Monthly Archives: August 2012

Cheap?

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The Democratic National Committee has told Westport, CT, that it will not be reimbursed for the $15 thousand the city spent on security, traffic control, fire, emergency planning, and so on for Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama’s fundraising trip in early August.

The candidate held two fundraisers in the small town, one at Sherwood Island State Park and the other a $36 thousand per person dinner at movie producer Harvey Weinstein’s digs.  The town’s First Selectman, Gordon Joseloff, noted that the tightwad-ness could have been softened had the candidate at least held a public event in the form of a visit to the town’s 9/11 memorial—just yards from the helipad used by the candidate to pop in and back out.  Candidate Obama had no time for such things, though.

At $36k per, it would seem half a meal—or just the table scraps—would have covered the town’s costs for the fundraisers.  I have to ask, then: is the Obama campaign that broke, or just that cheap?  And is it broke/cheap only fiscally, or morally, also?

“Not Useful”

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Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey insists that Americans shouldn’t be criticizing American leadership because they once were in uniform.  He seems to think that their free speech rights—appropriately curtailed (but not abrogated) along with a number of other fundamental rights while serving on active duty—become permanently lost to these men and women by dint of their military service.  He says that the political activity of Americans, once having served in uniform, is “not useful.”

Dempsey had this to say, in particular, last Wednesday about a 22 minute film released by the organization Special Ops OPSEC, a group that consists of a broad range of ex-military, ex-CIA, and others no longer affiliated with the military or any Federal agency:

If someone uses the uniform, whatever uniform, for partisan politics, I am disappointed because I think it does erode that bond of trust we have with the American people[.]

I have to wonder if Gen Dempsey actually has viewed the video (presented on the organization’s Home page, as well as here).  I saw no uniforms on any of the participants, and none of the participants were on active duty.

Indeed, as one participant put it, correctly (at about 16:20 of the video),

As a citizen, it is my civic duty to tell the President to stop leaking information to the enemy.  It will get Americans killed.

It’s dismaying that Dempsey seems not to understand that.

There’s more: Dempsey appears to disagree with a former SecDef.  Or were Robert Gates’ two years on active duty in the United States Air Force not long enough to disqualify his free speech rights in perpetuity?  Gates had this to say about the ongoing leaks:

Shut the f— up.

The men and women in uniform understand that they cannot engage in political activity while in uniform as well as the legitimacy of that ban.  Jamie Wilson (Col, Special Forces, Ret) noted this while making a larger point about the need to have a watchdog facility to make it harder for politicians to leak information for political gain.  On telling former colleagues at a military installation about this plan, their response was (roughly 18:03):

You’ve got to do this.  You’ve got to speak, because we can’t.

I have to wonder how politicized Dempsey has allowed himself to become with this blatant attempt to stifle the free speech of honorable Americans, whose only misbehavior is that they publically disagree with his boss.  Dempsey’s behavior is “not useful.”

Standards

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Much has been made of the media’s bias, both in favor of liberal incumbents and candidates for office and against conservative incumbents and candidates for office.  Much also has been made of why the bias exists—to preserve access to Power, to sell articles and newspapers and gain/preserve viewership, even to support heartfelt beliefs.

Here are a couple of examples of misbehavior and the reactions to them.  Missouri Republican candidate for Senator Todd Akin said some completely reprehensible things concerning rape and pregnancy few days ago, and Republicans and conservatives are, en masse demanding he withdraw from the race, even though this is a critical race in the coming struggle for control of the Senate.

Minnesota State Congressman Kerry Gauthier (D) was caught at a truck stop engaging in a sex act with a 17-year-old boy.  Even the local papers, including Minnesota’s largest, the Star-Tribune, are largely ignoring it.  The Star-Tribune has a single, pro forma article, and that’s it.

I’d like to offer a different reason for the bias in the media.  Maybe the reason is that conservatives simply believe in their fellow Americans and in the inherent goodness and wisdom of Americans, both individually, and collectively.  From that, conservatives expect more from their fellow Americans and especially from those they elect to represent them or who are asking for that privilege.  Conservatives simply have higher standards.

When a Republican or a conservative politician misbehaves, then, it’s news.  When a Democrat or a liberal politician misbehaves, it isn’t news; it’s business as usual.

Update: Fox News reported Wednesday that Minnesota’s state Democratic Party leaders are asking for Gauthier to withdraw from re-election–but not to resign from the state’s legislature before the end of his term.  The National Democratic Party leadership remains silent.  Hmm….

Up-Update: Yesterday, after discussions with state party leaders, Gauthier decided not to run for re-election, after all.  This was reported by Fox News; I saw little to no reporting by members of the NLMSM like CNN or MSNBC.

The Romney-Ryan Medicare Plan

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What is it, exactly, and how does it work?  The plan is a means of restoring responsibility for health insurance spending to the individuals seeking the coverage—which also removes that (usurped) responsibility from the Federal government.  The Wall Street Journal provided a summary earlier this week of how this gets accomplished.

  • Private insurers, and Traditional Medicare, would bid for the business of each individual senior citizen (oh, the ignominy: Big Government having to mingle with—to compete with—the hoi polloi) in a region for the year.
  • Each senior citizen would receive from the government a payment equal to the second-lowest bid in that region.
  • Each senior citizen then would spend that payment on the health coverage of that person’s choice.
    • If the senior citizen chose the cheapest policy, he would pocket the difference.
    • If the senior citizen chose the second cheapest, he would break even.
    • If the senior citizen chose a more expensive policy, he would pay the increment out of his own resources.

Hmm….  Choice—what’s up with that?  Can we trust our senior citizens to behave responsibly?  Even push actual competition among the vendors?  Some plainly say, “No!  We do not trust these people.”  It’s why they oppose the plan.

As the WSJ also points out, there’s real world, empirical evidence that base competition works: it has…in Medicare Advantage.  This program already requires vendors to bid against Traditional Medicare.  As recently as 2009, the year for which data are readily available, the lowest and second lowest bids—for the same coverage—were, respectively, 87% and 91% of the government’s Medicare charge.

Where, then, are the extra $6,400 that our seniors are supposed to be socked with paying under the Romney-Ryan plan about which Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama is on about so much?  He and his are using an obsolete CBO report about an obsolete Ryan proposal that doesn’t exist today and that has nothing to do with the Romney-Ryan plan.  Moreover, CBO conceded at the time that its analysis was suspect because it did not consider the effects of competition: their results

depend on the evolution of the health care and health insurance systems over time, which is hard to predict.

More damning—to the CBO analysis here and to its analyses generally—CBO has admitted its inability to score the Romney-Ryan Medicare plan because it

does not have the capability at this time to estimate such effects[.]

There goes Obama, again—stuck in a past that never existed.  And trying to change the subject again.

Retirement Security—For Whom?

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The Obama Campaign now seems to be coming out in favor of the status quo regarding the financial security of our American senior citizens.  They continue to state their adamant opposition to reforming Social Security (and Medicare, which is part of the Social Security system) at all.  Democratic Vice Presidential Candidate Joe Biden made that refusal explicit a few days ago during a Virginia campaign stop:

I guarantee you, flat guarantee you, there will be no changes in Social Security.  I flat guarantee you.

The opposition summarized by Biden has been so long-lasting and, of late, so shrill, that it seems the Progressives are afraid of freeing up the programs, of freeing up us American citizens to take care of ourselves away from the watchful eye and controlling hand of government.

Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D, FL) expresses Progressive fear this way:

The very last thing we ought to be doing is putting at risk the retirement security of millions of America’s seniors.

And yet, she chooses not to address the plain and simple fact that, with our retirement security in the hands of government, with government making funding and disbursement decisions for millions of us, we have no retirement security: Social Security will be bankrupt in just a few short years (it’s already paying out far more than it’s taking in, and the Social Security trustees say the funds will be exhausted by 2033), and Medicare is in worse shape.

Wasserman’s plaint is especially cynical in light of the fact that, for the last three-plus years, Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama—and his fellow Progressives in Congress—have chosen to offer no solution to this at all, save taking $700 billion dollars from America’s seniors’ Medicare in order to give it to his precious Obamacare, and otherwise, as Biden has assured us all, to refuse any change.

Wasserman, et al., also are objecting to a reform that would put more freedom and responsibility in the hands of us citizens: the specific proposal to which Wasserman was objecting (and which, sadly, has been absent from the last two (Republican) House-passed Federal budgets) would have allowed us to take a significant portion of our Social Security taxes and invest those funds in our own retirement accounts, managed by us without government interference.

Why are the Progressives so afraid of letting American citizens make our own choices, be responsible for our own lives?  Do they think we’re just too stupid to manage our own futures, that we’re dumber than government?  Or are they simply afraid of losing the power that comes from the dependency of others on them, and so their own retirement security?