On the Marque, Return to Blogging Edition

Chuck of Head Muscle has kindly hustled me back to the ol’ blog, so you can thank him for the pearls of wisdom herein imparted:

• When last I wrote, Republicans had 40 votes in the Senate, health care reform was still inevitable, and the President was planning to preempt Lost with his State of the Union address.  That was less than a month ago.  Since then, Scott Brown has preempted health care reform, Republicans have 41 votes in the Senate and more seem inevitable, and the President looked lost in his State of the Union address.  Ain’t democracy grand?
• Let’s all remember, come the next government shutdown crisis, that when the federal government shut down for at least three days in mid-February 2009, we all did just fine, thanks.
• Jim Geraghty spotlights one of those critically-underappreciated data points and the way it can creep under the skin of the American electorate.  It’s easy to forget that, aside from the enduring unemployment tragedy, there is also a lot of frustration among the employed.  Each year, millions of Americans leave their jobs not because they are forced out, but because they find greener pastures.  Right now, those pastures are looking pretty brown and chewed over by the millions of people looking for jobs full-time.  Add to that a national craving for economic security, which shows up in statistics ranging from the savings rate to the fury at government interventionism, and leaving the acceptable, stable (if unfulfilling) job for the potential dream job isn’t sounding so great right now.  So if you’re a smart, capable, hard-working American feeling stuck in yesterday’s job, making yesterday’s wages, how do you feel when you find out that the federal government bureaucrat living in Arlington makes more — a lot more — than you do, and more than he did before the recession began?  And this is the schlub that’s supposed to need more of your money to turn the economy around?  Even some of those government workers who are benefiting from such largesse are outraged.  Watch this.  It’s exactly the kind of apolitical, gut-level backlash that Washington cannot see coming until it hits the ballot box.
• Speaking of Washington, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the low-key approach taken by Washington Republicans in the wake of Scott Brown’s victory.  Sure, they’ve felt emboldened to state the obvious – that President Obama ignores the people at his peril – but there’s been little petty triumphalism of the sort that often overtakes a party in need of good news.  That said, national Republicans must maintain that discipline throughout the next ten months if they’re to lead the independents that are currently inclined to follow them.  President Obama is doing his level best to draw Republicans into small-ball fights that will make them, rather than him, look intransigent and haughty.  Kudos to McConnell, Boehner, Paul, Cantor, et. al. for being cautious, speaking equally with force and respect, and for refusing to compromise core principles for the appearance of “bipartisanship.”
• The importance of the defeat of President Obama’s NLRB nominee, SEIU lawyer Craig Becker, cannot be understated.  One year ago, it was considered a fait accomplit that unions would soon be able to bypass the secret ballot and impose favorable contract terms through arbitration on recalcitrant employers.  Unions were so convinced of their impending empowerment that they began training their employees on how to operate in this new regime.  There was word that an army of union organizers was being prepared to be unleashed on hundreds of previously union-free workplaces, radically transforming the American workforce.  But Becker — who famously believed that employers should “shut up” during the union campaign process — is the latest symbol that another element of the inevitable liberal revolution will not come to pass, at least not anytime soon.  Sure, Obama may still make a recess appointment and elevate him to the post, but Harry Reid’s inability to obtain cloture on the nomination sent an unmistakable signal to the Administration — now is not the time to “remake” America’s employers.

Avoiding Free-Riding Without a Health Insurance Mandate

My general interest in the debate surrounding the health insurance mandate led me to a post written by David Dranove of the blog Code Red the other day.  While David is generally supportive of the mandate, he posed a few good questions to conservatives and liberals who object to it.  As a non-lawyer, he tacitly set aside the constitutional issues, which I’ve addressed earlier and which I still think rule out further discussion of the idea.  That said, I agree that the impulse behind the mandate (prevent free-riding in the health care system) is a fair-minded one.  Rather than ask everyone to visit David’s blog (although I still recommend it) to read my comment, I thought I’d re-post my thoughts here.

The question David put to conservatives opposed to the mandate was this:

Are you going to mandate that providers stop treating the uninsured? Or are you going to mandate charity? If neither, then the uninsured are going to receive care and free ride on the rest of us. Government has every right to act on the behalf of the majority and limit the free riding. Look at it this way. Conservatives endorse the right of the government to raise taxes to pay for the national defense, lest those who do not want to pay their share free ride on the rest of us. Just as the national defense protects all of us, so do our medical providers. The parallel to health care is close to exact.

This is a fair question.  No one believes that doctors will stop caring for the sick, even if they are uninsured.  We wouldn’t want them to do that, anyway — there’s some minimal moral expectation that those who are in need should be able to expect help from our medical system.  So, since the care will be provided, who will pay?  And if it’s not the government — essentially, a collective responsibility assumed by the public — who else could it be?  The solution, to my mind, is through a series of changes rather than a single one (or a single payer).

First, in the case of non-emergency care, we empower medical providers to require proof of ability to pay prior to receiving care.  That can come in any number of forms: cash up front, traditional insurance, enrollment in government health programs (VA, Medicaid, Medicare), or the posting of a bond. That’s a lot of options for anyone, and any truly indigent person would be taken care of by Medicaid. Those not eligible for government programs but without traditional insurance would be able to pay on a fee-for-service basis, or to post a bond. The bond option isn’t really available today, but that’s mostly because anyone can get medical care without showing any ability to pay at your average hospital.  If a bonding option was necessary for some uninsured Americans to get treated, and it was affirmatively supported by government policy, it would flourish.  Since that bond would only be intended to cover the specific treatment sought, the required payment would be at a considerable discount to traditional insurance, but not so low to encourage routine use of the option.

If the individual is receiving emergency care, obviously there won’t be an opportunity to address payment before care is received. In this case, for uninsured indigents, hospitals should be allowed to administratively enroll them in Medicaid. You might argue that this is the same as an insurance mandate, but this is different in two ways. First, it is the hospital, not the government, that is taking the action as a condition of providing care. Second, the states could implement this requirement, and the general police power of the states includes the ability to require such things — not the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution.  This simple rule would protect the hospital from a large fraction of uncompensated emergency treatment cases.

For the uninsured that are not indigent but can’t pay their emergency bills (college students, the unemployed without COBRA, etc.), I’d recommend that the government establish a “one-strike-and-you’re-out” risk pool.  This risk pool would serve to pay for the emergency care costs only (not follow-on expenses when the individual is capable of making his/her own health decisions). The risk pool would pay on two conditions: 1) the individual agrees to pay over time a means-tested proportion of his care expenses at a subsidized interest rate and 2) the individual obtains basic health care insurance (high-deductible, no bells and whistles) and maintains it for a period, maybe five years.  This system protects the medical provider from the risk of nonpayment, it creates a constitutional means for requiring the uninsured-by-choice to pay their bills, and it limits the government’s liability to a smaller set of health transactions.

If an uninsured individual doesn’t want to avail himself of the risk pool, he must pay his bills out of his pocket. For those who don’t, Congress should create a much more streamlined and powerful means of collections for health care providers. Such a system, which could operate out of the same Magistrate Court system that hears most Social Security appeals today, would empower health providers to recover their own money, rather than take the financial hit and pass the cost onto paying customers. It’s not as if hospitals WANT to raise costs on paying customers — it’s just that the transaction costs of recovering the funds through current channels are far too high to make it worthwhile. Reduce the transaction costs and those incentives would change, benefiting the rest of us that don’t try to free-ride the system.

This system only works if guaranteed issue is also mandated, since an individual exiting the emergency room may not be able to obtain coverage under the current system. But since guaranteed issue is a given in every health reform bill I’ve seen, I don’t consider it too controversial.

Note that none of these changes restrict one’s liberty to choose how to pay for health care — so long as one doesn’t put others on the hook for health care. Once the uninsured individual does that, his liberty is constrained, but in a manageable and humane way. Why take an unconstitutional, coercive route when you can reach the same result without dramatically increasing costs for the insured population and still get the doctors paid?

What other ideas do folks have to avoid free-riding in our system without a mandate?



Obama’s DOJ: In Favor of Al Qaeda Recruiting Tools Before It Was Against Them

If any of the Obama Administration’s stated reasons for closing Gitmo has emerged as its favorite, it has to be that Guantanamo is a recruiting tool for al Qaeda.  This rationalization is particularly useful for the Democrats, because it simultaneously hints at the underlying cause celebre behind closing Guantanamo – that we do unspeakably evil things to those poor people at that bad place – while appearing to be a plus in the Overseas Contingency Operation against Man-Caused Disaster.

Which is the more powerful recruiting tool - this?

But remember that not long ago, this same Administration was moments away from creating a whole new set of al Qaeda “recruiting tools.”  Back in April/May 2009, the Justice Department was ready to forego an appeal of a court order to release dozens of photos of enemy combatants, which presumably depicted them after undergoing harsh interrogation or torture.  Those photos, whose release would have been unlawful under the Geneva Conventions preventing public depictions of prisoners of war, would have invariably reignited similar passions as were unleashed throughout the Middle East and Central Asia in the weeks and months after the Abu Ghraib revelations.  One might recall that things got worse, not better, in Iraq at that point.

Or this?

But here we had the Attorney General recommending that it not appeal to the Supreme Court a judgment by the Second Circuit that would have required the Department of Defense to release these photos.  Even if it would have eventually lost, the government would have delayed disclosure for at least another year.  And it was no slam dunk that it would have lost — the Court has been much more deferential (although not deferential enough) to the executive branch in its prosecution of the war than have the lower courts, particularly the forums chosen by the ACLU for its activist lawsuits.

Only after the intelligence agencies, the military, the public, and ultimately key members of Congress expressed their outrage at such a decision did the Obama Administration first delay, then indefinitely postpone release of the photos.  The matter was ultimately resolved when Congress allowed the Secretary of Defense to order the photos sealed, which he did.  That order was upheld by the Supreme Court.

So, the same Justice Department that is insisting on closure of Guantanamo to avoid inciting terrorist violence was ready to release photos that would surely have incited violence, and would have absent a public uprising against it.  The only common element here?  The ACLU and its liberal allies wanted both to happen, and for reasons utterly unrelated to the violence that may have resulted: they hate George Bush, and they are driven to remind us all of the evil that embraced our land during the dark days of his reign.  Irrational?  Yes.  Explanatory?  Without question.

True, Obama himself signed the law allowing the photos to be protected – in a rather rare reversal of policy.  But Holder and his ilk at DOJ remained unabashedly opposed to the move.  They have zero credibility when they attack Guantanamo as a “recruiting tool.”

Get Thee Behind Me, 2009!

I plan to do some predicting and evaluations of my previous predicting this weekend, but I wanted to get out a happy New Year message to all five of you who read Marque’s Letters!

Seriously though, while this year’s politics and current events have been grim and troubling in many respects, I’ve had a lot of fun chronicling them and giving my opinions thereon throughout the year.  Despite about six months of total hiatus for various reasons, Marque’s Letters topped 5,000 views in its brief history sometime around Halloween, and we’re almost to 6,000 as I write this.  One of the big reasons for those numbers is the terrific reaction to this post, probably my favorite of the year and one that WordPress chose to spotlight for a few days.  If my words served to remind a few folks of the profound human achievement of peaceful revolution against communism in 1989, I couldn’t be more pleased.

More important to me, though, are the 250+ comments the blog has received in its brief (18-month) life.  The lion’s share came from my insightful blogmates, including Chuck at Head Muscle, the guys at American Missive, and Maine.  Each of these guys’ blogs are worthy of your regular attention, and I value their faithful readership and comments greatly.  The other folks who drop by and contribute to the conversation are just as appreciated, and all the fresh perspectives and opportunities for informed debate are exactly why I keep on bloggin’.

Thanks for all your support and insight in 2009, and I hope you keep reading and contributing in 2010.  May God bless America in this new year.

– the Management

Will Facts Drive Policy, or the Other Way Around?

One of the Democrats’ chief criticisms of the Bush Administration, one that sometimes had merit, was that it refused to alter its strategy or message in the face of new facts.  In foreign affairs, that meant it took us three years to react to the Iraqi insurgency in a manner beyond “staying the course.”  On the domestic front, that meant allowing several appointees to serve far longer than their records justified (Gonzales, McLellan, Powell, Rumsfeld) and establishing a bunker mentality in response to press criticism.

The Obama Administration struck at this central failing of the last regime by promising pragmatism and common-sense straight from the “reality-based community.” No longer would partisan bias cloud the White House’s response to the nation’s challenges.  Spin would be replaced by transparency.  Facts would drive policy, not the other way around.

But one year into the politics of hope and change, and we are seeing a pattern develop about how this crowd handles inconvenient facts.  All summer, the economic facts rolled in that the stimulus bill had done little to create jobs or improve the economy, and that the “shovel-ready” projects so urgently needed were figments of the Democratic imagination.  Rather than change course and respond with an alternative strategy, Joe Biden repeatedly claimed that the stimulus was working, and that things were better than they would have been.  Only recently, when the Administration wanted to pass a new stimulus, was it willing to acknowledge the grand failure that was spending $787 million billion for 2.5% fewer jobs.

When the mullahs of Iran bungled its election fix this summer, the Obama State Department first abetted it, then ignored it, then begrudgingly decried it before returning to full appeasement mode.  Iranians were left to shout a remarkably Bushian line at our President – “Obama, are you with us or are you against us?”   But the answer was clear — the White House was choosing to ignore a pro-freedom Iranian revolution in hopes for a deal with the despots.  Even so, deadline after deadline was ignored, deals were cut and then broken, and Ahmedinejad continues to promise death to Israel.  All the while, Team Obama has refused to acknowledge what even France has acknowledged — Iran is just playing out the clock while it builds a nuclear bomb.

On the eve of the global warming summit, stunning revelations about the science underlying the alleged global-catastrophe-in-waiting should have led a pragmatist to take a step back and review the facts before committing a country in the red to billions more in federal aid.  A pragmatist might have also postponed announcement of a sweeping regulatory decision based on that same science, which threatened to impose billions more in environmental compliance costs on a seriously wounded economy.  In an Administration committed to “restoring integrity to U.S. science policy to ensure that decisions that can be informed by science are made on the basis of the strongest possible evidence,” one might expect that getting the science right would be of the utmost concern.  Such an Administration, and such a pragmatist, is not in residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, however.

Public doesn’t want Guantanamo closed?  Ignore them and do it anyway.  Released terrorists are returning to the war on terror?  Deny the war, release more terrorists.  Health care bill doesn’t bend the cost curve, which you required of any bill you’d sign?  Say it does anyway, and deny you ever required it to do that.  Islamic terrorists attack the U.S. three times in one year?  They’re lone wolves – we’ve got it all under control – but please stand in line another hour at the airport, just in case.

Carol Lee of Politico goes into greater depth about the P.R. tactics the White House has used to ignore the facts that threaten their worldview, but I’m more concerned about the worldview itself.  We have a president who ran exclusively on the idea that he was no ideologue, that he had no dog in the partisan fights that plague Washington, and that his Administration would rise above the pettiness and do what was necessary to reform and protect America. Given these facts, the pragmatist in me says there are only two ways to react to Year One of Obama: either our President is a lying ideologue, or he’s very, very bad at knowing what is necessary to reform and protect America.

The facts themselves are clear, however.  The President will be judged by the voters in November based on how he responds to the hard facts in Iran, the muddled half-truths of climate change, the plain facts of a falling dollar, a rising debt, and a nation out of work.  Rhetorical flourishes cannot change them.  I just hope our political leaders are prepared to face them.

An Alternate Analogy for Health Care Reform

Much has been written comparing the present health care reform effort to prior struggles for the same thing.  But this week’s passage of the Senate’s version of Obamacare brought to mind another recent political circumstance that, for me, says more about the political risks in play than does the failure of Hillarycare in 1993.

I speak of the impeachment of President Clinton, 1998. Of course, the process and the subject matter have nothing to do with health care.  But the politics do.  You may remember that the House vote to impeach President Clinton was the last thing Congress did before adjourning for Christmas in 1998.  I recall this distinctly, because I was driving south to Georgia from Washington with two of my friends and fellow Congressional staffers, listening to the debate and then the vote in favor of impeachment on a scratchy car radio.

It was a moment full of mixed emotions.  We wanted to be happy, because we all felt strongly that Clinton’s presidency should end after a year of lying and political manipulation.  We also knew that the public wasn’t so sure.  Polls had shown for months that Americans were largely against impeachment, but Republicans had resolutely pushed forward, certain that their solid factual and legal case against the President would carry the day in the end.  In fact, there was almost a morose, melancholy, martyred feeling to it all — while Republicans felt they were doing what they had to do, and that it was in everyone’s best interest, those who should be the most appreciative were instead rejecting them.  Even members of their own party were beginning to question the wisdom of impeachment.  In the midst of the Christmas season, the  impeachment managers’ doomed quest took on a bit of a religious tinge.

Compare this to today’s mood in Washington and the country at large.  In Washington, Democrats are throwing themselves victory parties, trying to gin up public support for a plan that average Americans have considered a boondoggle since September.  Democrats have long since given up saying that the public wants what they are selling (setting aside Harry Reid, of course, whose brain is so fried he voted against his own bill).  Instead, they insist on extolling the historic moment, promising that great things will come of this, even if Americans don’t agree with them today.  It also became obvious that Reid was desirous of a Christmas Eve vote, to give his caucus the chance to talk of the Senate’s present to the nation.

The impending political consequences of the two big votes are also similar.  While neither the impeachment vote in the House nor the Senate’s passage of Reid’s bill could independently yield practical results, they both presaged the focus of debate in Washington in the coming year.  In 1998, new political organs, like Moveon.org, were emerging to fill the void left by months of Democrats’ stunned silence in the wake of the Lewinsky allegations.  Those groups, which would become the dominant liberal political force in the country for the next decade, were already promising electoral armageddon against the House impeachment managers.  Even rank and file Democrats had begun to find their voice after months of feeling chastened by their unchaste President’s peccadilloes.  No one believed that impeachment, regardless of how it came out in the end, would benefit Republicans at the polls in 2000.  The only question was whether the Senate would compound the Republicans’ political error.

Health care, by comparison, has mobilized conservatives in ways considered unthinkable in early 2009.  New groups, such as the Tea Party movement, took up the slack in the beginning when Republicans were overcoming their post-Bush hangover.  Now, those groups appear ready to fund and support serious candidates and causes in the coming year.  At the same time, Republicans have retaken the mantle of fiscal sanity, and independent voters have rallied to them.  No one believes that health care reform, whether successful or no, will be a boon to Democrats next November.  The question remaining is whether Obama and Congress will push too many too far out on the plank so as to lose the majority entirely.

As a final comparison, I’d remind us all of what was being ignored in both cases.  At the same time impeachment was dominating the Washington scene, Osama bin Laden was plotting to take down the World  Trade Center.  The last seeds were being sown for the tech bubble to burst in 1999 and 2000.  And the poisonous atmosphere that developed in the wake of impeachment gave license to both sides to unleash a wave of ethics investigations, smear campaigns, and over-the-top theatrics that continue to dominate our politics.

Here we are, 11 years later, and after a year of campaigning on an end to such tactics, Democrats are using every trick in the book to pass what amounts to a regulatory takedown of one-sixth of the American economy on a party-line vote.  Rather than seeking to bring the country together, Democrats are content to go it alone, castigating those in their own party who refuse to go along.  All the while, unemployment hovers around 10%, real estate appears headed for a second collapse, the dollar is falling precipitously, and no one appears to know how to solve our budget crisis.  The selfsame Osama Bin Laden continues to plot his next attack.

I do not present this comparison as a way to suggest that impeachment was right, or even that health care is wrong.  Instead, it is a worthwhile reminder that sometimes doing what one party believes is right doesn’t mean it’s right for the moment, for the nation, or even for the party itself.

Surprise! Liberals Attack the Health Insurance Mandate

The health care story of the day is that the Left — yes, the Left — has turned against the health insurance mandate.  National Review Online has a great roundup of the liberal opinionmakers who are storming the barricades, including Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos, Keith Olbermann, Howard Dean, and Jon Walker of Firedoglake.

It’s a bit rich, of course, since the individual mandate has been in the bill since the beginning.  The same arguments being employed now by the Left have been championed by anti-mandate conservatives — including this blog — for months now.  I suspect that what’s really going on here is that liberals are angry about the lack of a single-payer or its Trojan Horse, the public option, in the Senate bill.  They have to give their folks in Washington some ammunition to bring it down.

Rather than taking on their president, however, they are choosing to go after the real outrage in the bill — the fact that it’s “sell[ing] the middle class into corporate servitude” when it “makes them criminals if they don’t buy insurance.”   In fact, since the Obama campaign opposed the mandate during the campaign (his central point contention with Hillary on health care), their attack gives him cover to retrench to his original anti-mandate position.

I’ve argued for a while that conservatives made a mistake when they attacked the public option as the central front in the war against the Left’s health care agenda.  It’s the mandate’s coercive, unconstitutional power that has the most potential to destroy the relationship between Americans and their government.  If it takes lefty bloggers to get this issue front-page status, that’s fine with me.  To my liberal friends, feel free to raid this blog’s posts on the mandate if they help you make your case.  And to my conservative friends — now’s the time to join the fight!

Starve Them.

No, the title does not refer to what I’ve been doing to my readers for the last month.  Well, it doesn’t ONLY describe that.

What it does refer to is the very easy, quite appropriate way for Congress to deal with Lisa Jackson’s attempted blackmail of the legislative branch.  It’s plain as day that EPA’s endangerment finding with regard to greenhouse gas emissions is the gun to Congress’ head, ordering them to pass cap and trade or face limitless regulation of carbon dioxide from the bureaucracy.

There was a time, not long ago, that such a move by the administrative state would have been received with unanimous resentment on Capitol Hill.  It’s the ultimate disrespect from an agency that Congress never even created in the first place.  Even if a congressman or senator is in favor of greenhouse gas regulation, he or she should be offended that EPA believes it can bludgeon them into pervasive regulation of the nation’s economy at the precise moment that the science behind such actions is in serious question.

Many are calling for Congress to amend the Clean Air Act to exempt greenhouse gases.  Others are encouraging our representatives to pass cap and trade and avoid Carbogeddon.  These routes are either unthinkable in the current political climate or would have an unfathomable impact on our weak economy.

Luckily, Congress was granted a shorthand way of reining in wayward bureaucracies.  All it must do is insert the following language in the 2009 Interior and Environment Appropriations Bill (or any appropriations bill, for that matter):

No funds may be used to develop, promulgate, or enforce any rule, proposed rule, or other regulatory action implementing or relying upon the December 7, 2009 Endangerment and Cause or Contribute findings issued by the Environmental Protection Agency with regard to regulation of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

That sentence, or something like it, would starve the EPA of funds to develop any rules on greenhouse gases.  How do I know that?  Because I wrote just such a sentence for my boss in 2000 about the Clean Air Act, and it became law.  Let it not be said that EPA has the upper hand here.  Only a weak Congress, obeisant to Obama, would countenance such bullying from a lowly administrator.

Well, OK, you’ve got me there.

On the Marque, 11/19/2009

Because it’s been too long since the last one.

• As regular readers will know, I’m incredibly passionate about the Orwellian freakishness that is the health insurance mandate in Obamacare.  Unfortunately, it’s so wrong on so many levels, it’s sometimes hard to explain why without being, well, verbose (ahem).  Luckily, there are writers whose clean language, pure logic, and persuasive arguments demand fewer words and more attention.  Read Shikha Dalmia.  (And while you’re at it, read The Black Commenter).
• Michael Gerson is not a raving right-wing ideologue.  He is, however, very scared of where Attorney General Eric Holder is taking us as a country.  You should be, too.
• I mean, the dude said “it depends” when asked if Osama bin Laden would be read his Miranda rights.  Seriously?  You don’t know this?  There isn’t already a 20-page memo on “what you will do if you capture Bin Laden?  We’ll decide when it happens?  Incredible.

• Michael Franc gives us the scorecard on exactly how “moderate” these Democrats are, particularly on fiscal matters.  GOP candidates, start your engines.
• And finally, our good friend Head Muscle shares his worthy insights on the two Koreas.  It’s a moving read, and it subtly explains why we conservatives fight the statist, totalitarian impulse with such vigor.  The world gives us — history gives us –  these irrefutable case studies, yet the theories (and the oppression) persist.

Quote of the Day, 11/18/09

This quote explains beautifully why no media bias, enemies list, journalist ban, or ugly slur will change the polls for Democrats:

You have not converted a man because you have silenced him.

– John Morley

(h/t Forbes Thought of the Day)