government health care like to point to the low administrative costs of Medicare, their estimates leave out costs such as staff salaries, building rent ,and insurance -- alll of which show up elsewhere in the federal budget. Nor do the estimates of administrative costs include fraud and abuse. The creation of any new government plan, Matthews said, would ding taxpayers for the start up costs, and would continue to change the rules on the private sector so that it could not compete.

Today, Preident Obama officially said he changed his mind and now supports the inclusion of an individual mandate requiring people to purchase health insurance. But Greg Scandlen, director of Consumers for Health Care Choices, explained that mandates have proven ineffective. For instance, even though we have mandates for car insurance, roughly 15 percent of car owners remain non-compliant.

The room also heard from Shona Holmes, a Canadian who was suffering from vision loss and had to come to America to get treated because she was put on a several month waiting list to see a specialist in her home country, even though she risked losing her vision if she was not treated in four to six weeks.

Health-Care Myths

by Elizabeth MacDonald

The Obama administration is now attempting the biggest overhaul of healthcare since Lyndon B. Johnson pushed through Medicare and Medicaid in 1965.

But the health care reform debate is riddled with misleading myths taken as fact, myths that are torquing the debate beyond recognition, from the U.S.’s supposedly poor infant mortality rates, who really gets medical care, the level of uninsureds, who really pays for insurance, who actually can afford insurance and wait times for surgeries.

Most everyone agrees that the U.S. health system is broken and that the uninsured must get coverage.

But fixing the health system should be based on the facts, not on a statistical faith-based initiative mounted to ram through reform, where the data is either more nuanced on closer look or the statements made are simply not true.

Worth keeping in mind, as the U.S. is already on track to compile total 10-year deficits that would surpass the annual GDP of Great Britain, Russia and Germany for one year-combined, and as the government is getting increasingly entangled in key industries, with higher taxes coming on incomes, on capital and on energy.

Meanwhile, the deficit spending figures do not include Medicare and Social Security costs, reforms which are so far on the backburner, they are off the stove. The following includes research from Fox News analyst James Farrell.

Myth: “The U.S. has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the developed world.”

Talk about stretching a point until it snaps. This ranking is based on data mining.

The U.S. ranks high on this list largely because this country numbers among those that actually measure neonatal deaths, notably in premature infant fatalities, unlike other countries that basically leave premature babies to die, notes health analyst Betsey McCaughey.

Other statistical quirks push the U.S. unjustifiably higher in this ranking compared to other countries.

The Center for Disease Control says the U.S. ranks 29th in the world for infant mortality rates, (according to the CDC), behind most other developed nations.

The U.S. is supposedly worse than Singapore, Hong Kong, Greece, Northern Ireland, Cuba and Hungary. And the U.S. is supposedly on a par with Slovakia and Poland. CNN, the New York Times, numerous outlets across the country report the U.S. as abysmal in terms of infant mortality, without delving into what is behind this ranking.

The Commonwealth Fund, a nonprofit research group, routinely flunks the U.S. health system using the infant mortality rate.

“Infant mortality and our comparison with the rest of the world continue to be an embarrassment to the United States,” Grace-Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, a research organization, has said.

Start with the definition. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines a country’s infant mortality rate as the number of infants who die between birth and age one, per 1,000 live births.

WHO says a live birth is when a baby shows any signs of life, even if, say, a low birth weight baby takes one, single breath, or has one heartbeat. While the U.S. uses this definition, other countries don’t and so don’t count premature or severely ill babies as live births-or deaths.

The United States counts all births if they show any sign of life, regardless of prematurity or size or duration of life, notes Bernardine Healy, a former director of the National Institutes of Health and former president and chief executive of the American Red Cross (Healy noted this information in a column for U.S. News & World Report).

And that includes stillbirths, which many other countries don’t report.

And what counts as a birth varies from country to country. In Austria and Germany, fetal weight must be at least 500 grams (1 pound) before these countries count these infants as live births, Healy notes.

In other parts of Europe, such as Switzerland, the fetus must be at least 30 centimeters (12 inches) long, Healy notes. In Belgium and France, births at less than 26 weeks of pregnancy are registered as lifeless, and are not counted, Healy says. And some countries don’t reliably register babies who die within the first 24 hours of birth, Healy notes.

Norway, which has one of the lowest infant mortality rates, shows no better infant survival than the United States when you factor in Norway’s underweight infants that are not now counted, Healy says, quoting Nicholas Eberstadt, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Moreover, the ranking doesn’t take into account that the US has a diverse, heterogeneous population, Healy adds, unlike, say, in Iceland, which tracks all infant deaths regardless of factor, but has a population under 300,000 that is 94% homogenous.

Likewise, Finland and Japan do not have the ethnic and cultural diversity of the U.S.’s 300 mn-plus citizens.

Plus, the U.S. has a high rate of teen pregnancies, teens who smoke, who take drugs, who are obese and uneducated, all factors which cause higher infant mortality rates.

And the US has more mothers taking fertility treatments, which keeps the rate of pregnancy high due to multiple-birth pregnancies.

Again, the U.S. counts all of these infants as births. Moreover, we’re not losing healthy babies, as the scary stats imply. Most of the babies that die are either premature or born seriously ill, including those with congenital malformations.

Even the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which collects the European numbers, cautions against using comparisons country-by-country.

“Some of the international variation in infant and neonatal mortality rates may be due to variations among countries in registering practices of premature infants (whether they are reported as live births or not),” the OECD says.

“In several countries, such as in the United States, Canada and the Nordic countries, very premature babies (with relatively low odds of survival) are registered as live births, which increases mortality rates compared with other countries that do not register them as live births.” (Note: Emphasis EMac’s).

The U.S. ranks much better on a measure that the World Health Organization says is more accurate, the perinatal mortality rate, defined as death between 22 weeks’ gestation and 7 days after birth. According to the WHO 2006 report on Neonatal and Perinatal Mortality, the U.S. comes in at 16^th-and even higher if you knock out several tiny countries with tiny birthrates and populations, such as Martinique, Hong Kong, and San Marino.

Myth: “About 46 mn Americans lack access to health insurance.”

There is a difference between health care and health insurance, as Fox Business anchor Brian Sullivan points out after researching reports on health care from the Congressional Budget Office, Blue Cross-Blue Shield and Georgetown University.

Everyone has access to health care. They may not have health insurance, but the law mandates everyone who shows up at emergency rooms must be treated, insurance or not, he reports.

About 14 mn of the uninsured were eligible for Medicaid and SCHIP 2003, a BlueCross-BlueShield Association study based on 2003 data estimated. These people would be signed up for government insurance if they ever made it to the emergency room, Sullivan says.

A whopping 70% of uninsured children are eligible for Medicaid, SCHIP, or both programs, a 2008 study by the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute shows.

Census figures also show that 18.3 mn of the uninsured were under 34 who may simply not think about the need for insurance, Sullivan reports.

And of those 46 mn without insurance, an estimated 10 mn or so are non-U.S. citizens who may not be eligible, according to statistics from the Census Bureau), Sullivan reports.

Myth: “The uninsured can’t afford to buy coverage.”

Many may be able to afford health insurance, but for whatever reason choose to not buy it. In 2007, an estimated 17.6 mn of the uninsured made more than $50,000 per year, and 10 mn of those made more than $75,000 a year, says Sally Pipes, author of the book, The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care: A Citizen’s Guide, a book that attempts to dig behind the numbers. According to author Pipes, 38% of the U.S. uninsured population earns more than $50,000 per year.

That means 38% of the uninsured likely make enough to afford health insurance, but for undetermined reasons choose not to buy it.

Myth: “Most of the uninsured do not have health insurance because they are not working and so don’t have access to health benefits through an employer.”

Not so fast–the data is more nuanced and revealing upon closer look.

According to the CBO, about half of the uninsured in 2009 fall into one of the following three categories. Some people will be in more than one of those categories at the same time:

*Nearly one out of three, 30%, will be offered, but will decline, coverage from an employer.

*Nearly one out of five, 18%, will be eligible for, but not enrolled in Medicaid; and

*More than one out of seven, 17%, will have family income above 300% of the poverty level (about $65,000 for a family of four);

What is potentially the real number for the poor uninsured? According to a 2003 Blue Cross study, 8.2 mn Americans are actually without coverage for the long haul, because they are too poor to purchase health care, but earn too much to qualify for government assistance.

[Source: CBO, "Key Issues in Analyzing Major Health Insurance Proposals," December 18, 2008, http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/99xx/doc9924/12-18-KeyIssues.pdf]

Myth: “The estimated 45 mn people without health insurance lacked health insurance for every day of the year.”

The CBO’s 45 mn estimate reflects individuals “without health insurance at any given time during 2009.”

But that does not mean that all 45 mn people spend every day of 2009 without insurance. It is a point estimate - on any particular day, there will be 45 mn individuals without health insurance.

[Source: CBO, "Key Issues in Analyzing Major Health Insurance Proposals," December 18, 2008, http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/99xx/doc9924/12-18-KeyIssues.pdf]

Myth: “Government-run universal health care would increase the international competitiveness of U.S. companies.”

The Congressional Budget Office disagrees.

“Replacing employment-based health care with a government-run system could reduce employers’ payments for their workers’ insurance, but the amount that they would have to pay in overall compensation would remain essentially unchanged,” the CBO says. “Cash wages and other forms of compensation would have to rise by roughly the amount of the reduction in health benefits for firms to be able to attract the same number and types of workers.”

[Source: CBO, "Key Issues in Analyzing Major Health Insurance Proposals," December 18, 2008, http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/99xx/doc9924/12-18-KeyIssues.pdf]

Myth: “The cost of uncompensated care for the uninsured significantly increases hospital costs.”

Hospitals provided about $35 bn in uncompensated care in 2008, the CBO says. Uncompensated care represented only 5% of total hospital revenues. In addition, half of the $35 bn in uncompensated hospital costs were offset by Medicare and Medicaid.

And the cost of uncompensated care for the uninsured is “unlikely to have a substantial effect on private payment rates,” the CBO says, adding that shifting costs from uninsured to private insurance premiums is “likely to be relatively small.”

[source: CBO, "Key Issues in Analyzing Major Health Insurance Proposals," December 2008, http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/99xx/doc9924/12-18-KeyIssues.pdf]

Myth: “Nationalized health care would not impact patient waiting times.”

Waiting time for elective surgery is lower in the US than in countries with nationalized health care.

In 2005, only 8% of U.S. patients reported waiting four months or more for elective surgery.

Countries with nationalized health care had higher percentages with waiting times of four months or more, including Australia (19%); New Zealand (20%); Canada (33%); and the United Kingdom (41%).

[Source: Commonwealth Fund, "MIRROR, MIRROR ON THE WALL: AN INTERNATIONAL UPDATE ON THE COMPARATIVE PERFORMANCE OF AMERICAN HEALTH CARE," by Karen Davis, Cathy Schoen, Stephen C. Schoenbaum, Michelle M. Doty, Alyssa L. Holmgren, Jennifer L. Kriss, and Katherine K. Shea, May 2007, http://www.commonwealthfund.org/~/media/Files/Publications/Fund%20Report/2007/May/Mirror%20%20Mirror%20on%20the%20Wall%20%20An%20International%20Update%20on%20the%20Comparative%20Performance%20of%20American%20Healt/1027_Davis_mirror_mirror_international_update_final%20pdf.pdf]

Myth: “Insurers cover less today than they did in the past.”

No they’re covering more costs. According to the CBO, consumers paid for 33 % of their total, personal health care expenditures in 1975. But by 2000, consumers’ personal share had fallen to 17%, and it declined to 15% in 2006.

[Source: CBO, "Key Issues in Analyzing Major Health Insurance Proposals," December 18, 2008, http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/99xx/doc9924/12-18-KeyIssues.pdf]

VOTER ALERT: Cap-and-Trade Bill Set for FRIDAY Vote

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

CALL YOUR CONGRESSMAN!!

According to The Wall Street Journal, the cap-and-trade legislation co-sponsored by California and Massachusetts Democrats Henry Waxman and Ed Markey will likely reach a vote on the House floor on Friday.

This bill is an absolute nightmare, and will result in nothing short of sheer destruction of American business and industry, and will exponentially increase energy costs for individuals and families of all income levels from coast to coast.

For background information, including an assessment of the likely costs of the legislation, check out a previous piece here at America's Right, The Exponentially Increasing Costs of a Manufactured Environmental Crisis, as well as a companion piece, 'Green' Spokesmouths Need to Curb Emissions.

Find your representative's office number HERE. Call it. Call it NOW. It doesn't matter if they are a Democrat, a Republican, or somewhere in between. Let them know that their vote on this disastrous bill is a bona fide determinative factor when it comes to their re-election in 2010. Support means they're going home, plain and simple.

I cannot stress enough exactly how devastating this piece of legislation is. Frankly, I am absolutely astounded that something so detrimental to our national economy is even being considered nonetheless voted upon, even by Democrats.

This is winnable for concerned Americans like you and like me. Let's make sure this doesn't make it out of the House.

CALL YOUR CONGRESSMAN!!

Focus on the Democrats' Health Care Reform

From America's Right blog:

I've mentioned before that our daughter was born six weeks early, that she spent a week in the Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit before being sent home at four pounds, fifteen ounces. Back at that time, my wife was still working as a surgical nurse at one of the top hospitals in Philadelphia, and we had the greatest possible health insurance plan available. Yet we paid almost $8000 out of pocket for the birth of our child.

What was perhaps the most maddening was not even the money. It was the billing. Every doctor who cared for our daughter during the various stages of her time in the NICU billed at different rates, through different companies, and even the amounts due for the same doctors varied from month-to-month. Making phone calls was pointless as well -- nobody knows anything, nobody has the answers. Our final bill from the birth of our daughter--the first notice for a specific doctor or procedure, no less--arrived almost one year to the day after she was born.

Our health care system does indeed need reform. If my wife, a nurse who spent her college years handling insurance and billing issues at a busy doctor's office, could not make heads or tails of what was going on, what kind of chance does her octogenarian aunt have?

The problem is that the Democrats look at the successes of our health care system as failures, and because of that want to solve the wrong problems with the wrong solutions. People gain wealth here in our health care system, for example, a problem for many on the left but, in reality, the potential for wealth and success is why we have the best doctors in the United States, the best machinery, the best drugs, the best procedures.

Everything good in our system comes from a free market approach. Yet the Democrats look to more and more government as a solution for manufactured crisis. They cite numbers essentially pulled from thin air, such as the millions of uninsured, a group largely made up of illegal immigrants or people who could afford insurance but choose not to.

Personally, I think this is a fight that concerned Americans on both sides of the aisle can win. And it is one we must win. The health care program being advanced by the White House is, by far, the largest ever entitlement program here in America, and one we never could dial back. At 852 pages, the Democrats have proposed what House Minority Leader John Boehner describes as a bureaucratic nightmare that rations care, raises taxes, and empowers government bureaucrats--not patients and doctors--to make critical medical decisions.

"This plan will make health care more expensive, reduce the quality of care for millions of families and small businesses, cost American jobs, and force untold millions of Americans off their current plans and into a government-run nightmare operated by federal bureaucrats," Boehner said on Friday.

His Web site, as well as the Web site for the House GOP Conference, currently offers a wealth of information on the issue. From Boehner's site, here are the latest top ten things everyone should know about the Democrats' program:

1. Democrats’ Government Takeover Will Cost Middle-Class Families and Small Businesses Billions. Though House Democrats don’t know (or won’t say) how much their government takeover will cost, here’s what we do know: the plan will make health care more expensive and hit the middle class particularly hard with higher taxes, rationed care, and new health care costs. As millions of families and small businesses are struggling to make ends meet while making responsible choices, this plan forces those that make responsible decisions to foot the bill for those who don’t.
2. Democrats’ Government Takeover Will Cost Tens of Millions Their Current Health Care Coverage. The House Democrats’ plan could force more than 100 million Americans out of their current health care plan and onto the government rolls, according to a Lewin Group study published earlier this year. A Congressional Budget Office report on a similar plan authored by Senate Democrats that would force at least 23 million Americans off of their current plans. According to the Associated Press, even the White House admits that the President’s promises about allowing the American people to keep their health care shouldn’t be taken literally.
3. Democrats’ Government Takeover Will Cost Millions of Americans Their Jobs. The House Democrats’ plan would impose employer mandates and cost jobs by requiring some employers – especially some small businesses – to pay a new eight percent tax to Washington. The plan would also slap employers that are unable to offer coverage the government deems adequate with another new financial burden. These two new taxes will make it more difficult than ever for small business owners to reinvest in their businesses and create and retain good paying jobs. Using the economic model of the President’s own economic advisors, an employer mandate would result in 4.7 million Americans losing their jobs.
4. Democrats’ Government Takeover Will Put Bureaucrats in Charge of Key Medical Decisions. Instead of keeping patients and doctors in charge of key medical decisions, the House Democrats’ plan will give Washington the power instead. And if you’re outraged with what Washington’s done with the bailouts, just wait until you see what Uncle Sam does with your health care.
5. Democrats’ Government Takeover Will Cost Future Generations Money They Don’t Have. The House Democrats’ bill simply shifts the burden of debt from one generation to the next. Our nation can’t sustain the Medicaid and Medicare programs now. At a time when families and small businesses already are being crushed under the weight of historic debt, a new government-run program will only further add to the bill passed along to our children and grandchildren.
6. Democrats’ Government Takeover Will Cost Seniors Key Medicare Benefits and Options. In order to expand health care benefits to some seniors, House Democrats will slash coverage millions of other seniors depend on. These benefit cuts will ultimately eliminate choices for seniors.
7. Democrats’ Government Takeover Will Place a New Mandate on Individuals. The House Democrats’ plan mandates that every American buy health insurance or pay a hefty penalty to Washington equal to almost two percent of their income. This would force more Americans into government-run system that will make health care more expensive, ration care, and put bureaucrats in charge of medical decisions.
8. Democrats’ Government Takeover Will Raise Taxes on Families, Small Businesses. Energy & Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) readily admitted that the Democrats’ health care “reform” plan would be financed with tax hikes. The Associated Press reported that, “Democrats are considering everything from taxing soda, to raising income taxes on upper income people earning more than $200,000, to a federal sales tax.” Exactly how many new taxes will there be to bankroll this government takeover? When do Democrats plan to reveal them?
9. Democrats’ Government Takeover Is a Missed Opportunity To Reduce Health Care Costs. The House Democrats’ plan does not include even a shred of medical liability reform, missing an opportunity to drive down health care costs by reducing costly, unnecessary defensive medicine practiced by doctors trying to protect themselves from trial lawyers.
10. Democrats’ Government Takeover Harms Small Businesses, Costs Jobs. The House Democrats’ plan uses the amount of an employer’s annual payroll to define “small business,” which is troubling news for millions of Americans who depend on these engines of economic growth. Based on the Democrats’ definition of small businesses only those with, on average, less than 10 employees will be spared from new taxes through employer mandates. This leaves a huge number of small businesses to deal with the onerous and expensive mandates of the House Democrats’ government defined health benefit plan (“small businesses” are traditionally defined as employing less than 500 people). These small businesses employ 47.3 million employees and provide those employees $1.7 trillion in wages annually. The House Democrats’ new employer mandate and taxes on these businesses will make it more difficult to retain these jobs and wages.

An article published on Friday from the folks at Canada.com detailed the lengths Canucks are going to measure and complain about wait times for health care services up there in the frozen north. In a report released this year by the Wait Time Alliance, the realities of a government-run health care system sets in.

Emergency room patients, for example, are waiting an average of nine hours to be seen and treated by a doctor. Those who need to be admitted are averaging a nearly 24 hour delay. Cancer patients, the group maintains, are on average waiting seven weeks for radiation therapy, three weeks past the benchmark of four weeks. Four weeks is the benchmark? Here in the States, a cancer diagnosis can bring radiation treatment by the end of a given workweek. Furthermore, if seven weeks is the average, that means that much of the cancer-stricken Canadian population is waiting longer than seven weeks for life-saving treatment.

Oh, but Obama says that ours would not be a government-run system. He says we can all keep our program if we want. The problem with his logic is that millions of employers from coast to coast will simply stop bearing health care costs and force employees to simply take the public option; eventually, private health care will be pushed out.

When looking at the Democrats' approach to health care reform, we must remember two things: First, the Democrats are the master of the unseen adverse consequences. Second, and most importantly, it's not about health care.

That's right. None of this is about health care. Like everything else, it is about control. A government-run health care system is the master key to the locked doors protecting us from government intervention in each and every aspect of our daily live. Want a cup of coffee? Better use Splenda. Want a hamburger? Better make it a garden burger. The government foots the bill (through taxpayers) for your health care, so you'd better be proactive.

At the very least, this giant entitlement program is not something that should be passed hastily. This is something that requires the kind of discussion that only adequate time can facilitate. Yet look for the Democrat-controlled Congress to ram this one through as quickly as possible.

So bend over, America. You're going to feel a little pressure. And if you don't push back, it's really going to hurt.

NRA Sheds Light on Manipulated Gun Experiment Conducted by ABC News

From Americas Right blog:

Thursday, June 18, 2009

If ABC is willing to manipulate so-called 'experiments' to make their point on guns and immigration, what should we expect with healthcare?

When I was young, it was Sports Illustrated. I couldn't wait for Rick Reilly's expertly-written column, for the photography that made me marvel at the capabilities of light, film and talent. For a while a few years ago, it was The Weekly Standard, but I quickly found that the commentaries I was reading in paper form could essentially be found online days earlier. Now, I only receive two magazines -- one being a publication distributed by the Auburn Alumni Association, the other being the National Rifle Association's American Rifleman.

When I came home to work to find that the latter had arrived in my mailbox yesterday, I tore it open. My first stop is always the Armed Citizen section, a collection of abstracts from recent news accounts of ordinary Americans like you and me stopping home invasions and other crimes in the process with the help of boundless courage and their Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. To me, the Armed Citizen shows America in a nutshell -- thanks to a little self-reliance, the independent-thinking righteous person is capable of anything.

A few pages past that, I stumbled across a fantastic article by NRA-ILA Executive Director Chris Cox on a shamelessly manipulated "experiment" conducted and publicized by ABC News' 20/20, the same ABC News scheduled to broadcast health care propaganda from the Blue Room and East Room of the White House next week. The so-called "experiment" was meant to prove that handguns are simply ineffective with regard to self-defense against mass shooters, using a university setting as a backdrop.

Sounds like an interesting idea, save for ABC News' penchant for faking such "experiments." After all, it was ABC's John Quinones who staged a situation intended to expose everyday Americans' racism toward illegal immigrants, going so far as to hire a paid actor to elicit controversial remarks. From a January 6, 2009 article at Newsbusters:

Correspondent John Quinones, the host of a series of ABC hidden camera specials designed to test how people react to ethical situations, appeared to preview a new edition that featured a cashier in a New Jersey deli yelling at a Hispanic customer.

The ABC crew had the pretend employee scream at a confused day laborer, saying things such as "We're building walls to keep you guys out of the country! You don't speak English, you don't get service! We don't serve your kind here!" Quinones then theatrically lectured, "...On this day, the only thing they [the customers] are being served is prejudice." He later observed that the experiment "uncovered some of the dark impulses many of us share."

In the gun-related "experiment" cited by the NRA's Cox, ABC News armed college students interested in employing firearms for self-defense purposes, staged a classroom situation, and simulated the entry of gun-wielding mass shooters such as those seen at so many of our nation's schools and shopping malls. The problems were numerous. First, the armed student in the equation was provided with ill-fitting gear, making a clean draw nearly impossible. Second, the student was always seated in the same place: in the front row of the simulated classroom, right in the middle. Worse yet, the perpetrator was portrayed by a police shooting instructor -- and knew in advance where the armed student was seated from the beginning.

Through the use of paint ammunition, ABC used its "experiment" to demonstrate that armed students who dare stand up to a mass shooter was usually killed before he or she could stop the shooter. When the student actually did well despite the odds stacked against him or her, advantages to a shooter that may not be there in real life, ABC's Diane Sawyer--a propagandist masquarading as a journalist--brushed it off.

So much for embracing opposition. ABC's penchant for shaping opinions through a carefully set agenda is worrisome, considering that ABC News has been invited by the Barack Obama administration to set up shop next Wednesday in the East Room and Blue Room of the White House to sell the Democrats' disastrous health care plan to an increasingly skeptical public. It is a purely defensive move by Obama and his flunkies -- Republicans and even some Blue Dog Democrats on Capitol Hill are having success in explaining to the American people how the president's plan will cost upwards of $1.6 trillion--money we would need to borrow or print--and really not expand coverage to that many people now uninsured, not to mention the adverse effects that such a plan will have on the quality and availability of care.

For that reason, the mainstream press is a natural partner for the Obama White House. Like the adminstration, the Obama-loving media has no problem manipulating facts, lying to those paying attention, and creating a crisis in order to advance its agenda. In "20/20 Turns a Blind Eye on Self-Defense," for example, Cox compares the faked ABC gun experiment to the famous case of Dateline NBC and the exploding pick-up trucks, a fabricated story for which the news magazine program was so intent upon conveying the results it wanted to convey that it actually strapped explosives to vehicles to demonstrate how the trucks supposedly blew up during collisions.

With that kind of integrity, what can we expect from the mainstream press in shilling for their Messiah's health care agenda? Already we see that ABC has refused to air advertisements during the special programming from groups opposing the administration's plan.

The truth has never much mattered to news organizations like ABC News. In the case of the gun "experiment," time and time again stories like those featured in the Armed Citizen section of American Rifleman highlight how ordinary people can save lives including and beyond their own, but ABC mentions them not. No word of the undercover police officer--carrying a weapon against mall policy--who stopped a mass shooting in progress at the Trolley Square Mall. No word of the students that averted a tragedy at Appalachian Law School. Even last week's horrible shooting at the National Holocaust Museum underscores the importance of an armed populace -- uniformed security guards stopped shooter James von Brunn by using him. Yes, they may have been in uniform, but the issue isn't as much about the guard badge and uniform as it is about the guns and the brave souls trained to use them.

There are very, very few armed guards at my law school. There are very, very few armed guards at shopping malls across the country. Our safety and security is up to us, my friends. Unfortunately, my school's policy renders my concealed carry permit useless and the nearest mall has "gun-free zone" signs posted all around -- the same sort of signs and policies were in effect at Virginia Tech, Columbine High School, the Trolley Square Mall and more.

This country needs to have a frank, detailed discussion on the issue of guns, just as it must talk about health care and energy as well. But this administration and Congress doesn't want that. They know common sense and an independent American public are stacked up against them, and that the only way to prevail on their proposals is by cramming it down the American people's throat with little if any time given to true opposition. On guns, the best way to do that is through reports like the one shown on 20/20; on health care, it's through shutting down all opposition response.

Reports like the ones broadcasted by ABC News and 20/20 do nothing good for anybody. When it comes to firearms, such reports embolden criminals, ensure that law-abiding citizens are subject to more scrutiny than those who choose to break the law, and therefore make people more unsafe. On immigration, they work hard to elicit a response that may not truly be there. On health care, they cheapen a solid debate rooted in common sense.

But they fit the liberal agenda, and that is all that matters.