I Have Signed Up

To attend Harry Reid's health care event.

"Please no outside placards or banners." Wonder why...

Government Motors Doesn't Sell

Auto sales are up - except at the companies that took the bailout.

Ford Motor Co., Toyota Motor Co. and Honda Motor Co. all reported substantial sales increases in the year's final month. Toyota said the surge meant it sold more cars to U.S. consumers in 2009 than any other maker, passing General Motors Co. in "retail" sales for the first time.

GM, which sells more cars to fleet customers such as car-rental companies than Toyota, still finished the year at No. 1 in overall sales. Still, its overall sales total for the month fell 5.7% to 207,538 vehicles.

And while Chrysler Group LLC posted just a 3.7% decline for December, its sales total for the entire year was the worst it has seen in 47 years.

For the month of December, Ford's sales rose 33.5%, Toyota's 32% and Honda's 24.5%, while GM's declined 5.7% and Chrysler's 3.7%. It appears as though I'm not the only one who won't buy a vehicle from bailout recipients GM and Chrysler.

The New Meaning of Transparency

Democrats promised a transparent process in formulating health care reform. President Obama asserted, "we'll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN." Harry Reid proclaimed, "With an issue like this that affects every person in our country, transparency is key."

But they can't let promises stand in the way of ramming the bill through. While the CEO of C-SPAN has penned a letter to Congressional leaders asking to be allowed to televise the proceedings of the Conference Committee charged with reconciling differences between the House and Senate versions, by all accounts the process is going to be as opaque as possible.

Thanks Transparent Nevada

Who Is the Enemy?

"I don't think anyone knows quite what this administration's anti-terrorism policy is," writes Victor Davis Hanson.

But Obama has discovered that there really are radical Islamic threats; that Bush's record of seven years of security was no accident; and that the "good" war is heating up. Obama has been forced by events to quietly find ways of emulating Bush's successful anti-terrorism formula, while making loud but empty declarations to mollify his liberal base (which so far seems pacified that Guantanamo is "virtually" closed, and that KSM is "virtually" facing an ACLU dream trial).

Radical Islamists sense, fairly or not, that this administration is angrier at prior officials who kept us safe than it is at those who wish to destroy us for who we are. Given his adoption of the Bush protocols, Obama might show the same magnanimity toward his predecessor that he does toward the Muslim world.

I repeat my assertion from a prior post that I think Obama actually believed that our enemies would leave us alone if only we were nicer to them and, as a result, was caught completely off-guard when they attacked us anyway. In fact, they have increased their attacks. As VDH points out, "more than one-third of all terrorist plots since 9/11 transpired in 2009."

Obama is a product of the academic left. Throughout his life nearly all of his friends and mentors have come from this group.

The foundational principle of the academic left is that, with just a couple of isolated exceptions (the most notable being the defeat of the Nazis), the United States has been a destructive force in the world. In this view, virtually every act of oppression or violence is a result of or a reaction to American policy. From this arises the belief that those who hate us do so because we have wronged them and the idea that if we acknowledge our sins and atone for them we can convert our enemies. Thus, the virtue of an apology tour and the naïve belief that we can fight terrorism by making ourselves less threatening.

I think President Obama is beginning to realize that, while this particular theory plays well among liberal Democrats, it will not sell to the vast majority of Americans. He did a masterful job of masking these beliefs during the campaign but he will not be able to do it again and will have to change if he has any hope to remain President three years from now.

Solar Blemishes IX

Or When Did The Sun Hire Harry Reid's Staff to Write Its Editorials?

Must have been some time shortly after the latest staff cutbacks, to help save money. Prior to that, the Sun used to run 3 unsigned editorials each day (every so often, when there was an issue they felt deserved additional space, they would print only 2). Since then they have printed only a single editorial daily.

In the last week they have devoted two of their seven pieces to plugging Senator Reid's health insurance reform, while at the same time engaging in two of their favorite pastimes - bashing Governor Gibbons and condemning Republicans.

On Monday, we were treated to History in the making.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has come under unfair criticism for the way he has handled the historic health care bill. In many ways, the Nevada Democrat is in a no-win situation — critics on the right howl that it’s an expansion of government while some critics on the left complain the bill didn’t do enough.

Some, like Gov. Jim Gibbons, have ludicrously accused Reid of “bribery” for the compromises he made to get the legislation approved. Who knew that negotiating and making concessions to arrive at an agreement — the same way business people across the country do every day — is a criminal act?

These agreements are nothing like those made by businesspeople. What "concessions" did Reid make? He promised to give away hundreds of millions of your money to make some Senators more popular back home in return for their agreement to give away hundreds of billions of your money. He conceded nothing - you did. It's worse than bribery because they're using other people's money.

Gibbons also claimed that the bill is “shameful and does nothing to increase access for Nevadans to health care.” Where Gibbons gets his facts is a mystery.

It's easy to find out where the Sun got its facts, though - from Harry Reid himself. The previous week, according the Reno Gazette-Journal, Senator Reid "released an op-ed piece to newspapers in the state." The RGJ chose to run it, the Sun did not. However, the Sun did choose to simply parrot the "facts" Reid provided in his op-ed in their editorial. Reid:

One of the many ways this bill benefits Nevada is it provides affordable coverage for the more than 500,000 Nevadans who lack health insurance, and tax credits for 300,000 Nevadans to help them purchase coverage. I can’t stress enough the importance of this part of the bill. As I mentioned, our state has the 2nd highest rate of uninsured in the country. Not only is this morally wrong, but it drives up the cost of premiums for those of us who do have insurance.

[...]

This bill also saves and strengthens Medicare, especially in Nevada. We are a small state, yet we have 328,000 Medicare beneficiaries. Under this bill they will receive lower premiums and lower prescription drug costs. In fact, this bill extends the solvency of Medicare by almost a decade. We also provide tax credits to 24,000 Nevada small business which will allow them to provide their employees healthcare, without worrying about how to remain competitive.

The Sun:

The bill would eventually provide affordable coverage for more than 500,000 Nevadans who don’t have insurance now, and lower the premiums for 328,000 Nevadans on Medicare. It would also provide tax credits for more than 300,000 Nevadans to purchase insurance and 24,000 small businesses to make coverage more affordable for their employees.

[...]

These same critics also fail to mention the high cost to the taxpayers who bear the cost of the uninsured using medical services that either get passed on to the taxpayers or the insured in the form of higher costs.

The remainder of the editorial consisted of a series of gratuitous slaps at the bill's opponents ("sound like toddlers throwing tantrums", "don’t like the bill or providing access to health insurance to millions of people", "just trying to divert attention from the real issue"), trumpeting of its "historic" nature and tributes to Reid's awesomeness.

As if one paean to Reid and his historic bill weren't enough for one week, today the Sun followed up with another, again sprinkled generously with Gibbons- and Republican-bashing, with a side of Fox News disparagement thrown in for good measure.

Gibbons has, once again, shot his mouth off on something he knows little about. He is wrong on point after point. We would think that a man who spent time in both the Legislature and Congress would understand that deals are made in legislative bodies. It’s not corruption, it’s a process called compromise — something the governor knows little about considering his refusal to work with anyone.

Promising hundreds of millions of dollars that belong to someone else to help your re-election in exchange for you supporting my effort to spend hundreds of billions of dollars that belong to someone else is hardly a compromise. We guess that's the way things work in Washington. But we thought that the Democrats campaigned to change the way things worked in Washington. The only change we've gotten is the same old games ratched up a couple orders of magnitude.

Regarding the bill being some sort of Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme, we didn’t know that Madoff planned to reduce the federal deficit, as the health care proposal does. Invoking Madoff’s name is a shameless, despicable way to scare people.

When we originally read the Sun's Monday editorial discussed above we were inclined to give them points for not mentioning the sham that the bill reduces the deficit. This bill will not reduce the federal deficit. It only appears so because its authors employed accounting tricks intentionally designed to game the Congressional Budget Office's scoring system.

For example, the bill includes as one cost-saving measure a 21% reduction in Medicare reimbursements to doctors. However, its proponents are also supporting a separate bill that would undo this very provision. If this separate bill is abandoned, the American Medical Association's support for Reid's reform bill vanishes. Removing this single provision to reflect the reality that everyone knows will happen is not only enough to completely wipe out the alleged "reduction" in the deficit it would add an additional $100+ billion to it.

There are other examples as well. Reid's op-ed claims his bill "extends the solvency of Medicare by almost a decade." As this CBO memo points out, the bill counts the same dollars as revenue two different times.

Certain provisions in the bill raise revenue to Medicare through tax increases. Surplus revenue to Medicare can be given to the Treasury (decreasing the deficit) or loaned to the Treasury through the purchase of government bonds (increasing the Medicare trust fund). If it is used to increase the trust fund it becomes an asset to Medicare, thus extending Medicare's solvency, but it also is a liability to the federal government, which increases the deficit at some future date when it is redeemed. Each dollar of revenue can be used to either reduce the deficit or to increase the value of the Medicare trust fund, not both.

But Reid's bill uses the additional funds to Medicare to do both. It is another accounting gimmick used to hide the fiscal disaster that it is.

The Sun continues,

Gibbons and Republicans complain about the price of the bill while ignoring the skyrocketing costs of health care, not to mention the toll the uninsured take on the economy.

As we've written before, this bill does nothing to reduce the cost of health care, in fact it does quite the opposite. It increases taxes on insurance companies and providers of the medicines and devices that are essential to extending lives and improving their quality. In addition, it further insulates consumers of health care from the costs of health care, which serves to increase demand and drive up prices (an effect we discussed here). And Reid specifically and intentionally rejected tort reform, which is a proven method of reducing health care costs.

This bill is designed to increase costs and burdens on insurance companies while simultaneously reducing their ability to recoup rising costs or to charge premiums that reflect their insureds' use of care, which will eventually destroy private carriers.

Many Republican objections to the health care bill are ludicrous. We have yet to hear of a situation in which the government would come between a patient and a doctor. Republicans say they are afraid that health care will be “rationed,” yet they are oddly silent about the current system in which private health care insurers “ration” services all the time by limiting the medications, tests and treatments they will pay for.

Here is one such situation. There is a significant difference between government rationing and private sector rationing. While not defending insurance companies' denial of treatments, there is still the possibility that one may obtain the necessary funds to pay for a denied treatment or pursue some other method for getting it performed. However, when the government rations, that is it - there is no alternative avenue for obtaining the treatment, short of leaving the country.

Arnold Kling discusses another aspect - that rationing may not need to be overt. As consumption of health care increases it may overwhelm our ability to supply it. This is especially true with Medicare as reimbursements are well below those of private insurers (and sometimes below the provider's cost). Many doctors and hospitals can accept Medicare patients only because they are able to subsidize the lower rates by treating other patients.

The Sun concludes,

If Gibbons and his colleagues want to argue health care, they should quit using scare tactics. Tens of millions of Americans cannot afford health care and that is a drain on the economy and taxpayers. What do they plan to do about it? Oh, that’s right. They don’t have a plan.

From declaring that health care costs will bankrupt the country if nothing is done to claiming all of us are one illness away from personal bankruptcy to asserting that tens of millions cannot afford health care to demonizing the insurance companies, it is the proponents of the current reform bills that have employed scare tactics as their stock-in-trade. Many of their arguments in support of their legislation have been dishonest and deceptive.

The bills themselves do little to nothing to reduce the cost of health care and much to demonize and increase the costs to insurance carriers and other health care providers. They are filled with accounting gimmicks intentionally designed to game the CBO scoring system and hide their true costs. Wouldn't it be nice if we had a media that would evaluate these proposals based upon what they actually contain rather than being mouthpieces for their sponsors? Unfortunately, at the Sun we do not. What we have is Harry Reid's staff.

Turn Out the Lights...

Environmentalists are protesting construction of a new power plant in the Mojave Desert near the California-Nevada border.

On a strip of California's Mojave Desert within view of Primm, two dozen rare tortoises could stand in the way of a sprawling solar-energy complex in a case that highlights mounting tensions between wilderness conservation and the nation's quest for cleaner power.

[...]

The Sierra Club and other environmentalists want the complex relocated to preserve what they call a near-pristine home for rare plants and wildlife, including the protected tortoise, the Western burrowing owl and bighorn sheep.

"It's actually a good project. It's just located in the wrong place," said Ileene Anderson of the Center for Biological Diversity, a Tucson, Ariz.-based environmental group.

Environmental groups have for years been pushing us to develop more sources of renewable energy, yet they are protesting the very projects that will do just that. Virtually every area that is being considered for development of solar and other renewable sources is a "near-pristine" area. It makes one wonder if there is any project they would support.

A couple years ago there were 3 large coal-fired power plants planned for Nevada. Environmentalists and their political allies, notably Senator Reid, were able to exert enough pressure to force the power companies to shelve the projects. As our energy needs are increasing, we are actually reducing our ability to meet those increasing needs. We are not only not adding to our production capacity, we are decommissioning existing plants. Solar, wind and other renewables are not capable of satisfying all of the projected increases, much less make up for the capacity that is being taken offline.

I have a prediction, actually 2 predictions. One, some time in the next 10-15 years the lights in Las Vegas are going to start going off. Our energy needs are going to exceed our ability to supply and we are going to be subject to blackouts and brownouts. If the cap-and-trade bill passes this will happen even sooner.

Two, when this does happen, our politicians, including some of those who are currently opposing the construction of the coal-fired plants, will be condemning the power companies for not building sufficient capacity.

A Cold-Blooded Foreign Policy

Fouad Ajami offered a devastating critique of Obama's foreign policy in yesterday's WSJ.

With year one drawing to a close, the truth of the Obama presidency is laid bare: retrenchment abroad, and redistribution and the intrusive regulatory state at home. This is the genuine calling of Barack Obama, and of the "progressives" holding him to account. The false dichotomy has taken hold—either we care for our own, or we go abroad in search of monsters to destroy or of broken nations to build. The decision to withdraw missile defense for Poland and the Czech Republic was of a piece with that retreat in American power.

It is the liberal version of realpolitik.

In the time of Barack Obama, "engagement" with Iran's theocrats and thugs trumps the cause of Iranian democracy.

The world's tyrants rest easy and their enemies live in fear. Lebanon's Saad Hariri was forced to pay homage to his father's killers.

Everywhere there is on display evidence of the rogues taking the Obama administration's measure, and of America's vulnerable allies scurrying for cover. A fortnight ago, Lebanon's young prime minister made his way from Beirut to Damascus: Saad Hariri had come to pay tribute to the Syrian ruler.

[...]

No despot fears Mr. Obama, and no blogger in Cairo or Damascus or Tehran, no demonstrator in those cruel Iranian streets, expects Mr. Obama to ride to the rescue.

Throughout the campaign and after the election, Obama and his administration have seemed to harbor more animosity toward their domestic political opponents than to America's enemies. They have had harsher words for Rush Limbaugh, Fox News and "right-wing extremists" than for Islamic jihadists. They may even have been caught off-guard by the attacks at Fort Hood and on Northwest 253 because they actually believed their own pronouncements that if they were just nicer to our enemies they would leave us alone.

It is different today, there is a cold-bloodedness to American foreign policy. "Ideology is so yesterday," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton proclaimed not long ago, giving voice to the new sentiment.

History and its furies have their logic, and they have not bent to Mr. Obama's will. He had declared a unilateral end to the "war on terror," but the jihadists and their mentors are yet to call their war to a halt. From Yemen to Fort Hood and Detroit, the terror continues.

But to go by the utterances of the Obama administration and its devotees, one would have thought that our enemies were Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, not the preachers and masterminds of terror. The president and his lieutenants spent more time denigrating "rendition" and the Patriot Act than they did tracking down the terror trail and the latest front it had opened at the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen. Our own leaders spoke poorly of our prerogatives and ways, and they were heard the world over.

Under Mr. Obama, we have pulled back from the foreign world. We're smaller for accepting that false choice between burdens at home and burdens abroad, and the world beyond our shores is more hazardous and cynical for our retrenchment and our self-flagellation.

The world is a dangerous placeand in dire need of adult supervision. The US is the only nation capable of providing it. The lesser our role the greater that of the world's despots, tyrants and thugs.

Give 'Em Hell, Harry

Senator Reid gives the construction industry, already hit harder than nearly any other by the downturn, a lump of coal for Christmas. And, as we have all been told, "coal makes us sick."

In an attempt to reduce the negative impact of the bill on small business, firms with 50 or fewer employers were exempted from the fines and penalties for not offering insurance to their employees. However, page 76 of Reid's "Manager's Amendment" removes those exemptions for companies in the construction industry that employ as few as 5 people.

It makes one wonder why Senator Reid would single out this one industry - one that has been left reeling from the recession. A possible answer is provided here.

(via Nevada Taxpayer Guide)