Environmentalists Created a Drought That is Going to Cost All of Us

As if the economic downturn wasn’t enough, environmentalists have created a dust bowl. The San Joaquin Valley in California is the largest agricultural area in the world, it provides half of the vegetables for the entire country, and it’s gone bone dry in order to improve the chances of saving the delta smelt.

The delta smelt is a fish and was listed as ‘threatened’ on the endangered species list. As a result an environmental lobby went to court and asked the court to shut down the turbines that pump water into the irrigation system for the San Joaquin Valley. Not 'reduce' or 'cut back', but turn off.

And that’s what the court ordered.

Now there is a 41% unemployment rate in the valley. An estimated 80,000 workers have lost their jobs. Every business in the area is suffering. Farms and houses are being foreclosed on. The ground is dry and the crops are dead.

Don’t just think it’s bad for the farmers. It’s going to affect food prices across the country. Vegetable prices are going to go up.

All for the sake of a smelt that MAY be getting injured or killed in the pumps.

The Pacific Legal Fund is fighting this and putting pressure on Washington to convene a committee to look into the issue and turn the pumps back on. Their website is here. You can sign their petition here.

Public Health Insurance Option Will Lead to a Single Payer System

I made the case, again, early this week that the public option being pursued would eventually lead to nationalized healthcare in the form of a single payer system.

Some creative bloggers, who are actually in favor of a single payer system talked to Rep Barney Frank about the public option and a single payer system, asking him why he didn't just want to go with a single payer system now. He explains that they don't have the votes to get that passed, but that they have the public option and he believes that will lead to a single payer system. Past history tells us that you certainly cannot trust Rep Frank a good portion of the time, but in this case I think it's safe to believe him.

Is Obama the Antichrist?

Okay, I do not make a habit of interpreting end time prophecies. The thing about prophecies is that they are usually very obvious right AFTER they are fulfilled. So someday when I am in heaven I’ll go… “oh, yah, I totally see that now!” And I have read the book of Revelation many, many, many times and I have yet to find the word “antichrist” in it. I’m not completely familiar with the whole pre-millennial, post-millennial, yada, yada, yada… quite frankly it really doesn’t matter too much to me how God shakes everything out in the end. I have my faith and trust in Him, I’m living for Him every day, and I’m doing my best to fulfill the purpose that He has given me. So any way it goes down… I’m okay. I know I’ll win because I’m with God.

That being said I have heard from several of you out there that Obama is the antichrist. The Bible speaks of anyone being against-Christ as the antichrist (kind of obvious from the name) and there have been many people in history that fit this bill quite nicely. Is President Obama one of them? Well, personally he doesn’t really seem to fit the bill. I think his actions seem anti-United States sometimes, but anti-US does not make him antichrist. He’s definitely anti-logic, anti-common sense, anti-free market, anti-truth, and anti-fiscal responsibility, but the man says he believes in Christ and has his faith in him and I am not about to jump into the spiritual judgment seat. I’m not going to sit in judgment on the man’s soul; his presidency on the other hand is entirely fair game…

In any case, there seems to be a strong desire out there to condemn the President as the antichrist (whether that means the beast or the prophet of the beast in Revelation, I don’t know), but this video shows what I consider to be an interesting play on words. Whether it is anything more than that is really not my call.

Nationalized Healthcare Part 2

I know, yesterday I went on about the trials and mess associated with nationalized healthcare and that isn’t what is being proposed in these bills. Yes, I understand that, but that is where these bills are leading us. Granted they wouldn’t take us there next week. It may even take years, a myriad of lawsuits, and a lot of jobs lost and businesses destroyed, but it would take us there.

What these bills are doing is requiring certain levels of coverage and mandating that employers provide coverage. (Let’s ignore the fact that this would cripple small business and completely drive some of them out of business. I know, I was talking to a small business owner this weekend who is already struggling and views this change as the gallows.) This minimum coverage level is a political tool. Lobbyists are already raking in the dollars pushing the right people to include their industry in the minimum coverage. Of course existing plans would not have to up their coverage for five years, unless of course they make a change in coverage, premium, or pretty much a letter in their plethora of paperwork. If they changed anything, they have to switch to the minimum coverage. Naturally this increased coverage (not increased benefit necessarily) of course costs more. So now private insurance companies have to adjust their rates for this adjusted level of care and they won’t be going down.

At the same time you have the “public option”, which is where the government comes into the game. Number one they aren’t a ‘for profit’ entity, so they aren’t trying to maintain the margins that the private insurance companies do. They also aren’t subject to the same tax laws as the private companies, and as we’ve already discussed, they have a huge percentage of the market and dictate what they will pay. The resulting decrease in government rates from the “public plan” now increases the rates on the private insurance companies, as I mentioned in part 1.

Now companies are in a struggling economy looking at their medical insurance costs shoot through the roof. So, they lay off some employees and take a look at their alternatives. They are spending a significant amount per employee to have insurance coverage and it is increasing all of the time as the Secretary of Health and Human Services decides on new additions to the minimum coverage. The law says that you have to provide coverage or pay a fine, but the fine is less than what the coverage is costing per employee. It doesn’t take a very creative bookkeeper to discontinue coverage and dump every employee into the “public option” to opt for a government fine that is lower and more stable than providing coverage at the minimum level.

So after all of the private insurance companies have been driven out of business, you will have socialized medicine on a single payer system. That’s when the fun we’ve already discussed in part 1 kicks in. It’s not an immediate take over, but it is a take over and a big one considering healthcare makes up approximately 17% of the US economy.

There are other issues that need to be considered as well and I need to actually dig through the nuts and bolts of this bill. There HAS to be some very creative wording in here regarding law suits and I’m very intrigued as to what it says. When it comes to providing health insurance there is always the risk of law suits, some legit, some not. However will the government ALLOW themselves to be sued if they wrongfully refuse coverage or will they be able to claim sovereign immunity? Hmm… I’m very intrigued. Since it is the government writing the bill you would think that they would specifically express that sovereign immunity applies, but since it is being written by liberals who have been on the receiving end of millions in campaign contributions from trial lawyers, they might specifically deny it, just to throw their loyal contributors a bone.

Either way… it’s not good for any of us.

… and on a side note, it will never apply to those who are voting for it. Their fluffy government insurance stays put for life.

Nationalized Healthcare Part 1

This is the first in a two part series on healthcare reform.

You are hearing people screaming (me included) about national healthcare and going down the slippery slope of socialized medicine. A lot of people are quite frankly indifferent about the whole thing. Maybe that’s because you don’t really understand the concept. You also don’t realize that at some point in your life, your healthcare and how it is handled is going to be very important to you.

Right now the government controls, through Medicare and Medicaid, between 40 and 50% of all medical dollars spent. That is very significant, and growing. The Baby Boomers are starting to become eligible for Social Security and will soon be eligible for Medicare. That generation comprises approximately 77 million people. There are only a little over 300 million people in the country as a whole. Think about those numbers for a minute because they are very important. You are talking about a massive number of people already in a government run system. So why can’t the government implement their cost reductions and improvements on their existing system? After all they have a lot of leverage with the number of people and money that they manage.

What they are not telling you is that Medicare and Medicaid are number one, a HUGE, CRUSHING financial nightmare that is right around the corner, and that they are already driving up your healthcare costs. Medicare/aid sets rates that they will pay doctors for services. Those rates are naturally lower than the doctors would like them to be; occasionally they are even lower than the doctors can afford them to be. If a doctor is not getting properly reimbursed for services from half of his patients, what do you think he has to do to the other half to maintain a profit? Raise rates. Ask more from private insurance companies and individuals who on their own make up a small percentage of his clients.

It’s a similar story for hospitals, but they get an extra whammy thrown in. Hospitals are required to treat patients that come into the emergency room, regardless of their ability to pay and regardless of their citizenship. Now don’t get me wrong, if an illegal alien is involved in a car accident and seriously injured, I really hope that a hospital would administer care to the patient. The fact that they are in the country illegally in the first place is what I have a problem with, but the impact on private industries from the federal government NOT enforcing our boarders is a separate issue. In any case, these emergency room cases cost hospitals money.

The point is that anytime someone doesn’t pay, or under-pays, the difference doesn’t just dissolve into thin air. That money has to be made up somewhere and it is from the people that either have insurance, or are actually paying for their service out of their own pockets.

Nothing is free. Someone pays for it.

Well, then why isn’t the government taking it over the best solution?

The best way to answer that question is with a question, or maybe a series of them.

If the incentives for something decrease, then does it become more popular or less popular? Obviously less.

If college and medical school tuition is steadily on the rise, are people going to be willing to go HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of dollars in the hole to get jobs that pay less and less? I wouldn’t.

Are you going to pay the extra money and spend the additional years of time to become a specialist? You know, an oncologist, pediatric neurologist, cardiac surgeon… The answer in the countries that have already tried this is a resounding NO. They have fewer doctors, fewer specialists, and LONGER wait times. That’s why Canadians who need a specialist often come to the US. Sometimes they are even sent here BY THE CANADIAN GOVERNMENT.

So you go this route. People hear that wait times are up and they start to feel a little sick. What’s the first thing they do? Run to the doctor or at least make an appointment. Before they would have waited and tried a couple of things, but now they are worried that they won’t be able to get in if they don’t make an appointment immediately.

So now you have fewer doctors, fewer specialists, and more people going to the doctor when they could have/would have stayed home. Wait times for appointments can be months long. People literally start suffering and even dying on the waiting list. What would have been treatable cancer is now terminal. What would have been managed glaucoma now means blindness.

Understandably people get upset and they start complaining to their elected officials, after all, they are the ones who control the system. So now they create a health review panel to limit the number of things that are covered by the system since costs are skyrocketing and people are complaining. Now they ask people to start self medicating for certain conditions. Sure, they won’t be as comfortable as they would have been with appropriate care and an expensive prescription, but it costs less and frees up physicians.

All the while people who are in school and considering going into medicine look at the mess and the limited benefit to them and they decide to become lawyers instead. Medicine just isn’t worth it.

So the problem continues to build.

These aren’t hypothetical scenarios. People in the UK and Canada go through this every day. Cancer patients who reach certain stages or who have certain types aren’t treated because the chances of survival are too low and the cost too high. The elderly are denied services that could drastically improve their quality of life, like certain medicines or pacemakers, because they are too old and the money wouldn’t serve the ‘greater good’. Those who suffer are those who need care the most but are deemed the least valuable to society.

For a country that values the individual and the beauty of human life, this is the wrong direction.

The Debt Visualized

I'm a visual guy, which is why I love PoliticalMath.

BTW, these numbers were before the health care reform debate.

HT : HotAir

Just for fun

I have no idea if this is legit or not, but it certainly looks it.

You know of all the things that you can take into a marriage a healthy sense of humor is definitely near the top of the list.

I think this couple has that one in the bag.

When you're in a hole...

STOP DIGGING! Wow! This is the most LONG WINDED, NON-APOLOGY, borderline chastisement I have ever heard! Well, you know, this is all the press' fault in the first place. They really need to provide all of their questions, verbatim, upfront so that the President's staff can put a well scripted answer on the teleprompter.

How do you fight for a leader who can't use the word "victory"?

Concerning the war in Afghanistan:

"I'm always worried about using the word 'victory,' because, you know, it invokes this notion of Emperor Hirohito coming down and signing a surrender to MacArthur," Obama told ABC News.

Did he just reference MacArthur like his REAL victory was a bad thing? I wish we HAD MacArthur in their right now as our C-in-C!

Really? Wow.

Up until this point I have credited President Obama with being a very savvy politician, and he may still prove himself again in the future, but I must say, as a politician and a leader, he’s wearing a lot of egg right now.

A few days ago police were called to a neighborhood in Cambridge, MA when someone called to report a possible burglary. Police arrived at the house and found a man inside who affirmed that he was the owner of the home and became belligerent with police. They requested to see his identification to confirm that he was the rightful owner and he refused and instead accused them of being racists. He yelled at them, apparently demeaning the arresting officer and even the officer’s mother. The man continued his rude behavior and was eventually arrested for disorderly conduct after the officer repeatedly tried to calm the man down.

Three things about the man: he is a Harvard professor, he is black, and he is a friend of the President.

Not uncommon in disorderly conduct cases, the man was released and the charges were dropped.

Wednesday night during President Obama’s press conference on health care reform (now being called health INSURANCE reform… a little rebranding) the president was asked about the arrest in Cambridge. He replied,

”I don't know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that. But I think it's fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home; and, number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there's a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately.”

So, while acknowledging that he doesn’t have the facts in the case, the President goes on to refer to the officer’s actions as stupid and strongly hints at the officers being racists.

Really? On national television? Without knowing the facts in the case you immediately blame and disparage the public servant and really ALL of law enforcement?

Most people have a healthy and well earned respect for police officers and this particular officer in question has been held up by his fellow officers and everyone in his community as above reproach in this area. In fact he was actually hand picked to teach classes to law enforcement on avoiding racial profiling.

The President has been back peddling but has not apologized for his comments.

Rasmussen (currently considered the most accurate political pollster) is going to report this morning (according to Drudge) that the President’s approval numbers have dropped below 50% for the first time this week.

On a side note, I have heard NUMEROUS times people quoting the fact that blacks and Latinos are stopped more by police officers. Why is this an issue? I really don’t care what race a person is, if they are suspected of committing a crime, I HOPE that police officers are confronting them. I hope they are stopping all people they suspect of a crime, regardless of their race, and the LAST thing I want an officer to be concerned about when he confronts ANYBODY is whether or not he is going to be called a racist… especially by the President.

Sorry, it’s Friday, I had to rant just a… little bit…