A post today by Michelle Malkin brings to light an interesting provision of Obamacare which will apparently target funding at racial minorities.  As she details with a good deal of clarity, this would seem to be an invitation for generating illegal racial preferences in healthcare.  While this, itself, is not a violation of the Civil Rights Act (which Congress may modify or ignore at will), it may present a legal conundrum within the world of medicine.  It also reminded me of concerns that I expressed privately months ago about healthcare being used as a vehicle for political preferences; concerns which are now certainly credible enough to be worth active discussion.

While I do not recall when it first occurred to me, I have been concerned since sometime last summer about the possibility that the healthcare bill would eventually be used as a tool to leverage votes for Democrats.  The basic scenario works as follows: When healthcare rationing inevitably begins, funds will be directed preferentially toward states, counties, and cities which routinely vote Democrat.  The more insidious scenario looks a little bit different: Medical records will be paired, secretly or explicitly, with rolls of party affiliation, campaign contributions, and political activism, and those individuals who support Democrat candidates and policies will receive care more quickly and completely than individuals who are opposed.  However unlikely those scenarios seem, neither one is impossible, and the first appears to be already happening.

Regardless of which scenario ultimately plays out, the result is that voters will be placed into a voting system built from a framework of oppression.  While politicians are well known to offer money to favored constituencies, this becomes the first time in America’s history that politicians can literally begin to equate votes to matters of life and death.  Most voters would not find it a difficult choice to select between supporting some policy that they don’t like, or a politician that they would otherwise oppose, when the alternative is that they will not be able to receive a life saving cancer treatment in time.

No neutral observer could call trading votes for life anything other than false liberty.

Strangely, though, this potential avenue for abuse has been almost entirely absent from the debate over health care.  Throughout the entire debate, I can only recall having seen the question show up once, in a survey published by the RNC asking if voters were concerned “that the government could use voter registration to determine a person’s political affiliation, prompting fears that GOP voters might be discriminated against for medical treatment in a Democrat-imposed health care rationing system.”  My vote, of course, would have been (and is) quite affirmative, especially as the full blown public option was still alive and well as a possibility in August when that survey was published.  The flash of furor, though, was apparently strong enough that the impotent GOP backpedaled, said that the question was “inartfully worded,” and tried to re-frame it as being about privacy rather than political gamesmanship.  With the GOP’s apology issued, the issue promptly disappeared from the debate.

But as we are already beginning to see, the GOP was right the first time.  Trading healthcare for votes is a serious issue about which Americans need to seriously engage.  Even liberals, who may think they’re safe with Obama in charge, should be scared of the potential for abuse.  Imagine, after all, if George W. Bush had been in charge of making your medical decisions; imagine the future of medicine under President Karl Rove.  Tying political support to medical treatment is far more dangerous than the financial quid pro quo that Americans have, unfortunately, gotten used to.

Perhaps Michelle discovering this first attempt will finally shed some light on a looming problem that should have been discussed months ago.

All of the major news outlets have been filled with reports of President Obama’s new promise to provide loan guarantees for the creation of new nuclear plants.  The promise comes amid efforts by Obama and Democrats to make forward progress on their effort to impose cap and trade legislation on the energy sector.  Obama’s bid, clearly targeted at Republicans who he feels may be willing to compromise on cap and trade in exchange for nuclear energy, appears to be little more than yet another empty promise by him and his administration.  Republicans should ignore the President’s meaningless promise and continue to oppose cap and trade.

Nuclear power is a source of energy which has been advocated by conservatives and energy producers for years.  Nuclear power offers an opportunity to significantly increase energy production in America, reduce dependence of foreign resources, and meet the politically expedient desire to avoid increasing carbon production.  The economics of nuclear energy are relatively straightforward, involving a significant upfront investment with significant payout over the life of the power station.  This is something that power companies have been ready to jump at for decades, and for which they would have no problem securing funding from the usual private sector debt markets.

Far from economics, the primary problem with nuclear energy has been from the environmental arena.  By citing concerns about the potential danger from nuclear facilities, environmentalists have managed to build a strong NIMBY sentiment in the areas where nuclear power has been considered.  Additional concerns over the disposal of reactor waste have further complicated the issue, primarily because of political resistance to building a properly designed disposal facility.  The regulatory system has further compounded the political issues by developing a process which borders on impenetrable for the approval of permits to construct new nuclear facilities.

By guaranteeing loans for the construction of nuclear facilities, Obama proposes to extend government investment to solve a non-problem.  His position allows him to portray himself as supporting nuclear power to Republicans in hope of winning their support on cap and trade legislation, all without running any risk that new nuclear power plants will actually be permitted.  Obama’s promise is, in short, a ruse to win support from gullible conservatives with no downside for his liberal base.

Republicans should see through and reject Obama’s empty promise.

Over in the Guardian, Sasha Abramsky invites us to consider the resurgence of apathy in a post-Obama America.  His central thesis is the idea that just a year after the high level of political engagement Americans exhibited during the 2008 election, the electorate has once again disengaged from the political process.  In truth, for Mr. Abramsky’s fellow liberals, such a charge may be the truth.  However, the American electorate as a whole has done precisely the opposite, becoming demonstrably more engaged in the political conversation than anyone was likely prepared for.

Mr. Abramsky is correct in noting the resurgence of political engagement shown by the American people during the election cycle in 2008.  Heading into the election, many things were up for grabs.  America was in the grip of what may be called two wars, Iraq and Afghanistan, both aspects of the larger war against terrorism and Radical Islam.  The country in general, and border states in particular, faced challenges from a broken immigration system and the pressing question — never resolved — of how to deal with people crossing onto US soil illegally.  The nation’s deficit had grown, putting a strain on the national economy even before the bubble burst.

Americans had a lot to be engaged about.

Where Mr. Abramsky’s argument comes off the rails is obvious in what happened next.  Democrats won the White House and the House of Representatives, and for a time held a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.  The stimulus, cap and trade, health care, invasive bank and industry regulation, and all manner of Democrat projects which had been held in check for years or decades suddenly became possible.  Riding their “mandate from the American people,” Democrats could literally not be defeated in the political  branches.

Democrats, however, have been defeated.  When the American people realized that the destruction of personal liberty and freedom, the destruction of the private sector, the destruction of the Constitution and any pretense that the government would not be in control of every aspect of their lives, the American people responded.  No disengaged populous could have defeated the unstoppable Democrat government.

Clearly, the American people have not returned to apathy by way of hope and change.  Americans saw the hope and change that awaited them and ran pointedly in the opposite direction.

Americans, I’m sure, still care about the environment, about health car reform, about jobs, and about the economy.  But Americans also care about liberty and freedom.  They care about personal rights, personal responsibilities, and “the right to be left alone.”  We care about having a limited government run by people who do not lie to us, who do not shut us out from the debate, and who do not act to secure their own power against/over the American people and contrary to our clearly expressed will.

But please, Mr. Abramsky, continue to encourage the American people to become even more engaged.  American apathy very well could lead to the revival of the Democrat agenda.  A disengaged populous is a very unfortunate thing.

Michelle Malkin suggests that Republicans should avoid the open-camera discussion with Obama about health care.  She suggests that they’re just opening themselves up to being cast as the villains in an Obama-run theatrical event.

I disagree.

I think there’s no good that would come from rebuffing Obama’s overtures, regardless of how insincere we believe them to be.  For one thing, that will just get the Republicans branded as blind obstructionists, with no way to counter that opinion.

More importantly, though, where Obama goes, so go the cameras.  The Republicans have submitted, over the past year, at least three health care bills that have gotten no exposure.  Congressional Democrats have buried them, and the media hasn’t even had the courtesy to attend the funeral.  To run an obituary for non-Obama health care reform would be to acknowledge that the deceased existed at all.

Beyond that, however, it allows the Republicans to make their case and force the Democrats to defend mandates, union favors, and denying mammograms to women.  Republicans can push the issue and show America that there is a clear reason Republicans have been opposing Obamacare for so long and that not only do we have the answers, but the Democrats do not.

Did I mention that it would give us a chance to show that we have the answers?  Good, just making sure.

We have the initiative in this debate; it would be folly not to pursue it.

That being said, the Republicans are going to have to do two things in order to pull this off.

First, they’re going to have to find someone in that gaggle of politicians who understands the issues and the issues behind the issues, and who can step up and be the voice of the party.  He should be someone who is unashamed of the free-market concept of health care, an advocate of liberty, and eloquent.  Unfortunately, Dr. Thomas Sowell doesn’t hold elected office, so we’ll have to find someone else.

Second, the Republicans will need to find a stage manager – someone who can take on Rahm Emanuel, head-to-head, and keep the Republicans from being hamstrung by absurd rules that give Obama all the stage time, and relegate the Republicans to ten seconds of rebuttal following a ten-hour Obama speech (with or without teleprompter – by the sixth hour, does its presence even matter anymore?).  This someone’s sole job is to make sure it’s a fair fight for a change.  Karl Rove, are you out there?

You would think by now that the speed with which Congress switches back and forth on whether or not to include a “public option” would have the media thoroughly tired of finding ways to spin either outcome as a win for Democrats.  Despite having made more switchbacks than a car on an highway through the mountains, the Washington Post has not slowed down in their ability to churn out nonsense aimed at making anything the Democrats do look intelligent.  A new article discusses what the senate health care deal would mean to consumers which paints a, predictably, much more rosy image of the story than is likely.

Included in the article was an interesting statement from a man named Paul Starr from Princeton:

“It’s good to have the federal government in there negotiating with plans because of the possibility that states will do a very bad job of regulating insurers and managing insurers,” said Paul Starr, a Princeton professor of public affairs. “This is a very important protection against poor implementation by states.”

Though this is not the first time I’ve heard this sentiment, it is the first time I’ve heard it so plainly applied to health care.  It is an interesting concept that seems to flow from the general notion that the federal government can do no wrong.  It is a quaint, if irrational, argument that seems to flow mostly from the 1960s civil rights era when the federal government, under orders from the Supreme Court and over the objections of Democrats, federalized the race industry and eliminated the Jim Crow policies of the states.  This gave the federal government instnat credibility as a nearly independent body of government which could craft policies without needing to worry too deeply about what the electorate might have to say.

Their policies, most of which are abject failures in terms of meeting their stated goals, sustainability, or both, are now the gold standard which folks like Mr. Starr want health care reform to compare.  The one thing that these programs — which include Medicare, civil rights reforms, and the radical expansion of the regulatory state — have actually succeeded in doing is removing power from the people and placing it in the hands of government.

A noteworthy example of the hollowness of federal “protection” is the FDA.  For drug manufacturers, the patent period is commonly viewed as the time during which they are able to recover the costs of the drugs they invent.  In order to recover their costs, they set their prices artificially high once the drugs are allowed to be sold.  A longer period of sales would allow drug prices to be lowered, because there would be a greater period of time over which they could spread out recovery of their up front costs.  But into this process comes the FDA, with its lengthy and expensive approval process which can take away as much as half of the patented life of a drug.  In, too, is the FDA, which has the power to pull from the market any drug, even ones the FDA has approved, for not being safe.  Thanks to the FDA, drugs cost more than they need to and have no particular guarantee of safety.  This is the sort of “protection against poor implementation” that we can expect from our federal government.

For liberals, though, the trouble reflected in the FDA doesn’t matter.  It only means that those programs need more money, need to be more invasive, and need to accumulate even more power.  But, that power comes with a price.  I found it notable that during the Bush years, the general cry that the federal government can do no wrong tended to fade into the background, if it was even made at all.  It was California, not Washington DC that was the champion of environmental policy.  It was state courts, not the FDA, that championed patients’ rights.  It seemed that the federal government under Bush could suddenly do nothing right.

We have, right now, a chance to have health care run by President Obama.  But he will not be President forever.  I can already hear the commotion now, come 2012 or 2016, when the White House again changes hands.  Just imagine what life will be like under our next President…

Doctor in Chief Sarah Palin.

I wonder if it is unfair to use the rules of evolution against the left.  For all the confusion the claims say conservatives have about how species change over time, nowhere is ignorance of the forces which drive population changes more on display than in today’s opinion section of the New York Times.  Thomas Friedman invites us to believe that conservatives “believe the world is going to face a mass plague, like the Black Death, that will wipe out 2.5 billion people sometime between now and 2050.”  He apparently feels that conservatives “believe all these things because that is the only way their arguments make any sense.”  His proof, however, entirely ignores the way population change works.

But there are two other huge trends barreling down on us with energy implications that you simply can’t deny…

The first is that the world is getting crowded. According to the 2006 U.N. population report, “The world population will likely increase by 2.5 billion … passing from the current 6.7 billion to 9.2 billion in 2050. This increase is equivalent to the total size of the world population in 1950, and it will be absorbed mostly by the less developed regions, whose population is projected to rise from 5.4 billion in 2007 to 7.9 billion in 2050.”

From this quote right here we get to see where the 2.5 billion person figure comes from.  It’s based on a UN projection of population growth and the apparent belief that the world cannot support any more people than are currently occupying it today.  As I see it, this has two major problems.  The first is that there is no indication that the Earth cannot support any more humans even under our current technology.  The second is that Mr. Friedman counts as dead about 2.5 billion people who do not exist and may never exist.

But be those problems as they may, there is nothing so terribly sinister at work as some deep belief in a mass kill-off of a significant chunk of the human population.  The forces underlying evolution apply a downward force on the growth rate of every species.  As the population of a species increases, the odds of survival for any individual member tend to decline.  Natural predators are attracted to dense concentrations of prey, competition for mates intensifies, and resources become harder to find.   These downward forces gradually eliminate the less adapted members of the species until the population reaches an equilibrium state.  The result is not a mass killing, but a gradual pruning of the family tree.

This process, of course, occurs in nature every day and nobody thinks much about it.

Mr. Friedman is hardly the first to have brought overpopulation fallacies to bear for political ends, nor is he likely to be the last one to make such an error.  To the extent that green technologies require burning our own food as gasoline, the net increase in hunger will serve not to prevent the 2.5 billion “deaths,” but to accelerate them.  What’s more, even the greenest of technologies will serve only to kick the can down the road; the human population will eventually reach its capacity for growth.

As the international hyperventilation over swine flu continues, it appears that the disease is now a national emergency.  As absurd as the declaration, and its associated language, are, the stated reason for the declaration now is fairly revealing of different issues with the US government.

According to Jennifer Nuzzo of the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Biosecurity, the national emergency declaration is “just a precautionary move so if need be we can focus on the care of patients rather than focus on administrative hurdles. In disasters, you often don’t have the time or luxury to keep the paperwork in order. You want hospitals focusing on patients.”  White House spokesman Reid Cherlin echoed this sentiment, stating that “If granted a waiver [under the declaration], hospitals would be freed from some regulations that guide their behavior during normal day-to-day operations.”

To phrase all of that somewhat differently, it sounds as if normal government regulations are getting in the way of doctors and hospitals providing effective medical treatment by default, and the state of emergency is needed to allow patients to be cared for in ways more in line with how medical professionals, rather than government bureaucrats, feel is most appropriate.

If a state of emergency is considered necessary for the management of such a benign illness, that fact alone should raise serious questions about the impact of government regulation during times of normal operation.

According to the Wall Street Journal, it appears that Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) wants people to start taking more money out of their bank accounts.  In particular, bank accounts which are empty.  While I know the government withdraws from an empty treasury all the time, there is precious little reason to think that doing the same is a good idea for the rest of us.  What it really appears is that Dodd wants to create a sort of back door by which individuals who probably couldn’t get loans in the traditional way are nevertheless able to access and spend more money than they have to their name.

While overdraft fees are well known to make people who get hit with them grumble, the reality is that they serve an important economic function.  From the perspective of the consumer, overdraft fees are, first and foremost, as sort of punitive damage incurred when the consumer withdraws more money than he has to his name.  While an overdraft fee can certainly put a cramp in someone’s day, an FDIC study reports that the fees are seldom onerous, ranging from $10 to $38 per infraction, with a median of $27 per overdraft.  A full 3/4 of the population will not incur any overdrafts at all over the course of a year, and only the most elite group of bank abusers, those with 20 or more overdrafts in a year, will average more than $1,000 in fees annually.  Of course, all of these fees are 100% avoidable.

More importantly to the legislation at hand, overdraft fees represent a compromise between consumers, banks, and retailers.  The vast majority of overdraft fees are incurred during debit card transactions or from writing bad checks.  In other words, the fees come from people spending money that they don’t have to purchase goods or services in situations where neither the vendor nor the bank necessarily know that the consumer has insufficient funds.  In the world of banks, where vendors are unable to receive any information from the bank while the customer is still present, most retailers charge a bounced check fee, if they’re willing to accept personal checks at all.  Debit cards, which either bounce immediately or not at all, remain widely accepted because vendors know that payment is guaranteed.  The guarantee on that payment, however, comes from banks, through overdraft protection.

If overdraft protection is opt-in, then much of the benefit attributable to debit cards will go away.  The overdraft system works in part because it is so wide spread and dependable.  The clear intent of this proposed legislation, however, is to make it less wide spread.  If debit cards become unreliable, retailers will stop allowing them, much as they have stopped allowing checks.  Banks, to ensure the same level of reliability, may find themselves pressured to allow debit card users to fall below zero balance in their accounts, effectively turning the debit system into a credit system — in particular, a credit system for low income people who likely couldn’t get credit through normal channels.  Consumers, no longer affected by the significant incentive overdraft fees provide to stay within their means, will become more likely to allow their balances to fall sub-zero, at least for short periods of time.

In all, this move strikes me as yet another example of Congress trying to encourage people to spend money they do not have, remove culpability for those that do, and set up private banks for future failure.

Once again it appears that Obama is preparing to redistribute taxpayer’s money to a favored constituency, budget deficit or not.  The next stop on the Obama Money Train, it appears, are senior centers and nursing homes around America where he will come riding in with a pile of $250 checks, totaling to $13 or $14 billion worth of increased debt depending on who happens to be counting.  The move is already being applauded (of course) by seniors groups and the AARP, and has the support of top Democrats in Congress.  If the Associated Press is to be believed, it looks like there’s even Republican support, though they’re at least (pretending to be) looking at the increase in deficit spending with concern.

The money handout comes, supposedly, as a result of the formula used for calculating annual cost of living adjustments (COLA) for Social Security dictating that there would be no increase in payouts this coming year. COLA is based explicitly on inflation and is intended to make sure that the purchasing power of payments to beneficiaries will not diminish over time.  Falling gas prices and a stale economy have actually caused a slight bit of deflation over the course of the past year.  To offset the lack of an official increase from COLA, Obama apparently wants to give away $250 to “senior citizens, veterans, retired railroad workers and people with disabilities.”

Looking over the list of recipients reveals an interesting collection of intended payees.  Senior citizens are obvious recipients as they are the primary beneficiaries of Social Security.  People with disabilities also make sense, because many of them are eligible for Social Security as well.  The payment to veterans is a little surprising; I wouldn’t have thought that they are on Social Security any differently than the rest of us, though many do get government pensions.  And then there are the retired railroad workers; where did that come from?  Plus, looking over another article, it looks like maybe all retired government folk (and railroad workers) might actually receive the benefit, whether they qualify for Social Security or not.

I wonder how many other favored constituencies might be added to the list before it’s all over.

Of course, the correct number to add is something on the order of negative four.  COLA is meant to maintain a level of purchasing power for Social Security beneficiaries, not to be a perpetually increasing rate of wealth redistribution from the young to the old.  We should be thankful, in fact, for the stagnation, as it increases seniors’ purchasing power without driving the program closer to its already impending bankruptcy.

As for the notion mentioned in the article that seniors deserve more because the cost of drugs has gone up, why is the payout not $250 to everyone who buys prescription drugs?  If that was really the concern, tying the money to drug purchases is the only logical way to address it directly.  Of course, the cost of drugs is being handled a different way: Medicare D is seeing an increase, which will serve to offset the (supposedly) skyrocketing cost of prescription drugs.

It is probably to anyone’s political turmoil to vote against this latest round of absurdity.  Nevertheless, seniors are going to get exactly what they deserve under the law.  There is nothing unfair about honoring a standing agreement.  It is, however, quite unfair to the younger generations to siphon their money and change the rules at a time when wallets are already tight and nearly one in ten members of the working population is not actually working at all.