The Lemming Watch

This is What is Wrong With Our Country

An article in the April 4 Orange County Register show clearly what is wrong with this country.

In a Q&A session, one interchange went as follows:

Q. Do you think the requirement that every American purchase health insurance is constitutional?

A. [omitting the respondent’s name for now] I do think it’s constitutional. We all are going to need health care. We should all have insurance or at least pay for the cost of the system. Even ignoring the glaring non sequitur (what connection is there between the Constitution and medical care for all citizens?), this is an outrageously cynical statement—to say that all should pay for everyone else’s medical care is an
effrontery to all thinking, free people.

The man who said this, Erwin Chemerinski is, believe it or not, the new dean of the UC Irvine law school. He is teaching our young people this kind of thinking—that each of us should pay for the other’s medical care. It’s no wonder our country is in trouble; we are graduating young people with these leftist ideas in their heads.

One Amazon reviewer of his book on “saving” the Constitution wrote: “Chemerinsky rebuffs the argument that the text of the written Constitution ought to be supreme, since this would ignore subsequent decisional law that regards that text as unimportant. To insist on adherence to the Constitution's text, Chemerinsky argues, "urges a radical change in constitutional law."

So there you have it: he believes the Constitution is what the judges say it is, and he bemoans the fact that conservative judges in more recent years are moving away from the damage done by liberal judges in the past.

Where was Chemerinski raised? In South Chicago. Say no more.

Will this be their first big test ?

The end of the year is upon us and all eyes (and ears) are waiting to see what the Congress will do about the tax picture. But there is another item on the end-of-year horizon that is just as important a test for Congress. It is flying under the radar, so there is not as much discussion about it, but it can be just as telling as the tax cut extension issue.

At the end of the year both the ethanol tariff and its companion tax credit are due to expire. Will the fresh GOP members and chastised Dems in Congress let them expire, or will the lobbyists win again?

The 54-cent tariff on imported ethanol protects American farmers from competition from Brazilian ethanol producers; the 45-cent tax credit to oil companies drains up to $6 billion a year from the general fund. Both are an additional tax on the consumer since they raise the price of gasoline. More than that—they raise the price of corn worldwide, and therefore of beef, poultry and other livestock.

The consequence (unintended of course) is a shortage of and higher prices for food as well as fuel. (A corollary unintended consequence is that the use of ethanol to reduce the use of fossil fuels is counterproductive. The production and transportation of ethanol is a high energy enterprise using huge amounts of fossil fuel for fertilizer in growing, for production, and for transportation to the pump since it is too corrosive to be transported through pipelines.)

Even the chief tree hugger, Al Gore, considers the support for ethanol a mistake:

Former U.S. vice-president Al Gore said support for corn-based ethanol in the United States was "not a good policy",

"One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president.”

There will be tremendous lobbying pressure on every member of Congress to renew this egregious tax. All that Congress needs to do is ignore the pressure, ignore the deadline, and let these twin evils die. Can they do it? We will see how principled the GOP really is.

  Published in the American Thinker - Nov 23, 2010

Your Medicare Dollar at Work

I’m retired and use Blue Cross as my medical insurer; Blue Cross, in turn, links to Medicare for its portion of my medical cost payments. Whenever I get medical service and incur a cost, a notice of the payment allocation is sent to me in the form of an Explanation of Benefits or EOB. That’s fine. It’s normally a one-page outline showing the provider, his charge, the Medicare discounted fee (which discount is criminally large), the amount paid by the insurance, and my portion of the payment if any.

But in addition to this one page come two additional pages. One is a description of my right to appeal the EOB allocation decision along with several paragraphs regarding how to appeal and of the appeal process. Why isn’t it sufficient to include this notice in the annual documents sent to the subscriber rather than waste the paper to send with every EOB?

The second page (two-sided) is a Notice of Language Assistance. This consists of a short paragraph in English as follows:

No Cost Language Services. You can get an interpreter. You can get documents read to you and some sent to you in your language. For help call us at the number listed on your ID card or 1-888-254-2721. For more help call the CA Dept. of Insurance at 1-800-927-4357 English

This is followed by the same message in thirteen additional languages! Is this paper necessary? It could also be included with the annual subscriber documents. Better yet, eliminate the service and require those asking for Medicaid support to use English (or pay for their own interpretation).

They have nothing to offer but fear itself

In his first inaugural speech Franklin Roosevelt made the statement that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. . .” Interestingly, that was made in the terrible economic climate of the great depression—very much like our current situation. Roosevelt was attempting to be upbeat and give the people of the country a reason to hope that the economy would soon recover.

Today his political descendants in the Democratic party have a different slant on the fear theme. They have nothing to offer but fear itself. In an election where it appears they and their ideas are going to be completely rejected, they are using the fear card in almost every way possible: The Republicans, they say, will take away your social security, they will reduce taxes on the rich and make you pay more, they will do away with your food stamps, they will increase your medical costs, they will terminate the fight against climate change and leave us at the mercy of smoking factories and gas guzzling automobiles spewing out carbon dioxide and other poisonous gases; And the list goes on-all in the negative.

Closely related to the fear campaign, they are using smear tactics as never used before: the Republicans, they say, are using illegally gotten funds to support their candidates. They are too extreme, they want to destroy all of your rights; they support sending jobs overseas; and that list goes on also.

Although in the long run Roosevelt could not meet his own expectations, he at least did offer something positive. The current batch of Democrats, however, have nothing positive to offer. So their only recourse is to be completely negative. The reason being of course is that their programs, their governance, their ideas are bankrupt. It is clear that their efforts have led the country into an economic quagmire. Unemployment is high, and they cannot reduce it. The country is deeply in debt, and they continue on a path that only makes it worse. The currency is in the tank, and all they have to offer is inflation. And they proudly look to enacting more laws that will only worsen the situation.

It appears that they are going to reap the rewards of their ruinous programs; they are soon to become a minor element in the governance of this country, and it’s about time that we begin an upbeat approach to dealing with our country’s problems.

Shooting Yourself in the Foot

Californians, you really blew it. Or more accurately, California Democrats, you blew it. You had the chance to nominate any one of hundreds of qualified people as your candidate for governor. But no, you went and nominated a 72 year old retread, a has-been from the flower child era of the ‘60s and ‘70s.

 

Jerry Brown never saw a business that he liked; and he never saw a union that he disliked. He is a typical California liberal, a political animal who has not been very successful in any of the very few non-political ventures he tried. As a matter of fact, he wasn’t too successful in some of his political ventures either. He had several disjointed and poorly run stabs at the presidency; fortunately for all he did not make it to the White House. As mayor of Oakland he left it pretty much in the same state as he found it—a hotbed of outlaw activity. It isn’t a nice place to live or work.

 

Why did the party not finally put this guy out to pasture?

You Cannot Make This Stuff Up

There is a regular column in the Orange County [CA] Register titled OC Watchdog: Your Tax Dollars at Work. In the February 15 issue, the column describes a report by Senators Tom Coburn and John McCain listing 100 grants of stimulus money considered questionable at best. Here is a sample:

1. Study On Why Young Men Do Not Like Condoms ($221,355)
Indiana University professors received $221,355 in economic stimulus funds to study why young men do not like to wear condoms. The research will “advance our understanding of…the role of cognitive and affective processes and condom application skills in explaining problems with condom use in young, heterosexual adult men,” and to create “education strategies tailored to the needs of individuals who have trouble using condoms effectively.”

This must be a put-on. The government wouldn’t really pay $221,355 for such a study, would it?

2. Study on “Hookup” Behavior of Female College Coeds ($219,000)
The National Institute of Health (NIH) is using stimulus funds to pay for a year-long $219,000 study to follow female college students for a year to determine whether young women are more likely to “hookup” – the college equivalent of casual sex – after drinking alcohol. Researchers will recruit 500 female students prior to their first year of college and contact them monthly over the course of a year to document sexual hookups, noting when there is alcohol involved. It is part of the $7.4 billion the NIH received in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to support “scientific research.”

Duh! Most young men (who may or may not use a condom) had this figured out years ago. Who needs “scientific research?”

3. Buffalo Residents Paid to Keep Daily Journal of Malt Liquor and Marijuana Use ($389,357)
Researchers at the State University of New York at Buffalo will receive nearly $390,000 to study young adults who drink malt liquor and smoke marijuana. Malt liquor consumption is an understudied topic, according to the researchers‘ application, making it an obvious choice for economic stimulus funding.

And a grossly over-funded topic.

The question is—and maybe someone could get a grant to study this: how do these studies enhance the lives of American citizens? They do certainly enhance the pocketbooks of the grantees.

You could think long and hard and rack your brain, but you could not make this stuff up.

Typing with frostbitten fingers

It’s January—normally the time when people leave the northern states to take up winter residence in the warmth of the southern part of the country. But today Birmingham, Alabama has a high temperature of 38 and a low of 18; New Orleans is at 52 and 28; Savannah 52 and 28.

Note that every one of those low readings in a supposedly warm climate is below freezing; and the highs are not exactly balmy. And the states in the northern area of the world are experiencing unusually cold weather causing more death than any warming has caused.

While these temperatures continue for days, the warmists insist that we are facing global warming. In spite of Climategate, which casts a huge dark cloud over the global warming findings by so called climate scientists, they are still claiming the Earth is getting dangerously warm. In spite of the 141 qualified scientists who finally came out of the deniers closet and signed a letter to the head of the UN that there is no validity to the findings, the warmists still claim their science accurately predicts global warming caused by the existence and activities of human beings.

Why are they using valuable ink and paper, valuable internet bandwidth, and valuable TV air time to push this idiotic and irrational agenda? Given the cold snap all over the world, it is clear that they will continue typing this global warming rubbish even if they have to do it with frostbitten fingers.

HT to AHB

Harry Reid, the Tooth Fairy

Harry Reid is the modern-day tooth fairy. But you don’t need a freshly detached tooth to receive money from Harry; you only have to vote the way he wants you to. And, whereas for a tooth you may get a quarter or even a dollar, for a vote you can get millions or even billions of dollars—paid by the taxpayers of course.

Politico provides a list of some of the tooth fairy beneficiaries. Ben Nelson is the most outrageous; in spite of his initial resistance to the bill because of the abortion issue, he put his integrity under his pillow, and Harry the tooth fairy took it away and, in its place, gave Nebraska a 100 percent exemption ($45 million in the first decade alone) from paying any new Medicaid expenses—a truly jaw-dropping act.

Mary Landrieu of Louisiana showed the way a few weeks ago: she sold her principles for mere $300 million in Medicaid funding for her state. Now we find there are others who have won a similar jackpot from Harry the tooth fairy: Bernie Sanders of Vermont (an Independent yet) who, a few days before his windfall, was against the bill got $10 billion (that’s with a B) for his state.

Then there is Carl Levin of Michigan who carved out a lucrative exemption from Medicaid costs; and senators from Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Florida, and New York lined up for goodies under their pillows.

One wonders how many of these porkers have even read the much-amended bill. One wonders if there is even one Democrat in the Senate with any integrity, who thinks in principles, and who could find the will to vote against what they know is a monstrosity. Can all 60 of them be far left socialists; can all 60 of them be so dense as to not see the train wreck this will cause; can all 60 of them be so corrupt? It’s hard to believe this is what America has come to.

Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com calls it the most corrupt piece of legislation in the nation’s history and gives more detailed information.

 If this bill were worthwhile it would not need a tooth fairy to rescue it from defeat.