It's all about where you draw the line

An open letter from Dr. Becky Hollibaugh of Friend, Nebraska to Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.):

Dear Senator Nelson:

I send this message under “Tort Reform” because the current monstrosity you have pledged your support to says nothing whatsoever about Tort Reform. You have sold the physicians of Nebraska for zilch (zilch for us, but beaucoup federal bucks for you and the liberal partisans in this state). As a family practice physician in Small Town, Nebraska, I was counting on you to be the lone voice of Democratic sanity on this issue, but you sold me out. I will dedicate every spare minute of my time and every spare dollar I have to defeating you, should you run for re-election. The long hours I spent on my medical education and the long hours I spend treating my patients are nothing but chump change to you and your Democrat colleagues in Washington. I especially can’t wait for your equivocation and milquetoast evasion when your “compromises” on the abortion language in the bill are silently erased or quietly (on-little-legislative-cat’s-feet) eviscerated in the House/Senate give-and-take. Go on: Bet me that you won’t wuss-out on this issue!

I know you won’t give two-seconds to this letter, but I had to write it. I’m a primary care doctor in YOUR state, and you sold me out. I didn’t slog through 4 years of college and 4 years of medical school and 3 years of residency just to have you hand my career and my patient/doctor relationships over to government lifers. Your gutless acquiescence to Obama and Harry Reid and ‘Nanny’ Pelosi will NOT be forgotten.

Thank you, Ben, for forcing doctors like me to earn less than the repairmen who fix our appliances. Case in point: We recently had our dishwasher fixed. The repairman who came to our house charged $65 just to come and ‘diagnose’ the problem, then charged another $180 to ‘fix’ the problem. You and your fellow lawmakers have fixed MY going rate (Medicare) at $35 per-visit. Thank you for securing such a ‘lucrative’ rate for me! Thank you so much for making me–someone with 8 years of education!–make less than a mechanic or appliance repair technichian. And thanks especially for falling in line with Obama and the rest of the Democrats to make such a socialist system permanent.

You have my disgust and disdain forever, you socialist-coddling coward.

Sincerely,
Becky F. Hollibaugh, D.O.
Warren Memorial Hospital
Ziimmerman Clinic
Friend, NE 68359

Good on you Doc!

Dr. Hollibaugh follows up with:

…To those who would accuse me of greed: I don’t make as much as you think I do. I give every one of my patients the very best care I can offer, regardless of their ability to pay. And I do NOT begrudge my mechanic or my appliance repairmen their salaries. Not one bit. I gladly pay them what I owe them. What you leftist idiots don’t understand is this: I am forced to accept $35 for an office visit by a medicaid or medicare patient. I. Can’t. Afford. It. On that enforced wage, I can’t pay my nurses. I can’t pay my billing secretaries. I can’t pay my receptionist. I. Can’t. Survive. On. Obamacare. Get it?! I. Can’t. Pay. My. Nurses. On. Ben. Nelson. Wages. Get it? I hope so. You think I’m greedy? I went to medical school as a former nurse at age 36. I have over $180,000 dollars in student loans. I. Can’t. Survive. On. Obamacare. I hope this helps. I don’t make as much as you might think. And most of what I earn goes to repaying my student loans. I love my little family medicine clinic in Friend. I love being a doctor in rural Nebraska. I love my patients and I love rural family medicine. But Ben Nelson sold me out. Thanks again for letting me vent. I’m not greedy. I don’t envy the wages of my blue-collar friends. But I can’t survive or pay my employees on Uncle Sam’s reimbursement rate for my services.

Personally I don’t care if the dictated price is enough for her to make a living. The government, flat out, has no place dictating how much money a citizen should be permitted to charge for their services. The government, flat out, has no right to dictate what products or services a citizen is required to purchase. Either of these is the illegal seizure of private property (money) by government fiat.

Obamacare doesn’t really kick in until 2013 or so. I personally will support and vote for any candidate who vows to repeal this monstrosity before then; and it appears to be about 60% of the populace who agrees with me. Goodbye, Democrats — you have dug your graves with this legislation.

Found at Michelle Malkin, via Matteo.

Bore Patch blog has an excellent post up: Should You Be a Global Warming Skeptic?. He details the problems with the AGW theory, much of it known even before the revelations of the “Climategate” leak.

Read the whole thing, really, but I especially want to point out this paragraph, which is a pointed response to any argument that “the science is settled”:

I thought there was a consensus that Global Warming is occurring? The “science is settled”, isn’t it?

Actually, there’s never been a consensus. We’ll come back to this later, but the most interesting thing about this argument is that it’s not a scientific argument. Science simply doesn’t care about consensus, it cares about data and reproduceability of results. If your data is solid, and other people can get the same results, it simply doesn’t matter if you run with the crowd or not.

Simply put, if science depended on consensus, we would never get anywhere — as any fundamentally new theory pretty much depends on throwing an old theory out. Reputable scientists in modern times never argue that something is “settled”. I mean gravity isn’t “settled” science for Chrissakes — do you really think that the climate is settled science, when we can’t even predict next week’s weather?

If you’re hearing “the science is settled”, what you’re hearing is politics, not science. It’s smoke and mirrors. It a different way of saying “We have a vested interest in people believing us, so everyone who doesn’t agree with us should just shut their mouths.” Specifically, it’s an Appeal to Popularity fallacy — an attempt to shame critics into silence — and it is shameful coming from people who claim to be scientists. Don’t let them get away with it.

A lot has been written about the revelations found within the documents leaked from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit, which are the scientists behind virtually all of the core Global Warming theory; but I think a “Climategate” article by Christopher Booker at the London Telegraph sums it up the best:

There are three threads in particular in the leaked documents which have sent a shock wave through informed observers across the world. Perhaps the most obvious… is the highly disturbing series of emails which show how Dr Jones and his colleagues have for years been discussing the devious tactics whereby they could avoid releasing their data to outsiders under freedom of information laws.

They have come up with every possible excuse for concealing the background data on which their findings and temperature records were based.

This in itself has become a major scandal, not least Dr Jones’s refusal to release the basic data from which the CRU derives its hugely influential temperature record, which culminated last summer in his startling claim that much of the data from all over the world had simply got “lost”. Most incriminating of all are the emails in which scientists are advised to delete large chunks of data, which, when this is done after receipt of a freedom of information request, is a criminal offence.

…The second and most shocking revelation of the leaked documents is how they show the scientists trying to manipulate data through their tortuous computer programmes, always to point in only the one desired direction – to lower past temperatures and to “adjust” recent temperatures upwards, in order to convey the impression of an accelerated warming….

What is tragically evident from the Harry Read Me file is the picture it gives of the CRU scientists hopelessly at sea with the complex computer programmes they had devised to contort their data in the approved direction, more than once expressing their own desperation at how difficult it was to get the desired results.

The third shocking revelation of these documents is the ruthless way in which these academics have been determined to silence any expert questioning of the findings they have arrived at by such dubious methods – not just by refusing to disclose their basic data but by discrediting and freezing out any scientific journal which dares to publish their critics’ work. It seems they are prepared to stop at nothing to stifle scientific debate in this way, not least by ensuring that no dissenting research should find its way into the pages of IPCC reports.

(That’s an excerpt — you can read the whole thing here: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/6679082/Climate-change-this-is-the-worst-scientific-scandal-of-our-generation.html)

This all goes hand in hand with the political drumbeat that “the science is settled”. In other words, “Shut up!” — the first and last resort of liars everywhere.

Booker calls this “the worst scientific scandal of our generation”, but to me it goes further than that. When you look at the trillions of dollars that countries all over the world are preparing to spend to combat something that these scientists invented from whole cloth, this is the single biggest fraud in history. Forget losing their jobs — these men should be in prison.

A very nice teardown of the health insurance legislation now going through the senate (Mike Rogers — R Mich. speaking):

Marred on slightly by the fact that the quote at the beginning was actually spoken by William Boetcker in 1916; though it is commonly, as here, mis-attributed to Abraham Lincoln.

The nice point he makes in this is just how much power over individuals’ lives this bill grants to government. It’s amazing to me that leftists will go on and on about the greed and corruption of big business, and at times also acknowledge that government is also corrupt, but then turn around and claim that the only group that can fix it is government.

Here’s the trick, folks: Government and business are, at times, both corrupt. It’s people. It’s powerful people, and power corrupts. Business is in it to make money, and government is in it to “make” votes. The difference is that I can turn down big business. Microsoft may be a massive company and control most of the world’s computers, but they can do *nothing* to force me to buy a Windows machine. If I don’t like the product I don’t have to buy it. But imagine if everyone had to use whatever operating system was most popular? Goodbye Mac, goodbye Linux. (Oh, and goodbye iPods, iPhones, and so forth, which wouldn’t exist because Apple would have been forced out of business years before they were invented.)

Government is like a business that can force you to buy their product — no matter how crappy it is, no matter how wasteful, no matter how poorly implemented. We’ve known for years that Social Security is going bankrupt. Virtually nobody my age believes that they’re every going to see a penny of what they’ve paid in to it, yet we have no choice but to continue paying in to this government “product”.

A common “straw man” argument against conservatives is that they claim that “government can’t do anything right”. That’s not the case, and not the claim. However, history has proven that government frequently gets it wrong — sometimes drastically, and tragically so — yet because it’s government we can’t choose not to buy that bad product.

(Note that despite the comparison, Microsoft products aren’t in the same league with the sheer crappitude that is Social Security, because any company that puts out product that bad ceases to exist in the private market. For a better comparison, imagine if Bernie Madoff could have forced anybody he wanted to invest in his scam: that’s Social Security in a nutshell.)

Ironically this came up to slap some liberals in the face when the Health Care bill was altered before the vote to prohibit funding for abortion. Pro-choice advocates were screaming that this was going to infringe on a woman’s right to an abortion… but why? Haven’t we been told repeatedly that everyone will be able to keep their current coverage? This bill will only help the uninsured? Their protests put the lie to the claim, and though I don’t agree with the specific problem they have (I’m pro-life), the principle of their problem is significant, and valid: if government controls it, then you are completely subject to the whims of government and politics. You no longer have control, and you no longer have freedom.

As goofy as health insurance sometimes is in this country, the companies still have to appeal to their customers. When government is in control, they are not accountable to you. You’re not a customer buying a product; you’re a subject, and they’re doing you a favor because it’s “free” — so quit complaining. It’s not like you have any other options.

And once you’ve handed over that power, good luck getting it back.

Video via Smallest Minority

A Canadian writes at the Heritage Foundation:

Everything I want to say about this is summed up in a story that happened to my partner Shelley. Shelley and I are partners in a restaurant, and she actually runs it. She was given an appointment at the hospital for a procedure, and she duly showed up at the appointed time. Two hours later she was still sitting there waiting to be called. Now she was only able to get a two-hour parking meter, and so she approached the desk and asked if she could go and put money in the meter. She was curtly told that she was free to go and put the money in, but that if her name were called while she was away, that her name would fall back to the bottom of the queue. So she just decided that she would take the parking ticket as part of the price of getting the medical service she needed. Another two hours passed, and still she was not called, so she again approached the counter, and very patiently and politely explained (as only Shelley can, because she is the soul of graciousness) that she actually had a small business to run; that she was there at the appointed time for her appointment; that she had waited four hours, which is far longer than she had been led to expect the whole thing would take; that she had other commitments because of the business; and could they possibly at least give her some idea of how much longer she might have to wait?

Well, the woman behind the counter got on her dignity, drew herself up to her full height, glared at Shelley and said, “You’re talking as if you’re some kind of customer!”

There you have it, ladies and gentlemen, the essence of the problem: When the government supplies you with “free” health care, you are not a powerful customer who must be satisfied. They are doing you a favor and you owe the state gratitude and servility in return for this awesome generosity. They can give you the worst service in the world, but because it is free, you are totally disempowered. One of the most important lessons I have learned from my contact with the Canadian Medicare system is that payment makes you powerful. And its absence makes you risible if not invisible.

Now the articulate and the middle class do not let little things like that get them down. Even though they do not pay, they still get in the faces of the people providing service and make their wishes known. But often the vulnerable, the poor, the ill-educated, and the inarticulate are the ones who suffer the most because no one’s well-being within the health care system depends on patients/consumers being well looked after. And by depriving them of the power of payment within the health care system, Medicare disempowers them. And the poor see this, because while they may be poor, they are not stupid.

As you look at this, just recall the China is *exempted* from the Kyoto Treaty.

http://deanesmay.com/2009/11/13/sky-is-blue/

h/t Brian

First Idaho, now Texas. Perhaps with a little luck (and several million angry citizens), this will become a trend….

State of Texas
H.C.R. No. 50
By: Creighton
Filed: 02/17/2009

CONCURRENT RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States reads as follows: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”; and

WHEREAS, The Tenth Amendment defines the total scope of federal power as being that specifically granted by the Constitution of the United States and no more; and

WHEREAS, The scope of power defined by the Tenth Amendment means that the federal government was created by the states specifically to be an agent of the states; and

WHEREAS, Today, in 2009, the states are demonstrably treated as agents of the federal government; and

WHEREAS, Many federal laws are directly in violation of the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States; and

WHEREAS, The Tenth Amendment assures that we, the people of the United States of America and each sovereign state in the Union of States, now have, and have always had, rights the federal government may not usurp; and

WHEREAS, Section 4, Article IV, of the Constitution says, “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government,” and the Ninth Amendment states that “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people”; and

WHEREAS, The United States Supreme Court has ruled in New York v. United States, 112 S. Ct. 2408 (1992), that congress may not simply commandeer the legislative and regulatory processes of the states; and

WHEREAS, A number of proposals from previous administrations and some now pending from the present administration and from congress may further violate the Constitution of the United States; now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED, That the 81st Legislature of the State of Texas hereby claim sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States; and, be it further

RESOLVED, That this serve as notice and demand to the federal government, as our agent, to cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates that are beyond the scope of these constitutionally delegated powers; and, be it further

RESOLVED, That all compulsory federal legislation that directs states to comply under threat of civil or criminal penalties or sanctions or that requires states to pass legislation or lose federal funding be prohibited or repealed; and, be it further

RESOLVED, That the Texas secretary of state forward official copies of this resolution to the president of the United States, to the speaker of the house of representatives and the president of the senate of the United States Congress, and to all the members of the Texas delegation to the congress with the request that this resolution be officially entered in the Congressional Record as a memorial to the Congress of the United States of America.

As a side note: someone else pointed out recently that Texas entered the Union by way of a treaty with the U. S. Federal Government, and as such, Texas has the legal authority to secede from the Union simply by ending the treaty.

(Hat Tip: Cold Fury)

I’ve written about this in the past, but Andrew Klavan puts it so much more entertainingly (and with pictures!). Check this out….

Hat Tip: Cold Fury

Very nice:

There is only one natural right: to do as you will. There is only one natural duty: to accept the consequences. The rest of society is a negotiation

“Labrat” at Atomic Nerds

I came across an article yesterday touting the grand efficiency of government over that of private charity(!) and thought that it was as eminently fisk-worthy as anything I’ve seen in many moons. Let’s get started, shall we?

A Tax Plan Charities Should Back

By Joel Berg
The Washington Post
Saturday, March 28, 2009; Page A13

Some of the nation’s largest charities — and the lobbyists they pay to represent them — have been hyperventilating over President Obama’s proposal to marginally roll back the amount of the tax deduction that the very wealthiest Americans can take for donating to charity.

So far so good; although already he’s taking some random pot-shots by pointing out the existence of lobbyists, as though hiring someone to represent you to government so that you can spend your time doing your job is somehow corrupt….

Of course, conservatives who oppose any tax hikes for the rich also oppose it.

And again with the suggestion that this is somehow sinister. Allow me to translate this sentence: “People who oppose tax hikes oppose tax hikes.” Well, Duh.

While these voices have created the impression that all nonprofit organizations oppose the plan, the reality is that many charitable organizations, especially ones that serve low-income populations, such as the one I run, strongly support it.

A straw man argument. There is no issue, anywhere, ever, that is universally supported or opposed. (Actually, that’s by definition, as if it were either of those, it would not be an “issue”.) So the grand revelation that some people support something is neither grand, nor a revelation.

According to the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center, the proposal would affect only 1.2 percent of U.S. households — those in the top two tax brackets. Nearly 99 percent of households would be unaffected.

Hey, man, we’re just sticking it to the Evil Rich™, so what’s the problem? Just remember, that’s how income taxes got started in the first place — as a 1% tax on the extremely rich. But once the principle was established that such taxes were okay at all, it was easy for the politicians to slowly bump the numbers up.

The plan would merely restore the deduction rate to Reagan-era levels.

This is a lie. Well, okay, it’s a statistic deliberately designed to mislead — same thing.

The top income tax rate at the end of the Reagan years was 28%, and people in that tax bracket could deduct that entire amount — 28% — from their taxes. Today the top tax bracket is 39%, and people can currently deduct the entire amount. Obama wants to change it so people paying 39% income tax can only deduct 28% of charitable giving. He is reducing the deduction for charitable giving from 100% to 72%. Simply put: Obama wants to start taxing that which was previously untaxed.

Both Obama, and Mr. Berg in writing this article, are claiming that Obama is trying to make it the same as it was under Reagan. This would be hysterical if it weren’t so outrageous.

Since the largest donors (such as Bill Gates and Warren Buffett) already give more than they can deduct, and numerous studies show that tax deductions are a relatively minor reason that the wealthiest Americans donate to charities, total charitable contributions are likely to decline by only about 1.3 percent if the proposal is enacted, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities calculates.

Again, it isn’t the specific amount, it’s the principle. This tax is custom-designed to reduce the amount of charitable giving and put more such “charity” under the thumb of government. The basis of the socialist leftist agenda: Make as many people as possible dependent on government.

Combined with other progressive Obama tax proposals, that change would not only start to redress the inequality gap that has engulfed America in recent decades

Again, if you’re a leftist, the fact that someone might make more that someone else is anathema; and it is up to government to determine what income is “fair”, rather than simply allowing people to earn based on what others are willing to pay them.

but would also help to pay for many effective domestic programs, including efforts that fight hunger and improve nutrition; boost public education; improve health care and make it more affordable; and create jobs for low- and middle-income families. In other words, the funding would greatly reduce struggling families’ need for charitable aid.

…by making them more dependent on government. To Mr. Berg here, this is a priori a good thing. Charity is bad, forcible government redistribution is good… if you’re a socialist.

Well, that and the fact that study after study has shown that conservatives give far more to charity than leftists do. This has been a political black eye that they would love to remedy by reducing conservative giving any way they can.

When the wealthiest Americans donate to charities, they are most likely to give to universities, hospitals and cultural institutions from which they and their families may benefit. Such organizations often have budgets and executive salaries equal to or larger than those of mid-size corporations, stretching the definition of “nonprofit group.”

Translation: “Those mean-ol’ rich people aren’t giving to the charities that I want them to, so let’s have the government take money from them at gunpoint, and give that money to the “right” charities. ‘Cuz we all know that only rich people benefit from libraries and hospitals and museums. And… AND!… the guy running a big city museum that employs hundreds and serves millions makes more money than I do running my organization that you’ve never heard of, and that’s not fair.”

While anti-poverty organizations such as mine do receive some funding from the wealthiest Americans (for which we are extremely grateful), the bulk of our private donations comes from middle-income families.

Translation: “I’m the ‘right’ kind of charity, so this new tax won’t affect me much. I’m cool with that.”

Even if the largest tax deductions are kept in place only for anti-poverty organizations, a compromise that would directly benefit groups such as mine, there are at least two reasons I still don’t think that would be wise public policy:

First, such tax deductions are a highly inefficient way to fund social programs. It is far more cost-effective for the government to simply increase supplemental nutrition benefits (formerly food stamps) that are immediately redeemed at for-profit food stores than it is to give massive tax deductions that only marginally increase donations to feeding charities, which then have to split such donated money between administrative costs and food purchases.

Because of course the government is not bureaucratic at all, and spends money far more efficiently than private charities do. Right? Hello? I’m pretty sure whatever this guy is smoking is illegal in all 50 states.

Let’s look at government “efficiency” for a moment: Let’s say that I donate $1,000 to Charity A. Charity A will have some overhead, but X% of that money will go directly to the cause that Charity A supports.

Now let’s suppose that the government steps in and takes that $1,000 from me taxes. They, in their infinite wisdom, determine that Charity A is, in fact, a worthwhile program, and gives that money to Charity A — the exact same charity I was going to give to in the first place. It’s a wash, right? Because Charity A got the same money? Well, no it isn’t. See, somebody has to pay the government bureaucrats who collected the money from me, and the ones who decided to give it to whatever program, and the ones who actual did the transfer to that program. Let’s call those expenses Y. Instead of the cause receiving X% of my $1,000, they now receive X% minus Y — government always gets its cut. This is not “more efficient”.

Then again, it’s not really about efficiency — it’s about control.

Second, voluntary private charity is a less equitable way to solve community problems.

According to whose definition? Like much of leftist theory, this is one of those things that only works out “if the right people are in charge” It seems to me that the people in a community have a better idea of how to solve that community’s problems than some bureaucrat in Washington DC.

Oh wait, Mr. Berg did not say it was more effective, he said it was more equitable. Equality of outcome is more important than an effective society. It’s okay if we fail, so long as everyone fails equally.

While many people assume that the rich amass their wealth on their own, the truth is that their business interests are almost always aided by public efforts such as roads, bridges and ports through which they ship their goods or public schools that educate their workforces.

And they pay for it asshole! Gaaaahhh!!! Why are you acting like the rich don’t pay taxes? Charitable giving has absolutely nothing to do with roads and bridges, and you damned well know it. Property taxes pay for schools. In Illinois the tolls alone more than pay for the roads.

Given that even the wealthiest benefit greatly from this modern “public commons,” it is wrong to give them unilateral power to decide whether their taxpayer-subsidized donations should go to, say, well-heeled operas or lavish care of pets rather than to organizations that meet more pressing communal needs.

This doesn’t even need translation: Mr. Berg believes it is wrong to “give” people the power to decide where they want to spend their own money. To a leftist, it’s never, ever your money — anything you have is “given” to you, and government merely “allows” you to keep it. To a socialist, this is good and proper.

It is fashionable these days to say that “the community,” not government, should solve social problems. Yet no nonprofit leader, myself included, was elected by the community as a whole. Elected officials, whether we like them or not, are picked by voting citizens.

Unless your name is Saddam Hussein^* no elected official is elected by the community as a whole. The difference is that government is all-or nothing; whereas with charity, you can give to the charity you like, and I can give to the charity I like. It’s called “the free market” — a concept with which you are apparently unacquainted.

In America, the government is the most legitimate voice of the entire community.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! *snort* The most legi…. aheh. Pull the other one, Comrade, it has bells!

The Obama administration should stick to its guns in fighting for tax equity, and Congress should support the effort.

Again, you seem to have a funny understanding of the word “equity”. Tax “equity” would mean that everyone pays the same rate. What you are looking for is “income equity”, where everyone is taxed to a point where they effectively all make the same — where the CEO makes the same “fair” rate as the street sweeper. It’s not even socialism at that point; that’s communism.

If charities want to prove that they value the public interest over their self-interest, they, too, should get on board.

Why? If charities value serve the public interest, the public will value them, and those will be the charities that get the voluntary donations. If your organization can only get good donations from the government, that is a sure sign that it is not valued by the public. Charities that are effective get donations, spend them effectively, and thrive. Charities that are *not* effective do not get as many donations, do not spend them as wisely, and fail. This is why organizations such as The March of Dimes have survived for decades — because individual people see the value in what they do, see the effectiveness of their organization, and donate to that cause.

[Hat Tip: Steve B.]