Our illusions about health care

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

If Sen. Edward Kennedy's 651-page bill reconstructing America's health-care system is any indication, the next few weeks will be confusing and exasperating.

Immodestly speaking, the Massachusetts Democrat thinks the government can bestow on Americans long-term care insurance for a far-fetched $65 a month. Right there is a great example of what the approaching weeks will be like as Congress opens debate on every utopian and fly-by-night idea for creating a perfectly healthy society, for a lot less than we're paying now. If there's ever a time for Americans to be skeptical, it's now, because the stakes may never be this high again.

What some are proposing to do with health care is akin to trying to take apart a wheezing old diesel engine and then, by adding a few new parts and a lot of stargazing, turn it into a jet aircraft engine. It has all the earmarks of President Barack Obama's fantasy that everything can be upgraded to excellent, if not perfect, condition in a few weeks by blindly blowing hundreds of billions of dollars out the door.

As a wise professor of mine once said, when you want to create or change public policy, what exactly are you trying to do? You've got to bore through the rhetoric, dogma and politics to find the heart of it. Do you, for example, want to insure every American for the sake of insuring every American, or is the goal to improve every American's health?

We keep hearing that we must provide medical coverage for what the Bureau of the Census says are approximately 47 million uninsured Americans, but there's no discussion of whether that's the goal itself, or a means to the goal.

It's made more difficult because the Census Bureau's survey doesn't delve deeply into why 47 million are uninsured: Because they're young and healthy and don't want to be covered? Because they can't afford it? Because of a disqualifying prior medical condition? No doubt, for all those reasons, but in what proportions? Also ignored is what proportion of the uninsured is nonetheless receiving health care through Medicaid or the State Children's Health Insurance Program. (By the way, the same annual survey shows that the number and percentage of uninsured children continues to decline.)

If you can't answer those questions with precision, you can't design a program that will do what the ultimate goal is -- better health care for all Americans, regardless of whether it is through an insurance program or some other way. For example, if 10 percent of the 47 million are young and healthy and don't want to be insured, forcing them all to buy a policy isn't going to do much to finance the new system. If 10 percent of the 47 million are involuntarily uninsured, then the problem isn't as bad as it is described, so we can ask: Why are we rebuilding the whole system?

Gets complicated doesn't it? Perhaps such questions will soon be answered with clarity. But my hopes aren't high because these kinds of questions have been persistently ignored in the health-care debate.

A firsit-hand glimpse of the Irianian thirst for freedom

Twitter has become one of the few ways that freedom-seekers are foiling censorship and communicating with each other. Check out here what they're telling each other.

Send Michael Moore contributions for his friends in the UAW

For some reason, Moore forgot to include them in this pitch.

Pro-reform marchers fill Tehran streets - Yahoo! News

Reading about the protests (here) made me think that Ahmadinejad's mistake when stealing the election was winning by too big of a margin, thereby instantly casting doubt on the results of the closely contested election. But then I thought of Mayor Richard M. Daley's Democratic Machine and all the precincts that routinely turn in 100 percent (or close to it) votes for Machine candidates. None of it seems to hurt Daley's credibility, but then again, this is Chicago, not Tehran.

GM's deal erased many average Americans' savings

Maybe the bondholders should have formed a union and contributed heavily to Obama's campaign so they would have extorted better terms from his administration. Story is here.

Today is Flag Day

Here's a thought.

61% of Illinois Voters Say They Would Definitely Vote Against Roland Burris

Lots of interesting information in Rasmussen Reports about the views of Illinois voters, including this:

Governor Pat Quinn, who replaced Blagojevich following his impeachment, does not receive much reelection support from voters. If Quinn decides to run for a full term as governor, only 13% say they would definitely vote for him while 23% say they would definitely vote against him. Most voters (63%) say their decisions would depend on who is running against him.

America to Obama: Stop the spending

Most voters (53%) believe increases in government spending hurt the economy, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.

While that result is unchanged from last month, it’s up five points from 48% in January.

Just 27% now say increased government spending helps the economy, and 10% say it has no impact.

Read more in Rasmussen Reports

David Letterman is a jerk

So are his defenders.

I know it's too much to ask we remember something as far back as more than a dozen years, but let's try, anyway. Bill and Hillary Clinton had just moved into the White House along with daughter Chelsie. Some folks, including Saturday Night Live, cruelly made fun of her looks. Everyone quickly agreed that a politician's children are off limits. And that agreement held for eight years.

Now, David Letterman breaks that consensus by making Sara Palin's daughter (or was it daughters?) an object of ridicule, implying sexual misconduct, rape, or whatever it was we are supposed to believe.

Face it, Letterman and his hip persona just aren't funny. For some reason, though, he has accumulated an adoring audience of dolts. Such as this defender, whose comment appeared in the Los Angeles Times.

If the Palin (sic) are going to parade her kids on stage in front of the world, making them public figures, then they need to accept that they'll be subject to jokes, even off-color ones. As far as I'm concerned, they all got what they deserved, and maybe the Palin's (sic) will now buy a clue and realize if THEY want to protect their kids, they will keep them out of site (sic) in Alaska---and leave us alone--EyesWideOpen

Let us hope that no one applies this principle to President Barack Obama's daughters.

The adorable picture above is of David Letterman's son, Harry. Letterman bragged about him on his show, so....Well, you get the idea.

Bush, Obama and Kenneth Lewis

Democrats say the Bush administration pushed Bank of America's Kenneth Lewis too hard to merge with troubled Merrill Lynch. Republicans say the same thing about the Obama administration when it comes to remaking the auto industry.

They're both right. It's what you get when government takes over. The question is whether any of it is legal or even constitutional?

Here's a quote to remember:

"That's why I have already promised the [health care insurance] reform will not add to our deficit over the next 10 years."--President Barack Obama.

Oh, sure. The 10-year cost of the plan is estimated to be $1 trillion. Where will the money come from?

The silliness is here

Barney Frank can't take the heat

He flees the kitchen.

Remember the 21.5 % prime rate?

Well, it's coming back

Arthur Laffer warns in the Wall Street Journal that we need to get ready for inflation and higher interest rates.

To date what's happened is potentially far more inflationary than were the monetary policies of the 1970s, when the prime interest rate peaked at 21.5% and inflation peaked in the low double digits. Gold prices went from $35 per ounce to $850 per ounce, and the dollar collapsed on the foreign exchanges. It wasn't a pretty picture.

Get ready to be frightened, when he points out that:

unfunded liabilities of federal programs -- such as Social Security, civil-service and military pensions, the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, Medicare and Medicaid -- are over the $100 trillion mark. With U.S. GDP and federal tax receipts at about $14 trillion and $2.4 trillion respectively, such a debt all but guarantees higher interest rates, massive tax increases, and partial default on government promises.

If Bush had done it...

Or, where is Comedy Central now?

This has been making the rounds on the Internet, and worth repeating:

If George W. Bush had made a joke at the expense of the Special Olympics, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had given Gordon Brown set of inexpensive and useless (to Tony Blair's UK video formatting) DVDs, when Brown had given him a thoughtful and historically significant gift, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had given the Queen of England an iPod containing videos of his speeches, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had bowed to the King of Saudi Arabia , would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had visited Austria and made reference to the non-existent "Austrian language," would you have brushed it off as a minor slip?

If George W. Bush had filled his cabinet and circle of advisers with people who cannot seem to keep current on their income taxes, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had ordered the firing of the CEO of a major corporation, even though he had no constitutional authority to do so, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had proposed to double the national debt, which had taken more than two centuries to accumulate, in one year, would you have approved?

If George W. Bush had then proposed to double the debt again within 10 years, would you have approved?

So, tell me again, what is it about Obama that makes him so brilliant and impressive?

Can't think of anything? Don't worry. He's done all this in 10 weeks -- so you'll have three years and nine-and-a-half months to come up with an answer.

More hypocrisy in Congress

The Washington Times reports that the House has restricted outside investigations in its members' ethics. Both parties joined in the move, a mere couple of years after Democrats took control because of GOP scandals.

Will it ever end?

In Defense of High Parking Meter Rates

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Daily Observer

Hold on a second; where does it say that you’re entitled to park cheaply on a public street?

You’re not, but that’s the assumption behind all the crabbing about the city’s “obscene” increase in parking meter rates. Put aside questions about the competence of the company now running the meters and whether Mayor Richard M. Daley could have squeezed another billion or so out of the company for the 75-year lease. Also, put aside how badly the company has bollixed the job and questions about whether it was a sweetheart deal.

That’s a lot to put aside, but if your gripe is about what it now costs to park on a street in Chicago, then you’ve lost me. I had thought from the decibel level that you were being asked for an arm and a leg, but then I looked at the rates.

Read more in The Chicago Daily Observer

Sanetilli puts it to Geithner

Next reforms should take on term limits for legislative leaders

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

All of the suggestions for reforming the contemptible Illinois legislature won't go anywhere unless we strip its two leaders of their iron grip on how their minions vote.

Therefore, as my first suggestions for amendments to the Illinois Constitution, I propose limiting the length that any legislator can serve as House speaker or Senate president to one or two terms. How else to end the lock that House Speaker Michael Madigan (above right) and Senate President John Cullerton, both Chicago Democrats, have on both chambers so that the legislative bodies can function as they should -- true representatives of the people?

The legislature can be called a lot of things (bumbling, cowardly, selfish, sheepish, insane), but it's also a diarchy. Diarchy: (n) a government controlled by two diarchs (bosses). In most diarchies, the diarchs hold their position for life and pass the responsibilities and power of the position to their children or other family members when they die.

In the Illinois legislature, the diarchs are Madigan and Cullerton -- two familial names in Chicago politics -- without whose approval nothing will move through the otherwise constipated, ethically challenged legislature. Because they are elected from two safe districts in Chicago and because they rule with papal-like ex cathedra ("from the chair") authority, the rest of us are virtually disenfranchised.

Madigan is the longer-serving, Cullerton having replaced Emil Jones, the former enabler of the disgraced former governor, Rod Blagojevich. Madigan and Cullerton control their chambers by sitting on a pot of campaign funds to be doled out to their ever-grateful toadies. Of course, limiting the speakership or presidency to one or two terms doesn't mean that the campaign contributions from those seeking favor won't stop flowing into the hands of whoever succeeds them.

So, we'll need another amendment: No Illinois legislator may distribute campaign money to any other member of the House or Senate. Sure, there are other ways to distribute campaign money to other servile party members and requiring loyalty in return. But at least it will keep the direct ladling of political funds out of the governmental process.

There are other possible amendments that citizens can initiate. High on my list would be the restoration of the "cumulative voting" system for electing lawmakers. Years ago, as a citizen activist, Gov. Pat Quinn was instrumental in eliminating this system, which turned out to be one of the biggest anti-reform moves in decades.

Under the system, each legislative district sent three representatives to the House. Typically, Democrats and Republicans would each put up two candidates in each district, and voters were given three votes to divide among them. It produced a cohesive minority of some of the most independent, honest and competent legislators in the state's history. Quinn and his fellow utopians accomplished what the most die-hard party regulars couldn't have done on their own. They concentrated political power in the hands of a smaller clique of party regulars, while producing an assembly of conformist lawmakers.

Voters also could initiate an amendment limiting the terms of all lawmakers, not just the leadership. Term limits aren't my favorite cause; I see good reasons for having experienced legislators. Yet, turning over the entire membership regularly isn't a bad idea, considering the manner in which the experienced hands have been conducting themselves.

This shouldn't exhaust the number of ideas for amending the constitution's Article IV, which sets out how the legislature does business. I'm putting these forward because after last week's column suggesting that voters use the citizen initiative process to shake up the legislature, a number of readers asked for specific suggestions. Other folks may have more or better ideas, and I hope to hear from them.

As I said last week, it takes about 270,000 registered voters' signatures to place an amendment on the ballot in the 2010 general election. It's not too soon to begin weighing the ideas and coalescing around the best ones. I can serve as a conduit for the ideas and for those who are interested in getting a movement started.

But I'm not an organizer. It's up to those with the moxie and the money to get this effort under way. I know there is interest out there, and we need to start somewhere. The Madigans, Cullertons and the rest have signaled that we don't matter; they need a reminder that we do.

Obama: We have only begun to spend

Finally, an accounting--grossly inadequate as it is--of stimulus spending:

In the three months after the Democratic-led Congress approved Obama’s stimulus plan, the government doled out about 11 percent of the emergency stimulus funds, according to a progress report released by Biden’s office on May 13.

The administration says it will commit about 70 percent of the money by the end of the next fiscal year, less than the 75 percent that White House officials projected in February.

Now, let's have a more detailed accounting on how well the money is being spent, before pushing ahead with the release of more record amounts of pork.

Springfield Tax Revolt

Wisdom in Springfield; is it possible?

A Wall Street Journal editorial found something praiseworthy to say about our pathetic Illinois legislature:

Taxpayer victories are rare these days, so let's cheer the good news in Illinois, where earlier this week the state House in Springfield voted 74-42 against a plan to raise the income tax rate on individuals and businesses by 50%.

One interesting fact in the piece:

One reason [Gov. Pat] Quinn's tax plan failed is because there was little effort to slow down spending that has increased 45% (to $4,700 from $3,250 per person after inflation) in the past decade.

Republicans, struggling to find a message that resonates with "moderate" voters should note all the Democrats who joined with every House Republican to kill the tax increase. Together, they made an overwhelming majority