I am told that, at this morning’s hearing of the House Select Committee on Global Warming, the Ranking Republican Jim Sensenbrenner (WI) requested that the two administration science witnesses — White House science advisor John Holdren, most recently seen in the ClimateGate emails defending the erasing from history the Medieval Warm Period, and NOAA administrator and longtime activist Jane Loubchenco — be sworn in before testifying.

Chairman Ed Markey conferred, then denied the request.

Could lead to all sorts of unpleasant things. Like the truth. Or consequences.

(more…)

In the very near future, Senator Reid is going to follow Speaker Pelosi’s lead and try to pass his Senate version of the liberal utopian health care plan – a full, unabashed socialist-style takeover of our nation’s health care system.

Senator Reid said health care reform would cover the uninsured, but we’ve already learned it will drive up our premiums – forcing more of us into a Big Brother system with inevitable rationing. He said health care reform would lower costs by itself, but he’s now considering massive tax increases on small business to pay its trillion dollar price tag. He’s promised more competition in health care, but only offers massive government, disguised as phony competition in the form of the taxpayer-subsidized “government option.”

Premium increases, tax increases, and socialized medicine. Make no mistake. Senator Reid is willing to destroy Nevada’s – and the nation’s economy, to pay the ransom demands of the radical left for his re-election.

Senator Reid may think he rules America from his gilded Capitol perch, but I believe that ‘We the People’ still have hope to defeat him, and I have a plan.

(more…)

Health care “reform” is coming. But what’s the best way to fix our health care system, which is an inefficient, complicated mess of private actors, third-party payers, public subsidies, and innumerable state and federal regulations? Should we place our faith in the government or in the free market?

ObamaCare supporters argue that the answer lies in more government—more subsidies, more regulations, a law mandating individuals buy health-insurance coverage and, of course, more taxes to pay for it all.

(more…)

As the Congress prepared to vote to let us enter the world of waits for doctors, waits for specialists, waits for testing and waits for surgery, radiation and chemo, we should pause to consider the relative records of the private medical care system in the United States with the socialized system in the U.K.

In 2008, Britain had a cancer death rate 0.25% while the United States had a rate of only 0.18%.  The UK cancer death rate was 38% higher than in the United States.

The Guardian, the UK’s left wing daily, estimated that “up to 10,000 people” are dying each year of cancer “because their condition is diagnosed too late, according to research by the government’s director of cancer services.”  While many people die because of late detection due to their own negligence, there is no reason to believe this self-neglect is more common in the UK than in the US. (more…)

Well, it’s hard to choose these days. The resurgence of Keynesian economics shows how fragile and insecure economists are in general. They are, of course, important exceptions. But while I have a special dark place in my economist heart for the New York Times‘ columnist Paul Krugman, I think today the prize should to economist Mark Zandi, of Moody’s Economy.com.

Zandi is constantly quoted in the media as the go-to-person on what do for the economy to recover. For instance, how many stories have we read in the Washington Post saying “nearly all economists support the stimulus,” with for only evidence a Zandi quote. Many. Who cares that Zandi’s model shows that the stimulus is working because the answer is built into the equations of Keynesian models. Here is a job for an economist: Take apart and demolish these reality-defying macro models once and for all.

The media loves him and as a result there are countless quotes of him out there about how we need more government intervention into the economy to jump start the economy, how passing the $800 billion stimulus bill would create jobs, how more spending programs are yet still needed.

(more…)

Both the House and Senate versions of the healthcare reform bill would require employers above a certain size to provide health insurance for their workers or face some sort of penalty. The House bill that passed last month would require employers to pay an 8% additional payroll tax for not insuring their workers. The Senate bill now under consideration is much less punitive, requiring employers who do not provide insurance to pay a $750 annual fee per full-time worker, but only if one or more of their employees receive a government subsidy in the insurance exchange.

Quite a difference between the two bills. By way of example, take an employee earning $50,000 per year. Under the House bill, an employer who did not provide insurance would be required to pay an additional tax of $4,000 to the federal government. Compared to only $750 under the Senate bill – a difference of more than 500%.

Now consider whether it would make more sense financially for the employer to provide insurance or pay the penalty. In our example above, under the House bill it would probably be close to a break-even if the employer is providing coverage only for the employee. According to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the average monthly insurance premium for private industry employers across all worker categories was $317.63. Or just over $3800 annualized (compared to the $4,000 penalty). However, it would be quite a bit more expensive if the employer was providing family coverage (BLS data: $737.68/mo – $8850/yr).

Obviously under the Senate bill it would be far less expensive for the employer to just pay the $750 penalty rather than provide the insurance.

(more…)

So he came in as a great recruiter, a great builder, a new innovator, already with the rings on his finger, the prizes around his neck, and he was going to make everything better — but then he started losing people, right and left, and the team he built crumbled. It’s time we started asking: is Barack Obama going to end up like Charlie Weis? We’re talking health care policy on the latest edition of Coffee and Markets, a daily podcast from The New Ledger on politics, policy and the marketplace with Francis Cianfrocca, brought to you by BigGovernment.com.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Download Podcast | iTunes | Podcast Feed

You can subscribe to the podcast by following the links above, and if you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

Related Links:

RCP: Long, Bitter Debate for Health Care Bill
FT: Expected Reform Savings Disappoint
WSJ: Costs Will Stay the Same or Rise for Most Individuals
WSJ: Obama Hasn’t Accomplished Nothing

I agree with Paul Krugman on at least one thing: the continued prospects for high unemployment in America is a bad thing. In his NYT column Monday, Krugman the Keynesian wrote:

The damage from sustained high unemployment will last much longer. The long-term unemployed can lose their skills, and even when the economy recovers they tend to have difficulty finding a job, because they’re regarded as poor risks by potential employers. Meanwhile, students who graduate into a poor labor market start their careers at a huge disadvantage — and pay a price in lower earnings for their whole working lives. Failure to act on unemployment isn’t just cruel, it’s short-sighted.

Unemployment is currently 10.2 percent, and if you factor out the part-time workers it is 17.5 percent. Banks aren’t lending to the limited demand from manufacturers, further depressing employment opportunities. And the recovery outlook right now is bleak. Krugman is right, we have to do something.

His plan, however, is not the answer. Not even close.

(more…)

On Monday, I discussed some of the background in the ongoing journalistic argument about the tactics used by James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles in their ACORN takedowns, first released here at Big Government.  This is part two of that discussion.

Since the freewheeling days of the 1920s celebrated in The Front Page, there has been a profound shift in the way journalists view themselves and their societal role.  We might locate its origins in the 1947 report by the Commission on the Freedom of the Press, known today as Hutchins Commission after its chairman, Robert M. Hutchins, of the University of Chicago, and funded by Henry Luce of Time Inc.   In answer to the question, “is the freedom of the press in danger,” the commission answered yes, and issued “five ideal demands”:

1) A truthful, comprehensive, and intelligent account of the day’s events in a context which gives them meaning.

2) A forum for the exchange of comment and criticism.

3) The projection of a representative picture of the constituent groups in the society.  (“The Commission holds to the faith that if people are exposed to the inner truth of the life of a particular group, they will gradually build up respect for an understanding of it.”)

4) The presentation and clarification of the goals and values of the society.

5) Full access to the day’s intelligence. (more…)

The Labor-Management Disclosure and Reporting Act (LMRDA) requires labor union officials to report potential or certain conflict-of-interests they might encounter if they receive gifts or cash payments from employers. Service Employees International Union (SEIU) President Andrew Stern may be in violation of that requirement since he has not filed a report disclosing $140,000 in advance payments from publisher and service industry employer Simon & Schuster.

In addition to this, documents made public during an intra-union California lawsuit and obtained by a “BigGovernment researcher” (posted on NRTWC.org’s Scribd, seen below) reveal that SEIU Treasurer Anna Burger recommended that the union use general treasury money, much collected from employees as a condition of employment, to promote Stern’s book, A Country that Works.

It’s not as if Stern has never filed a conflict-of-interest disclosure report; in fact, he has filed two in 2004 and one in 2005. But, why has he not filed any reports related to his special book deal?

SEIU President Andy Stern’s Book Advance and Past Conflict of Interest Reports (LM-30s)

Unfortunately for rank and file workers forced to pay dues or fees to the SEIU, rather than spending its resources investigating potential LMRDA violations, the Obama Labor Department (DOL) is busy rescinding conflict-of-interest and other union financial reporting requirements.

(more…)

Today, in 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte crowns himself Emperor of France (also, today, in 1805, Napoleon won a decisive victory at the Battle of Austerlitz, leaving an indelible mark on battlefield tactics):

Embattled Athens County, Ohio Democratic Chairwoman Susan Gwinn was indicted Monday on two counts of election-related bribery, special prosecutors announced today.

Gwinn, who last month was charged with six felonies for campaign finance crimes and money-laundering, became the subject of a voter fraud investigation after an email from College Democrats Vice President Kellie Galan surfaced in which students were promised a cash bounty for every voter brought to the polls.

“Remember, if you bring a friend from 4th ward they are more then [sic] a friend, they’re 5 bucks!” Galan wrote to fellow College Democrats in the email.

(more…)

From the American Spectator:

It was the biggest story of 2009.

If you doubt, ask ACORN. Or Van Jones. Or the So We Might See campaign. You won’t need Timemagazine’s once clout-filled “Man of the Year” issue to figure it out, either. Just take a look back at the bestseller lists, the ratings of Fox News or simply turn on your local AM radio dial.

The single most important news event of 2009 was the emergence of The Virtual Newsroom. A newsroom run by a virtual army of conservative journalists famous and unknown, their individual and collective impact multiplied exponentially by millions of Internet users, radio listeners, readers and television viewers.

How did this happen? How does it work in practice?

First, perspective is needed here. Like other big news events, it didn’t happen overnight. There is history, lots of it.

(more…)

By now you’ve likely forgotten the name of Josh Steiner, the Bill Clinton aide who feebly testified that he had lied to his own diary when recording events of the time. But you haven’t forgotten the pitifulness of the spectacle. I suggest we may have just passed that one in ClimateGate, with the following passage from John Tierney’s column in the New York Times, discussing “Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd [sic] from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline”:

“In fact, one skeptic raised this very issue about tree-ring data in a comment posted in 2004 on RealClimate, the blog operated by climate scientists. The comment, which questioned the propriety of ‘grafting the thermometer record onto a proxy temperature record,’ immediately drew a sharp retort on the blog from Michael Mann, an expert at Penn State University:

‘No researchers in this field have ever, to our knowledge, ‘grafted the thermometer record onto’ any reconstruction. It is somewhat disappointing to find this specious claim (which we usually find originating from industry-funded climate disinformation Web sites) appearing in this forum.’

Dr. Mann now tells me that he was unaware, when he wrote the response, that such grafting had in fact been done in the earlier cover chart, and I take him at his word.”

(more…)

The Senate earmarks $500,000 for itself; Money will be spent to promote Senators’ appearances

House of Representative’s expense reports now online

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spent $2,993 in taxpayer money on flowers in just a few months and House Majority Whip James Clyburn spent hundreds of dollars on donuts

Congress steers millions of taxpayer dollars to campaign donors’ pet projects including an earmark for “mammal awareness”

The Justice Department has instructed federal agencies to honor contracts with ACORN despite ban on funding passed by Congress and signed by the President

(more…)

Yesterday we discussed the events leading up to the August 6^th health care town hall meeting featuring Rep. Russ Carnahan (D-MO).  The event was hosted by Health Care For American Now (HCAN) and Organizing for America (OFA), the former a front group for Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the latter an off-shoot of the Obama Campaign now run by the Democratic National Committee (DNC).  We revealed a four page document released by HCAN two days before the August 6^th town hall meeting.  In that document, guidelines are revealed for members of HCAN (union members) on how best to stifle the protestations of ObamaCare.

The meetings hosted by HCAN (like the one on August 6^th in St. Louis) were set up using these rules.  Americans showed up at these meetings thinking that it would be an opportunity to address their elected representatives and talk to them about the single most important piece of legislation our congress has proposed in decades.  Instead, they were pushed to the back of the room and shouted down by the well-trained SEIU members.  Eventually, an American citizen who was distributing “Don’t Tread on Me” flags and buttons was assaulted by a handful of the SEIU members.  His name is Kenneth Gladney.

Let’s look at that memo and how it matches the events of August 6^th: (more…)

Last night was one of those nights when I was mad as hell at the California State government and their foolish, micro-managing, Big-Nanny ways.  (Caution, dear reader, such rage at the machine has been known to cause the temporary insanity of running for public office.)

The cause of my extended rant?  AB 1953, a law passed in 2006 that goes into effect on January 1, 2010, the purpose of which was to define lead-free plumbing from 4% in fixtures down to the European Union standard of 0.25%.  Not that the science supported this change.  Once lead was removed as a gasoline additive, taken out of paints, and removed from plumbing (the Latin word for plumbing is where we get the chemical symbol for lead: Pb), human lead exposure dropped significantly.  Having a small percentage of lead bound up in a brass alloy plumbing fixture isn’t going to add a statistically meaningful amount of lead exposure to anyone.

Today’s story began when my family bought a 4-bedroom house in Irvine in 1998.  The house, built in 1979, had the original chrome-plated sink fixtures when we moved in.  As soon as I could afford it, I installed solid brass bathroom fixtures.

Well, our master bathroom faucet sprung a very slow leak on the cold water handle a few months back.  Having a few spare hours, I found the leak on the valve, took it apart, and trekked down to Lowe’s.

(more…)

Almost 40% of William Howard Taft’s cabinet officials were from the private sector. Ike had nearly 60% of his appointees sporting private sector experience. Reagan had about 55% and George W. Bush about 53%. Even FDR and Truman saw half their cabinet officials coming to government with private sector experience.

And Obama?

Less than 10%.

That means that only about 7% of Barack Obama’s cabinet appointees ever worked in the private sector. So is it any wonder that Obama has become the president responsible for an unprecedented bloating of the federal government and a take over of power on a scale never before seen?

Nick Schulz published a great graph revealing the private sector experience of the appointees of every president since 1901.

(more…)

Ex-White House counsel Greg Craig thought it was a good idea to transfer Elián Gonzalez from the arms of his loving family in Miami into the arms of Fidel Castro. Transfer Elián from Florida to Cuba. Bad idea. Attorney General Janet Reno thought she might have to prove her toughness by transferring dozens of women and children from a Waco cult headquarters to eternity. Really bad idea.

But Eric Holder’s plan to transfer Khalid Sheikh Mohammed from Guantánamo Bay to Manhattan for a civilian trial is perhaps liberals’ worst idea in years. KSM and his cohorts had agreed to plead guilty before a military tribunal, accept a sentence of death, and speedily rendezvous with their 72 ladies-in-waiting.

This offer of an efficient way out for the administration was not good enough for Attorney General Eric Holder. He insists on trying the terrorists before a civilian jury in federal court, just a few hundred yards from Ground Zero. Next to martyrdom and a free trip to paradise, this has to be the terrorists’ wildest dream.

No turbaned genie ever appeared out of Aladdin’s lamp to grant three greater wishes than these. KSM to Genie: One, I want to exploit my status as mass-murdering terrorist; Two, I want to inflict even greater pain and suffering on the families of those thousands whom I’ve murdered; Three, I want to make my trial a magnet for my brother jihadists throughout the world.

(more…)