While I find Romney to be a poor Republican candidate, and not really a conservative at all, I find agreement with him on some issues and this one I do.

Yesterday Obama released the creepy slideshow “The Life of Julia” in which they depict how a female is taken care of from cradle to grave by the taxpayer. It’s a perfect example of the welfare state that is bankrupting this country. In the utopian world of Julia she gets money for college, for her medical bills, she gets to sue her employer for more money, she gets free contraception, loans for a business, and then some retirement money until she dies. Somehow Obama believes we will have the money for all that for the next 80 years.

It’s a tall tale for sure.

Rich Lowry

Julia’s central relationship is to the state. It is her educator, banker, health-care provider, venture capitalist, and retirement fund. And she is, fundamentally, a taker. Every benefit she gets is cut-rate or free. She apparently doesn’t worry about paying taxes. It doesn’t enter her mind that the programs supporting her might add to the debt or might have unintended consequences. She has no moral qualms about forcing others to pay for her contraception, and her sense of patriotic duty is limited to getting as much government help as she can.

The alleged benefits to Julia are exaggerated or nonexistent. Pity the poor thing if she depends on Head Start for her launch into the world. A study by the Department of Health and Human Services last year found that positive educational effects tend to wear off by the first grade. The government assistance she gets for financing college feeds into the maw of inexorable tuition increases. The chances that the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act is going to boost her pay, as a web designer, are essentially nil. Julia is getting punked.

Her life is framed to show that she gets more from President Barack Obama than from Republicans. The same contrast could be achieved differently. She could lose her web-design job and go on unemployment, which President Obama always wants to extend despite Republican objections. With her family’s income dropping, she could resort to the food-stamp program, which has expanded massively under President Obama despite Republicans’ inveighing against the trend. These examples don’t suit the campaign’s purposes, though. They show government to be a poor substitute for the robust recovery that President Obama hasn’t delivered even as he has endeavored to make Julia’s birth-control pills free.

The point of view of “The Life of Julia” is profoundly condescending. It assumes that giving people things will distract them from larger considerations of the public weal — the economy, debt, the health of the culture.

Now where do I find agreement with Romney? Here he answers a question from a real version of Julia:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I agree with him, but does he really mean it? Romneycare may suggest otherwise.

The Obamacare individual mandate demands that everyone have insurance coverage and penalizes those who do not carry insurance.

The fine for not purchasing health insurance under PPACA is $95 per person in 2014 (or 1% of taxable income, whichever is greater), $325 in 2015 (or 2%), and $695 in 2016 (or 2.5%). Thereafter, the mandate is indexed to inflation.

But hold on, there are exemptions:

In addition, many people are exempted from the mandate, such as those for whom premiums exceed 8 percent of household income. Hence, as premiums increase, more and more people will be exempted from the mandate.

So those exempted not only won’t pay the penalty, they will absolutely no incentive to spend a penny on health care coverage until they get sick and now they cannot be refused. Obamacare- it’s like going to a bank and making a $1000 withdrawal without ever opening an account. Not long ago this was called robbery.

Never mind that the architect of this disaster now says not only will it not save money, it’s going to cost a lot more:

In Wisconsin, Gruber reported that people purchasing insurance for themselves on the individual market would see, on average, premium increases of 30 percent by 2016, relative to what would have happened in the absence of Obamacare. In Minnesota, the law would increase premiums by 29 percent over the same period. Colorado was the least worst off, with premiums under the law rising by only 19 percent.

Never mind that none of the promises Obama made- keeping your plan, keeping your doctor, lowering premium costs- are worthless.

No, penalizing people for not having insurance is not a burden. Sheila-Jackson Lee, (D-Idiot), say it’s a positive thing. In Rep. Jackson-Lee’s view, however, this language does not actually impose a penalty. Not only that, but it’s like the civil rights struggle.

“I would make the argument, one, that instead it is an incentive to do right–that it is not penalizing because penalty is punishment,” Jackson-Lee told the Judiciary Committee.

“You’re not punished if you have health insurance, in fact. And so you are, in fact, incentivized to have health insurance, rather than take the negative which is to suggest that because we have a penalty you are being punished,” Rep. Jackson-Lee said.

“I am helping you. I am helping you not to have 26 percent un-insurance in the state of Texas. I’m helping children be insured. I’m helping diverse minorities be insured,” said Rep. Jackon-Lee. “And I know during the civil rights argument–even though we were arguing under the Constitution–there were many policy statements being made: Do we want to live in a nation that discriminates against a person because of the color of their skin? In addition to the constitutional argument, do we want to live in a nation where there are people being uninsured causing catastrophic costs unto the nation and others have to pay. I think that is the question that needs to be considered by the courts.”

And parking tickets? They’re a positive thing too.

“But I also need to say whether or not it is more an incentive than it is a punishment,” said Rep. Jackson-Lee. “I am more inspired by incentive. And I welcome it being a parking ticket. We get parking tickets all the time, and no one complains about being required to do the right thing.”

Eric Holder has blocked the South Carolina voter ID law on the basis that it unfairly burdens some potential voters:

The Justice Department on Friday rejected South Carolina’s law requiring voters to show photo identification at the polls, saying it makes it harder for minorities to cast ballots. It was the first voter ID law to be refused by the federal agency in nearly 20 years.

The Obama administration said South Carolina’s law didn’t meet the burden under the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which outlawed discriminatory practices preventing blacks from voting. Tens of thousands of minorities in South Carolina might not be able to cast ballots under South Carolina’s law because they don’t have the right photo ID, Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez said.

The Supreme Court has upheld a similar law in Indiana.

South Carolina ID’s would be provided at no cost and South Carolina has even offered to provide free transportation to obtain one.

The Carter-Baker Commission of 2005 said voter ID was no burden:

A bipartisan Commission on Federal Election Reform in 2005 chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and former U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III found no evidence that requiring photo IDs would suppress the minority vote. The panel recommended a national photo ID system and a campaign to register voters.

Want to see a side-splitter?

What’s wrong with showing identification when you vote? That’s an egregious civil rights violation if you ask the Obama Administration and liberal groups like the Center for American Progress, and the Advancement Project. So what happens if you show up at the front door of these groups without ID? Find out on this PJTV undercover investigation.

Click here to view the embedded video.

So it’s a burden to have to have an ID to vote, but it is not a burden to have to pay a penalty for not having insurance under Obamacare, and you can’t into the offices of those who say it’s a burden to have to have an ID without an ID.

You can’t make this stuff up.

If one person doesn’t need an ID to vote, than neither do I. And if I don’t need an ID to vote, then I don’t need one to board a plane or drive a car. It’s discriminatory. But that’s not this is all about. As wrote back in January, this election is all about fraud. Obama absolutely depends on it to win re-election. The more the left whines, the more dependent on fraud they are.

This past week the Supreme Court heard arguments for and against ObamaCare. The decision, expected to be handed down in June may very well be the single most important case in the history of the United States.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, the perennial swing vote on the court pinpointed the argument on Tuesday:

Here the government is saying that the federal government has a duty to tell the individual citizen that it must act, and that is different from what we have in previous cases, and that changes the relationship of the federal government to the individual in a very fundamental way.

He is making the observation that if ObamaCare stands, the federal government can not only tell you what you are prohibited from doing, but at the same time it can tell you what you must do.

Donald Verrilli, the administration’s attorney, suggests that the reason the government can regulate the healthcare market is that that everyone participates in it at some point.

Justice Scalia points out that everyone participates in the food market and therefore the government could use that rationale to force everyone to buy broccoli.

Verrilli’s retort: Though the two markets do share that one trait, they remain distinctly different. The healthcare market, he said, contains participation that is “often unpredictable and often involuntary.” The food market is not that.

Which in turn caused Justice Alito to ask about burial insurance, the cause of which is often unpredictable and almost always involuntary.

You can see where this is going. This gets us to the fundamental question about liberalism in general. When will enough regulation be enough? Will there ever come a point where liberals believe that there is simply enough government regulation in place and that they should stop making new laws? Is there a point where citizens are going to be allowed to exercise individual responsibility to the point that they are responsible for their own lives? From the federal government all the way down to local towns and counties, what one describes as freedom in America is rapidly shrinking.

The thing that liberals never seem to get is that the unknown factor in their plans for universal perfection (read equal outcomes) is the fact that it includes humans. There is nothing that humans have ever been involved in that is perfect, that is 100% successful or 100% safe. Yet liberals continue to push the envelope. And it’s not just about safety… it’s gotten to the point that New York City’s Department of Education believes it’s the government’s job to save people from getting their feelings hurt so they’ve put out a list of 50 topics that should not be used in tests because they might offend various people. Dinosaurs are on the list, presumably because it would offend people who don’t believe in evolution. Computers in the home cannot be mentioned (because not all kids will have computers in their homes) but mentioning a computer in a school environment is allowed.

Is there some point of minutia that is beyond the reach of liberals? John Stossel did a special recently called “Illegal Everything” about regulation and featured children from around the country being stopped from selling lemonade. In one case, in Midway, GA, one of the little girls’ father went to city hall to find out what law the girls had broken. No one knew, but the Chief of Police was clear about why they had to be stopped: We were not aware of how the lemonade was made, who made the lemonade, or what the lemonade was made with.

In the spirit of the times, I would like to suggest a new regulation. All men should be required to get a federal dating permit in order to strike up a conversation with a women in a bar or at the supermarket. Certainly some men lie about all sorts of things in order to get a woman into bed. From their jobs (or lack thereof) their salaries, their previous relationships, their education and even their marital status. Women across the country would be saved from ever getting their hearts broken or their purity despoiled. Licenses would be $25 per year and would have to be shown within the first 5 minutes of any intended coupling. The woman could scan the license with her smartphone and immediately know everything about her would be suitor.

Such as system would open a Pandora’s box of issues. What happens when a man changes jobs? How long does he have to update his license? What happens if he gets a raise? A cut in pay? Who decides if a previous relationship ended amicably, the man or the ex? Does she have the right or obligation to comment on the issuance of his license? How would a government computer weigh an acceptable honesty score? Does lying to your girlfriend about how beautiful your last girlfriend was generate enough positive points to outweigh the truth you told her about how bad her cooking is? Is there even a remote possibility that this could somehow make dating a better experience?

This may sound farfetched, but that’s what happens when government gets involved in practically anything. Education. Healthcare. Housing…

At the end of the day the United States, like every other society throughout history is guaranteed to be imperfect by the fact that it is made up of imperfect humans. Liberals make the mistake that collective decision making and rule making can move the nation farther down the road to perfection. It can’t and it won’t. The strange thing is, the more regulations they foist on the population, the more people become law breakers, inadvertent and otherwise. With over 100,000 federal regulations and literally millions of state and local ordinances it’s virtually impossible that individuals can go through any day without breaking some laws. With so many regulations, virtually everything is illegal, and it’s simply the whim of the regulators, politicians and police that decides who gets prosecuted and for what.

ObamaCare is the single most important court case in a century for one simple reason. It presents the American people with the clearest choice between freedom and statism since the calamitous 1942 decision in Wickard v. Filburn.

If the Supreme Court throws out the individual mandate and the rest of ObamaCare, perhaps citizens will finally feel like they have a fighting chance in taking on the borg that government has become and begin the process of rolling back the overreach that permeates every area of our lives.

On the other hand, if the Court upholds ObamaCare then it is the swan song of freedom as you know it. The United States will not collapse the next day or the next week or even within the next few years. It will however happen. Power corrupts absolutely and absolute power corrupts even more… A government bestowed with carte blanche will see no reason to ever curb its own power, and eventually it will take over everything. Lemonade anyone?

Even some of the liberal judges appear skeptical about Obama’s defense of ObamaCare:

On the first day of oral arguments in the case challenging President Obama’s national health care law, justices seemed skeptical that the individual mandate should be considered a tax — one of the main consitutional defenses being offered for the law.

To be clear, today’s 90 minutes of oral arguments did not concern the underlying merits of the case, but whether an 1876 law called the Anti-Injunction Act bars the Court from ruling on the suit at this time. Under the Anti-Injunction Act, people cannot challenge a tax in court until after they have paid it, something that would effectively punt the issue until at least 2015. However, there is some overlap between this question and the idea of whether the mandate is a tax, and justices on both sides of the ideological fence expressed skepticism that the mandate should be treated as a tax.

“This cannot be a revenue raising measure, because if it’s successful, there won’t be any revenue raised,” said Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the mandate.

Another liberal on the court, Justice Stephen Breyer, said of Congress’s description of the fine for non-compliance with the mandate, “They called it a penalty and not a tax for a reason.”

Alito came in for the swoop:

Justice Sam Alito asked Verrilli whether he could point to another case in which courts identified something as not a tax for the purposes of the Anti-Injunction Act while still ruling it was a constitutional exercise of taxing power. Verrilli could not name any.

Bam!

First Obama said the mandate wasn’t a tax, and then they said it is.

And now even the liberal judges of the Supreme Court are looking a bit wary on their argument.

Ed Morrissey:

That doesn’t bode well for ObamaCare advocates. If the mandate gets struck as a constitutional overreach, then regardless of whether the Supreme Court finds severability or not, the entire structure of ObamaCare collapses. It will hasten momentum for its repeal, and insurers will switch sides to demand its complete rejection.

And even Howard Dean believes the mandate will be struck down:

Dean, a former presidential candidate who also chaired the Democratic National Committee from 2005 to 2009, said on “CBS This Morning” that it’s “likely the individual mandate will be declared unconstitutional” but he expects the justices will sever that finding from the rest of the bill, meaning other elements, like the ban on denying people insurance based on pre-existing conditions, could remain in effect.

Howard Dean believes ObamaCare will survive if the mandate is struck down. Richard Epstein:

…if the individual mandate is struck down, does the rest of the law go down with it? As Abbe Gluck and Michael Graetz recently noted in the New York Times, both the Obama administration and the states opposing the program insist that the entire ACA will go down the tubes if the mandate is struck down. Their motivations of course diverge. The Obama administration thinks that the all-or-nothing position improves the odds that the mandate will be upheld, given the vast dislocations that will follow if it is struck down. The states think that the mandate is a loser on its own terms, and want to bring the rest of the statute down with it.

Both sides are wrong. As I have urged in a brief coauthored with Mario Loyola of the Texas Public Policy Foundation and Ilya Shapiro of the Cato Institute, Title I at the very least has to fall if the mandate is struck down because it is the only backstop that Congress put in to control adverse selection under the ACA. Writers like Gluck and Graetz are wrong to say that allowing severability rightly puts the issue back into the lap of the next Congress. A future Congress could easily be paralyzed on the issue, which leaves us with an incoherent structure. But we do know that the 111th Congress that passed this bill a year ago on March 23, 2010 did regard the two as indissoluble.

Just because the rest of Title I is not severable from the individual mandate does not mean that the mandate itself is saved from constitutional attack by propping up the Commerce Clause with the Necessary and Proper Clause. The key issue is this: Severability asks whether one part of the legislation can function as Congress intended if another part is stripped out. In contrast, the Necessary and Proper Clause only saves that legislation which is needed to make the statute cohere. As noted earlier, the individual mandate was only introduced as a second-best response to the ACA’s problem of adverse selection risk.

The mandate is not necessary for that purpose because there are other devices that do a far better job in coping with that omnipresent danger. And it is surely not proper to use an extraordinary remedy that expands the scope of Congressional power to achieve an end that could be controlled by more traditional means. Thus, restrictions on the power to pull out of an insurance plan can deal with adverse selection and general taxes can deal with the need to subsidize high-risk individuals —if that is thought to be a legitimate government function.

In the end, Obamacare’s rickety economic structure is intimately connected to its constitutional infirmities. The simple fixes that control the worst excesses of the ACA obviate the need for the government’s constitutional adventurism.

If SCOTUS strikes the mandate down I believe it will provide momentum to repeal it. At least I hope it does.

Click here to view the embedded video.

UPDATE

Click here to view the embedded video.

I was thinking of writing this up as a Most Wanted, but it deserves significant exposure. The Institute of Justice has filed an amicus brief regarding Obamacare. It questions the ability of the government to force people into contracts against their will, and if this is done for Obamacare then there would be no limit to what Obama could force anyone to do. And one cannot help but wonder if this is not part of the plan.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Constitutional law professor Elizabeth Price Foley, who is the executive director of the Institute’s Florida Chapter and who co-authored IJ’s brief, said, “The individual mandate violates a cardinal rule of contract law—to be enforceable, all agreements must be voluntary. The Framers understood this, and would never have given the federal government the power to force individuals into lifelong contracts of insurance. The Court should not allow the government to exercise this unprecedented and dangerous power.”

As IJ’s brief shows, the principle of mutual assent, under which both parties must consent for a contract to be valid, is a fundamental principle of contract law that was well understood during the Founding era and is still a cornerstone of contract law today. Indeed, contracts entered under duress have long been held to be invalid. Yet the mandate forces individuals to enter into contracts of insurance that would never be valid under this longstanding principle. (For a copy of IJ’s brief, visit: www.ij.org/PPACAbrief.)

If the U.S. Supreme Court fails to strike down the individual mandate, there will be nothing to stop Congress from forcing people into other contracts against their will—employment contracts or union membership, for example. If we still have a constitutional republic in which the federal government’s powers are limited, then the Court should strike down this law.

The Institute for Justice’s brief is the only amicus brief filed with the Court that examines this case in the context of the history of contract law. The brief illustrates how the Supreme Court has recognized the principle of consent in commercial relations in its Commerce Clause and Tenth Amendment cases, and it explains why the U.S. Supreme Court has a key role in acting as a check against this unconstitutional power grab by the federal government.

This is arguably the single most important aspect of Obamacare. It could in fact codify tyranny.

via Hot Air

More at IJ

Here is what Democrats want us to think: Republican candidates are going to take away your contraceptive pills; they are going to go on some jihad against you in the bedroom, and the only salvation is reelecting Barack Obama.

First of all, Obama cannot run on his record. The last thing that he wants you to think about is what he has done while in office. He does not want you to think about Obamacare, because it has continued to remain unpopular, even to today. Now, they will continue to try to sell Obamacare is becoming more popular, but Democrats do not want to carry this flag into the main election.

Whereas Newt Gingrich is going to tell you over and over again that he is the only person on the ticket to ever balance the budget in our lifetimes, Democrats are not going to tout the passage of Obamacare as a great reason to vote for them.

What else have they done? They passed the Stimulus package, which was supposed to reverse the recession. More people believe that Elvis is alive than believe that the Stimulus package worked. Democrat Evan Bayh, when retiring said that if he created one job when he entered into the private sector that would be more than Congress has created in the previous six months.

Are Democrats going to run on the various omnibus bills that they have passed? Yes, at $1.1 trillion for one 2010 bill alone that was 2000 pages long, Dems do not want you to think about that.

Can Obama run on ending the wars in Afghanistan or Iraq? These wars have degenerated into chaos under his watch.

Most people who pay some attention to politics know the numbers:

It doesn’t matter if Obama is at fault here or not; under his watch, things have gotten worse, not better, and he has spent huge sums of money from many generations to come in order to “fix” the U.S. economy.

Both the media and the Obama administration have tried to paint the economy as improving, but a lot of Americans aren’t buying it.

So, what remains are wedge issues and personal attacks. The media managed to drive Herman Cain out of the Republican race and Sarah Palin out of elective office and apparently, out of elective office aspirations.
What the democratic party knows is, there are a lot of voters out there who barely pay attention. Huge numbers of people voted for Obama, and yet had no clue about him or the other candidates. Some young people simply voted for Obama because he was cool and McCain was this doddering old man.

So Obama needs to capture these votes and to do it with manufactured controversies.

The controversy of the last month has been contraception.

Although Republicans are continually blamed for raising this issue, it actually first occurred in a Republican debate, brought up by George Stephanopoulos on January 7^th, a former Clinton aide.

He said the question was a joke. He and Diane Sawyer had a bet that Stephanopoulos could make Romney say, “Contraceptives are working just fine.” A few days earlier, ABC’s Jake Tapper asked Rick Santorum questions about state regulation of birth control.

And then, seemingly out of nowhere, President Obama made to sovereign decision that some Catholic institutions must pay for forms of birth control including the morning after pill. When this became plainly unpopular, the President proposed a compromise, which did not come from any sort of discussion with the Catholic entities about a compromise.

The compromise is, insurance companies will now give out free contraception, which is essentially free to the insurance companies, even though it costs a huge amount of money to individuals (which stories generally ignore that contraceptive pills from WalMart can cost as little as $5–$15/month). And, to liberals, this makes complete sense. If the government requires it to be paid, then it’s free; if a person pays for it individually, the costs are beyond that person’s ability to pay.

Then there is the liberal operative at the Georgetown School of Law, Sandra Fluke [pronounced flook]. There are all kinds of law schools out there and there are a number of different medical plans, yet this woman chose to go to Georgetown, where there are some limits on contraceptive coverage. She said she is attending Jesuit Law School in her testimony. She is concerned that she and others who have spoken to her must come up with $3000 for contraception (which appears to be over the period of time that she is enrolled in school). She claims that contraception is not easily available elsewhere, that they are under crushing demand.

Fluke is a reasonable speaker, but her examples were weird. One woman, after being raped, did not go to her medical provider because she figured they would not help her. Another example was a woman who used birth control for other reasons, and received the birth control, even though maybe it might be denied.

Her primary point was, she should be able to get the coverage that she wants—including free birth control—at a Catholic University, no matter what.

I am certainly not an expert in the female reproductive system. However, it would make sense that, if a woman needed birth control pills for a reason other than birth control, that would be easily verifiable. It appears as though that was not really an issue, even though many people are arguing that is the main issue, where one person actually argued that more people took birth control to prevent ovarian cancer than took it for birth control.

What we have here is a typical Democratic issue. “I am a victim; my friends are victims. This is what we want; we should get it without any hassle or any extra cost.” And Democrats come to her aid, thankful to talk about anything other than the debt, the deficit and unemployment.

As a side note, Rush Limbaugh made light of this, which he often does, illustrating absurdity by being absurd (Rush has since formally apologized for his language and characterization of Fluke). However, in between the absurdity, Rush also throws in some actual information.

As Rush Limbaugh said 2 weeks ago: “The Democrats don’t have one thing they can run on. There’s not one aspect of Obama’s first term that they can say, ‘If you want four more years of this, vote for us.’ They have to create fear, hatred, loathing, impugn the character, all that, of Republicans — and that’s what they do.”

This will be in Conservative Review #218

We have another of those “death panel” tail-chasing debates coming up … only this time it will be a “death spiral”. Just as many erroneously characterized the “death panels” of O’healthcare as the proposed approved payment for end of life counseling – when it was really the creation of the czar appointees on the IMAC/IPAB Medicare board – the defenders of the private insurer “death spirals” ride a dizzying vortex of distraction and mistruths as well.

Case in point? HHS Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius responded to Illinois congressman Peter Roskam’s question about the heightened decline of private insurers in the wake of the enactment of O’health care with the following euphemism…

“Well again, Congressman, what you’re seeing – It wouldn’t have mattered if we had passed the Affordable Care Act or not. The private market is in a death spiral”

Is this true? Yes and no. What is a fact is that those covered by private insurance has been on the decline since circa 2003-04.

What is also a fact is that O’healthcare has hastened it’s demise, in accordance with Obama’s principal goal – a path to single payer health insurance.

The notion that O’healthcare would lead to the demise of private insurers is neither new, nor a unique claim. Many of us did battle with liberals on this very subject prior to its sleazy passage in the back rooms of the WH. And I’m quite sure that many of those same advocates are going to show up on this thread, and attempt to lend their voices to Sebelius… that O’healthcare isn’t the cause.

But O’healthcare is indeed a factor… and in more ways than one. The most obvious is that Sebelius’ claim is countered by the study from McKinsey Quarterly last year, stating that the entire structure of employer provided benefits would be upturned with the nanny legislation. This is the part I call hastening the demise of the private insurer.

Many of the law’s relevant provisions take effect in 2014. Our research suggests that when employers become more aware of the new economic and social incentives embedded in the law and of the option to restructure benefits beyond dropping or keeping them, many will make dramatic changes. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that only about 7 percent of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) will have to switch to subsidized-exchange policies in 2014. However, our early-2011 survey of more than 1,300 employers across industries, geographies, and employer sizes, as well as other proprietary research, found that reform will provoke a much greater response. More information about the survey methodology is available on the McKinsey & Company Web site.

· Overall, 30 percent of employers will definitely or probably stop offering ESI in the years after 2014.

· Among employers with a high awareness of reform, this proportion increases to more than 50 percent, and upward of 60 percent will pursue some alternative to traditional ESI.

· At least 30 percent of employers would gain economically from dropping coverage even if they completely compensated employees for the change through other benefit offerings or higher salaries.

· Contrary to what many employers assume, more than 85 percent of employees would remain at their jobs even if their employer stopped offering ESI, although about 60 percent would expect increased compensation.

It’s also true that the demise of privately insured employees has also increased threefold since 2009. That dramatic increase is linked directly to our economy, and the demise of employers who provide insurance for their employees.

While this country was already in a recession in 2008, the economy sharply deteriorated in 2009. The unemployment rate increased from 5.8% to 9.3% between 2008 and 2009, the largest one-year increase on record. As most Americans, particularly those under 65 years old, rely on health insurance through the workplace, it is no surprise that employer-sponsored health insurance fell precipitously from 2008 to 2009. Employment-based coverage for the under 65 continued to erode for the ninth year in a row, falling 3.0 percentage points from 61.9% in 2008 to 58.9% in 2009.

But let’s go back even further as to why the decline prior to the O’healthcare passage … the cardboard bunker where Sebelius foolishly chooses to seek shelter. Because it can’t be denied that the status of private insurers is not a new problem, the more important reality is why they were declining.

And that fact is the prolific availability of charitable healthcare provided by the government… i.e. Medicare/Medicaid/Schips.

To illustrate, I’ll go back to a May 2005 study, “Charity Care, Risk Pooling, and the Decline
in Private Health Insurance” published on the Harvard website, and conducted by economic braintrusts from Harvard, U of Michigan, and NBER – Michael Chernew, David Cutler and Patricia Seliger Keenan.

The evidence is clear that rising health-insurance costs lead to significant reductions in insurance coverage—as much as two-thirds of the overall decline in coverage in the 1990s. We estimate that up to half of this response to higher costs is related to the availability of charity care. This estimate is rough because our estimates of the availability of charity care are based solely on the availability of beds in public and teaching hospitals. Moreover, our charity care measure, which incorporates availability of beds in teaching hospitals, could reflect greater moral hazard over time. Nevertheless, the models consistently demonstrate that the availability of beds in facilities that are relied upon for charity care increases the sensitivity of coverage
to rising premiums.

By providing access for the uninsured, charity-care providers inadvertently create the conditions for crowding out of private health insurance.

We suspect that the remaining impact of premiums on coverage is due to diminished utility of coverage associated with rising premiums, particularly for the young and for low income individuals. The evidence we present is consistent with this, although not definitive. Of particular importance may be the pooling of high- and low-risk enrollees, which leads to identifiable transfers from the healthy to the sick. As medical costs increase, the size of these transfers rises, and the willingness of the healthy to make them declines.

The new era of rising medical spending we have recently entered could have a major impact on private insurance coverage. Moreover, the decline in coverage caused by rising premiums will place a greater burden on charity-care providers. Though important in a time of declining coverage, bolstering the strained charity-care system may further exacerbate the decline in coverage, posing a policy dilemma in responding to increases in the uninsured population.

Shall I summarize the above conclusion excerpts? Government provided healthcare, and government meddling over time, has had a notable and undeniable impact on the private health insurers market… and all of it negative.

Now I realize this is where the less informed O’healthcare supporter will enter and scream about the heartless who advocate letting the poor and children die in the streets. But they are missing the larger point. Instead of healthcare reforms that would genuinely make coverage more affordable, the government has exacerbated the problem for those that genuinely need health insurance. And nothing would make premiums more affordable than an environment that fosters highly competitive insurers, aided by increasing the ability for medical providers to keep their administration costs down, to acquire supplies with better pricing, and not be saddled with high risk litigation that tend to cause over administration of unneeded care – all unimpeded by overly broad charity care that destroys private market competition.

And this goes back to the heart of O’healthcare to begin with. The originally stated goals were to make it affordable. But instead of addressing what has caused private market competition to evaporate … the high costs of administering medical care, causing an uncontrollable increase in premium prices … Pelosi/Reid/Obama instead attempted price control of insurance premiums, accomplished by mandating a wider spread risk pool.

Economists.. including the Heritage Foundation economist, Gerald Butler, back in the early 90s… would agree that forcing every healthy individual into buying health insurance premiums would indeed spread the risk, and better cover the costs for the unhealthy who put more demands on the system. But then, as the lawsuits and constitutional authorities and more than a few Judges note today, this mandate lies outside of the powers of the central government, and infringes on our Constitutional rights.

But let’s assume, for argument’s sake, that this power did lie with the federal government. Because the costs of administering medical aid and pharmaceutical has risen astronomically, how long can even forcing the entire nation into paying for high premiums stem the tide against the rising costs?

The answer? It can’t. Because O’health was nothing more than a temporary bandage using unconstitutional federal powers. The real problem… the costs of providing medical attention… was never addressed.

In fact, not only has the increased government paid charity care become more prolific over the decades, but the state mandates have also added to the problem. Thus the recent contraceptives debate enters the fray as the perfect example of complaining about all the wrong problems, and fighting the war on the wrong battleground.

As the study linked above points out, the value of some services covered under policies is not sufficiently high to justify their costs. If consumers had the ability to exclude unwanted coverage/care they considered invaluable from their costs, they would.

But since States have the sole right (not the feds) to mandate minimum policy requirements in their respective jurisdiction, their penchant to cover every possible thing… including birth control pills… has driven up premiums for non valuable services.

And now, to make a bad situation worse, the federal government has decided they can nationally mandate minimum coverage by insurers… and they want amenities to the moon to be included.

Therefore, Ms. Sebelius’ claim that the “death spiral” for private insurers would have happened whether O’healthcare had passed or not is technically correct… in a sadistic sense. What she does not cop to is that the decline is due to other government interference in the private market in the form of charity care and frivolous mandates.

And to that end, it is O’healthcare that is finishing the job that charity care has begun. Combined with an administration derelict in it’s management of an overspending Congress, refusal to address real reforms that affect cost of providing medical services, and embarrassingly poor leadership in pulling the nation out of a recession, O’healthcare has provided the nails for pounding into the coffin of the private health insurers market.

And for Obama, Pelosi and Reid – that’s a “mission accomplished” moment. For the nation? That death spiral won’t be limited just to the extinction of private health insurers. Rather we will also find ourselves in the same spiral as we take the next step toward the Euro-socialist fiscal and medical care abyss.

Couple interesting polls out to share. The first is this one from The Hill in which they asked likely voters what they believed would be a good tax rate for the rich.

Three-quarters of likely voters believe the nation’s top earners should pay lower, not higher, tax rates, according to a new poll for The Hill.

The big majority opted for a lower tax bill when asked to choose specific rates; precisely 75 percent said the right level for top earners was 30 percent or below.

The current rate for top earners is 35 percent. Only 4 percent thought it was appropriate to take 40 percent, which is approximately the level that President Obama is seeking from January 2013 onward.

The Hill Poll also found that 73 percent of likely voters believe corporations should pay a lower rate than the current 35 percent, as both the White House and Republicans push plans to lower rates.

How could that be you ask since all the other polls show people want higher taxes for the evil rich.

Well, the difference was in how they asked the question. They gave specific tax rates and they were told to pick one.

So when it came down to actual numbers most people feel a lower tax rate across the board is a good thing.

Then Gallup has a poll on ObamaCare and the mandate:

Seventy-two percent of American adults and 56 percent of self-professed Democrats say that the provision in the health-care law signed by President Barack Obama that requires individuals to purchase health insurance or pay a fine is unconstitutional, says the Gallup Poll.

In March, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear cases challenging the constitutionality of the mandate.

Among Republicans, according to the poll, 94 percent say the mandate is unconstitutional and 6 percent say it constitutional. Among Independents, 70 percent say it is unconstitutional and 21 percent say it is constitutional. In contrast to the 56 percent of Democrats who say the mandate is unconstitutional, only 37 percent say it is constitutional.

72%!

That’s a pretty damn large chunk of the populace who believe the mandate is unconstitutional.

Of course when you drill down a bit you find out that 54% of the people are willing to overlook our Constitution to get ObamaCare rolling, answering that ObamaCare is a good thing.

Unbelievable.

On a side note, The Heritage Foundation and the National Review Institute are hosting a panel today at 2:00 PM EST called “Women Speak Out: Obamacare Tramples Religious Liberty”. You can sign up to watch online, live, here. 

The panel:

The Honorable Ann Marie Buerkle (R-NY)
U.S. House of Representatives

Followed by a panel discussion with

Hadley Heath
Policy Analyst, Independent Women’s Forum

Maggie Karner
Director, Lutheran Church Missouri-Synod Life and Health Ministries

Pia de Solenni
Diotima Consulting, LLC

Lori Windham
Senior Counsel, The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty

Co-hosted by
Jennifer Marshall
Director, DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society, The Heritage Foundation

Kate O’Beirne
President, National Review Institute

A thought has been tumbling around in my head for quite some time and it wasn’t until a posting by one of our resident liberal friends that the picture became clear.

Have you ever wondered why, exactly, there is such depth and magnitude of conflict politically? My first instinct was to attribute it simply to people’s varied opinions on issues and leave it at that. But then, I noticed a trend. That is, that when a conflict seemed to resolve itself, it soon became the flash point for another conflict to develop. And on certain issues, this has continued on for years and even decades.

Examples of such issues are, but not limited to; -Environmental issues -Taxation -Gun control -Certain “rights” -Aspects of the Constitution On those issues, within certain arguments, or debates, two sides argue, an agreement is reached, and eventually the agreement becomes the focal point of furthering the argument and reaching a new agreement. The fact that such agreements seem to be increasingly restrictive upon freedom and liberty should not be overlooked.

So, what can we attribute this to? In a phrase, the Hegelian dialectic (h/t to Liberal1 for the subject). What is the Hegelian dialectic? It is, simply, a series of theses (accepted idea) opposed by antitheses (opposing idea), resulting in a syntheses (new idea). This synthesis then becomes the thesis that is opposed by an antithesis, resulting in a new synthesis, and on and on until a final, ultimate, “perfect” synthesis is realized. Now, to understand where Hegel was coming from, it is important to note that Hegel was a devout socialist. So much so, in fact, that his work, his dialectic, was put into practice by such well-known socialists as Marx and Engels.

”…the State ‘has the supreme right against the individual, whose supreme duty is to be a member of the State… for the right of the world spirit is above all special privileges. -Georg Hegel

Hegel envisioned the same control over people, by the state, that Marx and Engels were guilty of. So, how does this “dialectic” apply to now, today?

Think about an issue. Any issue that people are concerned about. Then think about the history of that issue, as in, the evolution of the issue into today’s specific arguments. Take gun control, for instance. Over 200 years ago, the Framers of the Constitution drafted the Second Amendment. The idea of gun ownership, namely the freedom to do so, went largely unchallenged in America until the 1900′s when New York passed the Sullivan Act, requiring small firearms to be registered. In the 1930′s, gun control became a national issue with two laws, both signed into law by FDR. While the regulations involved were uncontroversial by today’s standards, involving gun dealer licensing and regulating machine gun ownership, it introduced the concept of national gun control. Fast forward to the 1960′s, and we see gun control becoming a national issue with two prominent sides on the debate, particularly in 1968 with the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and MLK, jr. Continue on to the Reagan attempted assassination and on up to today’s restrictive gun control laws.

At each point, there were a theses, or accepted idea of the limitation on gun control, and an antithesis, proposing ever more restrictive control over firearms. The syntheses from these conflicts are seen in the laws passed at those points. Neither being as liberal as the theses, nor as restrictive as the antitheses, but an accepted position somewhere in the middle. And each new law, or syntheses, became the starting point, or theses, for the next round of debate on the issue. And at every point, those syntheses further eroded the rights of gun ownership in America. Now, I don’t wish to make the debate about gun control, because that is not the point of this post. Rather, it is but an example of the wider idea that conflict is entered into, continuously, that applies ever increasing control by the federal government over our lives. Is it a concerted effort by the groups pushing for that control? Most definitely. Is it a coordinated effort? That is a debatable point, though I think in most cases it isn’t.

What it is, though, is Hegel’s dialectic in action. At each point of conflict, the theses are challenged by the antitheses, to reach a predetermined synthesis. Think about Obamacare, for instance. Obama, and the liberal/progressive left, could not go from no national healthcare law to the ultimate goal of a single-payer system whereby the government was the sole “insurer” and arbiter of our country’s healthcare system. No, instead they needed to enter “mild” controls upon the system itself, furthering the federal government’s control over our lives. The next phase will, most likely, be one of additional controls, and on and on until the single-payer system is realized. Remember, Hegel’s ultimate vision of a society, as evidenced by his quote above, is that the state has the “supreme right” over the individual. His ultimate vision is one of a complete socialistic society, and that is where he saw his dialectic leading to.

Joseph Stalin coined the phrase “useful idiots” in referencing the people who supported their own enslavement. Today, we in America have our own “useful idiots”. The difference is that I see everyone who allows this Hegelian dialectic to continue, meaning the continuing erosion of our rights and liberties by compromised syntheses, or acceptable agreements, as useful idiots. I am a useful idiot. So, too, are you, no matter what your political stripe may be.

The look behind the curtain is frightening, and reminiscent of the world of Orwell’s Animal Farm or 1984. And the willingness of we, the people, to contribute to our own enslavement, some more than others, is bewildering.

Eugene Robinson is an scribe for the Washington Post who specializes in embarrassing himself with ad hominem attacks on right wing personalities. Lately he’s made some scathing and offensive remarks about Rick Santorum.

Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson set off alarm bells last month when he denigrated Rick Santorum as “very weird” for the manner in which Santorum and his wife mourned the loss of their newborn son Gabriel, who died within hours of his birth in 1996. The Santorums brought their deceased baby home and grieved with their other children in a private vigil before a funeral was held.

Jack Coleman wryly notes that the Kennedy family did the same weird thing with Teddie:

Consider, for example, how the Kennedys responded after the death of Ted Kennedy in Hyannisport three years ago. Kennedy’s body remained at the compound and a vigil for family and close friends was held there, followed by a public wake and invitation-only funeral, and Kennedy’s burial at Arlington National Cemetery.

In other words, the Kennedys reacted much the same as the Santorums to the death of a loved one — with a private vigil at their home followed by a funeral. Difference being, Ted Kennedy had been a fully formed human being — all too human, you might say — while Gabriel Santorum clearly wasn’t, not at conception and not even after he was born, at least to Eugene Robinson.

Then Robinson launches a new pogrom on Catholics

MADDOW: What about this issue seems to be a winning argument to Republicans? Why, why do they like it if the polls aren’t with them?

ROBINSON: Well, the polls are not with them, the voters are not with them, so, so clearly it’s not a winning issue. I mean, they can’t believe this is, this is a good idea politically. So, I mean, the only thing I can figure out, Rachel, is that’s based on a wrong and frankly insane belief that a fertilized egg is a fully formed person and has personhood and that, you know, preventing the implantation of that egg is some-, is murder. I don’t, you know, it baffles me as to what other explanation there could be. They can be sincerely mad on this, on this subject, I think, and maybe they are.

So it appears that we have a standard of sorts for life- a “fully formed person.” What we don’t have is a definition of what a “fully formed person” is. Coleman thinks that Robinson’s “fully formed person” would exclude the Santorums’ preemie Gabriel from the ranks of being alive.

Robinson doesn’t limit himself to his belief that a fertilized egg is not fully human. He also believes this of babies born prematurely who die shortly after birth — as shown by his dismissive criticism of the Santorums’ response to the death of their son. Why all the fuss, Robinson wondered aloud. It’s not as if this child had been a fully formed person.

One thing Robinson owes us is an explanation- a definition of a “fully formed person.” I cast the question into a pool of personalities on another forum just to see what would result. The most common response was that a fetus develops into a “fully formed person” somewhere around late second and early third trimesters.

But one could argue that this is too limiting.

A “fully formed person” should be capable of reproduction.

If a being is still growing, then it is not fully formed.

Thus one could argue that a fully formed person is one beyond puberty and has stopped growing. Then all others are not “fully formed” and do not qualify for “personhood” in Robinsonworld. And non-persons do not enjoy the rights and protections of fully formed persons, do they?

Coo, coo, ca-choo, Mr. Robinson
Jesus loves you more than you will know
God bless you please, Mr. Robinson
Heaven holds a place for those who pray
(Hey, hey, hey…hey, hey, hey)