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Sunday’s Pickings was devoted to the problems of the “affordable care act.” Now we have Joe Klein of Time Magazine writing about obamacare incompetence.
… Yes, the President has faced a terrible economic crisis—and he has done well to limit the damage. He has also succeeded in avoiding disasters overseas. But, as a Democrat—as someone who believes in activist government—he has a vested interest in seeing that federal programs actually work efficiently. I don’t see much evidence that this is anywhere near the top of his priorities.
One thing is clear: Obamacare will fail if he doesn’t start paying more attention to the details of implementation, if he doesn’t start demanding action. And, in a larger sense, the notion of activist government will be in peril—despite the demographics flowing the Democrats’ way—if institutions like the VA and Obamacare don’t deliver the goods. Sooner or later, the Republican party may come to understand that its best argument isn’t about tearing down the government we have, but making it run more efficiently.
Sooner or later, the Democrats may come to understand that making it run efficiently is the prerequisite for maintaining power.
Andrew Malcolm with more disasters from the unaffordable care act.
Remember how since-demoted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said we’d have to pass the massive ObamaCare health law to find out what’s in it?
Well, now three years later that’s happening and a lot of people are not liking what they see.
Remember how ObamaCare was going to save you money?
Not going to happen. Premiums are going up, some by as much as 100%. And a new study by the nonpartisan Society of Actuaries finds that on average insurers will have to pay 32% more for claims under ObamaCare.
Remember how ObamaCare was going to cover more than 44 million uninsured Americans?
Not going to happen. As the immense law and its 86-inch tall stack of new regulations roll out, millions of Americans will remain uncovered, even if the troubled, challenged law works flawlessly, which it hasn’t. And won’t. The latest Congressional Budget Office estimate is that even with full implementation, more than 30 million Americans will remain uncovered by the so-called Affordable Care Act.
Remember how ObamaCare was not going to add “one single dime” to costs?
Not going to happen. …
Time Magazine, and now Campbell Brown, late of CNN and NBC, takes the president to task for ignoring violence in the entertainment industry.
There was something missing from President Obama’s Wednesday speech in Denver about gun violence. He focused almost exclusively on passing gun-control laws, and not at all on one of the nation’s biggest promoters of violence: the entertainment industry.
The president’s campaign against gun violence has produced a stale debate marked by lots of speeches with little achieved. A more creative chief executive would have used this moment to widen the discussion by drawing attention to the increasingly graphic violence so pervasive in television shows, movies and videogames. Mr. Obama is particularly well positioned to challenge Hollywood because of his special relationship with the media world’s elites. They might be more likely to heed criticism coming from Mr. Obama than from any other president or member of Congress.
In January, when announcing his gun-violence task force, headed by Vice President Biden, Mr. Obama paid lip service to the subject of media violence. The president’s gun-control plan, based on Mr. Biden’s recommendations, addressed the matter only by asking the Centers for Disease Control to “conduct research on the causes and prevention of gun violence, including links between videogames, media images, and violence.” He asked Congress to allocate $10 million for the research. In Washington terms, that’s a pittance.
Dr. Victor Strasberger, the leading researcher on media violence for the AmericanAcademy of Pediatrics, could tell the CDC and the president what to expect: “All our studies show portraying violence is extremely dangerous,” Dr. Strasberger recently told me. “Kids become desensitized, numb to suffering around them and aggressive.” He also says that when you add in other factors like poverty, abuse or mental illness, “you have a perfect storm. This can and does lead to violence.”
Dr. Strasberger says he was stunned that the White House seems to have little interest in the available evidence. On the subject of media violence, Mr. Biden met only with representatives of the entertainment and videogame industry and researchers who support the industry. Not a single doctor or researcher critical of media violence met with the vice president.
That’s a shame, since there is a consensus among doctors and mental-health professionals about the danger to children from exposure to the violence depicted by movies, television and videogames. …
You can’t make it up! David Harsanyi says the administration is bugging banks to make risky home loans.
According to the Washington Post, the Obama administration is pushing big banks to make more home loans available to Americans with bad credit – the same kind of government guidance that helped blow up the housing market:
In response, administration officials say they are working to get banks to lend to a wider range of borrowers by taking advantage of taxpayer-backed programs — including those offered by the Federal Housing Administration — that insure home loans against default.
Housing officials are urging the Justice Department to provide assurances to banks, which have become increasingly cautious, that they will not face legal or financial recriminations if they make loans to riskier borrowers who meet government standards but later default.
Think about this statement. The administration is asking banks – banks that Washington bails out; banks that Washington crafts regulations for — to embrace risky policies that put the institution and its investors (not to mention, all of us) in a precarious position. So precarious, in fact, that banks have to ask government if they can be freed of any legal or financial consequences. …
And, also in Time, John McWorter says Ben Carson should be left alone.
Ben Carson criticized Obamacare, sharply, with Obama listening, at the National Prayer Breakfast in February. And Carson is black.
Yes, Carson is the black – gasp – conservative of the moment, this weekend also speaking out against gay marriage, for which he has been forced to apologize.
Unsurprisingly, Carson, an accomplished neurosurgeon at Johns Hopkins, has been celebrated by the right, and is considering politics. Enter the usual dogpile from black commenters: Carson as a traitor, a sellout, airing his views not from sincerity but because he wants to please the white establishment and make a buck.
Many wonder why so many black people seem to treat true diversity of opinion as heresy. There is, in fact, a reason which, in itself, makes sense. The idea is that black conservatives, in distracting whites from thinking about racism, impede black progress and even give entrée to a possible racist backlash.
That’s not crazy at all – but the problem is that history has shown it to be invalid. …
WSJ’s Political Diary celebrates another labor loss in Wisconsin.
Remember Big Labor’s throw-down last year over Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s public-sector union reforms? The fight ended with a squeak yesterday as conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Patience Roggensack handily defeated union-backed candidate and Marquette University law professor Ed Fallone, with some 57% of the vote.
The vote means conservatives retain 4-3 control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The next two justices up for reelection on the court will be from its liberal wing, which means that after yesterday’s win conservatives are likely to maintain or extend their majority for years to come. That’s a blow to unions who were hoping that they could secure a liberal majority that would be more receptive to an upcoming appeal of a Dane County case charging Mr. Walker’s union reforms are unconstitutional because they exempted police and firefighters.
The election also shows that Mr. Walker’s union reforms have had significant political consequences for the left. During a similar state Supreme Court battle last year between conservative incumbent David Prosser and liberal challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg, local and national unions poured buckets of money into the fight for control of the court and lost. With their ammo spent, Mr. Fallone’s campaign got only a fraction of the support. …
The Weekly Standard’s Scrapbook notes the Institute for Justice win for Louisiana’s monks. This was noted in March 27th Pickings as we gave tribute to IJ for the win.
Fifteen months ago, The Scrapbook cheered on the monks of Saint Joseph Abbey, in Covington, Louisiana, as they fought in court for their right to earn a living by selling to the public the plain wooden caskets they’d been making for years for their own use. Now we celebrate their triumph in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Last week, the court voted unanimously to free them from “irrational” regulations.
Here’s what those regulations required—and listen up, you skeptics of Tea Party demands for less government and for economic liberty. We’re talking about a product designed to be buried in the ground forever.
Under the legal regimen secured by the Louisiana Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors, according to the 5th Circuit,
a prospective casket retailer must become a licensed funeral establishment. This requires building a layout parlor for thirty people, a display room for six caskets, an arrangement room, and embalming facilities. Second, the establishment must employ a full-time funeral director. A funeral director must have a high school diploma or GED, pass thirty credit hours at an accredited college, and complete a one-time apprenticeship. The apprenticeship must consist of full-time employment and be the apprentice’s “principal occupation.” None of this mandatory training relates to caskets. . . . A funeral director must also pass a test administered by the International Conference of Funeral Examining Boards. The exam does not test Louisiana law or burial practices.
The purpose of these Alice in Wonderland requirements was plain: to protect the guild interests and profits of a politically favored industry. So that the funeral directors and licensed embalmers who occupy eight of the nine seats on the state board could comfortably enjoy their monopoly, the upstart monks of Saint Joseph would have to think of some other way to make a buck.
Well, not anymore—at least not in Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, the jurisdiction covered by the 5th Circuit.
The state board has 90 days to decide whether to appeal to the Supreme Court, which might or might not take the case. Either way, there is now a “circuit split” on the constitutionality of government protection of a narrow economic interest without public benefit. The 6th Circuit unanimously struck down a similar casket monopoly in 2002, while the 10th Circuit upheld an Oklahoma law in 2004, cynically pronouncing the “dishing out of special economic benefits” to the well connected to be the “national pastime” of governments.
Sooner or later, the High Court seems likely to clear up the conflict. That is the goal of the strategically selected litigation pursued by the valiant Institute for Justice in these and other cases: to have the Supremes strike a blow for individual economic liberty and place limits on legislators’ power to rig the system for their friends. Not to mention burying bad regulations.