Quote of the Day: Wal-Mart & The National Insurance Mandate

Megan McArdle via the WSJ's Political Diary:

I find it hard to believe that none of the liberal commentators breathlessly celebrating Wal-Mart's 'capitulation' on national health care have even entertained the most parsimonious explanation: that Wal-Mart is in favor of this because it raises the barriers to entry in the retail market, and hammers Wal-Mart's competition. Yet somehow, this appears nowhere in any of the analysis. . . . Wal-Mart is always going to have a seat at the table when employer mandates are discussed, because Wal-Mart is the nation's largest private employer. Target and Macy's probably won't have a seat at the table. So Wal-Mart can influence the rules in ways that benefit Wal-Mart at the expense of the competition.

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'Life, Liberty, & The Pursuit Of Happiness'

It feels good to be back in the United States. In 2006 & 2007, I spent the 4th of July in Cambridge (UK) & London, respectively.

Though we found appropriate ways to celebrate--BBQs, impromptu tea parties in the river Cam, viewing Live Free Or Die Hard, etc.--there is nothing like being home on the 4th of July.

I love this country and everything for which it stands and I am grateful to everyone--from the Founders to the soldiers--who who has given the "last full measure" to build her and defend her.

Image link

Nathan Hale

"I only regret that I have but one life to give my country."

Independence Day Must Reads:

Apotheosis of Liberty - Thomas Jefferson

A Day at the Beach - Peggy Noonan

Making History - Peggy Noonan

Celebrating and Safeguarding Our Freedom - Fr. Roger J. Landry

A Family's Valor, A Nation's Freedom - Karl Rove

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American Healthcare Has It's Problems, But It's Still The Best In The World

Seriously. There are some things that could done to resolve these problems (see here & here), but American healthcare is still the best in the world, warts and all. Free market reform of American healthcare would only widen the gap between us and everyone else.

From doubleplusundead via Russ from Winterset at Ace of Spades (standard language warnings about AofS apply), a cautionary & enlightening tale.

It seems that a Canadian couple gave birth to a premature baby this weekend in Hamilton, Ontario. Since Canada is just another Third World Hellhole where brain surgery is done with a 16" Poulan and a 6-pack of Moosehead, its not exactly a shock that NOT. ONE. SINGLE. Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU for short) bed could be found for the child. I know what you're thinking: Russ, they couldn't find one single NICU bed available in the City of Hamilton for this baby? NO. They couldn't find one single NICU bed available for this baby in the entire PROVINCE of Ontario. You know, a PROVINCE? Sort of like a STATE, only 196% more [dumb]?

Luckily, Canada just happens to be the mildly retarded cousin of the United States of America; and like most families, we look after each other - even if the slow relatives are complete window-lickers who eat their own boogers in public. The baby was brought to Buffalo, NY, where she is enjoying the fruits of America's evil profit-driven health care system. If this was the end of the story, I'd be willing to smile and wish the happy hosers well with the addition to their family; however, as Paul Harvey used to say, there is ..... the rest of the story.

This kind of stuff--Canadians coming to American for medical care, surgery, &c.--happens all the time.

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The Democrat Party: Bought & Paid For By Wall Street

I know, I know, as opposed to all the other special interests that own that party. (subscription required)

The Republicans’ loss of Wall Street magnifies an ancient fissure in the party, a conservative contradiction: the misalignment of incentives between the party’s free-enterprise wing and its entrenched business interests.

“The problem with socialism is socialism,” Willi Schlamm famously observed. “The problem with capitalism is capitalists.” From Wall Street to Detroit, businessmen have had at best a marriage of convenience with free-market principles, a fact that often puts the Republican party in the impossible position of mediating between philosophical purists and parochial business interests that profit from expansive government, protectionism, and regulations that smother competition. Republicans have long thought of themselves as the party of Big Business and free enterprise but, as Wall Street sends its money and votes to Democrats and snuggles up in an ever-cozier relationship with the government, Republicans face the choice of being the party of Big Business or the party of free enterprise — the party of capitalists or the party of capitalism.

The Democrats have already decided which party they are. Which is to say, the Democrats have figured out that they can keep Wall Street in their coalition by offering them easygoing social liberalism, a few sweet tax breaks, and good access to government revenue streams. Republicans are not above the same deal-cutting and back-scratching, obviously, but they have a knottier coalitional contradiction to resolve: The capitalists don’t want capitalism, and neither do a lot of mid-American social conservatives. Even as Reagan talked about the miracle of the invisible hand, the blue-collar social conservatives who put him in office indulged in a near-paranoid loathing of Japan — an economic phobia that is still very much alive in Republican heartland attitudes toward trade with China and India. George W. Bush talked up free trade — except on steel, sugar, and most agricultural commodities. The Republicans’ philosophy is informed by free-market idealists who celebrate the wonders of Schumpeterian “creative destruction,” but the guys flying business class would much rather sink into a nice warm bailout and let capitalism creatively destroy somebody else’s money — the taxpayers’ money, for instance. The bankers are the last guys who want free markets right now, and so it’s no surprise to find them writing big checks to the Democrats. But against all evidence, Republicans remain the party of Wall Street in the public imagination.

Obvious & easy jabs at Democrats aside, this is an interesting quandary for the Republican party.

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3 Conservative, Market-Based Steps To Reform Health Care

(from Gabriel Malor @ Ace)

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Garry Kasparov: 'Citizens Who Once Chanted "Death To America" Now Call For The Blood Of Ayatollah Khamenei'

Very compelling column from chess master Kasparov on the implications of Iranian protests.

But what has been flagging so far has been leadership from the United States. Only in his second statement, a week into the crisis, did President Barack Obama underscore the importance of nonviolence, though he still declined to support the Iranian protestors. I understand the reluctance to provide Iranian leaders with the opportunity to smear the protestors as American stooges. But can the leader of the Free World find nothing more intimidating than bearing witness when it is clear that the regime doesn't care who is watching?

Sen. Richard Lugar (R., Ind.) and Fareed Zakaria on CNN, among others, have defended Mr. Obama's extreme caution. Mr. Zakaria even compared the president's actions to how George H.W. Bush responded timidly to the impending collapse of the Soviet Union and its hold on Eastern Europe in 1989. Mr. Zakaria explained, "Those regimes could easily crack down on the protestors and the Soviet Union could send in tanks." True. But the Soviet Union used tanks to quash dissent when it could. Dictatorships use force when they can get away with it, not when a U.S. president makes a strong statement.

President Dwight Eisenhower might have learned that lesson in 1956 when he said nothing and the Soviets sent tanks into Budapest anyway. Likewise, in 1968 the Soviets cracked down in Czechoslovakia even though the West said little. Regardless of what Mr. Obama says, the Iranian leaders will use all the force at their disposal to stay in power.

There is no reason to withhold external pressure that can tip the balance inside Tehran. Iranian opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi is not an ideal democrat. But should he and his supporters win power they will owe their authority to an abruptly empowered Iranian electorate. It is reasonable to expect that the people will hold a Mousavi government accountable for delivering the freedoms that they are now risking their lives to attain.

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Milton Friedman Fridays - On The Environment &c.

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Karl Rove: 'From 1998 To 2002 Nearly Twice As Many New Drugs Were Launched In The U.S. As In Europe'

From the Evil Genius's column in Thursday's WSJ:

Nearly everyone agrees that some reforms are needed. But it is also vital to protect areas of excellence and innovation. Stanford University professor Scott Atlas points out that from 1998 to 2002 nearly twice as many new drugs were launched in the U.S. as in Europe. According the U.S. Pharmaceutical Industry Report, some 2,900 new drugs are now being researched here. America's five top hospitals conduct more clinical trials than all the hospitals in any other developed country, according to Mr. Atlas. And a McKinsey Co. study reports that 40% of all medical travelers come to the United States for medical treatment.

These are some of the costs--the unanticipated consequences (diminished drug research)--associated with a single-payer system.

Where's the incentive to develop new drugs if there is no profit to be made? If government is going to pay for research & development of new drugs, well, how is it going to pay for it? And if government does pay for it, who decides which drugs to develop?

When healthcare is rationed, so is R&D for life-saving drugs. And when government controls the R&D decisions, then government picks the R&D "winners."

Who donated the most to a powerful Senator? Here comes your funding. What is the hated disease de jour? Here comes your funding.

Unlike the millions or billions made when government picks the winners (and bankruptcy for the losers) in a financial crisis, in this instance, the losers die.

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Checking In With Dr. Ronen Bergman Part III

Here's Part I.

Here's Part II.

Ed West at the Telegraph (London) met with Dr. Bergman just before the start of the Iranian elections. In his course of his interview, he explored how the BBC was a propaganda tool of Ayatollah Khomeini back in 1979.

Yeah, I know, so what else is new?

Anyway, the interview:

When we met in a west London hotel not far from the notorious Iranian embassy, Bergman pointed out: “The BBC gave free hours of free broadcast to Khomeini from Paris. It is unbelievable. Every time there is a person who is fighting ‘royal’ forces, in the sense of their being autocratic, the BBC gives them a free hand and carte blanche, without trying to understand what their views are.

The European Left, he says, have always fallen for any group that is anti-monarchy without understanding their true ideology. The BBC did not realise Khomenei’s true nature, and nor did the socialists and Communists who sided with him.

No prizes for guessing, incidentally, what happened to Iranian Marxists.

The Left and the media (but I repeat myself) have had a long and sordid love affair with nasty elements around the world. I'm sure this example doesn't surprise anyone.

What it should become, however, is the large grain of salt you take when you see the western media sympathize with "freedom fighters" from around the world.

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Checking In With Dr. Ronen Bergman Part II

Here's Part I.

At the NYT blog, "Room for Debate," they asked several "Middle East experts" for their opinion on the happenings in Iran. Dr. Bergman was one of those they asked.

In Tehran the earth is shaking, but in the Arab world there has been no public official response to the post-elections riots. Bernard Lewis, the renowned orientalist, told me on Monday that this is because Arab governments are concerned about backing the wrong horse.

By contrast, debate is lively in the Arab media and on Arab-language Web sites. But there is one exception: the Palestinians seem almost indifferent to what is going on in Iran. This may seem surprising. After all, the Iranian regime is a major supporter of Palestinian hardliners, providing funding, training and weapons, particularly to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, both of whom owe their ability to confront Israel to direct Iranian support. But surfing the major Palestinian Web sites at noon today (Tuesday, Tel Aviv time), reveals very little interest in what is happening in the streets of Tehran.

The most prominent Palestinian to have publicly expressed an opinion on the events is a former Israeli Knesset member, Azmi Bishara, who fled Israel and is wanted for questioning for allegedly spying for Hezbollah.

In an op-ed piece earlier this week in Al Jazeera, Bishara concluded that the events in Iran reflect the views of middle-class Iranians, not those of the majority of the population. And to the extent that Iran becomes more westernized, he stated, this process will result from an ideological clash within the regime itself.

Bishara did not say a word about how all of this might affect the Palestinians. Even when his piece was copied to Hamas’s most active forum, Paldf, it did not give rise to a discussion on what the impact on the Palestinians would be.

Perhaps this is because the Palestinians realize that what happens in Iran — short of a complete overhaul of the regime, which is highly unlikely — is not going to have an effect on the support they receive from the Revolutionary Guards and the Ministry of Intelligence. This is contrary to the view of much the Western media, which sees the events in Iran as a sign of an impending regime change.

The turmoil in Tehran, as far as the Palestinians are concerned, is a dispute between rival political factions; it does not concern them, and it does not interest them.

The Iranian governmental entities in charge of exporting the Islamic revolution will continue to do so under a reformist government just as they do now and just as they did in the past when the reformist Mohammad Khatami was in office. One way or another, the Iranian regime will keep stoking the flames of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Click the link to read the rest as the rest of the experts hold forth on all things Iranian.

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Taxing Your Good Health

That is what will happen if Democrats get their way with single-payer health care--socialized medicine--in this country. And the President admitted as much in his infomercial last night:

As a candidate, then-Sen. Obama bashed his rival for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton, for proposing that Americans be mandated to have health insurance.

"She'd have the government force you to buy health insurance," he said Feb. 23, 2008. "I disagree with that approach. I believe that the reason Americans don't have health care isn't because no one's forced them to buy it, it's because no one's made it affordable."

But now the president is acknowledging that his thinking on the issue has "evolved" and he could support a law mandating that individuals purchase health care coverage, with fines for those who do not.

Obama stressed that there must be some kind of waiver for those who are simply unable to afford it.

"People have made some pretty compelling arguments to me that if we want to have a system that drives down costs for everybody, then we've got to have healthier people not opt out of the system," the president told ABC News.

As he notes, in order for this system to work--to actually drive down costs--you have to include healthy people as well as the sick--everyone is forced into the plan. Many of these healthy people do not have health insurance or carry insurance with really high deductibles because they are healthy and do not need it.

In a single-payer system, the healthy would be forced into the same health plan as the sick--effectively taxing their good health and eliminating all other choices open to them. This is utilitarian leveling at its, well, level-best. In order to reach a more equal outcome for everyone, Obama and co. will tax your health and infringe on your liberty.

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Checking In With Dr. Ronen Bergman Part I

Not personally mind you, but via the web. What can I say? I trust Cambridge-trained historians to get the facts right more than I trust western journalists with an ax to grind.

The first thing I found, from The Jewish Week in NYC, was essentially a recapitulation of what I heard from Dr. Bergman and then put in my notes a couple weeks ago. This part, however, is new:

Q: What can you tell us about Mir Hossein Mousavi, the so-called pro-reform opposition candidate who spearheaded the protests over the election returns?
A: Mousavi was the Iranian connection to the Americans in the Iran-Contra affair, and American and Israeli intelligence said he was the most extreme person they had met. He reminds many of another so-called Iranian moderate, former President Mohammad Khatami. Khatami came in [in 1997] as a great hope and people said he would be the Gorbachev of Iran — that he was going to change Iran. But the big leap forward in the Iranian nuclear project was under Khatami. Khatami cherished suicide bombers in the [Palestinian] territories and twice he called for the destruction of Israel.

Q: If Mousavi became president, could he change anything?
A: No, because I don’t see Mousavi bringing about change. And the fact we see him as a more moderate element of the regime and see him as a reformer, does not mean he is a reformer. He does not call all the shots.

When I say that I support the revolution in Iran, it is with eyes wide open about the political realities of Mousavi's nuclear ambitions. I understand that he is similar to Ahmadinejad in this regard--or rather, that even if he weren't different, he's not the one calling the shots, it's the supreme leader. I get all that.

I support democracy in Iran because I believe that the more democratic Iran becomes, the less likely they are to both build a bomb and use it against their enemies--specifically Israel. I do not believe that the Obama administration's attempts at diplomacy have a snowball's chance of succeeding. What has happened in North Korea is a cautionary tale.

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Democracy For Democracy's Sake: Obama & Iran

Friends of mine (not in the mob sense) argued that Obama maintained silence and largely ignored what was going on in Iran all of last week for two main reasons:

1. He didn't want to give credence to the likely Iranian claim that the protests were the work of American Imperialists & Zionists.

2. Ahmadinejad was going to win anyway and Obama didn't want to do anything to harm his future negotiating posture. And anyway, the other guy wants nukes too, so what's the difference?

Regarding the first point, the supreme leader & co. are always going to blame the American imperialists and the Zionists, regardless of what Obama says.

Regarding the second point, regardless of Mousavi's similar nuke ambitions, democracy & democratic outcomes are inherently good. And they are particularly good when they push back against a totalitarian regime. A more democratic state is probably the only way Iran gives up its nuclear dream and quits funding world terror.

As unpersuasive (to me, anyway) as these arguments are, they are entirely refuted by the fact that Obama has done a complete about face and dropped a lot of critical rhetoric on the supreme leader, Ahmadinejad, and the rest. Oh, and the Iranian dips are no longer invited to Obama's July 4th weenie roast--or rather, they had the good sense to decline the Obama administration's invitation even if Obama didn't have the decency to rescind it.;

Apart from the fact that his silence last week was wildly unpopular, what about Iran has changed to cause Obama's rhetorical shift?

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Holman Jenkins: 'Our President Is An Object Of Craving Utterly Independent Of The Policies He Pursues'

From his column in today's WSJ:

Mr. Obama, therefore, has an unlikely degree of freedom to throw overboard his agenda and go for growth without fear of his public abandoning him.

From the start, he has seemed uniquely detached and noncommittal about his own policy positions, as if he was entertaining them only to see if they might be useful to him. Let's not underestimate this advantage over lesser politicians, who get trapped by their rhetoric. Let's also hope Mr. Obama takes advantage, becoming the "growth" president and saving the big initiatives for his second term. Otherwise, with the AIG disaster before him, he may be remembered as the president who nonetheless blundered into similar disasters trying to manage Citibank et al.

Don't bet on Obama becoming the "growth" president.

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