Monthly Archives: March 2015

All the more Reason

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…to speed reform of the way in which our economy produces medical care services and in which we pay for them.

[A] 66-year-old couple retiring this year with average Social Security benefits can expect medical costs to consume 67% of the Social Security they will receive in retirement.

A 55-year-old couple who plan to retire in 10 years can expect to devote about 90% of their lifetime Social Security benefits to healthcare costs.

There’s more:

Social Security benefits typically grow by approximately 2% a year—the overall rate of inflation. But medical costs in general tend to rise by more, 5% to 7% a year[.]

There’s this graph, too, that illustrate cost change trends since 1960:HealthCostTrends

Since Obamacare was enacted and has started to take effect (since 2010), the then-eight-year-old trend of decreasing costs has been completely stopped. That’s the effect of government intervention into a free market.

If we’re to correct this, if we’re actually to hold down, not just the rise in costs, but the actual costs themselves, we need to get government out of the way and use free market solutions: get rid of the health welfare that is Obamacare, allow insurance companies—which would sell true insurance policies—to charge premiums based on the actual risk transferred from customer to company, and allow insurance policies to be sold across state lines—that is nationwide.

All government intervention succeeds in doing is preventing competition and market forces from reducing and then holding down costs. Which hits hardest the very people these government programs are claimed to help.

Shameful

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President Barack Obama has yet to meet with the new head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and won’t see Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg this week, even though he is in Washington for three days. Stoltenberg’s office requested a meeting with Obama well in advance of the visit, but never heard anything from the White House….

Stoltenberg has met with most of the other NATO member heads of state, including Canada’s Prime Minister on the same trip that brought him to DC to be snubbed by our President.

It’s not like Obama was too busy to meet with the NATO head; although, Obama doesn’t have any golf scheduled, either, so….

In the end, this is a major step toward giving Russian President Vladimir Putin something of what he wants: the irrelevance, if not the outright dissolution, of NATO.

Justice Kennedy Testified

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Justice Anthony Kennedy testified a little bit ago before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government regarding the Supreme Court’s budget request. In the course of that, Congressman Ander Crenshaw (R, FL), the subcommittee’s chairman, asked Kennedy about Congressional gridlock. Kennedy answered,

And we think an efficient, responsive legislation and executive branch in the political system will alleviate some of that pressure. We routinely decide cases involving federal statutes and we say, well, if this is wrong the Congress will fix it.

But then we hear that Congress can’t pass a bill one way or the other. That there is gridlock.

Some people say that should affect the way we interpret the statutes. That seems to me a wrong proposition. We have to assume that we have three fully functioning branches of the government, government that are committed to proceed in good faith and with good will toward one another to resolve the problems of this republic.

I think, though, that Kennedy is missing part of the point (keeping in mind that the C-SPAN clip is an excerpt, but this particular answer is presented in its entirety). Federal statutes, under our Constitution, are political matters to be determined solely by We the People through our elected representatives in the Congress (with veto or signing input from our elected President). The Judiciary, that third fully functioning branch of the government under our Constitution, can only decide the legitimacy—the Constitutionality—of a Federal statute and, on finding it legitimate, can only apply that statute as it is written.

There is nothing in our Constitution that authorizes the Judiciary to do any part of law making in the event of gridlock. Gridlock is a political matter, not a judicial one, it’s an occasional outcome of the checks and balances built into our government by our Constitution, and it’s there on purpose: that would be the “check” part. The courts are in no way authorized to fill that void with their own view of what the law (or a law) ought to be. There is, in fact, no void to be filled.

It would have been good had Kennedy given a more complete answer.

The Junior Varsity

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The Junior Varsity that is Daesh is actively training with two other junior varsity teams at camps in Mauritania, nation of the western Sahel region of Africa. Those other two scrub teams are al Qaeda and Boko Haram.

At least 80 trainees, recruits from the United States, Canada, and parts of Europe, including France, are known to be training at the camps[.]

Hmm….

In parallel,

US counterterrorism strategy in Yemen has all but collapsed as the country descends into chaos, according to US and Yemeni officials.

Operations against militants have been scaled back dramatically amid the fall of the American-backed government and the evacuation of US personnel. What had been consistent pressure on Yemen’s dangerous Al Qaeda affiliate has been relieved, the officials say, and a safe haven exists for the development of an offshoot of the Islamic State group.

Al Qaeda is on the run, all right.

It’s too bad our President, the nominal leader of the free world, isn’t even any good at trash talking.

The Democrats’…Budget

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The House Democrats are showing their disdain for the American people with this thing (you have to drill to see what they’re burying).

Congressman Chris Van Hollen (D, MD) published the House Democrats’ version of a budget, and it nearly doubles the Federal deficit over the next 10 years and increases the national debt by nearly a third over the same period to $25 trillion dollars. On purpose. Remember this as he gears up for his run for the Senate next year.

While buying into every penny of President Barack Obama’s call for $1.8 trillion in more taxes (because Democrats can’t get enough of your money), it raises spending even more (because they need your money to buy votes to keep their power).

This isn’t a serious budget effort; it’s just an in-your-face answer to the more conservative budgets already on the table in the House and Senate. As they’ve done the last several years over multiple administrations, these Democrats are determined to block Republican initiatives, not because of any real, principled differences with them, but solely because of their Republican provenance.