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2010-03-24T15:21:00.001-04:00

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2010-03-24T15:13:00.002-04:00

Will Senate Democrats join the GOP in banning insurance coverage for sex offenders to pay for their Viagra?

Ryan's Revenge: The Truth

2010-03-24T14:20:00.005-04:00

Rising GOP star Rep. Paul Ryan explains what Obamacare will do to the economy, healthcare costs and insurance premiums.

Sky-rocketing health care costs are drowning families, businesses and governments in red ink - leaving millions priced out of the market and without coverage. This legislation - with its maze of mandates, dictates, controls, tax hikes and subsidies - pushes costs further in the wrong direction.

Premiums in the individual market would rise from 10% to 13% for families. Our debt and deficit crisis - driven by $76 trillion in unfunded liabilities - would accelerate from the creation of a brand new entitlement and an increase in the federal deficit by $662 billion, when the true costs are factored in. National health expenditures will increase by an additional $222 billion over the next decade, according the president's own chief actuary, and $2.4 trillion in the decade after the new entitlement is up and running.

H. Beatty Chadwick Update

2010-03-24T11:39:00.005-04:00

I just happened to be speaking with Media Attorney Mike Malloy about another matter but I asked him how his former client H. Beatty Chadwick is doing.

Chadwick is the defrocked attorney who spent 14 years in Delaware County prison on contempt charges. Malloy was the lawyer who finally got him released

"He's fine," Malloy said. "I do hear from him."

He living in an apartment in Delaware doing the "odd (legal) job" for friends. But then most of his friends are either retired or deceased, said Malloy.

Meanwhile, according to Malloy, the "Battle Royale" continues over what ever happened to Chadwick's money. He says he lost in an overseas investment and his ex-wife's attorney said he stashed away so as not to share it with her.

Anyway, if he didn't lose the money - and there is plenty of evidence that he wasn't straight with the court about it - Chadwick gave up 14 years of freedom to hang on to it. Pretty amazing.

Obama Wins Gold in Promise Breaking Event

2010-03-24T11:21:00.005-04:00

Tony Phyrillas watches Barack Obama break 7 campaign promises in two minutes. It's got to be some sort of record.

Let's go to the video.

Threats, Ultimatums and Bribes, Oh My!

2010-03-24T11:17:00.003-04:00

Noemie Emory opines:

History was made Sunday in several ways. The bill passed is a historical change, and a massive expansion of government. It was also the first major bill to be passed against the will of the country, to be passed by only one part of one party, and in the face of a wave of public revulsion, expressed over 10 months in such different outlets as mass demonstrations, three big elections, and polls.

It was not only not bipartisan, but it was less than one party, in the sense that the great war of passage was the attempt by the leaders to force their members to vote in a way that outraged their constituents, by way of threats, ultimatums and bribes.

Read it all.

Reason vs. Obama on Obamacare

2010-03-24T11:08:00.002-04:00

Who to believe about Obamacare and what it will do to the federal deficit: Obama or ReasonTV. You decide.

If Congress Can Require You to Buy Health Insurance... It Can Require You To Do Anything

2010-03-24T08:23:00.007-04:00

In an interesting column, David Harsanyi quotes Marquette law professor Richard M. Esenber:

"If Congress can require you to buy health insurance because of the ways in which your uncovered existence (affects) interstate commerce or because it can tax you in an effort to force you to do (any) old thing it wants you to, it is hard to see what -- save some other constitutional restriction -- it cannot require you to do -- or prohibit you from doing."

Sounds about right.

So because we're all in this together, responsible for one another, how about this:

We know obesity is a big health problem in this country. (The First Lady has made it her First Cause.) People who are morbidly overweight add billions to our health care costs every year with their various ailments, diseases and medical conditions. Shouldn't they be required to lose weight by law? Or pay a fine if they don't? Maybe a dollar a pound, per month? That sounds fair doesn't it.

Let's go to the Body Mass Index or BMI calculator (you can find one here

Let's see I am 6'0" and weigh about 215 pounds. According to my BMI, I am just .8 percent short of being officially "obese." I am definitely way overweight and therefore I am substantially increasing my risk of being a burden on our national healthcare system. But if I drop exactly 32 lbs. I just make it into the "normal" range.

And so I should either lose the weight or pay a fine to the government of $32 a month or another $384 a year for my government health insurance.

Figure out how overweight you are? And then calculate what you should be paying our government for your irresponsible behavior and unattractiveness.

Sue, Sue, Sue de O - bamacare

2010-03-24T08:09:00.006-04:00

Let the lawsuits begin, including one from our next would-be governor, A.G. Tom Corbett

She Paid the Two Dollars

2010-03-24T08:05:00.002-04:00

Oprah settles defamation suit against African school headmistress. So we'll miss her star turn in a Philadelphia federal courtroom.

Bummer. I was gonna' bring my Flip Cam.

Stupid Pet Trick of the Day

2010-03-24T07:57:00.001-04:00

Who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks?

Healthcare Monkeys and Trinkets

2010-03-24T07:49:00.004-04:00

If you want to further understand the health insurance problem facing America today read this.

Health insurers, and indeed Corporate America as a whole, are like monkeys who are caught by staking a glass jar to the ground with a shiny trinket inside. They won't let go so they can't get their hands out of the jar. That trinket is the ruinous and regressive $250 billion-a-year tax benefit for employer-provided insurance.

Corporate America isn't brave enough to argue against a direct subsidy to its employment costs, no matter how perverse its impact in insulating consumers from the true cost of their health care choices. Insurers are not brave enough to say: Give us a tax code that lets us go back to being insurers rather than a tax laundromat for the middle class's health-care spending...

A world-class hospital in India does heart surgery the equal of any heart surgery in America, but does so at one-tenth the cost (and increasingly attracts a world-wide clientele). The reason is not what you think: low-paid doctors and nurses. The reason is that competition works in medicine as it does in everything else when the patient cares about getting value for money. This is the great low-hanging fruit of health-care reform. It continues to hang.

A Declaration of Dependence

2010-03-24T07:40:00.003-04:00

Doctors Richard Amerling and Jane Orient say Obama is taking our healthcare system in exactly the wrong direction. The future of U.S. healthcare can be witnessed at your nearest state Department of Motor Vehicles office.

My print column is up.

Poor Canada, Here Comes Coulter

2010-03-24T07:21:00.004-04:00

Conservative firebrand Ann Coulter is headed to Canada to speak at three colleges. Some students are protesting her appearance and are saying she should be careful what she say lest she be found guilty of hate speech.

From the story:

Among Coulter's more contentious assertions is that the U.S. should invade Muslim countries and convert their people to Christianity. She has also suggested Canada is lucky the U.S. allows it "to exist on the same continent."

These aren't examples of hate speech. They're punch lines, especially the second one. But the campus speech fascists can't stand to hear anything of which they don't approve. Not content with simply not showing up, these censors like to shut people up and send them packing. If anything should be against the accepted practice at a university, it should be that.

Putting the Stup in Stupak

2010-03-23T17:25:00.005-04:00

Stupak gets only 700 grand for his vote, while others got hundreds of millions?

I don't see it.

UPDATE: But check this out:

Joe Drops the F-Bomb, Remains Free on His Own Recognizance

2010-03-23T16:53:00.006-04:00

Joe Biden drops the F-bomb in an open mike introducing the President of the United States.

At least he didn't say, "All black people must leave the White House now."

Do You Believe in Magic?

2010-03-23T13:55:00.001-04:00

Obamacare? There's an APPS for That

2010-03-23T12:53:00.008-04:00

I just got off the phone with Dr. Richard Amerling of Beth Israel Hospital in NYC. His take on Obamacare can be found here.

He is also the author of the Physician's Declaration of Independence and a member of Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (APPS). He will figure prominently in tomorrow's print column. Stay tuned.

9/11 al Qaeda Recruiter Ordered Freed

2010-03-23T11:39:00.004-04:00

A federal judge has ordered al Qaeda recruiter freed from Gitmo.

Among Slahi's most notorious recruits were four of the September 11 conspirators, all of whom were members of the infamous Hamburg cell. Slahi’s role in recruiting the Hamburg cell for al Qaeda is explained on pages 165 and 166 of the 9/11 Commission’s final report. Slahi arranged for Ramzi Binalshibh, al Qaeda's point man for the 9/11 operation, and three of his cohorts to travel from Germany to Afghanistan so that they could train in al Qaeda's camps and swear allegiance to Osama bin Laden. Binalshibh's three friends were: Mohammed Atta, Marwan al Shehhi, and Ziad Jarrah--the suicide pilots of American Airlines Flight 11, United Airlines Flight 175, and United Airlines Flight 93, respectively.

Hard to see even the Obama administration complying with this order. But that's what you get when you give federal judges the power to review national security cases.

What's on Tap

2010-03-23T08:18:00.002-04:00

Where Everybody Knows Your Name

2010-03-23T07:09:00.004-04:00

I must have missed the episode of Cheers where the local police chief attempted to shut it down as a nuisance bar. But it went like this:

Norm gets drunk, passes out and Sam lets him sleep it off in the office. Cliff accidently leaves his mail pouch in a booth comes back for it and Norm, mistaking him for a burglar, blows his head off.

The police chief declares the joint a nuisance bar and attempts to shut it down but the Cheers crew Sam, Diane, Woody, Carla, Frasier and the rest rally to show politicians that Cheers is just a friendly watering hole where a tragedy occurred. Good humor and good judgment prevail. Plus, Sam quietly pays of one of the pols with an autographed baseball from his pitching days with the Red Sox.

Fade Out.

The Coercive Dependency Agenda

2010-03-23T07:03:00.004-04:00

A must-read George Will column on what Obamacare does: It doesn't fix the healthcare system but it is a big win for the Democrats "dependency agenda."

On Sunday, as will happen every day for two decades, another 10,000 baby boomers became eligible for Social Security and Medicare. And Congress moved closer to piling a huge new middle-class entitlement onto the rickety structure of America's Ponzi welfare state. Congress has a one-word response to the demographic deluge and the scores of trillions of dollars of unfunded liabilities: "More."

There will be subsidized health insurance for families of four earning up to $88,200 a year, a ceiling certain to be raised, repeatedly. The accounting legerdemain spun to make this seem affordable -- e.g., cuts (to Medicare) and taxes (on high-value insurance plans) that will never happen-- is Enronesque.

Read the whole thing.

The Lie of Fiscal Responsibility

2010-03-22T17:55:00.000-04:00

Peter Suderman at Reason exposes it:

Since the New Deal, American entitlements have consistently grown faster than projected in size, scope, and cost. Like unwanted houseguests, they cost money you don't have, and they can't be kicked out. Reform and repeal efforts are about as successful as kindergarten experiments with do-it-yourself haircuts. Indeed, the health care bill's very structure is a testament to this fact. Much of it is funded with changes designed to eliminate waste in Medicare and Medicaid—changes that could, or at least ought, to have been used to reform those programs, both of which are unsustainable. Yet the only way these changes were politically viable was if they were made in order to fund an all-new benefit.

Spencerblog: The Video

2010-03-22T12:57:00.006-04:00

Check this out:

Then this:

Pensioneers, Public vs. Private

2010-03-22T08:11:00.005-04:00

Why can't public pension plans be more like private pension plans? They can. And should be. My Sunday print column is up.

More on the coming pension plan debacle here. It's even worse than you think.