Back to Basics

Grim reaper photoshop credit: Manly Rash

I said yesterday in my Beltway Chainsaw Massacre column that the GOP needs to track the Obama jobs death toll and tell the victims’ stories far and wide.

But there’s no need to wait for the GOP. I’ll keep doing it right here.

The first story of the day comes from the Fort Worth Star Telegram in Texas, where a health insurer called Health Markets has laid off 70 workers and expects up to 180 more as it braces for the costs of Obamacare and other government mandates:

HealthMarkets, the North Richland Hills-based seller of health insurance, laid off 70 employees this month and expects to trim 180 more positions by the end of the first quarter of 2011, according to a recent federal filing.

In the Securities and Exchange Commission filing, HealthMarkets blamed the layoffs on “dropping enrollment levels experienced by the company’s insurance subsidiaries,” along with national healthcare reform and “related legislative developments.”

HealthMarkets provides insurance plans to the self-employed, individuals and small businesses.

The second story of the day comes from the Worcester Telegram in Massachusetts, where a local hospital will slash about 50 full-time jobs:

About 50 full-time jobs will be eliminated at the HealthAlliance Hospital — Leominster Campus, and one of two planned expansion projects may be cut back.

Mary Lourdes Burke, chief communications officer for the hospital, said yesterday the job cuts do not mean 50 layoffs, because some were vacant positions that will not be filled, and some were positions that had hours reduced. Also, she said, some union contracts required moving employees into other posts.

Loathsome cowboys

How’s that Summer of Recovery working out for you? Continuing my series on the White House War on the West, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s attack on the economy, and the White House land lock-up (Part 1, Part 2) and ocean grab, here is the latest on Barack Obama’s deliberate job destruction policies.

According to the WSJ, the administration forged ahead with its junk science deepwater drilling ban despite knowing it would cost 23,000 jobs.

Senior Obama administration officials concluded the federal moratorium on deepwater oil drilling would cost roughly 23,000 jobs, but went ahead with the ban because they didn’t trust the industry’s safety equipment and the government’s own inspection process, according to previously undisclosed documents.

Marcia McNutt, an Obama administration science adviser, commented on the corporate culture of BP in a memo sent to Michael Bromwich, the administration’s new top offshore oil exploration regulator, on June 28.

Critics of the moratorium, including Gulf Coast political figures and oil-industry leaders, have said it is crippling the region’s economy, and some have called on the administration to make public its economic analysis. A federal judge who in June threw out an earlier six-month moratorium faulted the administration for playing down the economic effects…

Sound familiar?

Just last month, you’ll recall, the TARP inspector general reported on how the capricious Dealeragate mandates of Obama’s non-expert auto experts deliberately destroyed jobs in the name of “shared sacrifice” to appease Big Labor.

Then there are more and more Obamacare job-killing stories piling up like this one:

Assurant Health is eliminating 130 jobs at its offices in Milwaukee and Plymouth, Minn., by Oct. 1 as the health insurer prepares for changes under federal health care reform.

Okay, the Missouri Senator didn’t phrase it exactly that way, but that’s what she said.

On Tuesday, Missouri voters overwhelmingly rejected a federal mandate to purchase health insurance.

Naturally, that’s just because most voters didn’t understand the product and are incapable of wrapping their heads around the totally awesome creamy goodness that is Obamacare:

McCaskill said she understood what Missouri voters had been trying to say about the healthcare reform law for which she had voted in the Senate. But the centrist senator downplayed the vote as a result of heavy Republican primary turnout and a lack of education about the effects of the law.

“I certainly noticed the vote on Prop C, the healthcare law, and: message received,” she said Wednesday in a conference call with state reporters.

“I think there has been … a lot of noise about the mandate that people have gotten so focused on that they don’t realize that there’s going to be more access and affordability and more choices,” she said.

It’s too bad the Senator doesn’t understand that even us rubes, hicks, hayseeds, simpletons and peasants have asked ourselves a very simple question that answers itself: If everybody’s going to like it so much, why does it have to be mandated?

President Obama, once adored by the unwashed masses as The Omnipotent One, is now known as The Impotent One.

Things have gotten so bad for Obama that voters are no longer hesitant about challenging the president, even on his birthday which is August 4.

This year’s birthday message to Obama comes from the great state of Missouri where the people sent our fascist poser a message that roughly translates to, “Get stuffed—sir!”

At issue was ObamaCare, Democrats’ attempt to take health care out of the hands of individual citizens and deliver it as another part of life that is dictated by the government.

And why not? What with the great successes of the federal government in managing Social Security, Medicare, the federal deficit, unemployment, and other issues of great importance, why not include health care as an issue that government controls?

However, the people of Missouri beg to differ as reported at Yahoo.com, in part:

“WASHINGTON – Missouri voters’ overwhelming opposition to requiring nearly all Americans to buy health insurance puts one of the least popular parts of President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul law back in the political crosshairs.

“Even if the vote sets no legally binding precedent, it will help mobilize foes of Obama’s agenda in the fall midterm elections, and that could make a difference in some states with close congressional races that could decide the balance of power in Washington.

The other day, it was Virginia and Colorado moving forward with their efforts to protect their citizens against Obamacare coercion.

Last night, Missouri voters voted with their feet, via the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Missouri voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly rejected a federal mandate to purchase health insurance, rebuking President Barack Obama’s administration and giving Republicans their first political victory in a national campaign to overturn the controversial health care law passed by Congress in March.

“The citizens of the Show-Me State don’t want Washington involved in their health care decisions,” said Sen. Jane Cunningham, R-Chesterfield, one of the sponsors of the legislation that put Proposition C on the August ballot. She credited a grass-roots campaign involving Tea Party and patriot groups with building support for the anti-Washington proposition.

With most of the vote counted, Proposition C was winning by a ratio of nearly 3 to 1. The measure, which seeks to exempt Missouri from the insurance mandate in the new health care law, includes a provision that would change how insurance companies that go out of business in Missouri liquidate their assets.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Cunningham said at a campaign gathering at a private home in Town and Country. “Citizens wanted their voices to be heard.”

Ed Morrissey reads the tea leaves:

Bear in mind that over 315,000 Democrats turned out to cast ballots in the primary that nominated Robin Carnahan, while over 577,000 Republicans hit the polls. That is about a 65/35 split — which means that a significant amount of Democrats either supported the ballot measure repudiating ObamaCare, or didn’t bother to cast a vote to defend the program. Actually, Prop C got more votes than the combined voting in both Senate primaries — which tells us something even more about the passion in the electorate.

Democrats may have to hit the panic button after seeing the results from this swing state. ObamaCare set fire to the electorate last year, and that may be an inferno for Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid in November.

Gateway Pundit Jim Hoft (welcome back!) has a round-up of the Prop C victory.

Two items of note on the grass-roots revolt against the Obamacare power grab:

*A federal judge in Virginia has allowed the state’s lawsuit challenging the federal individual health care mandate to proceed:

A judge on Monday refused to dismiss the state of Virginia’s challenge to President Barack Obama’s landmark healthcare law, a setback that will force his administration to mount a lengthy legal defense of the overhaul effort.

U.S. District Judge Henry Hudson refused to dismiss the state’s lawsuit which argues the law’s requirement that its residents have health insurance was unconstitutional, allowing the challenge to go forward.

It’s good news for the Obamacare backlash by state attorneys general across the country — as well as for those sponsoring opt-out initiatives.

*Here in Colorado, Independence Institute president Jon Caldara has spearheaded a referendum to provide citizens here with health care choice. Petition signatures were turned in on Friday:

Coloradans may have the opportunity this fall to weigh in on the recent health care legislation passed by Congress. Roughly 130,000 signatures in support of the Right to Health Care Choice amendment to Colorado’s Constitution were turned into the Secretary of State’s office on Friday afternoon.
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To qualify for the November ballot, 76,047 of those signatures need to be matched with registered Colorado voters.

The amendment would prevent Coloradans from being required to buy health insurance and to continue to allow medical personnel to take payments in cash for services.

“We want Colorado to be a sanctuary state for quality health care,” Jon Caldara, the initiative’s chief proponent, said. “This is not just to address the mandate in Obama-care, this is to make sure Colorado never becomes like Massachusetts where government puts a gun to your head and says you will buy a private product whether you want it or not.”

***

The 2,319 page financial regulation bill that just passed Congress is filled with vague, complicated language.

Some language will weaken our financial system and make it less efficient.

Other language appears to mandate racial and gender employment quotas in dozens of Federal agencies.

In the name of making sure that there is not another financial crisis, the bill does nothing to address what caused the mortgage problems created by government regulations that forced banks to make risky loans that they didn’t want to make.

It does nothing to rein in the $400 billion in losses created by government entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

What Democrats don’t understand is how everyone from farmers to small and large companies use derivatives to decrease their risks. When a farmer plants his crops in the spring he has to worry about what the price of his crops will be when they are harvested in the fall. If prices plummet before the harvest occurs, farmers face real financial peril. So farmers sell a portion of those crops even before they plant them. They know what price they will get and they greatly reduce their risk. That is what a derivative is.

The same thing happens when Southwest Airlines agrees to the price that it will pay for jet fuel months in advance.

Among the new rules is that these derivative transactions must be standardized and traded on exchanges.

Democrats claim that this will make deals more transparent. But what business is it of the government whether the farmer or Southwest Airlines makes that deal with another company or over an exchange?

If farmers and companies really benefit from using these exchanges, why does the government have to force them to make agreements that way?

What should be obvious is that the costs of trading derivatives will increase. The contracts traded over these exchanges will also not be as flexible as they are now.

Making derivatives more costly is simply another way of saying that the cost of farmers and companies buying insurance will rise. When some farmers stop buying this higher cost insurance will anyone seriously argue that really reduces their financial risks?

Regulations that restrict bank size ignore one critical question: why are the banks the size that they are now?

The most likely reason is that the most efficient banks grew, the ones that could offer customers the best services at the lowest costs attracted more customers.

Larger banks presumably could also offer services that smaller banks couldn’t.

So how does forcing banks to have higher costs and be less efficient make them less risky? Won’t that make them more likely to go out of business?

Proponents of regulating derivatives point to the losses from AIG or Goldman Sachs supposedly ripping off its customers. A simple solution for AIG would have been to let it go bankrupt and make shareholders bear that loss.

For Goldman Sachs, even if the questionable fraud charges are true, the fraud could presumably occur with any financial instrument, not just derivatives.

Just as President Obama is driving oil rigs out of American waters to other nations, he is going to drive some financial operations overseas.

He is going to raise company costs and make it costly for them to buy insurance.

We have yet another example of government financial regulations begetting more regulations. Regulations that force financial institutions to make risky mortgages remain in place.

Just when one thinks one has heard it all, a quick browse of the local paper reinforces the notion that sheer stupidity is an infinite commodity.

This is especially true in a Sanctuary City such as San Jose, California, where moon bats and lunatics with far too much idle time on their hands seek to interpret the law as an item of fickle, subject to the needs and wishes of the underrepresented, under served, and under intelligent.

As reported in the San Jose Mercury News, in part:

“Opponents of police vehicle impoundment practices are hitting the streets, intent on warning motorists of police checkpoints in Santa Rosa and Petaluma.

“Protesters holding signs in Spanish will continue to show up at checkpoints to protest 30-day impoundments of vehicles operated by drivers without valid licenses, said Alicia Roman, a Santa Rosa attorney who is a member of the Committee for Immigrant Rights.

“The cost of reclaiming an impounded auto, typically $2,000, places an “undue hardship” on low-income people, including Latino immigrants, she said.

“People are upset this is going on,” Roman said.”

An urgent message from Earth to Roman, NOT in Spanish:

People are also upset that drivers (Latinos included!) are breaking the law by driving while drunk, without a license, and without insurance. Citizens are also enraged that illegal aliens are even on our roadways, given the fact that they have no legal or moral basis for being in America!

The fight to shape perceptions of President Obama’s health care overhaul is still in the early stages, but on Wednesday two Republican senators will fire a salvo when they release a 32-page report arguing that the legislation is only exacerbating skyrocketing prices and will cause nearly 100 million Americans to lose their employer-based insurance.

“The passage of the new law is a lost historic opportunity,” says the report, authored by staff for Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican, and Sen. John Barrasso, Wyoming Republican.

The report, titled “Bad Medicine,” comes as the Obama administration is accelerating a public relations push to promote benefits in the law that are taking effect now or soon, in advance of this fall’s midterm elections. There have been improvements in public opinions about the law, though large numbers still oppose it.

One of the most startling assertions in the Coburn/Barrasso report – which was obtained ahead of its release by The Daily Caller – is that nearly 100 million Americans will lose their current form of health insurance and will be required to obtain more expensive plans. One of the president’s most constant refrains in selling his health bill was that if Americans liked what they had, they could keep it.

“The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recently released a regulation that limits the changes businesses can make to health plans and still be considered ‘grandfathered’ plans – exempt from many of the burdensome new mandates in the law,” the report says. “With this new rule, it looks like almost 90 million Americans could lose their current health plan and instead be stuck with more costly, government-­mandated health insurance.”

There are roughly 176 million Americans who currently have health insurance through their employer, the report says.

The White House did not directly contest these numbers, but said that the majority of the 133 million people receiving insurance through large employers will retain what they have because the benefits are similar to what will be required in the future, while those at smaller companies would simply be moving from less protective plans to insurance policies with more protection, such as a ban on lifetime caps.

One of the more insidious aspects of the government takeover is how such takeovers are pitched as reforms. Of course reform traditionally applies to institutions reforming themselves or being reformed by their constituents or shareholders. The idea of government reforming the private sector smacks of unlimited authority, which is exactly what it is. And so a government that cannot reform itself, that cannot stop its out of control spending, its constant legislative corruption, its culture of pork and kickbacks, its compulsive need to appropriate power, sets out to instead take over every aspect of life within the country in the name of reform.

Can an alcoholic who can’t stop drinking, teach others to be teetotalers? Can a compulsive gambler who drops 10 grand a week in Vegas, regulate the gambling habits of others? Only as an example to others of how bad things can get. But though the government cannot regulate itself, it insists that it can regulate everything outside itself. The blind leading the blind is bad enough, but what are we to make of the blind leading those who can actually see. That’s what government regulation is.

But the reform pitch is part of the whole insidious premise that government is protecting the people from being exploited by acting as a referee on their behalf. It’s so insidious because it’s both deceptive and appealing. Most people have felt taken advantage of by corporations. And indeed we do have a legal system in order to avoid criminal exploitation. But what government refereeing does, is blur the line between the criminal and the unethical, and between the unethical and the profiteering, thereby creating a mandate to not only crackdown on criminal actions, but on acts that are unethical or just greedy.

For example, reformers may begin by exposing an insurance company forging documentation to avoid paying claims, an illegal act, to focusing on misleading claims made by insurance representatives, an unethical act, to campaigning for lower insurance rates, an area that is not illegal or unethical, but a question simply of profit. By exploiting this kind of slippery slope, entire industries have been heavily regulated, even in areas well outside of the government’s purview.

The scandal generated by exposing illegal activity is used by advocates for a government takeover to regulate unethical and profiteering behavior, which they all class together as proof of malfeasance. By doing so they define both legal and illegal behavior as illegal, because it is rooted in the desire for profit– an essentially socialist position. Going back to the muckrakers, socialists discovered that they could create an impetus for socialism by delegitimizing the profit motive, and the best way to do so was to begin by building their case around blatantly criminal activity and then move down the ladder to attacking the basic idea of capitalism itself.

The overall target was of course the free market, promising the people that government would act as their guardian, protecting them with regulation from the abuses of capitalism. The genuinely deceptive thing however, was that politicians were making the same offer to companies, promising to act as their referee to protect them from their rivals, their workers and their customers. What was actually happening was that government was inserting itself as the “referee”, promising to protect the different segments of the free market from each other.

So politicians “protect” consumers from companies by price controls, while protecting companies from their competitors by creating de-facto monopolies through legislative loopholes, and then protect companies from consumers by tightly regulating what products consumers can buy. ObamaCare, which both imposes price controls and forces consumers to buy health insurance, is a typical example, in which the government as referee screws over both sides, while giving them both some seeming advantage. In reality both sides are worse off than before, and only the politicians and their camp followers gain from the regulation.

And that is how it began. Retailers were promised protection from distributors. Distributors were promised protection from manufacturers. The public was promised protection from all them. Of course this called for reams and reams of legislation. And that legislation called for more legislation. And the politicians and officials in charge of the process naturally welcomed lobbyists from various trade and consumer groups to “explain” their positions them, said explanations usually accompanied by donations and pledges of political support.