Monthly Archives: August 2013

Why Do Progressives Oppose a Safe Ballot?

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Their latest opposition to protecting the sanctity of an American’s vote is in North Carolina, where the state’s government enacted a law that moves to protect a vote by ensuring the one casting it is the one who’s eligible to cast it, only casts it once, and is who he claims to be; and in front of the American Bar Association, in a speech by ex-Secretary of State and President wannabe Hillary Clinton.

The law contains these provisions, among others:

  • changes in how residents can vote that includes requiring them to show a photo ID at polling stations
  • eliminates a week of early voting, while maintaining 10 days of early voting
  • ends same-day registration
  • prohibits “out-of-precinct” voting
  • allows voters to cast a provisional ballot if they come to a polling station without proper ID
  • places additional campaign finance restrictions on lobbyists

Critics argue the true goal is to suppress voter turnout, especially among blacks, the young, the elderly and the poor.  Because blacks—especially blacks—are too…simple…to be able to plan ahead and get their—free—photo IDs well in advance of voting.  The elderly and poor are similarly incapable, claim Progressives; they, too, need to be led by the nose by their Betters.

More, the law suppresses other Progressive demographics—the non-resident voter; voters who don’t always vote, but when they do, they prefer to vote several times; illegal alien voters.

Clinton made similarly insulting allegations:

…she said some observers have defended the US Supreme Court ruling as a sign that discrimination has ended.  She disagreed and said it gave jurisdictions carte blanche to renew discrimination at the polls.

Because it’s impossible for people to change.  Because it’s still 1963, and the Party of Jim Crow still is rampant.  She’s projecting.

In the weeks since the ruling we have seen an unseemly rush by previously covered jurisdictions that will make it harder for our fellow Americans to vote.  Unless we act now, citizens will be disenfranchised and victimized by the law instead of served by it.

No, the only ones being disenfranchised are those ineligible to vote.  The only unseemly rush is the Progressives’ move to place disliked states back under the yoke.  In the mean time, states are moving to protect the sanctity of the vote.

Nice VA Benefit You Got There

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Be too bad if something happened to it.  Get rid of the sequester.  Or else.

Thus, President Barack Obama’s threat to our disabled veterans.  Which he made just prior to jetting off to the comforts of his Martha’s Vineyard vacation estate.

The fact that the sequester was his idea, imposed on Congress in the aftermath of his intransigence and refusal to compromise on taxes and spending?  Forget about it.

No Case

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When a man knows he’s defending the indefensible, as President Barack Obama knew in his presser Friday, he falls back on ad hominem slander of the men trying to remove the indefensible.

Now, I think the really interesting question is why it is that my friends in the other party have made the idea of preventing these people from getting health care their holy grail.  Their number-one priority.  The one unifying principle in the Republican Party at the moment is making sure that 30 million people don’t have health care; and presumably, repealing all those benefits I just mentioned—kids staying on their parents’ plan, seniors getting discounts on their prescription drugs, I guess a return to lifetime limits on insurance, people with pre-existing conditions continuing to be blocked from being able to get health insurance.

And

The—the—the notion is simply that those 30 million people, or the 150 million who are benefiting from the other aspects of affordable care, will be better off without it.  That’s their assertion, not backed by fact, not backed by any evidence.

And

And let me just make one last point about this.  The idea that you would shut down the government unless you prevent 30 million people from getting health care is a bad idea.  What you should be thinking about is, how can we advance and improve ways for middle class families to have some security so that if they work hard they can get ahead and their kids can get ahead.

Of course, nothing in Obama’s diatribe could be farther from the truth.  The House has already passed—included in their budgets of the last few years—a number of reforms to our health care system that actually reinvigorate the health insurance industry, rather than converting it to a privately funded, Federally mandated welfare program; do drive down costs of both insurance and health care; and thereby do make both more available to those who want the care and/or the insurance.  All while leaving the choice and the assessment of need not in the hands of government bureaucrats through one-size-fits-all diktat, but squarely in the hands of those who know best—we American citizens.  Furthermore, these alternatives all represent market solutions that enhance the health and prosperity of Americans; they are not the failed policies of centrally directed economies.

On the matter of shutting down the government if one doesn’t get one’s way, it’s true enough that many Republicans have said that that’s a preferable alternative to funding the abomination of Obamacare.  However, the only ones actually threatening to shut down the government are Obama and his Senate colleague, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, NV).  They’re the ones who’ve said, in the one case, he won’t permit a budget that doesn’t fully support Obamacare even to come to a vote on his Senate floor, and in the other case, he’ll veto a budget bill that doesn’t fully support Obamacare.  In that latter case, he’s also said that he’ll veto any bill that doesn’t raise taxes, increase spending, and raise the debt ceiling commensurately—preferring to further damage our credit rating and our economy to not getting his way.

The decision to shut down the government is entirely in these two Democrats’ hands.  Nowhere else.

And let me make just one last point.  In the end, as is Obama’s wont, he wouldn’t even answer the question put to him.

Fox News’ Ed Henry: You recently decided on your own to delay a key part of [Obamacare]. And I wonder, if you pick and choose what parts of the law to implement, couldn’t your successor down the road pick and choose whether they’ll implement your law and keep it in place?

President Obama: With respect to health care, I didn’t simply choose to delay this on my own. This was in consultation with businesses all across the country….  We did have the executive authority to do so, and we did so.

But there was no consultation with the law itself, which unequivocally mandates that “key part” begin 1 January, and there was no consultation with the Constitution he’s sworn to uphold, which unequivocally mandates that the President “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed….”

And—carefully—there was no answer to the question of whether, himself having picked and chosen, a successor couldn’t do the same and gut Obamacare.

Responsibility

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The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt.  People must again learn to work instead of living on public assistance.

Cicero understood this in 55 BC.  Rome failed to recover her sense of responsibility—personal and individual, as communities, as a nation—at all levels.  Tyranny arrived shortly after Cicero published his realization.

Short-of-Death Panels

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Power Line received an email the other day from a gentleman who is…how shall I put it—unimpressed…with Obamacare.  It’s a long email, but you should read it all.  It recounts his experiences following a pair of strokes—one of them massive—he suffered a bit under two years ago at the ripe old age of 30.  The man spent three months in the hospital, much of that time on life support, and his doctors tell him that had he survived (his chances were about 1%—as he notes, a new meaning for a Democrat mantra), he should have been a vegetable.  But he had a Cadillac insurance policy—one of those openly attacked by Obamacare, and he had very much good fortune that Obamacare would have obviated.

There’s much in the man’s email that recounts his good fortune at not—yet—having to wear the yoke of Obamacare; I want to excerpt just a bit [emphasis added].

Had I been an elderly patient responsible for my own care, or not had the extraordinary family connections that I have at my disposal, I would have been in serious trouble and undoubtedly come out of this much worse.
…
I saw the cost-cutting is much more tangible.  A major factor in my recovery has been physical, occupational, and speech therapy.  Without those things I wouldn’t be able to roll over, put on my socks, or eat, among other things.  In fact, before my therapy began I was scheduled to enter assisted living.  Because my therapy was so effective….
…
One of the things Obamacare is doing is forcing Medicare’s CMS to cut back on quite a lot of rehabilitation services.
…
One of the things that changed for “new” stroke patients was limiting reimbursable therapy visits of all kinds for stroke patients to ten total (because my stokes had happened before the change I was grandfathered in, so to speak).  Ten!

I have had well north of 200 visits.  At upwards of $250/visit for most therapy not many folks could sustain that for long without insurance (and remember, jobs go away when you’re in the hospital as long as I was).  Had I been restricted to ten visits my best case scenario would have involved a home nurse.  I wouldn’t have been able to find work.  And had I been single (as many stroke patients are because they’re elderly and their spouse has passed) I would have become destitute, thus likely landing in the Medicaid system, eventually.

That’s an incredible and frightening amount of power to be put in the hands of DC bureaucrats.  My therapy was at one of my hospitals (I had four) and every day I heard Medicaid patients being told their therapy visits were being cut off.  Those CMS decisions are consigning people to wheelchairs, or worse.
…
Granted, my case was exceptionally bad but being limited to 10 visits almost would have been a death sentence.  I’ve experienced some of the most awful things imaginable and to think that a bureaucratic decision made in Washington…could have consigned me to that forever….

It’s August and our Representatives and Senators are in town hall season—those of them with the courage to face us up close and in public, and to listen to us.  Go there, and go there often.  Tell our Congressmen to put an end to Obamacare—no more argument, no more “debate,” no more dithering.  Tell both Democrats and Republicans.  Tell the Progressives and Conservatives, too.

Remember, in the primaries and elections of 2014, who follows your instructions this season.  Also remember who didn’t even have the courage to face you in an open town hall.