Internet Scofflaw

I noted earlier that while my state representative, Paul Costa (D), did not deign to reply to my email about CCAC trampling free speech, he did add me to his spam list. Now I’ve discovered that he doesn’t honor requests to be removed from the list either. What a jerk.

The CBO has scored the Baucus bill. A few notes:

• First of all, it’s not a bill. Amazingly, the Senate Finance Committee doesn’t actually deal with legislation, it deals with specifications that staffers turn into legislation after the committee has completed its work. As the CBO observes:
  

  CBO and JCT’s analysis is preliminary in large part because the Chairman’s mark, as amended, has not yet been embodied in legislative language.

• What the “bill” would do is establish a mandate on all Americans to acquire health coverage, at their own expense if necessary. It would include a steep fine on employers that do not offer health coverage, and on individuals who decline the health coverage offered by their employer. (This means that employers are given an incentive to offer the minimum plan, and employees are obligated to take it.)
• The plan would also create “exchanges”, which really don’t have much to do with exchanging anything. Rather, they are vehicles for government subsidies. The exchanges would subsidize the purchase of insurance by low-income households.
• The plan would create co-ops instead of a public option, but as I’ve noted, there’s no real difference between the two. Co-ops would eventually come to dominate the insurance landscape, and would be under effective government control, establishing a de facto single payer system. (Indeed, that is the whole point.) The CBO analysis largely ignores the co-ops though, concluding:
  

  The proposed co-ops had very little effect on the estimates of total enrollment in the exchanges or federal costs because, as they are described in the specifications, they seem unlikely to establish a significant market presence in many areas of the country or to noticeably affect federal subsidy payments.

  I wish I believed that.

• The plan would be paid for by deep cuts in Medicare and a variety of new taxes, including a tax on the value of health insurance. (Remember when the Obama campaign savaged McCain for suggesting a tax on health insurance “for the very first time”?) The tax would apply to health insurance over a certain ceiling, but that ceiling would increase more slowly than health care costs are likely to increase, so in time virtually all health insurance would be taxed.
• The plan is also paid for by unspecified savings that would be uncovered by a new Medicare Commission. Bizarrely, the CBO accepted this, and assumes that the commission would somehow find $22 billion in additional Medicare cuts.
• Finally, the plan assumes a variety of cost-cutting measures will be carried out that almost certainly will not be. As the analysis notes:

These projections assume that the proposals are enacted and remain unchanged throughout the next two decades, which is often not the case for major legislation. For example, the sustainable growth rate (SGR) mechanism governing Medicare’s payments to physicians has frequently been modified (either through legislation or administrative action) to avoid reductions in those payments. . . The long-term budgetary impact could be quite different if those provisions were ultimately changed or not fully implemented.

• Significantly, important provisions in the plan change their behavior in 2019, which not-so-coincidentally is the end of the period that the CBO analyzes. The CBO analysis therefore tells us nothing whatsoever about the impact of the legislation beyond the 10-year window, even setting aside the inherent uncertainties in long-term prediction. As the CBO notes:
  

  Many Members have requested CBO analyses of the long-term budgetary impact of broad changes in the nation’s health care and health insurance systems. However, a detailed year-by-year projection, like those that CBO prepares for the 10-year budget window, would not be meaningful because the uncertainties involved are simply too great.

• The CBO estimates that the plan would cut the number of non-elderly uninsured roughly in half, leaving 25 million without coverage.
• In total, assuming all the budgeted savings take place that surely will not, the plan would cost $904 billion over ten years ($829 for the coverage provisions, and another $75 billion for various Medicare provisions), which would be paid for by $507 billion in new taxes and $329 billion in Medicare cuts.
• As always, the CBO analysis is static, meaning that it does not take into account the deleterious effects that the plan would have on the economy.
• Of course, the CBO analysis has nothing to say about the plan’s innovation-stifling effects, or about the plan’s deleterious effects on the quality of care in general.

UPDATE: Under realistic assumptions and counting off-budget items, the plan’s real cost is over $2 trillion. (Via Instapundit.)

Robert Gibbs, making stuff up again:

Q: In a letter to senators last week the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said that, I’m quoting, ‘So far the health-reform bills considered in committee, including the new Senate Finance Committee bill, have not met the president’s challenge of barring the use of federal dollars for abortion.’

Is that statement wrong?

GIBBS: Well, I don’t want to get me into trouble at church, but I would mention there’s a law that precludes the use of federal funds for abortion. That isn’t going to be changed in these health care bills.

Q: There have been several amendments that would explicitly bar [federal funding for] abortions that were rejected–

GIBBS: Again, there’s a fairly well-documented federal law that prevents it.

I wish. I’d like to hear Gibbs cite the “fairly well-documented” law of which he speaks. He can’t, because there is no such law.

The Hyde Amendment bars Medicaid from spending money on abortion. It does not apply magically to other legislation. Consequently, similar amendments have been attached to other spending bills. But, the health care bill contains no such provision. In fact, the Senate Finance Committee voted one down.

Gibbs’s statement is an outright lie.

UPDATE (10/14): Kathryn Jean Lopez elaborates.

David Bernstein writes:

I’m disappointed in Obama, too. I expected him to be a liberal. I expected to disagree with him on most issues. But I hoped that either good government (“goo-goo”) liberalism or raw political calculus (like the Republicans in 1995) would lead him to keep some of his non-ideological promises, like on earmarks, transparency, and so on. I even hoped, consistent with his promise of a net spending cut, that he’d show more fiscal responsibility than Bush did, which isn’t hard to do; surely there are government programs out there that don’t serve liberal ideological ends and could be cut. He lost whatever good will or benefit-of-the-doubt I was inclined to give him by neglecting, backtracking, or going back on his word on all these issues.

The Obama administration has treated Obama’s promise of changing the way business is done in DC as a distraction from his legislative agenda. I suspect they’ll come to regret that perspective.

I agree, but I’d add a more important example. I expected that he would keep his central national-security pledge, to prosecute the war in Afghanistan. Like the others that Bernstein mentions, that pledge is being abandoned due to domestic political calculations. In the long run, failure in Afghanistan will hurt us much more than his failure to establish transparency and reform earmarks.

This YouTube video making the rounds purports to catch Michelle Obama in a lie:

I doubt it. All this shows for sure is that she was wrong. Childhood memories are notoriously unreliable and are often created later in life. I’m sure that’s what happened here, since this is hardly something one would lie about.

We would do well to remember that false statements are not necessarily lies. One can be honest and still be mistaken.

POSTSCRIPT: Yes, I know the other side does it all the time. That’s beside the point.

A White House staffer hands out lab coats in advance of President Obama’s photo op with doctors:

(Via Instapundit.)

Chicago Democrats blame the defeat of their Olympic bid on President Bush. I guess this shouldn’t surprise me.

A revealing bit from the New York Times:

Mr. Obama was in Copenhagen for just five hours and did not stay for the vote. He learned Chicago lost in the first round while watching a CNN transmission whose signal cut in and out as Air Force One passed over Cabot Strait between Newfoundland and Nova Scotia.

A sense of stunned bewilderment suffused Air Force One and the White House. Only after the defeat did many advisers ask questions about the byzantine politics of the Olympic committee. Valerie Jarrett, the president’s senior adviser and a Chicago booster who persuaded him to make the trip while at the United Nations last week, had repeatedly compared the contest to the Iowa caucuses.

But officials said the administration did not independently verify Chicago’s chances, relying instead on the Chicago 2016 committee assertions that the city had enough support to finish in the top two. Mr. Obama, Michelle Obama, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Ms. Jarrett worked the phones in recent weeks without coming away with a sense of how behind Chicago really was.

(Via Hot Air.)

Donald Sensing has an analysis of the Obama presidency that strikes me as very insightful, drawing from Mae West and the Peter principle.

(Via Instapundit.)

Chicago is lucky to have missed out on the disruption and expense of the Olympics. Having just experienced three days of disruption for the G-20 (thanks Mr. President!), I can only imagine what two weeks of the Olympics would be like.

As far as the expense: $4.8 billion was the official estimate, which was complete crap. London is looking at significant overruns over its £9.3 billion budget (that’s $14.8 billion!) The City of Chicago would be on the hook for any overruns, having signed an unlimited financial guarantee. The bid itself cost $100 million. (Balanced against the cost would be a benefit as small as $4.4 billion by one independent estimate, and as large as $19.2 billion according to its proponents.)

Accordingly, the public soured on the bid. A recent poll showed Chicagoans evenly divided on whether to hold the Olympics, but 84% agreed that public money should not be spent.  (Which, without a doubt, would absolutely have happened.)

Non-Chicagoans can be happy too, because a Chicago Olympics would also have cost billions in federal dollars. (This was even used as an argument to Chicagoans in favor of the games.)

Andrew Stuttaford celebrates the bid’s failure this way:

Chicago is a fine city and a place that I always enjoy visiting. It deserves better than to have the Olympics foisted upon it. What I cannot understand is why President Obama is joining in with the effort to bring this scourge to his home town. The Olympics after all, is a festival of bureaucratic arrogance, financial irresponsibility, internationalist vacuity, and politically correct blather.

Oh . . .

UPDATE: More here. London’s costs may reach $40 billion. Athens spent three times their projected amount. Montreal just finished paying off the 1976 summer games in 2006! (Via Instapundit.)

What’s with the sudden rash of prominent liberals calling for the annihilation of conservatives?

First you have Thomas Friedman calling for China-style autocracy so that Republicans cannot obstruct the Democratic agenda. He didn’t explicitly call for conservatives to be killed, but how exactly does he think that China’s “reasonably enlightened” autocrats deal with their opponents?

Next, Garrison Keillor made it explicit.

Now it’s Michael Moore. In his latest movie, he calls the elimination of capitalists, to the tune of the Soviet anthem in case anyone might miss the point:

The movie ends with Moore telling us, “Capitalism is evil, and you cannot regulate evil. You have to eliminate it.” Then he plays the bloodthirsty Soviet national anthem “The Internationale.”

(Via Classical Values, via Instapundit.)

Will this be enough for Democrats to loosen their embrace of the man? I won’t be holding my breath.

POSTSCRIPT: By the way, let’s not Bill Ayers (unrepentant domestic terrorist and disowned Obama pal) who had actual plans for genocide.

A new Rasmussen poll shows that 63% believe that guaranteeing that no one will be forced to change their health coverage is more important than a public option. Only 29% take the opposite view. Also a majority believe (correctly) that they personally would be forced to change their health coverage if the Democrats’ health plan passes. It’s not hard to see why a majority oppose the plan.

POSTSCRIPT: President Obama has been trying hard to convince the public that no one will lose their existing coverage, much as he has been trying hard to convince the public that his plan will not cover illegal immigrants and will not result in “death panels”. In each case, the public simply does not believe him.

(Via Instapundit.)

More evidence of the administration’s ambivalence towards free speech.

Even under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t buy a GM or Chrysler car, since they are — generally speaking — crap. But since the bailouts, I wouldn’t buy a GM or Chrysler car even if I were otherwise inclined to do so.

It seems that I’m not alone. GM and Chrysler’s sales are down dramatically since a year ago, GM’s by 45% and Chrysler’s by 42%. Meanwhile, Ford’s sales are down just 5%, which seems to indicate that this is not merely a function of the economic slowdown or the end of cash-for-clunkers.

(Via Instapundit.)

There’s a very strange result in that new Fox News poll. On the question of Afghanistan, they found:

Do you support or oppose the U.S. military action in Afghanistan?
                 Support     Oppose   (Don't know)
29-30 Sep 09       64%         27           9

By comparison, two weeks ago they found:

Do you support or oppose the U.S. war in Afghanistan?
                 Support     Oppose   (Don't know)
15-16 Sep 09       46%         45           9

During the same time, there was only a one-point shift in the question of whether we should send more troops to Afghanistan, so I think we can rule out a large shift in public sentiment. The only other difference is the wording: two weeks ago they asked about the “war” in Afghanistan but this time they asked about the “military action” in Afghanistan.

So it seems that quite a lot of people’s opinion hinges on whether the action is called a war or not.

(Previous post.)

Some more interesting takeaways from the new Fox News poll, on domestic policy:

• Two-thirds say that President Obama is proposing more government spending than we can afford.
• The vast majority say the national debt is so large it is hurting the country, and that we should cut spending.
• Two-thirds say that we should not raise the debt limit. (I’m pretty sure that most people don’t know what that means. I doubt that most would support a default on US treasuries.)
• A majority of those who have heard of ACORN view it as a corrupt organization, including a plurality of Democrats.
• The public is evenly divided on the question of whether Obama blames President Bush too often.
• Independents are evenly divided on the question of whether Obama behaves more like he is a candidate on the campaign trail, or more like he is the president.

And on foreign policy:

• A majority say that Obama apologizes too much to the rest of the world for past US policies.
• A majority say that Obama is not doing what it takes to win in Afghanistan.
• Two-thirds say they trust the military more than Obama to decide the next steps in Afghanistan! Only one in five trust Obama more.
• As I noted earlier, majorities say Obama has not been tough enough on Iran, think military action against Iran will be required, and support such military action.

(Previous post.)

You can’t make this stuff up; and if you could, you wouldn’t want to:

President Obama’s “safe schools czar,” under fire from critics who say he’s unfit for his job, acknowledged Wednesday that he “should have handled [the] situation differently” years ago when he was a schoolteacher and didn’t report that a 15-year-old boy told him that he was having sex with an older man. . . [Kevin] Jennings has written that he told the boy, “I hope you knew to use a condom.”

In a statement issued Wednesday, Jennings said: “Twenty one years later I can see how I should have handled this situation differently. I should have asked for more information and consulted legal or medical authorities.”

Gee, you think?!

Jennings, director of the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools, said he believes his office can now help keep other new teachers from making the same mistake.

“Teachers back then had little training or guidance about this kind of thing,” Jennings said.

I like to think that most teachers don’t need training to know to report statutory rape. This guy is the safe schools czar. The mind boggles.

UPDATE: Not just unconscionable, but criminal. Under Massachusetts law, teachers are mandatory reporters of statutory rape. (Via Instapundit.)

A new Pew poll reveals that support for abortion has faded in recent months. These results are very sensitive to the way the question is posed, but the trend is interesting. Support for legal abortion is at 47%, just one point higher than its all-time low (set this past July). Opposition is at an all-time high at 45%. The difference in well within the sampling error, making it a statistical tie (although, again, I think the trend is more interesting than the absolute numbers).

Support for abortion has slipped considerably in the last year:

It’s hard to guess what is driving the variation (particularly the strange dip in August 2001), but the overall trend is clear.

Another interesting result is that the importance of the abortion issue has dropped dramatically among abortion supporters, but not among opponents. Also, conservative Republicans are the best informed about abortion: 75% were able to identify President Obama’s view on abortion correctly. Moderate Democrats are the least well informed; only 49% could identify the president’s view correctly.

(Via the Corner.)

The president has insisted that his health care plan will not cover abortion, and it will not insure illegal immigrants. Anything to the contrary, he says, is a lie.

Today, the Senate Finance Committee had a chance to back up that pledge. It did not. It voted, largely along party lines, against an amendment to bar federal funding for abortion. And it voted, along party lines, against an amendment to proof of identity when singing up for federal healthcare programs.

It’s not for no reason that the public doesn’t believe the president.

Although it moonlights as a facilitator for child prostitution and human trafficking rings, ACORN’s bread-and-butter is election fraud. Today we have two new ACORN election fraud scandals. One is in Las Vegas, where ACORN illegally paid cash incentives for voter registrations, and the other is in Troy, New York, where an ACORN subsidiary forged dozens of absentee ballots.

Frank J. has some tips for liberals on how to calm angry conservatives. This suggestion was my favorite:

Call them racists: If we shout “Racist!” every time they say something, maybe they’ll finally reflect on the racism that motivates them against a black president and give up whatever silly cause they think they’re pushing. If they dispute the racism accusation, point out how sensitive they are about the charge and how that further proves it’s true (people who really aren’t racist shouldn’t have any problem with being called racist). If further evidence is needed, point out to them that the president is black and they are white and that it’s obvious to everyone that a white person saying bad things about an underprivileged black person is quite racist. If the conservative isn’t white, though, this can be confusing. Make sure to give that person a pamphlet describing the political views he is supposed to have based on his race. If the person doesn’t read the pamphlet, you might have to try using a racial slur. It’s okay, if the person deserves it.

(Via Instapundit.)

According to the latest Rasmussen poll, support for the Democratic health care plan has hit a new low, at 41%. Opposition is steady at 56%.

Apparently, it’s illegal in Michigan to be a good neighbor:

A West Michigan woman says the state is threatening her with fines and possibly jail time for babysitting her neighbors’ children.

Lisa Snyder of Middleville says her neighborhood school bus stop is right in front of her home. It arrives after her neighbors need to be at work, so she watches three of their children for 15-40 minutes until the bus comes.

The Department of Human Services received a complaint that Snyder was operating an illegal child care home. DHS contacted Snyder and told her to get licensed, stop watching her neighbors’ kids, or face the consequences.

“It’s ridiculous.” says Snyder. “We are friends helping friends!” She added that she accepts no money for babysitting.

(Via Instapundit.)

Neighbors helping neighbors? Obviously this must be stopped.

A DHS spokesman says that law is designed to protect children. I suppose they think the children would be safer left unattended.

Politico reports:

Just to put some of the numbers in perspective, Obama has logged 124 television interviews so far in his presidency, compared with about 40 interviews at this point for Bill Clinton or George W. Bush. And the television networks have been generous with their nightly news coverage of the president — in the first four months of the presidency, they gave him 28 hours, compared with eight hours for Bush in his first term.

(Via the Corner.)

That’s a 37:1 ratio in interviews, and a 42:1 ratio in TV evening news coverage.

The blogosphere is abuzz about the video Allahpundit uncovered two days ago of school kids being taught to sing President Obama’s praises. In an ACORN-esque display of tune-deafness, the school superintendent made this statement:

Superintendent Christopher Manno said in a written statement Thursday that the taping itself was out of order, but failed to address whether the lesson was approved. “The recording and distribution of the class activity were unauthorized,” he wrote in a note to parents and the media.

Nothing to say about the “lesson”, but he’s upset that the video went out. Listen Mr. Manno: the problem is not the fact that you were caught!

With the increasing ubiquity of video cameras, and the means easily to distribute information over the internet, we can expose our officials’ malfeasance in ways we never could before. The days when they enjoyed our unthinking trust are over. We’ve learned how wrong we were.

UPDATE: The principal is standing by the “lesson”.

UPDATE: This is not the first outrage from the Burlington Township School District.

UPDATE: They have succeeded in taking the video down, but you can find the lyrics here.

Argentina is nationalizing its professional soccer league.

The president and his surrogates have been trying hard to convince the public that his health care plan will not contain “death panels”, will not cover illegal immigrants, and will not fund abortions:

Some of people’s concerns have grown out of bogus claims spread by those whose only agenda is to kill reform at any cost. The best example is the claim made not just by radio and cable talk show hosts, but by prominent politicians, that we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens. Now, such a charge would be laughable if it weren’t so cynical and irresponsible. It is a lie, plain and simple. (Applause.)

There are also those who claim that our reform efforts would insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false. The reforms — the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: You lie! (Boos.)

THE PRESIDENT: It’s not true. And one more misunderstanding I want to clear up — under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place. (Applause.)

Despite his efforts, the latest CBS/NYT poll indicates that the president has failed to convince the public on the first two. (Oddly, they did not poll on the question of abortion coverage.) And this is despite CBS/NYT being among the most severely biased polls. (ASIDE: CBS/NYT overestimated Obama’s margin of victory more than any other major poll except Newsweek. Even the Fair model, which does no polling and doesn’t know who the candidates are, did better.)

At this point, it seems safe to say that the public has heard the president. They simply do not believe him.

(Via Instapundit.)

(Via Hot Air.)

Environmentalists have succeeded in banning the light bulb. Their next target: toilet paper.

(Via the Corner.)

One puzzling thing about the ACORN scandal is why so many ACORN offices were willing to involve themselves in such a preposterously flagrant criminal enterprise. A deep disregard for the law is part of it, obviously, but that’s not a sufficient explanation. Unlike voter fraud, child prostitution is not a core mission of ACORN (I hope!), so why did they involve themselves?

I think the answer goes to the nature of modern liberalism. Unlike conservatism or libertarianism, modern liberalism is not really an ideology. Rather, modern liberalism is an alliance of various interests, and it’s difficult to express any principle that those interests have in common. For example, the liberal umbrella contains both feminists (who favor women’s rights, ostensibly at least) and multiculturalists (who defend oppression of women throughout the world, particularly in the Muslim world).

In short, while the right sees the world in terms of right-and-wrong or free-and-unfree, the modern liberal generally sees the world in terms of us-and-them. As we have seen often this year, liberals will see the exact same policy promulgated by both Bush and Obama negatively in the former instance but positively in the latter.

How does this explain ACORN? An under-reported aspect of O’Keefe and Giles’s investigation is the manner in which O’Keefe introduced himself. He introduced himself as a law student who intended to use the profits from his side business (child prostitution) to finance his run for Congress. By presenting himself as an aspiring liberal politician, O’Keefe identified himself to ACORN as one of them. This, I suspect, made all the difference. In the absence of any moral standard or respect for the law, ACORN was willing to go the extra mile for anyone on its side.

The phenomenon is not limited to ACORN. We can see it in the response of Congressional Democrats to the scandal. Of course, most Democrats voted with the Republicans to cut off ACORN funding. But the most liberal Democrats, 75 of them, voted to continue ACORN funding despite everything. Harry Reid also blocked a Senate investigation. Why? To them, government is a matter of us-and-them. Whatever ACORN had done, ACORN was on their side.

We also see it in the response of the mainstream media. Despite the story being incredibly juicy, the liberal media did everything it could to avoid reporting it. (Of course, it would have been the top story for days had it been a conservative group.) Once they were forced to report the story, they tried to balance it with dirt on O’Keefe and Giles. There being no real dirt available, they tried to smear them as racists.

But the motives of O’Keefe and Giles aren’t actually relevant to what ACORN did, and even if the smears were true it still wouldn’t excuse ACORN’s conduct. So why report it that way? Because the modern liberal sees the world through the lens of us-and-them, not right-and-wrong. In an us-and-them world, the nature of the whistleblowers is relevant. If the other side can be shown to be bad, that amounts to a full exoneration.

(Previous post.)

Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) blows the whistle on a quid pro quo in the closed-door health care negotiations:

I’ll tell you — if someone negotiated a deal with me and I agreed to put up say, 80 dollars or 80 million dollars or 80 billion dollars and then you came back and said to me a couple of weeks later — no no, I know you agreed to do 80 billion and I know you were willing to help support through an advertising campaign this particular — not even this particular bill, just the idea of generic health care reform? No, we’re going to double — we’re going to double what you agreed in those negotiations to do. That’s not the way — that’s not what I consider treating people the way I’d want to be treated.

(Via Instapundit.)

Trading a deal on legislation for advertising dollars has to be illegal, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it?

The AP reports:

Senate Finance Committee Democrats have rejected a GOP amendment that would have required a health overhaul bill to be available online for 72 hours before the committee votes.

(Via Instapundit.)

The reason Democrats gave is that, under the amendment, they would be required actually to write the bill before voting on it. I am not making this up.

The AP reports:

Congress’ chief budget officer is contradicting President Barack Obama’s oft-stated claim that seniors wouldn’t see their Medicare benefits cut under a health care overhaul.

The head of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Elmendorf, told senators Tuesday that seniors in Medicare’s managed care plans would see reduced benefits under a bill in the Finance Committee.

(Via Instapundit.)

A Christian couple in Britain is facing criminal charges for offending a Muslim woman:

Ben and Sharon Vogelenzang are awaiting trial accused of breaching public order by insulting a guest at their hotel in Aintree, Liverpool, about her religion.

The couple, who are members of an evangelical congregation, were arrested by police after getting into a discussion with the woman about the differences between Christianity and Islam earlier this year.

Mrs Vogelenzang, 54, is understood to have described Muslim dress as putting women into “bondage” while her husband, 53, allegedly described the Prophet Mohammed as a “warlord”. . .

The guest complained to Merseyside Police who called the couple in for an interview. They were questioned twice before being charged with a religiously aggravated public order offence.

They appeared before magistrates last week where they denied the charges and are due to go on trial later this year. If found guilty they face a fine and a criminal record.

(Via Volokh.)

Fox News reports:

A proposed requirement that all Americans buy health insurance does in fact include a “tax” increase, according to the Senate — even though President Obama insisted Sunday that it “absolutely” does not.

Obama gave ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos a stern talking-to Sunday for suggesting that the mandate to buy health insurance would amount to a tax. He even taunted the host for citing the dictionary definition of “tax” to make his point.

“The fact that you looked up Merriam’s Dictionary, the definition of tax increase, indicates to me that you’re stretching a little bit right now,” Obama said.

But the language of the health care reform plan proposed by Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., explicitly labels the penalty attached to the mandate as an “excise tax.”

Penalties for failing to obtain coverage would range from $750 to $3,800 under the plan. This is addressed in a section labeled: “Excise Tax.”

“The excise tax would apply for any period for which the individual is not covered by a health insurance plan with the minimum required benefit,” the Baucus plan says.

It’s not the way he stretches (and breaks) the truth that sets President Obama apart, most politicians do that. What sets Obama apart from other politicians is the sanctimonious manner in which he demeans those who call him on it.

Having failed to win the public debate on health care reform, the Obama administration has moved on to trying to silence its critics. The AP reports:

The government is investigating a major insurance company for allegedly trying to scare seniors with a mailer warning they could lose important benefits under health care legislation in Congress.

The Health and Human Services Department launched its investigation of Humana after getting a complaint from Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., a senior lawmaker usually viewed as a reliable ally of the insurance industry.

“It is wholly unacceptable for insurance companies to mislead seniors regarding any subject — particularly on a subject as important to them, and to the nation, as health care reform,” Baucus said Monday, disclosing the HHS investigation.

Humana Inc., headquartered in Louisville, Ky., is cooperating with the investigation and stopped the mailer earlier this month, company spokesman Tom Noland said Monday.

It’s unlikely to stop here. Remember, Obama’s organization was threatening his critics even before he was elected president.

(Via the Corner.)

UPDATE: More here. (Via Instapundit.)

UPDATE: I thought that for-profit companies have weaker free-speech protection than other organizations, but it seems I was mistaken. Apparently the distinction is not based on the speaker, but on the sort of speech. Commercial speech (that is, speech that proposes a commercial transaction) is offered less protection than other sorts of speech. (I see no justification for even that distinction in the Constitution, but never mind.) Since Humana’s mailer is political speech, not commercial, it is Constitutionally protected.

Last May, I wrote to my state representative, Paul Costa (D), about the incident in which the Community College of Allegheny County trampled the free-speech rights of one of its students. Rep. Costa is a graduate of CCAC, so I thought he might be concerned. Well, he wasn’t. Costa never even replied to my email, but I’ve just discovered that he did add me to his spam list. What a jerk.

The mayor of Wellford, SC has prohibited police from chasing criminals:

The Mayor of Wellford is defending her policy which bans police officers in that city from chasing suspects. Sallie Peake says the policy also includes vehicle chases along with pursuits on foot.

A memo issued on September 2nd from Peake to all Wellford officers reads:

“As of this date, there are to be no more foot chases when a suspect runs. I do not want anyone chasing after any suspects whatsoever.“ . . .

Peake says she issued the mandate because several officers have been injured during chases, driving up insurance costs for the town.

(Via Hot Air.)

What could go wrong?

An anecdote that the president used prominently in his health care speech is bogus:

President Barack Obama, seeking to make a case for health-insurance regulation, told a poignant story to a joint session of Congress last week. An Illinois man getting chemotherapy was dropped from his insurance plan when his insurer discovered an unreported gallstone the patient hadn’t known about.

“They delayed his treatment, and he died because of it,” the president said in the nationally televised address.

In fact, the man, Otto S. Raddatz, didn’t die because the insurance company rescinded his coverage once he became ill, an act known as recission. The efforts of his sister and the office of Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan got Raddatz’s policy reinstated within three weeks of his April 2005 rescission and secured a life-extending stem-cell transplant for him. Raddatz died this year, nearly four years after the insurance showdown. . .

The patient’s sister, Peggy M. Raddatz, testified before the House Energy and Commerce oversight subcommittee June 16 that her brother ultimately received treatment that “extended his life approximately three years.” Nowhere in the hearing did she say her brother died because of the delay.

On learning of the error, the White House quickly issued a correction and apologized for spreading misinformation.

Ha ha! Just kidding:

Obama aides say the president got the essence of the story correct.

AP reports:

Gov. Deval Patrick said Friday that President Barack Obama had personally talked to him about changing the Senate succession law in Massachusetts, and White House aides were pushing for him to gain the power to temporarily replace the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy amid the administration’s health care push.

A month after a White House spokesman labeled the issue a state matter, Patrick said he and Obama spoke about changing the law as they both attended Kennedy’s funeral in Boston last month. He also said White House aides have been in contact frequently ever since and pushing for the change so they can regain their filibuster-proof majority in the U.S. Senate.

The Obama administration is very good at espousing high principles, and completely unable to adhere to them.

The Economist is belatedly realizing it is one of the rubes:

YOU can be fairly sure that when a government slips an announcement out at nine o’clock on a Friday night, it is not proud of what it is doing. That is one of the only things that makes sense about Barack Obama’s decision to break a commitment he, along with other G20 leaders, reaffirmed last April: to avoid protectionist measures at a time of great economic peril. In every other way the president’s decision to slap a 35% tariff on imported Chinese tyres looks like a colossal blunder, confirming his critics’ worst fears about the president’s inability to stand up to his party’s special interests and stick to the centre ground he promised to occupy in office.

This newspaper endorsed Mr Obama at last year’s election (see article) in part because he had surrounded himself with enough intelligent centrists. We also said that the eventual success of his presidency would be based on two things: resuscitating the world economy; and bringing the new emerging powers into the Western order. He has now hurt both objectives.

Charles Krauthammer writes:

[In his address, President Obama said] “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits — either now or in the future,” he solemnly pledged. “I will not sign it if it adds one dime to the deficit, now or in the future. Period.”

Wonderful. The president seems serious, veto-ready, determined to hold the line. Until, notes Harvard economist Greg Mankiw, you get to Obama’s very next sentence: “And to prove that I’m serious, there will be a provision in this plan that requires us to come forward with more spending cuts if the savings we promised don’t materialize.”

This apparent strengthening of the pledge brilliantly and deceptively undermines it. What Obama suggests is that his plan will require mandatory spending cuts if the current rosy projections prove false. But there’s absolutely nothing automatic about such cuts. Every Congress is sovereign. Nothing enacted today will force a future Congress or a future president to make any cuts in any spending, mandatory or not.

Just look at the supposedly automatic Medicare cuts contained in the Sustainable Growth Rate formula enacted to constrain out-of-control Medicare spending. Every year since 2003, Congress has waived the cuts.

So this pledge is a complete fraud.

She says only a racist would use a prostitution sting on a predominantly black organization. (Cue to 2:00 here.) I guess the race card is all they have left.

(Via Hot Air.) (Previous post.)

Fox News reports:

Seven former directors of the Central Intelligence Agency on Friday urged President Obama to reverse Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to hold a criminal investigation of CIA interrogators who used enhanced techniques on detainees. . .

The letter was signed by former directors Michael Hayden, Porter Goss, George Tenet, John Deutch, R. James Woolsey, William Webster and James R. Schlesinger.

Incidentally, that is all the former CIA directors still living other than Robert Gates (who is in the president’s cabinet), President George H. W. Bush (who is generally silent on politics today), and Stansfield Turner (Jimmy Carter’s CIA director who is best known for decimating its human intelligence resources).

The Obama administration is not following its own announced policy on Freedom of Information Act requests. See the update here.

In the latest Rasmussen poll, 56% disapprove of the Democratic health care reform plan, including a near majority (44%) that strongly disapprove. Those who strongly disapprove outnumber the 43% who approve at all (even weakly).

UPDATE: The RNC has a rundown of public opinion on health care reform. (Via Free Market Mojo.)

A new Rasmussen poll indicates that hardly anybody likes ACORN: 67% have an unfavorable impression against just 15% favorable. Even liberals are divided: 35% favorable vs. 38% unfavorable. A majority (51%) say that Congress should cut off all funding for ACORN; just 17% say Congress should continue funding them.

(Previous post.)

The Baucus health care bill contains a big new tax on medical devices and diagnostic instruments, equal to half the industry’s R&D budget. The Wall Street Journal tells the story of how it happened:

This tax also offers an instructive lesson in the perils of industry dealmaking in President Obama’s Washington. Convinced by the White House that legislation was inevitable, most of the health-care lobbies decided to negotiate and pay ransoms so Democrats would spare their industries greater harm. Sure enough, the device maker lobby, AdvaMed, was among the “stakeholders” that joined with Mr. Obama in a Rose Garden ceremony in May and pledged to “save” $2 trillion over 10 years to fund his program. . .

But the word on Capitol Hill is that AdvaMed’s tribute wasn’t handsome enough for Mr. Baucus’s tastes. The massive new tax—which wasn’t a part of any of his policy blueprints released earlier this year—is in part retaliation. Partly, too, the device makers simply don’t have the same political clout as the other big players, making them an easier mark. Old Washington hands are saying the device lobby made a “strategic mistake” by not offering Mr. Baucus more protection money, but the real mistake was trying to buy into the ObamaCare process, instead of trying to defeat its worst ideas outright.

(Emphasis mine.)

Our government is being run like the mob. “Nice industry; it’d be a shame if something happened to it.”

(Previous post.)

Honestly, I’m not too concerned about the proliferation of new czars in the Obama administration. But many people are, including an increasing number of Democrats. Now the White House is firing back at its critics, calling them liars:

Last week, when the President addressed the Joint Session of Congress in a speech on health reform, he referred to some of the untruths – okay, lies – that have been spread about the plan and sent a clear message to those who seek to undermine his agenda and his presidency with these tactics: “We will call you out.” So consider this one of those calls.

Over the past several weeks, we’ve seen with increasing frequency and volume issues raised around the use of “czars” by this Administration. Although some Members have asked serious questions around the makeup of the White House staff, the bulk of the noise you hear began first with partisan commentators, suggesting that this is somehow a new and sinister development that threatens our democracy. This is, of course, ridiculous. Just to be clear, the job title “czar” doesn’t exist in the Obama Administration. Many of the officials cited by conservative commentators have been confirmed by the Senate. Many hold policy jobs that have existed in previous Administrations. And some hold jobs that involved coordinating the work of agencies on President Obama’s key policy priorities: health insurance reform, energy and green jobs, and building a new foundation for long-lasting economic growth.

As usually seems to be the case, it is the White House that is being dishonest. The crux of its defense is three arguments:

• Many czars are confirmed by the Senate.
• Many czars existed in previous administrations.
• Some czars are really important.

The third isn’t germane to the complaints, so let’s set it aside. As for the first two, a handy guide from the Washington Post lays out the true distribution of czars:

So according to the Washington Post, President Obama has more than doubled the number of czars, and just one of the new czars faces Senate confirmation.

As I said, I don’t care all that much. But I do care that the White House calls people liars when they are the ones being dishonest. That’s just despicable.

(Via Hot Air.)

345-75.

UPDATE: Hmm:

It’s a typical these-voters-are-such-rubes stunt; the House and Senate voted to defund ACORN on different bills.

The Senate bill is a housing bill, the House bill the federal takeover of student loans. Each bill will wind up in conference committee where the ACORN ban can be quietly stripped out, behind closed doors and secure from prying eyes.

UPDATE: A House GOP aide explains:

“On Thursday, we surprised the House Democrats by offering the ‘Defund ACORN Act’ as the motion to recommit on the government takeover of the student-loan-industry legislation,” the aide says. “Frankly, the motion was not germane, and we expected Democratic leaders to raise a point of order against it. But, in the face of the overwhelming public outcry against ACORN, they decided not to fight it. Now comes the hard part — though the House has effectively passed the ‘Defund ACORN Act,’ it is on a bill that has not passed the Senate, and there’s no guarantee that it would survive a Democrat-controlled conference committee. We’re going to have to continue to work to keep the pressure on, while Democrats try to make this issue go away. We’ve won a battle, but the war goes on.”

(Previous post.)

A secret Treasury Department analysis of the cost of the cap-and-trade bill has been made public:

The Obama administration has privately concluded that a cap and trade law would cost American taxpayers up to $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent.

A previously unreleased analysis prepared by the U.S. Department of Treasury says the total in new taxes would be between $100 billion to $200 billion a year. At the upper end of the administration’s estimate, the cost per American household would be an extra $1,761 a year.

A second memorandum, which was prepared for Obama’s transition team after the November election, says this about climate change policies: “Economic costs will likely be on the order of 1 percent of GDP, making them equal in scale to all existing environmental regulation.”

The documents (PDF) were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute and released on Tuesday.

(Via Hot Air.)

A 15% tax hike. I can see why they didn’t want the analysis to become public. The White House’s public estimate, $175 per year, was an order of magnitude too small.

I also suspect that even the secret analysis severely lowballs the cost, since government analyses usually rely on static assumptions about the economy’s behavior.

UPDATE: Jonathan Adler says the facts are a little more complicated than this might suggest. The $100-$200 billion estimate doesn’t really apply to the bill being considered now in Congress. The figures that would apply to the current bill are still being kept secret and were redacted in the document. So the Treasury Department’s secret analysis is still secret.

Adler goes on to point out that the redaction of part of the document is not consistent with the Freedom of Information act, much less the president’s announced policy on FOIA requests.

Adler’s explanation also shows that my speculation above was accurate, but didn’t go far enough. The cost figure does not include any effects on the economy, whether under static or dynamic assumptions.

UPDATE: The document is now unredacted. A key portion reads (with underlining to mark the formerly redacted portion):

While such a program can yield environmental benefits that justify its costs, it will raise energy prices and impose annual costs on the order of tens (and potentially hundreds) of billions of dollars.

Another reads:

Domestic policies to address climate change and the related issues of energy security and affordability will involve significant costs and potential revenues, possibly up to several percentage points of annual GDP (i.e. equal in size to the corporate income tax).

It’s no surprise to see Maxine Waters playing the race card; that and the crazy card are the only cards in her hand. Her latest is a call for an investigation of Tea Party racism.

The latest ACORN video is from San Diego. In it, the ACORN staffer actually gives advice for how to smuggle underage prostitutes across the Mexican border. This time, O’Keefe and Giles’s are unusually blatant about their imaginary criminal plans, perhaps because they wanted to test the limits of what ACORN would involve themselves in. Indeed, the staffer in this one seemed to be a little uncomfortable with the conversation, not that it stopped him from helping.

It’s also worthy of note that San Diego, like New York, was on ACORN’s list of cities in which O’Keefe and Giles supposedly failed:

This recent scam, which was attempted in San Diego, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Philadelphia to name a few places, had failed for months before the results we’ve all recently seen.

(Emphasis mine.)

(Previous post.)

Last year, when the Executive branch set aside the law, that was evidence of incipient dictatorship. What a difference an election can make:

The Justice Department has declared that President Obama can disregard a law forbidding State Department officials from attending United Nations meetings led by representatives of nations considered to be sponsors of terrorism.

Based on that decision, which echoes Bush administration policy, the Obama administration sent State Department officials to the board meetings of the United Nations’ Development Program and Population Fund in late spring and this month, a department spokesman said. The bodies are presided over by Iran, which is on the department’s terror list. . .

Justice Department officials pointed out that when Mr. Obama signed the legislation containing the provision in March, he issued a signing statement reserving a right to bypass any portions of the bill that restricted his power to conduct diplomacy.

(Via Instapundit.)

The president has every right to do this; the constitution has separation of powers for a reason. (Whether it’s wise in this case is another matter.) But I do have to take a short trip down memory lane:

President Obama tried to overturn his predecessor again on Monday, saying he will not use bill signing statements to tell his aides to ignore provisions of laws passed by Congress that he doesn’t like. . .

Obama sent a two-page memo to department heads saying he would only raise constitutional issues in his signing statements and do so in “limited circumstances.” . . . In his memo, Obama asked aides to work out constitutional problems before Congress acts.

Michelle Boardman, a deputy assistant attorney general in the Bush administration, said the Bush White House tried to do just that. She said it is the executive branch’s responsibility to point out conflicts between newly passed laws and the Constitution.

Obama “will discover for himself just how infrequently Congress shows any interest in removing unconstitutional provisions,” she said.

Indeed he has.

The White House is distancing itself from ACORN, and ACORN is suspending operations. Congratulations to O’Keefe, Giles, and Breitbart. (Via Big Government.)

I guess we’ve learned where the line is. Voter fraud is one thing, but abetting traffickers in child prostitutes was just too much.

UPDATE: The “council” that will do ACORN’s audit is, er, decidedly friendly. Bottom line:

Presumably the point of this absurd whitewash-slash-“audit” is to create enough cover for Democrats to say they deserve a second chance, which is all the more reason why it’s important for Big Government to keep the clips coming. The more there are, the more systemic this is, the more pathetic the idea of some investigative panacea becomes.

It takes a fake journalist to give the scandal the treatment it deserves.

(Previous post.)

The bounce from the president’s speech has now completely evaporated and opponents of health care nationalization have regained the momentum, according to the latest Rasmussen poll. At 55%, disapproval is at a new high, while approval matches its previous low at 42%.

The president is responding with an unprecedented media blitz. I think we’re already seeing diminishing marginal returns.

A new Rasmussen poll asks whether opponents of the president’s health care reform plan are racist. Just 12% said yes, while 67% said no. The party breakdown is interesting. While 88% of Republicans and 78% of independents said opposing the president is not racist, only 39% of Democrats agreed. An equal number of Democrats weren’t sure, while nearly a quarter (22%) of Democrats said opposing the president is racist.

(Previous post.)

The Baucus health care bill ditches the public option, but contains “co-ops”, which are pretty much the same thing. We’ll see if anyone is taken in by them.

When President Obama announced his plan to give a speech to school students, many people were concerned. This is a president who observes no distinction between campaigning and governing, and whose administration has already shown a willingness to use the organs of government for propaganda. Moreover, the lesson plan issued by the Education Department explicitly used the speech as an opportunity for political indoctrination.

But, under public pressure, the Education Department rescinded the lesson plan and the speech itself ultimately proved innocuous. Democrats pounced, saying that conservatives’ concerns were unjustified and frankly a bit crazy.

As I (and others) pointed out at the time, we had no way of knowing what the speech would have said if not for the public uproar. For all we knew, the public uproar may well have been the reason the speech was innocuous.

Now we do know. The Washington Post reports that the president’s speech was cleaned of controversial content, exactly as we speculated:

When critics lashed out at President Obama for scheduling a speech to public school students this month, accusing him of wanting to indoctrinate children to his politics, his advisers quickly scrubbed his planned comments for potentially problematic wording. They then reached out to progressive Web sites such as the Huffington Post, liberal bloggers and Democratic pundits to make their case to a friendly audience.

(Emphasis mine.) (Via Instapundit.) (Previous post.)

A new poll out from IBD/TIPP contradicts the White House’s claim that doctors support health care nationalization. It found, to the contrary, that:

• 65% of practicing doctors oppose the plan.
• 71% disagreed with the proposition that “the government can cover 47 million more people and that it will cost less money and the quality of care will be better.”
• 45% would even consider quitting if the plan passes!

Another interesting tidbit that I didn’t know: the American Medical Association represents just 18% of physicians.

(Via Instapundit.)

Olympia Snowe (R-ME) says she will not support the health care bill. This leaves Democrats with no Republican support at all, and also leaves them short of 60 votes even if they get every Democratic vote.

Also, Reid makes it clear that he will use reconciliation to pass the bill. Under the Senate’s rules, reconciliation cannot be used for non-budget items — such as the public option, individual mandates, and employer mandates that make up the heart of the bill — but I’m sure we can expect Democrats to ignore the rules.

(Via Instapundit.)

Required reading, from Victor Davis Hanson.

(Via Instapundit.)

(Via the Corner.)

Charles Krauthammer explains it:

The way that the president has presented it is really remarkable. He doesn’t lie. He is too smart. He deceives.

This is incredibly deceptive. He said, as we just heard, he says — all I’m doing here is enforcing trade agreements. That would make you think that the Chinese have done something wrong, that they had dumped a product or they had undercut or subsidized. In fact, not.

This provision in the tariffs on tires are treated entirely by the U.S. Trade Act section 425 which allows the slapping on of a tariff simply in response to a surge of imports, even if it’s not illegal or done underhandedly — simply a surge. We have had a surge of imports. So it is not as if the Chinese are in violation of anything.

What is the effect of it [the tariff]? It is only done in the name of unions. The tire companies are against the tariffs.

What a time to be starting a trade war.

Not the worst aspect of the Obama presidency, but easily the most tedious, is how any opposition to President Obama is called racist:

Rep. Joe Wilson’s outburst last week is drawing new recriminations from his colleagues, with a member of the Congressional Black Caucus suggesting that a failure to rebuke the South Carolina Republican is tantamount to supporting the most blatant form of organized racism in American history.

In an obvious reference to the Ku Klux Klan, Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., said Tuesday that people will put on “white hoods and ride through the countryside” if emerging racist attitudes, which he says were subtly supported by Wilson, are not rebuked. . .

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote in her column Sunday that Wilson’s outburst convinced her that racial angst is the underlying motive among Obama critics like Wilson.

“I’ve been loath to admit that the shrieking lunacy of the summer … had much to do with race,” she wrote. “But Wilson’s shocking disrespect for the office of the president — no Democrat ever shouted ‘liar’ at W. when he was hawking a fake case for war in Iraq — convinced me: Some people just can’t believe a black man is president and will never accept it.”

Wilson didn’t use any racial language; he merely said (accurately) that President Obama was lying. The only thing wrong with it was he was interrupting the president’s speech.

Conservatives and libertarians that oppose the president don’t care about his race; we care about his policies and the damage they will do to our country. It’s people like Johnson and Dowd that see him primarily as a black president. If they want to see racism, they need to look in a mirror.

(More here and here and here.)

UPDATE: Jimmy Carter too.

UPDATE: Heh: Dissent is the highest form of patriotism racism. (Via Instapundit.)

Democrats are ready to rebuke Joe Wilson (R-SC) for his (accurate but out-of-order) outburst during the president’s speech:

House Democratic leaders have decided to formally discipline Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., on Tuesday for his jeer last week at President Obama during a joint session of Congress. . .

Wilson bellowed “You lie!” at Obama during his address. It’s against House rules to call the president a “liar” or accuse him of “lying” when the House is in session.

It’s against the rules to call the president a liar, is it? I’ll be interested to see how Pete Stark (D-CA) votes on the resolution. The Democrats never rebuked him for repeatedly calling President Bush a liar from the House floor.

(Via Instapundit.)

In June, the US Civil Rights Commission indicated its intention to investigate the dismissal of charges in the Black Panther voter-intimidation incident, and requested the Department of Justice’s cooperation. After ignoring the commission’s letter for weeks, the DOJ has written back indicating that it will not cooperate. (Unbelievably, they claim that they couldn’t possibly cooperate until they complete their internal investigation.)

Naturally, the response infuriated the commission (which has subpoena power), and may prompt it to designate the affair as the subject for a year-long study and special report. Given that, what on earth could the DOJ be thinking? Everyone knows it’s not the offense but the cover-up that does real damage.

(Previous post.) (Via Instapundit.)

The UK’s government (in office since 1997) is even more incompetent than I ever dreamed. Great Britain is facing a looming shortage of power-generating capacity and will probably begin seeing brownouts as soon as 2013.

Most of Britain’s nuclear plants will have reached the end of their service life and be shut down without being replaced. About half of Britain’s coal-fired plants will be shut down because of pollution controls. Nuclear and coal together account for 45% of Britain’s electricity.

The WSJ reports:

The White House Council of Economic Advisers said Thursday the $787 billion stimulus plan kept one million people working who would otherwise not have had jobs. . . The report, which had been delayed for a month, is the first estimate from the Council of Economic Advisers on the issue of whether stimulus spending has saved jobs that otherwise would have been lost. . .

The council said it compared current economic indicators to projections of the direction they were headed before the stimulus plan was passed.

What an unadulterated load of crap. Here is a comparison of where the economy was headed before the stimulus (by the Obama administration’s own analysis) with where it went:

A WSJ piece says that wind power plants are killing between tens and hundreds of thousands of birds yearly. I don’t necessarily care all that much, but it’s very strange that wind power gets a pass, while other power technologies get prosecuted for killing birds on a scale several orders of magnitude smaller.

Hollywood sure has changed.

(Via the Corner.)

I think the most interesting thing in the president’s speech was this:

The insurance companies and their allies don’t like this idea. They argue that these private companies can’t fairly compete with the government. And they’d be right if taxpayers were subsidizing this public insurance option. But they won’t be. I’ve insisted that like any private insurance company, the public insurance option would have to be self-sufficient and rely on the premiums it collects. But by avoiding some of the overhead that gets eaten up at private companies by profits and excessive administrative costs and executive salaries, it could provide a good deal for consumers, and would also keep pressure on private insurers to keep their policies affordable and treat their customers better, the same way public colleges and universities provide additional choice and competition to students without in any way inhibiting a vibrant system of private colleges and universities.

If this were true, the public option would be no big deal. Of course, there are other factors that would give the government an unfair advantage (notably exemption from regulations, and the fact that the government can’t be sued without its permission), but those would be fairly minor. Moreover, they would be more than balanced by the monstrous inefficiency that government management would bring.

ASIDE: The president thinks that the government would save money by reducing excessive administrative costs, et cetera? What planet is he from? As someone who has had the job of filling out government forms to show compliance with the Paperwork Reduction Act, I can say that the very idea is laughable. But for present purposes, that is all to the good.

An unsubsidized public option would not only be acceptable, it would almost certainly be irrelevant. Like every other government enterprise, it would be expensive and poorly run, and consumers would quickly learn to have nothing to do with it.

Alas, it isn’t true. Of course the public option will be subsidized by the taxpayer. Even if we suppose that this promise is kept in the ultimate bill (which I see as vanishingly unlikely), here’s what will happen:

1. The public option will offer low prices and generous benefits to attract customers, causing it to run a large deficit.
2. The politicians who set this thing up will not allow it to fail, so they will bail it out with an influx of taxpayer funds. It will probably be termed a loan at first, but the loan will never be paid back.
3. The public option will continue to lose money for as long as it takes to drive the private players out of business.
4. At some point after that, the system will be “reformed” again. The loans will be forgiven and public financing made explicit.
5. Liberals will tell us that the government has saved us from the failure of the private health insurance system.

ASIDE: If the final bill goes with co-ops, rather than a public option, exactly the same thing will happen, with the addition that the co-ops will be officially nationalized at some point (like Fannie and Freddie), probably at stage 4.

ANOTHER ASIDE: Mind you, this is assuming good faith! Sadly, that is an unjustified assumption, since a variety of Democrats have already made clear that the public option is a trojan horse intended to bring about single-payer. Most likely, the pledge will simply be dropped on the floor. But even if not, the bill will take other steps to ensure that the public option prevails, such as giving it a large initial endowment, and burying private insurers in new regulation.

What President Obama claims he will do, produce a plan with better benefits and lower prices than existing plans without running a deficit, simply can’t be done. If by any chance this isn’t obvious, health care researchers say so:

Health care policy researchers are contradicting President Obama’s claim that a government-run health insurance program would be self-sufficient and could rely on premiums, saying it’s not possible to insure up to 30 million people with better coverage and reduce costs at the same time.

“The numbers don’t hold up,” Grace Marie Turner, president of the Galen Institute, a think tank devoted to health policy, said Thursday.

Furthermore, Obama’s own example proves the point. He cites public colleges and universities as public institutions that do a good job. Indeed they do, but they do so by relying on enormous public subsidies! In fact, we have recently seen what happens when those subsidies are cut. The University of California, being left to subsist on a smaller-than-usual subsidy, is furloughing staff and faculty, prompting talk of a walkout.

POSTSCRIPT: As usual, the president is very impressed with his own supposed consistency. Is there any instance in the past in which the president has publicly “insisted” that the public option would be unsubsidized?

The latest Rasmussen poll shows that opposition to the president’s health care program weakened slightly after his speech. Before, the public opposed the plan by a 53-44 margin; now opposition is at 51-46.

The shift came from a substantial jump in support by Democrats (from 72% to 80%). Opinion among Republicans (-2%) and independents (+1%) was largely unchanged. Unlike CNN’s poll, which showed a large bounce among speech watchers (a predominantly Democratic audience), Rasmussen polled likely voters.

So there’s no game changer here in terms of public opinion, but it may not have been intended that way. As Larry Sabato points out, the speech appears to have been more intended to unify Democrats by attacking Republicans.

UPDATE: Rasmussen does show some continued movement in the president’s favor in the days following the speech.

UPDATE (9/15): The bounce is gone now.

For the record, I think Rep. Joe Wilson’s outburst during President Obama’s speech was inappropriate, because that’s just not the way things are done over here. Not that there’s anything fundamentally wrong with British-style debate, but for some reason our Congress likes to pretend that everyone gets along.

But there are a few things to observe:

• It’s awfully rich for Democrats to pretend that Wilson’s breach of decorum is somehow unprecedented. For example, Rahm Emanuel said “No president has ever been treated like that. Ever.” Really? What about our last president?
• Obama was, in fact, lying. Worse, in so doing, he was calling other members of Congress liars.
• Through his outburst, Wilson may have forced Democrats to take action on the matter:
  

  In the Senate, Democrats in the so called “Gang of Six,” a group of bipartisan senators on the Senate Finance Committee which is the last panel yet to release its bill, began moving quickly to close the loophole that Wilson helped bring greater attention to.

In light of the above, I think Democrats are overplaying their hand by making a big deal out of this. Ultimately, it will serve to draw attention to a matter that is not at all favorable to Democrats, and away from the president’s speech. Already Wilson has become the main story, and I really don’t think that helps them. So, by all means, let’s have a full investigation and a vote to censure Wilson.

UPDATE: Eeeexcellent. . . (Via Hot Air.)

Gosh, it’s been months since the last time the president nominated a tax cheat. The latest is Lael Brainard, nominated to be Undersecretary for International Affairs.

Dusting off the scorecard:

• Geithner, Treasury Secretary (confirmed)
• Daschle, HHS Secretary (withdrawn)
• Killefer, “Chief Performance Officer” (withdrawn)
• Solis, Labor Secretary (confirmed)
• Emanuel, Chief of Staff (no confirmation required)
• Kirk, US Trade Representative (confirmed)
• Sebelius, HHS Secretary (confirmed)
• Brainard, Undersecretary for International Affairs (nominated)