Why We Have Rules

I have written often about human nature. It is obvious to me that any policy or political philosophy that ignores human nature is bound to fail. How do we know what human nature is?

Its most objective definition is actually stated in the reverse, in my opinion. That definition is the 10 Commandments. After all, who, if not The Creator, would be in a better position to evaluate the character of characters he created.

The first four command us not to do what we naturally do; extol ourselves. These commandments then posit that left to our own unchecked preferences we would all insist that we are god and prefer our own rules to those laid down by others. Thus, the other, laying down the rules must be far more powerful than mere mortals. You can  use your own experience to evaluate the success of the first four commandments.

The fifth commandment instructs us to honor our parents. I'm guessing that whoever wrote this commandment had noticed that children, particularly teens and young adults, routinely consider their parents to be complete idiots and often treat them accordingly. The author was likely the parent of more than one of these offensive beasts.

Later in life parents tend to become a burden to their children. Another appropriate time for the application of the commandment in an effort to ensure that the children, no longer young, are sufficiently afraid of other-world complications that they will abide by the injunction. You can use your own experience to evaluate the success of the fifth commandment.

Numbers 6,7 and 8 tell us what god thinks is part of our nature but commands that we not succumb to our nature and; murder, commit adultery and steal. Considering the current pace of murder, divorce and theft it looks to me, once again, as though The Creator knows his customer. Given the astonishing rate of incarceration and divorce in this country, it seems, once again that he understands our character.

Number 9, "Thou shalt not bear false witness..." points to the fact that many of us are liars. That is apparently so basic and pervasive a human trait that any important document tells us that we must swear that we are not lying.

It is so basic a feature in fact that several words and phrases have been developed to be used to persuade our friends, absent a sworn declaration to the contrary in support of the veracity of our assertion, that we are not lying. These words and phrases include, "frankly", "honestly", "to be perfectly honest", "to tell you the truth" and so on. Don't ever use them.

Number 10 addresses covetousness. As we have all observed humans are extremely jealous creatures. Disastrously so in many cases.

So, our Creator, the bible tells us, for reasons left completely unexplained, decided to create a bunch of creatures who:
1) Have little respect for anyone but themselves;
2) Treat their parents like crap;
3) Murder, steal and commit adultery;
4) Lie constantly; and
5) Live lives fueled by being jealous of their fellow men.

That is the judgment of human nature according to the 10 commandments. Although I refer to god and The Creator, I do so for convenience only. It is clear to me that there is no god and that some other method of creation produced us. Imagine the spectacular idiocy of knowingly creating a group that you know in advance will be severely flawed. Ridiculous. Whoever the authors of the old testament were, they were simply creating a blueprint for socialization using a bogey man as their weapon for forcing compliance. Not a unique tool. Every religion created before and after Judaism proceeds similarly.

The lesson here is that we cannot create policies and/or political philosophies that rely on honesty, respect, fair dealing or selflessness and expect them to succeed without the simultaneous application of severe penalties for transgression.

The spectacular abuse of every social program in this country is evidence enough to prove this point.

Socialism fails at every turn because it must rely on an absence of covetousness to succeed. Can not happen. Capitalism works because it appeals to our true nature. Covetousness, for example, is rewarded if it is accompanied by hard work. Of course, there are those who choose to substitute murder and/or dishonesty for hard work and are also rewarded. The Mob, for example.

So conduct yourselves accordingly. Plan for those you interact with to be liars and cheats if they can get away with it. Your planning will protect you from many of the usual human behaviors. Ronald Reagan may have said it best: Trust but verify. A few moments of thought will lead you to the conclusion that this phrase actually restates, politely, a very old saying: I don't trust him as far as I can throw him.

Capitalism's Creative Juice, the Threat of Failure

Over the last few years I have added a new name to my list of favorite opinion writers, Kevin Williamson of National Review. An article he published today is, in my opinion, a must read. He is an unabashed supporter of Capitalism and seems to me to understand its workings with more clarity than most.

"One of the rarely appreciated aspects of the capitalist model of innovation is that the wealthy subsidize the development of products for everybody else: The mobile phone is a case study in that process, as is the electric car, as indeed were ordinary cars. The firm that developed the first automotive air-conditioning and power windows was a high-end marque that despite its landmark innovations is no longer with us: Packard. The Bonfire of the Vanities–era financiers who carried the first mobile phones paid for much of the research and development that made them ordinary products for non-gazillionaires. My own financial means at the moment do not, alas, afford the purchase of the new plug-in hybrid from Porsche — which is a million-dollar supercar — but the technologies developed for the 918 Spyder will make their way through the marketplace the same way that the automatic transmission (Oldsmobile, 1940), the supercharger (Mercedes, 1921), and the independent suspension (Mercedes, 1933) went from being expensive options on cars for the rich to being standard equipment on your Hyundai."

This, to me, is an excellent insight and might be valuable knowledge for the Occupied crowd to have as they talk to each other on their cell phones castigating the evil rich. But for the evil rich they would have no cell phones or much else for that matter. Anyone remember the Lhada? No? That is because it no longer exists. It was a car built in the USSR. My sister bought one back in the 70's. Predictably the worst car ever manufactured. There is a good reason for its failure and Williamson explains it below.

Williamson's piece is actually a response to a comment made by the US Government's Chief Technology Officer. She said,

“Why can’t the federal government have websites and digital services that are awesome?”

He proceeds to answer her question. In his penultimate paragraph he explains:

"Non-performing federal agencies do not go bankrupt, federal bureaucracies do not see their shares tank when they do poorly, and government entities do not have their assets acquired by more effective competitors. Political bureaucracies are creatures doing violence to the evolutionary equilibrium — dinosaurs running amok in modern technological civilization, and Jurassic Park taught us how that turns out."

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/418162/bureaucracies-dinosaurs-run-amok-technological-civilization-kevin-d-williamson

 

Read the whole thing if you have the time and the interest.

Lies, Always

The gender wage gap has been getting a lot of press recently. Of course, as we all know if we give it a moment's thought, there is no such thing. Would any of you tolerate, absent seniority implications, doing the same job, with the same skills, dedication and outcome for less money than the person sitting beside you doing the same job? No you wouldn't. Do you know anyone who would? It has been the law in this country since 1965 that wage discrimination by gender is unlawful.

The famous "Women earn 77 cents for every dollar earned by men" is true. It is also entirely meaningless. That statistic is arrived at by adding up all wages earned by women and dividing that number by the number of women in the work force, doing the same for men and comparing the results. Given the career choices that women and men make for various reasons the outcome is entirely predictable. Teachers and Librarians are deemed to be less valuable to our economies than Doctors and Lawyers. They just are. I doubt it surprises anyone that Doctors earn more than Teachers.

The Left is heavily invested in their "War on Women" trope and so they cannot let this go. And so they do what they always do...Lie.

 http://www.nationalreview.com/article/416974/sarah-silverman-admits-she-made-wage-gap-story-then-calls-critics-maniacs-katherine

This reminds me of a recent Michelle Obama story. When asked during an interview with People Magazine last winter whether  she had experienced racism personally she answered in the affirmative and related the story of having gone to Target "in disguise" and being asked by another customer to reach something on a shelf for her. Implicit in her telling is that the customer just assumed she was a lowly Target worker because Michelle is black. It was a terrible experience. http://www.redstate.com/2014/12/19/michelle-obamas-imaginary-racism-target/

The following is copied from the linked story. This is how she told the story somewhat earlier during a Letterman appearance.

“That’s my Target run. I went to Target,” she said. “I thought I was undercover. I have to tell you something about this trip though. No one knew that was me because a woman actually walked up to me, right? I was in the detergent aisle, and she said — I kid you not — she said, ‘Excuse me, I just have to ask you something,’ and I thought, ‘Oh, cover’s blown.’ She said, ‘Can you reach on that shelf and hand me the detergent?’  I kid you not.”
As the audience laughed, she went on, “And the only thing she said — I reached up, ’cause she was short, and I reached up, pulled it down — she said, ‘Well, you didn’t have to make it look so easy.’ That was my interaction. I felt so good. … She had no idea who I was. I thought, as soon as she walked up — I was with my assistant, and I said, ‘This is it, it’s over. We’re going to have to leave.’ She just needed the detergent.”

So, a short person (color of skin not noted) asked a tall person  to get something off a high shelf for her.  Just a normal human interaction. No racism, no nothing. Michelle just "felt so good".

Disgraceful liars, all of them all of the time. There is an element of very good news here. A 50 year old black woman cannot point to a single act of racism in her life. That is real progress. We should be congratulating each other on our accomplishment. So congratulations. You will not hear that from these black libs because many of them would be out of business if they confessed to their lies.

They Never Take Ingenuity into Account

There have always been Malthusians among us, even before there was a Malthus.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_catastrophe

These are people who look at the present and extrapolate it to the future without considering that historically humans have shown that we learn as we go along. An essential part of being human is being creative and adaptive.

Despite the evidence of the last 200 years of technological breakthrough after breakthrough the same people continue to predict man-made disaster from over population and over industrialization without a moments regard for our innovative history.

At the link you will find an excellent exposition of the complete failure of  the Malthusians predictions since 1970. All the predictions were reasonable if you choose to think of the human race as one that never learns anything.

http://thefederalist.com/2015/04/24/seven-big-failed-environmentalist-predictions/

Enjoy.

Good Faith

Quoting from Black's Law Dictionary:

"The phrase 'good faith' is used in a variety of contexts, and its meaning varies somewhat with the context. Good faith performance ....excludes a variety of types of conduct characterized as involving "bad faith" because they violate community standards of decency, fairness or reasonableness..."

Good faith is a basic requirement for civil discourse. Without it there is no point in discussing anything. If your opponent in a debate is constantly lying about his position, or having changed his position fails to note that change and/or claims he has not changed positions at all it is impossible to reach any meaningful conclusion, other than that your opponent is acting in bad faith.

At the link http://pjmedia.com/eddriscoll/2015/05/04/nbc-geller-caused-texas-shooting/
is an excellent example of how and why liberals operate in bad faith. Always.

In a three month period of time Matthews' opinion changes 180 degrees. The only apparent  reason for the change is that the actor being described has changed from a left wing publication to a right wing activist.

Matthews does not bother to tell us; 1) What his original opinion was; 2) Why he changed his mind; nor 3) Which of his two diametrically opposed positions is his real opinion.

This is standard procedure on the left. See my earlier post regarding the 2013 SOTUS.

One of my favorite examples of this tactic is courtesy of the NY Times. When republicans controlled the Senate in the mid-1990's NYT editorialized that the Senate filibuster rules were the cornerstone of American political freedom. 10 years later, with republicans now in the minority and making things difficult for the democrat majority the NYT editorialized that the filibuster was an anti-democratic construct that threatened the very cornerstones of American political freedom. No reference made to the earlier editorial on exactly the same subject  and no explanation for their change of heart. Bad faith actors all. (http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/then-and-now-the-hilarious-hypocrisy-of-new-york-times-editorials-on-the-filibuster/article/2539617 is a story about a third incarnation of their thinking based on their 2005 position and their 2013 position)

It must be so when your only principle is the quest for power and your determination to make sure your opponents are kept from it.

Chris Matthews was a speech writer for Jimmy Carter during the latter's Presidency.

SOTU 2013

Back in January 2013 I was surprised to hear from my daughter (a 21 year old college student at the time) that she and her boyfriend had decided to watch Obama's SOTU speech. She told me what a wonderful speaker he is and that he had some good ideas. I was shocked. Below is my deconstruction of several parts of the speech written for her benefit.

"Verbatim excerpts from 2013 State of the Union speech with my annotations in italics. http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-02-12/politics/37059380_1_applause-task-free-enterprise

In 2011, Congress passed a law saying that if both parties couldn't agree on a plan to reach our deficit goal, about a trillion dollars' worth of budget cuts would automatically go into effect this year. These sudden, harsh, arbitrary cuts would jeopardize our military readiness. They'd devastate priorities like education, energy, and medical research. They would certainly slow our recovery, and cost us hundreds of thousands of jobs. That's why Democrats, Republicans, business leaders, and economists have already said that these cuts, known here in Washington as "the sequester," are a really bad idea. A really bad idea proposed by Obama, not that he would do other than pretend he had nothing to do with it. http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/sperling-admits-obama-misled-debate-president-did-propose-sequester_705015.html

After years of talking about it, we are finally poised to control our own energy future. We produce more oil at home than we have in 15 years. Yes we do. However this is in spite of, rather than because of Obama. We are producing less oil on Federal Lands which he controls access to. The increase has come exclusively from state and private land production. http://eenews.net/public/Greenwire/2012/02/27/4 We have doubled the distance our cars will go on a gallon of gas, and the amount of renewable energy we generate from sources like wind and solar – with tens of thousands of good, American jobs right  http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/13/us-usa-campaign-green-idUSBRE83C08D20120413 to show for it. We produce more natural gas than ever before – and nearly everyone's energy bill is lower because of it. And over the last four years, our emissions of the dangerous carbon pollution that threatens our planet have actually fallen. Yes, they have fallen without any need for Kyoto or any other climate change nonsense regulation. Our emissions have fallen because the economy stinks and we have found and produced fantastic amounts of cheap natural gas causing the conversion of many factories from coal (dirty) to gas (much cleaner) http://news.yahoo.com/ap-impact-co2-emissions-us-drop-20-low-174616030--finance.html  Keep in mind that most of the new gas is available because of fracking which Obama and his minions oppose! Does that stop this lying piece of crap from taking credit for it? Of course not.

But for the sake of our children (the use of the preceeding phrase should always cause you to become more vigilant. It actually means that we are going to propose limiting your freedom and you would never go for it unless we invoke “the children”) and our future, we must do more to combat climate change. Yes, it's true that no single event makes a trend. But the fact is, the 12 hottest years on record have all come in the last 15 ( Maybe. There are a lot of questions about the baseline data and since the world leaders in this research refuse to release their raw data, in stark violation of non-proprietary scientific endeavors,  who knows. There is one thing we do know if we concede the assertion. 11 of the 12 took place between 1998 and 2007 http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/12/071213101419.htm which means that only one has occurred in the last 6 years.   Heat waves, droughts, wildfires, and floods – all are now more frequent and intense complete nonsense http://www.prisonplanet.com/global-warming-doublespeak-snowmageddon-blizzards-are-part-of-heating-trend.html . We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades nonsense http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drought_in_the_United_States , and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence. Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science – and act before it's too late.

As long as countries like China keep going all-in on clean energy, so must we. Right. Researchers from Harvard University and Tsinghua University have found that the People's Republic could meet all of its electricity demands from wind power by 2030.^[5]
Despite this, Wen Jiabao Premier of China stated in a March 5, 2012 report that China will end the "blind expansion" into wind and solar energy, instead developing nuclear power, hydropower, and shale gas.^[6]  Why? Because solar and wind are unreliable and unpredictable. We don’t know when the sun will shine or when the wind will blow.

That's why my Administration will keep cutting red tape and speeding up new oil and gas permits. More lies.  http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/04/politics/fact-check-oil-gas/  . Whenever Obama talks about this stuff you must keep in mind that his stated goal is that energy prices of all kinds should rise dramatically. Here he is talking about electricity http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlTxGHn4sH4 )

Indeed, much of our new-found energy is drawn from lands and waters that we, the public, own together. ( As stated above, almost none of the new production comes from Federal Land and, overall production is down on Federal lands that “we, the public, own together”.

Study after study shows that the sooner a child begins learning, the better he or she does down the road. But today, fewer than 3 in 10 four year-olds are enrolled in a high-quality preschool program. Most middle-class parents can't afford a few hundred bucks a week for private preschool. And for poor kids who need help the most, this lack of access to preschool education can shadow them for the rest of their lives. enough said on this in our earlier communication.

Through tax credits, grants, and better loans, we have made college more affordable for millions of students and families over the last few years. But taxpayers cannot continue to subsidize the soaring cost of higher education. (Costs are soaring because of tax credits, loans and grants. It is the same phenomenon as we see in the medical care business. Government money skews the economics of the market. If there were fewer students able to “afford” college then the colleges would be forced to be more competitive. Easy government money means they do not have to be competitive so they hire more and more people to do less and less work. Ultimately, it is these poor saps taking out these loans who pay the price for “affordable” college”.

But today, a full-time worker making the minimum wage earns $14,500 a year. Even with the tax relief we've put in place, a family with two kids that earns the minimum wage still lives below the poverty line. Minimum wage is paid for entry level jobs. Your first job might be minimum wage but if you are a decent employee, an employee your employer considers valuable, your wages will increase steadily. You saw that dynamic in action yourself at City Tan. You did a good job and got raises because your employer didn’t want you looking elsewhere for a better paying job. As a high school student working part-time or a recent graduate working full-time at an entry level job you should not be married with two kids! So, if you spend year after year making minimum wage it is your fault, not the fault of the minimum wage and making that wage more “livable” will make the problem worse, not better. Also note the real agenda here, as with mandatory pre-school. Most union contracts define wage levels as a function of the minimum wage http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061111000556AAr0KHu  so a raise in the minimum wage means an increase for almost all union members, a democrat constituency. I negotiated a union contract years ago and this is exactly how it works.

Tonight, let's declare that in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full-time should have to live in poverty, and raise the federal minimum wage to $9.00 an hour. This single step would raise the incomes of millions of working families. Indeed. It will also raise prices on many things, including many that this guy now making $9/hr will have to buy since business owners do not take the money for the increase out of their pockets, they charge more for goods and services to make up for their increased costs.

When any Americans – no matter where they live or what their party – are denied that right (to vote) simply because they can't wait for five, six, seven hours just to cast their ballot, we are betraying our ideals.

We should follow the example of a North Miami woman named Desiline Victor. When she arrived at her polling place, she was told the wait to vote might be six hours. And as time ticked by, her concern was not with her tired body or aching feet, but whether folks like her would get to have their say. Hour after hour, a throng of people stayed in line in support of her. Because Desiline is 102 years old. And they erupted in cheers when she finally put on a sticker that read "I Voted." ( Wow, what a story. Ancient woman goes to vote on election day and stands in line for hours and hours. Terrible. Of course, that is not what happened. What happened was that some democrat booster wanted to make sure this woman voted and so took her to a polling station on the first day of early voting, not election day. There was no reason for her to be there at all. Early voting was intended to allow people who would not be in their district on election day to cast their ballots early. Dems have since used early voting to ensure as many of their voters as possible cast their votes without the excuses for failing to vote on election day coming into play. “had to work late; kids had a soccer game” etc. There are very few polling places open for early voting and even they would be adequate but for democrats taking advantage of the system. If they had an ounce of decency they would have arranged an absentee ballot for this 102 year old woman and she could have voted without ever leaving her home. By the way, what sort of people stand in line for hours ahead of a 102 year-old women? Would you not have given up your place to her? Do you know anyone who would not have done the same? Me either.  http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/a-102-year-old-face-of-voting-delays-at-the-state-of-the-union/ 

In the linked article you will see that the longest wait times in the country on election day were actually in Florida. How long? 3 hours, no; 2 hours, no; 1 hour, no; 45 minutes, yes and that was the longest wait time in the entire country! The article does say that blacks and Hispanics had the longest wait times. Big surprise since a much greater proportion of them live in urban areas which are, by definition, more crowded.

So, that’s all for now. Please note that links to CNN, Reuters and AP are links to media wildly in favor of Obama so they do their best to minimize his transgressions but even they, as you have seen from reading the links, have to reluctantly concede that he is lying.

Love…Me

Human Nature 2, Civility and Gridlock

You will often hear politicians and pundits complaining about government gridlock.

Anytime you hear this be assured that the speaker either has no understanding of the nature of the history of the founding of our Constitutional Republic or is a Democrat trying to shut up any opposition to their grand plans. Unfortunately, usually both.

Our system of government is designed to be slow and cumbersome. Checks and balances are in place to prevent humans from being human. It is supposed to be very difficult to move legislation through the House and the Senate and get a President to sign it into law.
If it was easy the route from a Constitutional Republic to an Authoritarian State administered by the political elites would have been a quick one. We are seeing, in Obama's Executive actions, what the Founders were trying to prevent. Not being able to get Congress to go along with his wishes he has invoked "Gridlock" (the prescribed state of normal for a Constitutional Republic) in order to justify his actions.

It is demoralizing to watch supposedly informed policy makers and their critics display their utter lack of understanding of our Constitutional Republic. The Founders were very clear that they were creating a system where getting anything done politically would be very difficult. Persuasion and compromise would be the only paths to legislation. That was the point. Every new law infringes our liberty. It was never their intention that we should have 51 legislatures filled with career politicians doing nothing but passing laws day and night.

Civility has never been part of American politics. Today whenever the admonition to be civil in politics is issued it is from the mouths of Democrats and actually means Republicans should shut up and go along with whatever it is Democrats want to do.

Politics were so "civil" around the time of the Founding that Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr fought a duel with pistols. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burr%E2%80%93Hamilton_duel  Hamilton died of his wound.

Things were so civil when Lincoln was elected President that political cartoons portrayed him as a monkey.

In 1856 things were so civil..."In 1856, a South Carolina Congressman, Preston Brooks, nearly killed Sumner on the Senate floor two days after Sumner delivered an intensely anti-slavery speech called "The Crime Against Kansas".^[2] In the speech, Sumner characterized the attacker's cousin,^[3][4] South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler, as a pimp for slavery.<sup>[5]" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Sumner

Brooks never suffered any real consequences for his attempted murder. 

 " Although an attempt to oust him from the House of Representatives failed, and he immediately resigned his seat, he received only token punishment ( a $300 fine. A fairly large sum at the time) and was re-elected by the people of South Carolina." http://www.ushistory.org/us/31e.asp

In fact, Southern newspapers  applauded his actions and suggested there should be much more of the same.

George W Bush was routinely vilified in and out of the press as a Nazi, warmonger, war criminal and everything else under the sun by every Democrat with a mouth.

"Politics ain't bean bag" has been a saying in active use since 1895.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finley_Peter_Dunne

Civility and Gridlock lamentations have only one goal, as I stated earlier: To bully us into going along. My advice? Don't.</sup>

Human Nature 1

Human nature is many things. Among the most important of its components:

a) The further from destitution we are removed the lazier we become. It was not long ago, perhaps 300 years, that the vast majority of humans were engaged in agriculture in some form or other. We had to make sure we had enough to eat. Now, far removed from any threat of starvation, at least in the West, we are a fat, lazy and entitled civilization.

b) The further we get from an embarrassing or troubling event the smaller its impact on our behavior. Our heart-felt apologies and pledges to never do "that" again lose their urgency and so the old event has an ever decreasing impact on our current behavior.

c) Honesty and integrity are highly valued characteristics. Like so many things of great value, diamonds, gold and beauty, for example, they are in short supply. Be honest, have integrity and you will be highly valued. I do not mean this in a monetized way, although that may come to pass.

Reporting as it is now known and ideological blinders

 At the link below is an article that appeared in the Boston Globe. It describes LSU's economic struggles in an era of shrinking State support.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2015/04/23/lsu-draft-insolvency-plan-jindal-cuts-loom/e2dMpep32tc3GgVU99MHtJ/story.html#comments

What I consider noteworthy about the report is the editorializing of the piece's final sentence:

"State cuts to higher education have sent tuition soaring across the United States, adding to the more than $1.2 trillion in student-loan debt. "

It is manifestly not reduced government support that has caused tuition to "soar". Reduced government support has caused revenues to fall. "Soaring" tuition rates are the remedy of choice by administrators who refuse to cut costs and would rather burden their students with the costs of their own comfort.

It is a combination of an explosion in non-academic (read administrative) hiring:

" Between 1975 and 2005, total spending by American higher educational institutions, stated in constant dollars, tripled, to more than $325 billion per year. Over the same period, the faculty-to-student ratio has remained fairly constant, at approximately fifteen or sixteen students per instructor. One thing that has changed, dramatically, is the administrator-per-student ratio. In 1975, colleges employed one administrator for every eighty-four students and one professional staffer—admissions officers, information technology specialists, and the like—for every fifty students. By 2005, the administrator-to-student ratio had dropped to one administrator for every sixty-eight students while the ratio of professional staffers had dropped to one for every twenty-one students."
 http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/septemberoctober_2011/features/administrators_ate_my_tuition031641.php?page=all

and the apparent refusal of college administrations to do what families and businesses do when revenue decreases. Decrease spending. Not for these empire builders, nor for their like-minded friends in the press.

It is no surprise that democrat activists with by-lines, also known as Reporters when Republicans are in office, push this line. It has two objectives, in no particular order of importance;
1) Blame Bobby Jindal, the Republican Governor of Louisiana and,
2) Continue laying the groundwork for forgiving student loans.

Obamacare, Pelosi, Garrett et al

Following the implosion of Obamacare has been at once great fun and very frustrating.

Great fun because it almost always is when liberal programs bump into reality. Ah yes, those brilliant technocrats. They know what is best and how to accomplish it.

It is always the same of course; Have meetings, give speeches, lie as needed to persuade your listeners that you are not doing what you are doing. And then the fun part, ducking the blowback. They are not doing quite as well at the last part as usual and it is great fun to watch them all squirm.

The frustrating part is the apparent cluelessness of many of the people interviewing the latest crop of miscreants.

There is the clip of Nancy Pelosi being grilled by Major Garrett about the "Big Lie". Her answers are incoherent, as usual. She prattles on about the goal of the ACA being to make sure everyone has the coverage they need.  Garrett fails to ask the obvious...Really? 60 year old couples need maternity and pediatric coverage? Goodness, how did we survive not having coverage we cannot ever, ever use?

Any structure built on a financial footing so deceitful that in order to charge customers what you really need to charge them to make your product work you have to include phantom benefits because you could not otherwise sell it is doomed.

Obama the neophyte

Our hapless President declares that we have no right to meddle in Iran's internal politics. Aside from the disgrace of not supporting the protesters the idea that we will not be accused of meddling is so preposterous as to be funny, if it wasn't so sad.

Does Obama really not understand that the leaders of Iran, and the third world in general do not actually rely on reality to make their pronouncements? They simply say what they want to regardless of the facts. Think Baghdad Bob.

The Iranians immediately do the obvious: Declare that we are meddling in their internal politics. Brilliant.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090617/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iran_election

Giving away money with no spending instructions is not wise

I have read a lot of stories recently about cancelled junkets to Los Vegas and elsewhere. The cancellers are recipients of government bail outs and the public, rightfully outraged about the need for and/or usefulness of the bailouts, made a fuss about the lavish plans.

Our political class, which gave away the money with no restrictions that I am aware of, suddenly becomes outraged. Righteous indignation abounds.

Who doesn't know that if you give someone a bag of money with no instructions on how it is to be spent it may not be spent the way you might have hoped. Blame the givers, not the givees.

I would suggest that we all take a step back and ask ourselves what difference it makes how the money is spent. The point is, it has to be spent. Spending a few million in a Las Vega resort is a far better and more direct stimulus than keeping it in the bank's vault.

Confessing to Strategic not Moral Errors

Obama confessed to a "mistake" today. He will quickly learn that the leader of the free world does not make such confessions.

In reading MSM coverage of the Daschle debacle it is noteworthy that nowhere (as far as I have seen) is his "mistake" called what it is: A willing, knowing effort to illegally avoid paying income taxes. Can anyone really believe that after a million years in Congress he wasn't aware of the rules? Nonsense. How much time do Senators spend crafting ethics laws and dealing with what is and is not income to them so that they can endeavor to pay as little income tax as possible? How long was he a Senator. What a lying sack of crap.

Obama actually is admitting only to a strategic error, not the moral error of considering a tax cheat an appropriate candidate for a US cabinet position. Of course, we already knew that, didn't we.

Mr. Geithner also made a "mistake". Yes, of course he did. After having signed an agreement with his employer, IMF, that clearly stated that he understood he was being paid a sum that was to be passed on to the government in payment of Social Security and Medicare taxes he kept the money. His Turbo Tax error argument has been strongly rebutted by Turbo Tax and a zillion "experts".

Here too, Obama admits to a strategic error, not the moral error of considering a tax cheat an appropriate candidate for a US cabinet position. Irony of ironies, we now have a willful, knowing tax cheat as the Treasury Secretary.

Now that is Change!

Stimulus - Not - Letter to Congressman Mitchell

Dear Mr. Mitchell,

The purpose of this note is to encourage you to vote against the "stimulus" bill.

To put it most simply, we have engaged in vast amounts of deficit spending over the last 8 years. It did not prevent a recession. More of the same will obviously not cure one.

As is well known, this manner of economic stimulation did not work in the 30's, 60's or 70's. Even Keynes said himself after the FDR effort in the 30's that massive government spending is not an effective way to stimulate an economy in severe downturn.

This bill has turned into a massive pork barrel and it will do no good to the reputations of any of you who vote for it.

We often make mistakes when we are in a hurry. This is no time for mistakes. A yes vote will mortgage the futures of our children to extent not previously seen.

As has been pointed out in the "disappeared" CBO report and is confirmed as less severe in the current one, a great deal of the spending called for will not be immediate.

I urge you to caution your colleagues that they are embarking on a catastrophic course from which recovery will be difficult.

The most likely solution to the current problem is to let the markets do their work. It is government interference in the mortgage markets that produced the problem we are dealing with in the first place. More government interference will only delay the market correction that is essential to the business cycle and recovery.

If we want to help those with mortgages they can't afford, let's do it. If we want to help the unemployed, let's support them. We don't have to spend a trillion dollars to do it.

Good long-term jobs come from the private sector, not government construction programs. Stimulate the housing industry with buyer tax credits. Support business friendly policies and tax cuts. They work.

Yours truly,
Michael Markowitz

What Obama voters don't know

I have been thinking a lot about the election. Trying to find a suitable answer to a simple question: How could voters (other than those voting to confiscate for themselves some of the wealth of those more successful than them) possibly vote for Obama if they knew anything about him? The only answer I could come up with is that they couldn't. They must know little about him. As has been obvious for some time the MSM didn't bother to do much educating of the electorate where Obama was concerned.

A recent study by Zogby http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.cfm?ID=1641#Anchor-37902 makes three things clear:

1) Obama voters know (or care to know) little about him;
2) Almost half of them are so ill-informed that they are unaware that the Democrats have controlled Congress for the last two years. Bring back the poll tax please. There has to be a way to stop these people from voting.
3) An overwhelming majority of these same voters were very well informed about various Republican ticket "scandals". No surprise there thanks to an in the tank MSM.

The study was commissioned by the people who made this video http://howobamagotelected.com/ Watch it. Its worthwhile, if a bit tedious.

Obama , America

The land of the free and the home of the brave died today. The less well off have been convinced that they can bleed the wealth from those better off. This has not and never will work.

Election Day

Finally it's here. Election Day 2008. Is it really possible that we will elect a man like Obama. I have written about him several times before. At least we won't have to deal with his serial lying anymore, one way or another.

You may have heard the clip from his January 8, 2008 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board where he assured them any new coal fired electric generating stations would be bankrupted by his Cap and Trade program. He was very pleased with himself.

I hope he has not considered that the people who will be hurt by the rising electricity costs resulting from his program will not be me and my rich friends. It hardly matters to us what electricity costs. It will be all the middle class and lower people he claims to want to help so much. You know those tax credits and transfer payments that are going to make their lives so much better? They'll be used to pay for electricity. Wow, what a boon to humanity.

If he has considered the impact of his proposed policy and would go ahead anyway, so much the worse.

Through the Looking Glass

I'm not sure when it happened, but it has. We now live in Alice's world.

We are being told with that unless we agree to spend/lend/guarantee $700,000,000,000 to big financial institutions our economy will melt down. We have all heard the clarion cry "There's no credit!!!".

At the same time we are told banks aren't lending to each other. What could they possibly have to lend to each other? They have no money. Right?

Perhaps they should give prospective borrowers the phone numbers for Citibank, Bank of America and Goldman Sachs. These three entities have raised $45,000,000,000 in new capital over the last couple of weeks and have been buying everything in sight; MerrilLynch, Washington Mutual, Lehman Brothers and Wachovia to name several.

What has actually happened is that solvent banks have raised the interest rate to insolvent banks. Makes sense. You have more risk, you charge more interest. The converse is, after all, what has caused the situation in the first place.

The people in charge of the solution, like Barney Franks and Chris Dodd, created the problem in the first place. Imagine. You can actually see video at YouTube of Barney Frank et al in 2003, 2004 and 2005 rejecting calls for more oversight of Fanny/Freddie. Insisting they were doing a great job. Amazing.

Michelle Obama Now and Then

Michelle in her own words:

“My piece of the American Dream is a blessing hard won by those who came before me driven by the same conviction that drove my dad to get up an hour early each day to painstakingly dress himself for work — the same conviction that drives the men and women I’ve met all across this country…That’s why I love this country.” August 2008.

“We’re still living in a time and in a nation where the bar is set, right?…You start working hard and sacrificing and you think you’re getting close to that bar, you’re working and you’re struggling, and then what happens? They raise the bar…keep it just out of reach.”May 2008.

“For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country, because it feels like hope is finally making a comeback.” February 2008.

Remarkable transformation eh? Do you have any doubt which is the real Michelle? I didn't think so.

Obama the Diplomat

When Dubya was running in 2000 some reporter asked him the name of the President of Somewhere or Other. He mangled it, if he guessed at all. I don't remember. What I do remember are the ramifications. "Obviously", all the lefties said "this guy isn't ready to be President". They may have been right.

Yesterday Obama suggested, among other things, that the UN Security Council should convene immediately to discuss and pass resolutions to stop the war in Georgia.

This Columbia and Harvard educated lawyer is apparently not aware that Russia has a veto in the UN Security Council and there will be no resolutions passed until the Bear (note to Obama: Russia has been known as the Bear for a couple of hundred years, at least) achieves its goals in Georgia.

Unremarkably, one of our former Ambassadors to the UN, Governor Richardson of New Mexico, a wannabee VP for Obama, is also unaware of Russia's veto, having suggested the same prescription as Obama for stopping the war.

The well of these peoples' ignorance apparently has no bottom. Is it really possible that the dems would elect someone without even the most basic understanding of the most important (if utterly useless) international institution in the world?

Of course it is. They do not appear to care about anything but beating Republicans, no matter what the cost to the country and the world.

Update 8/27/08: Apparently nobody mentioned the Russian Security Council Veto in the last few weeks. He again called for the Council to convene on the subject. Wow. What a bubble this guy and his advisers live in. It is so hard to fathom that I find myself making excuses for him: What if he actually knows about the veto power but figures Americans are so stupid they don't know about it so he says it anyway. Let's hope so. It would certainly be the lesser of two evils.

Obama's AmeriKa

"America is …, uh, is no longer, uh … what it could be, what it once was. And I say to myself, I don’t want that future for my children.” Obama answering a question from a 7 year old girl. The question? "Why do you want to be president" on August 7, 2008.

Mr. Obama your negativity really doesn't have to be used to depress children. You might have considered an answer that shows that you recognize where you are and who you are talking to. How about, "I want to be President because I am sure that this, the greatest country in the history of the world, can be even greater. I intend to help make it so. That is why I want to be President".

By the way, when was it "what it once was"? Could it have been in the age of American slavery? How about the Depression? No wait, how about in the 40's when we were fighting all over the world. Or maybe it was during the Jim Crow 50's. Oh, I know, it was the pre-Civil Rights Act/Voting Rights Act 60's. No? Ok, how about the mid-60's to mid 70's when we were involved in Vietnam, sending conscripts to their deaths by the thousands and enduring the Arab Oil Boycott. Hm, no good either. Well how about the Jimmy Carter 70's. You remember those right? 20% interest rates, double digit inflation. The "Misery Index" and our folks held hostage in Iran? Not then either..hm.

Well I know 1980-88 is out of the question. Can't have been any good going on then. After all, we were being protested all over the world for stationing nukes in England and Europe and pointing them at the Russians.

The 90's? Didn't sound so great in your books. Bunch of greedy white people running the world, you know how it was. We also know with great certainty that it cannot possibly have been during the 2000's what with Bush and Cheney running roughshod over the Constitution.

Looks like, on balance, it must have been the 90's so why not let Mrs. Clinton run the show again since she and hubby were in charge for almost the entire decade?


"I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal." Obama on the day he became the presumptive nominee.

In an earlier post I commented on Eugene Robinson's assertion that white people calling Obama arrogant or presumptuous were really saying he was an uppity black man. Anyone who could utter a statement like Obama's above is such a complete narcissist that the words arrogant and presumptuous do not properly describe his hubris.

Obama, Stupendously Stupid

I don't know how much more of this I can take.

Now Obama tells us that we are going to eliminate all the oil we import from the Middle East and Venezuela in 10 years. How? Well, we are going to invest $150 billion of your money in research and development and have the private sector go full out to develop alternative energy. Senator, you can't make the private sector do anything. Typical democrat. As I wrote earlier about John Edwards and Hillary, they all seem to think that the presidency is a dictatorship.

Senator, billions in subsidies have gone to wind and solar power undertakings over the years. They are inefficient and uneconomic in their current states. Billions are being invested by the private sector to improve the technology for both. This is being done because PROFITS are forecast. That is the reason most things get done. Not by presidential fiat.

Racism

Eugene Robinson had a column published in our local rag, The Arizona Republic, yesterday. In it he makes the usual assertions that people who call Obama arrogant or presumptuous are racists.

His piece got me to thinking about stereotypes. He doesn't realize that he is dealing not in white racist stereotypes but in black stereotypes. White people, in my experience, don't think much about race. There is no reason they should. Their race or color doesn't adversely affect their lives, generally speaking. Its a non-issue.

Black people, it seems to me on the other hand, are constantly aware of their color. It is an essential element of their self image. Unfortunately they seem not to understand that racial identity does not motivate white people, particularly not conservative white people.

We refer to Obama as arrogant and presumptuous because he is, independent of his skin color. He lectures us about things that we are all well aware of. For example, inflating tires. Are you driving around on half-inflated tires? Of course not, you aren't an idiot. He believes you are. Arrogant.

Has any other presidential candidate had his own seal? No. Arrogant. Presumptuous.

Has any other presidential candidate replaced the American Flag on the tail of his airplane with his own campaign logo? No. Arrogant.

Has any other presidential candidate ever gone on a world tour giving campaign speeches in foreign countries? No. Arrogant.

What being arrogant and presumptuous has to do with race is precisely nothing. Those who believe it does are projecting their own race based self-identification on white people. Its misplaced.

The syndrome is no different than many of my fellow Jews blaming any set-back and/or insult on anti-Semitism; homosexuals blaming any set-back and/or insult on homophobia; fat people blaming any set-back and/or insult on fatophobia. You get the picture.

Barack and the Truth Revisited

In an earlier post I had declared that he is a liar. I am more convinced than ever he is one of the most cynical and devious politicians to run for national office in my adult lifetime.

In recent correspondence with a Dem acquaintance I mentioned that it appears Obama, although a lecturer in Constitutional Law, is unfamiliar with the opening words of the Declaration of Independence.

I wrote, "On June 30, 2008 Obama gave a silly "patriotism" speech. This was a prepared speech. I assume his regular speechwriters wrote it, with or without his help. Obama is a Columbia and Harvard educated Constitutional Law lecturer. Apparently he doesn't know that his statement regarding the Declaration of Independence is wrong:

"I remember, when living for four years in Indonesia as a child, listening to my mother reading me the first lines (emphasis added) of the Declaration of Independence--"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Reproduced below is the actual language of the Declaration.
"The Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies
Presented by the Indiana University School of Law—Bloomington
The Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen ColoniesIn CONGRESS, July 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve..."

Obama's "first lines" are actually the first lines of the second paragraph. In the ordinary course of things this wouldn't be very important. Here it is and I will tell you why.

In the first place he is supposed to be a Constitutional Law scholar. Lack of familiarity with the DofI makes one wonder what he doesn't know about things he has not spent years studying.

There is a more important aspect to this. Imagine your mother had read you something when you were 10 years old or so that was so important that you remembered it 36 years later at 46 years old. Likely you would also have remembered it when you were 25 years old and studying Constitutional Law or 14 years old studying High School Civics.

As with all of us, regarding memories so important, when you read the DofI for yourself you would have said to yourself, "Gee, Mom got it wrong". You would never forget that would you? No, you wouldn't.

What all this means is that Obama made the story up. He is a liar of the first order.

We Have Won

The AP has confirmed today that the war in Iraq is being won. Their headline:

"Analysis: US now winning Iraq war that seemed lost"

Yes, it seemed lost to those willing to lose and those who hoped to lose. Not to those determined to win.

Not surprisingly the article mentions President Bush only to criticize his "Mission Accomplished" speech and never uses the word "surge". Apparently neither had much to do with the outcome.

Its nice to see the enemy, AP, finally surrender. They have been doing so much for so long to try to win the war for the bad guys.

It will be amusing to watch the reactions of the surrender caucus.

When will Hillary apologize for calling Petraeus a liar. Right, never.

When will Harry Reid take to the Senate floor and declare his 2007 and 2008 declarations of our loss to have been mistakes? Never.

When will John Kerry take to the Senate floor to declare his gas bag speeches of 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008 to have been wrong? Never.

When will MoveOn.org take out a full page ad in the NYT to declare that their "General Betray Us" ad of 2007 was a mistake? Never.

These are the same people who demanded that President Bush own up to his mistakes. Hypocrites of the first order all.

Several commentators have pointed out that the AP story seems to coincide with Obama's trip to Iraq. Are they preparing the ground for a narrative that has Obama's visit turning the tide? I guess we'll see.

An examination of gas prices

I am told that a year ago gas was $2.00/gallon. Today it is $4.00/gallon.

My expectation was that as prices rose the economy would grind to a halt and I have been surprised that it hasn't happened.

Looking at the figures, I think I can see why.

If you drive a car that gets 15mpg and commute 20 miles to work each day you have to drive 200 miles a week. The cost difference to you with gas at $5.00/gallon is $8.40 per day if $2.00 per gallon is your base line.

Is it likely that most drivers have discretionary income of $8.40 per day. Do you?

There was a story in the AZ Republic yesterday reporting on the increase in public transit ridership. The reporter described it as having "soared" 18% in recent months.

She went on to describe the two types of service offered, express and traditional stating that you could ride the express for "a small amount more". Traditional is $1.25, express is $1.75. So in this case a 40% increase is a "small amount" but increase ridership 18% and it has "soared".

Barack and the Truth

I have written before about Barack's problems with the truth.

Today he has set a new standard for himself and truthfulness. He is a liar.

Does he really believe that we are willing to believe that some recent events have caused Wright to go off his rocker? Does he really believe that we are willing to believe that sermons from 2001 and 2003 were aberrant departures from his usual form and content?

Does he really believe that we are willing to believe that the very first sermon that so impressed him, which he used a line from for the title of his first book, which described a miserable world run by greedy white people, was a departure from his normal sermon?

What a bunch of nonsense.

At best, he was deceived by a vicious racist for 20 years. Says a lot for his judgement.

At worst, he couldn't care less what Wright says or said. He joined Wright's church for his "street cred". A cold, calculating opportunist.

On another subject, Michelle Obama gave a speech this past Friday night, somewhere in Indiana I think. Her usual litany of complaints about this crummy country of ours. One was particularly amusing. She spoke about the crushing load of student loans which makes it impossible for the people who worked hard for those degrees to use them in the careers they had hoped to pursue.

Among those she listed as impossible to pursue because it doesn't pay enough to enable you to pay off your student loans; Community Organizer. What was her husband's profession? Community Organizer. How can anyone be that stupid? I don't know.

What is even more curious is that there are actually people who don't notice how dishonest this pair of ungrateful beneficiaries of the greatest country on earth are.

Hillary and the Truth

Those of us on the right are amused and puzzled at the left's recent discovery that Bill and Hill are world class dissemblers. They are, as we have long known, embodiments of the old joke
"Q: How do you know when a salesman is lying?"
"A: His lips are moving".

I wrote in an earlier post about Bill's craveness in this regard. A few months ago he loudly proclaimed that among Hill's first acts as Prez would be to send him and Bush 41 around the world on a mission to repair our reputation, torn asunder by the execrable W. Of course, Bush 41 hadn't been consulted on his new mission and issued a prompt statement supportive of 43. Bill never even considered that in the Internet age his assertion wouldn't stand up for 5 minutes. He just didn't care.

Over the last few months Hill has been talking about her harrowing arrival in Bosnia in 1996 amid sniper fire. She described being hurried across the tarmac to her car and the cancellation of the scheduled greeting ceremony because of the danger presented by the snipers.

For reasons best known to the MSMers who accompanied her on that trip, filmed and reported on it, they waited months to contradict her. But contradict her they have. Showing her, once again (but perhaps for the first time to her loyalists) to be the craven liar she is. No snipers, no rush across the tarmac, no cancelled greeting ceremony.

As one commentator mentioned today, to her it likely isn't a lie. She may well have convinced herself it happened (think John Kerry and the Cambodian memory "seared, seared into my brain" that never happened). That is suggested as the only reason she would, in this age of instant verification, have described a version of an event witnessed in full by TV cameras, that never happened.

Rush has a better explanation and it is consistent with reality. The MSM rarely challenges Dems and they have become complacent in the knowledge that they can say almost anything and those who get their info from the MSM will never know that they have made it all up.

For some reason, after almost 4 months of sitting on it, the MSM finally got up the nerve to call Hill what she is: a liar.

Obama and the Truth

Barak Obama has demonstrated repeatedly throughout his campaign that he is among the most cynical politicians we have seen in a long time. His message is Hope and Change. The only thing he really Hopes is that we are all too stupid to listen to what he is saying. The only thing he wants to Change is his status, from Senator to President.

His most recent demonstration of Hope is that he Hopes we will not notice that when confronted about his pastor's outrageous anti-americanism he claimed it was news to him. The reason he Hopes we won't notice is that a few days later when his original explanation became completely untenable he confessed to being aware of it, but said that he didn't agree with it.

His most recent manifestation of Change is the changing description of his grandmother's comments about being afraid of black men on the street. The recent Change differs in very important ways from his description of the same event in his autobiography. In that telling she was afraid of one black man who she felt threatened by because of his particular actions. Which is the truth? Who knows and it doesn't matter.

What does matter is that Obama is a liar with Clinton-like loyalty (see earlier posts) who is perfectly happy to try and further his political career by trashing his still living grandmother's reputation branding her as a racist. The grandmother, by the way, who was his primary parent and support, according to his autobiography, in his growing up years. Disgusting.

Hillary's Democracy

I never fail to be amazed by Democrats' seemingly instinctive authoritarianism. I described in an earlier post John Edwards' apparent belief that as President he would have the authority to cancel the health insurance coverage of members of Congress and his Cabinet. It is possible that Dem's never waning assertion that Republicans favor an "Imperial" presidency is merely another case of projection.

In promoting her Universal Health Care Plan recently Hillary informed us that she would consider garnishing the wages of those who refuse to purchase health insurance in order to ensure the universality of the plan.

So here we have a proposal supposedly initiated to "help" the less fortunate. If they have the audacity to refuse to accept and pay for the "help" they will be forced to participate against their will. Oh, wait, she would only garnish the wages of those who could "afford" to pay for the coverage. Great, thanks Hill. So, you 18 million 18 - 30's who see that paying health insurance premiums is a waste of money for you, we're going to "help" you. Reminds me of Reagan's 10 words you never want to hear: "I'm from the government and I'm here to help you".

Of course she also wants to confiscate some or all of the profits of those nasty oil companies. You know, the ones who have vast investment programs to find and drill more of the stuff so we can keep driving. Its odd, but I don't remember any dems offering to give money to the oil companies when they were struggling and oil was $10 barrel.

She wants to prohibit medical insurance companies from screening for pre-existing conditions and she claimed last week in a speech at a GM Plant in Lordstown, OH that the companies spend $50 billion a year "trying to figure out how not to cover people".

She went on to say that, "I'm going to save them a fortune and a whole lot of time, because here's the new policy: No more discrimination period. So even if you have a pre-existing condition you can get the health insurance you need no questions asked".

Now there's an example of the rhetoric and mind set of a truly democratic person. Beyond the appalling spectre of authoritarianism raised by such dictats is the much worse and much more practical result of such stupidity.

If you are buying your insurance from an insurer that doesn't accept subscribers with pre-existing conditions (group insurance policy issuers have long since stopped screening for pre-existing conditions) and that company is now forced to accept them, your premium will simply be raised to pay for the inevitable rise in claims the company will have to pay. That is how insurance works. The risk is spread among the policy holders. More risk = more expense = higher premiums for all policy holders. So, what Hillary is telling all you individual policy holders is that you are about to be forced to subsidize your neighbors.

Not surprisingly, she didn't give any support or meaningful explanation for that $50 billion statement. Let's assume the figure, wherever it came from is accurate. What does it mean? It means that the combined budgets of insurance companies' claims departments is $50 billion a year.

Every claim has to be evaluated and some will be turned down. So what she could just as easily have said, although it probably wouldn't enter her mind to do so since the evil insurance companies must be vilified, is insurance companies spend $50 billion a year processing claims.

She leaves the impression, purposely, I'm sure, that the companies are spending $50 billion a year to ferret out claims for pre-existing conditions, nonsense obviously. To get an idea of just how preposterous this notion is consider that it would cost less than 50 billion annually to pay $100,000 in claims for 499,000 people. Most people accumulate less than $100,000 for medical care in a lifetime, never mind a year.