I understand Jeff’s frustration with having his ideas used without acknowledgement of them.

A few weeks ago I wrote an article critical of Jeff Bolton’s website blowoutcongress.com. The article appeared on a number of sites. I received quite a few comments. Not all were very well thought out, but they were all civil. Since I’m pretty sure those comments all came from Jeff’s fans I was favorably impressed with my little sample and believe it is a direct reflection of the way Jeff conducts himself on his show. He is a gentleman. I feel comfortable in stretching that a little farther to say that in my opinion, he is having a positive impact on polite debate in Dallas.

The first comment I received was from Cliff Sosamon. I am of the opinion that Cliff is an integral part of blowoutcongress.com. He didn’t say that in his repsonse to my post, but I think I recall Jeff mentioning a “Cliff” in relation to blowoutcongress. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’ve got a feeling… I once wrote to blowoutcongress.com with some suggestions regarding the site and the unsigned response (a tiny bit snotty) I got was quite similar in tone to the response Cliff sent to my article. It’s not important, its just a feeling. I’m always a little bothered when people are secretive.

I responded to all the comments. I was polite and took the effort to explain myself in the hope that those who wrote would clearly understand my position.

Lo and behold. For the last couple weeks Jeff has been talking about a new, related site – rebuildcongress.com. I recall Jeff saying something about the site which made me think it was more along the lines of keeping the good congresspeople and getting rid of the poor performers if the good ones would stipulate that they would support things like term limits. That’s much more in line with something I could support.

There’s this tiny, niggling thing though. The timing of my article, Cliff’s rebuttal and the announcement of rebuildcongress.com leads me to suspect that perhaps – just maybe – my article caused some rethinking, re-evaluation and re-focusing. If that’s true it would have been nice to get an acknowledgement of the value of considered criticism. Just a little “thank you” maybe…

Although they get many millions each year from the US Government, unions and charitable organizations, ACORN does everything it canl to avoid paying its own members the minimum wage required by law.  This, while those same employees agitate to extort minimum wages for others.

ACORN actually went to court to fight to pay wages below the legal minimum. ACORN made the same arguments its corporate victims make when arguing aginst higher minimum wages — namely, that paying higher wages would mean the organization would have to make do with fewer employees.

In its Resource Guide for activists, written by David Reynolds of the Wayne State University Labor Studies Center, ACORN casts aside concerns about minimum wage laws resulting in fewer jobs for low-wage workers, scolding

That’s low road thinking, the kind of philosophy that seeks short-term increases in the bottom-line by directly lowering costs and casts high wages, benefits, and other worker protections as obstacles to competition.

But in 1995, ACORN actually went to court in California in an attempt to exempt ACORN from that state’s minimum wage and overtime laws. Why? Well, according to ACORN’s brief in an appeal of the ruling against them…

…the more that ACORN must pay each individual outreach worker–either because of minimum wage or overtime requirements–the fewer outreach workers it will be able to hire.

ACORN also has a history of union-busting, ducking overtime requirements, late paychecks, and general anti-labor practices. In 2003, the National Labor Relations Board made the following findings about the organization:

• ACORN pays its field members $18,000 per year – about 6.65 per hour when you consider they average 54 hours per week.
• Field members are rarely given weekends off.
• Field members are expected to canvas neighborhoods alone, sometimes at night.  Even though many of the neighborhoods are dangerous.
• ACORN is frequently tardy with member paychecks.

The un-mitigated gall of ACORN is truly beyond comprehension and the cow-like stupidity of their followers is an embarrassment to the human race.

“We will achieve our goal of making this administration the most open and transparent administration in history,” President Obama said on Friday.

“Americans have a right to know whose voices are being heard in the policymaking process,” he added.

Well, maybe not so much.  As a citizen your transparency will begin September 15.  White Houes visitors for the first eight months of Obama’s administration will remain secret.  And the transparency thing?  Well, the visitor logs will be made available 90-120 days after the visits.  Visits to President Obama or Vice-President Biden which are deemed “personal” won’t be released to the public.

You see when Bush wouldn’t release visitor logs Obama criticized him promising transparency but, like all things  Obama, the meaning of words is defined by him based on context.  You (and most other Americans) might think “transparency” means openess, communication and accountibility.  Well, you’d be wrong there bud..

Lets define what he actually said in the above quote and you’ll see where you went wrong.  In my mind, “transparency” and “pregnancy” are definite in the sense that the condition exists or it doesn’t.  Try imagining what “most pregnant” would mean. Then there’s the qualifier “policymaking process” when it comes to your “right to know whose voices are being heard”.

Oh yeah.  Lest you delude yourself into thinking that President Obama is just ticking another item off his list of campaign promisess:

The Administration has also agreed with Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW) to settle four pending cases requesting specific White House visitor access records, including those dating from the Bush administration (read the transmittal letter here). We have provided CREW with the records relating to their requests….

Morally, the self-serving factor should be considered when the decision affects only you.  In othe words, if you represent others (publically-held corporation, government entity, non-profit organization, etc.) the self-serving factor should not be allowed to come into play.

Why, in the face of continuing and mounting losses (offset to some degree by continuing and mounting price increases),  is the United States Post Office not offering email distribution for the various federal, state and local governments?  Logic tells me it is not better, cheaper and faster.  So why hassn’t government created their own service for email to replace the independent contractor they currently use?  Well, I suspect they think the timely and successful delivery of their email is too important to them to put it into the hands of a government bureaucracy.

Yet, they are anxious to run healthcare.  Yours, not theirs.  Can government-run healthcare be proven to be better, cheaper or faster?  Of course not.  The only way to do that would be to try it for a while and examine the results.  Given the historically poor track record of bureaucracy, self-serving politicians, special interest groups and lobbyists a national health care system is doomed to fail.

Asked about the importance of bipartisan support for a bill in which divisions between the parties are only growing deeper, Gibbs said:

“The president is going to evaluate ultimately any piece of legislation as to whether it meets his goals and principles for health-care reform… The president’s goal is not to print a banner and sign a bill just so somebody can say we’ve reformed health care.”

From the Chicago Tribune

Bullshit.  The banners, t-shirts and bumper stickers are probaly already at the printer.  This is exactly what he is going to do.  AND it is a classic example of doublespeak on the part of the administration.  Ironically it’s happening right in the middle of Obama’s emphasis and focus on “myth, lies and disinformation”.  Evidently his administration will stoop to any level to accomplish their goals.  Really, it’s shameful.

If a healthcare bill passes at all (which is increasingly unlikely) Obama will take credit for acting on a campaign promise while passing the buck to Congress for “watering it down”.

Talk about being “wee-weed up”.  Recently the bill was referred to as Obama’s Waterloo.  It just may be.

]]> http://chuck-thompson.com/2009/08/that-is-exactly-his-intention/feed/ 0 http://chuck-thompson.com/2009/08/hello-world/ http://chuck-thompson.com/2009/08/hello-world/#comments Wed, 19 Aug 2009 19:03:53 +0000 Chuck http:/?p=1 …and thinking through the doublespeak is easy.

1. The government funds the set-up of “cooperatives” which, ostensibly, are set up to provide an alternative to conventional health insurance companies. The idea is that the cooperatives would provide a more “cost-effective” alternative to conventional health insurance providers and/or provide a health insurance option to those who are denied coverage due to pre-existing conditions deemed unprofitable to insure.

2. First, it will be necessary to organize, staff and provide infrastucture to the cooperatives as none of this exists now.

• This opens the floodgates to ACORN-type organizations to begin their own bureaucratic businesses.
• It takes the pressure off conventional insurance companies to re-consider their healthcare decisions as it can then be said that people have an alternative.
• Billions of dollars will be used to organize, staff and provide infrastructure – none of which will provide any healthcare to anyone.

3. Once steps 1 & 2 are complete, the process of providing actual healthcare begins.

Due to the bureaucratic nature of the cooperatives, the opportunites for graft and abuse of power will be innumerable.

• Local activists will demand, and get, coverage for anyone in their group regardless of ability to pay, immigration status or any other aspect not related to the constituency of the activist group. Because the cooperatives depend upon the “largesse” of the government to exist they will have to bend to the will of the activists regardless of the monetary consequences.

4. There will, no doubt, be an Administration-appointed “healthcare cooperative czar”.

The czar will be under political and party pressure to insure anyone who is not conventionally insured. This will result in the czar dictating health coverage policy based on political pressure.

• The czar’s power will derive from the Adminsitration and funding from congress.
• The cooperatives may (almost certainly) also find themselves under the authority of the various states and municipalities in which they operate, adding additional layers of bureaucracy and the inevitable corruption which is part and parcel of bureaucracy.

5. When additional funding, beyond the original mandate, is required to offset losses (and it most certainly will be) the only source will be the American Taxpayer. It is possible that “donations” to the cooperatives will be tax-deductible, again effectively resulting in tax increases on everyone else.

When conventional insurers are seen to be “unfairly” causing problems for the cooperatives, such as denying unprofitable coverage and causing the cooperatives raise prices, the government has two basic choices: additonal funding to the cooperatives or mandating unprofitable coverage from the insurers.

• Every possible “cure” will have to be considered and (depending on who you know, how you vote, or who you pay off) paid for without consideration of cost or efficacy.
• “Alternative Healers” will thrive and become a huge government-funded industry.
• The czar will dictate what “appropriate” charges for care and treatement are like Medicare does now. This will result in fewer people entering the medical field, fewer business providing healthcare, testing etc. and Canadian-type waiting periods for service.

6. The result will be that trojan horse is exposed and the U.S. will effectively be in the Universal Health Coverage business which was the intent all along.

At every election, the party which represents the people covered by the cooperatives will have the threat of loss of coverage as their #1 plank. Realistically, who would you vote for if you believed your healthcare hung in the balance?

• The above point, if accurate, will guarantee a greater divide between the “haves” and the “have-nots” which will result in social unrest at never-before-seen levels.
• Taxes to cover the shortfall of the cooperatives will have to be raised, but not for those who are actually in the cooperatives.
• We will be flooded with illegal aliens seeking free healthcare.
• Some people will have less of an incentive to have gainful employment.

7. Those who currently pay for their own healthcare will be dis-incentivized to continue to do so and will drop it and join the cooperatives.

Steady loss of paying customers will cause insurance companies to find ways to offset the loss of income: more stringent review of coverage, layoffs, closings, etc.

• The result of the above measures to stay profitable will result in a “virus” which will take down the healthcare industry.

8. Ultimately, the private healthcare industry will fail due to regulation and unprofitability in the same way that private delivery companies like Fedex and UPS would fail if the government regulated what they could do or charge based upon what it took to keep the USPS operating without continued government subsidies. Follow the analogy below:

In this analogy, the  USPS equates to government-sponsored healthcare, private delivery companies equate to private healthcare providers and cooperatives equate to junk mailers.

Junk Mailers cannot survive without the USPS due to the low rates provided them. If the USPS closes or raises rates to achieve profitability, the junk mailers are in trouble. Currently the US government subsidizes the industry, so in effect tax-payers are paying to have their mailboxes filled with junk mail. Ironically, trees are dying every day in order to fill up re-cycling bins to save the environment.

If the government chose to fund a fleet of airplanes to deliver packages without consideration to profitability or efficiency, the for-profit delivery companies would be forced to raise rates or close up shop. If they raise rates, either the public pays more or the service shrinks. If either of those two things happen, the USPS is the benficiary.

That means that all tax-payers have to pick up the financial slack, thereby shifting the cost of package delivery to everyone rather than focusing it on those who need the service.

The junk mailers will do whatever is necessary to protect their business. They will hire lobbyists to sway the votes of congresspeople towards bills which benefit their industry. They will complain to congress saying that since poor people cannot afford overnight delivery that they are being discriminated against and that junk mail should be delivered overnight at no additional cost by the USPS in order to “level the playing field”.

Finally, since decisions regarding the industry are made based only on criteria related to providing service to people who can’t afford it, might not want it, or don’t deserve it,  the private providers fail. Investors in those companies lose their money. The previously provided service it provided by the government-subsidized USPS and the entire industry becomes like the Mexican Post Office where it can take weeks to get mail if it arrives at all and where you might have to pay off your postman to get the mail. And the postman can’t be fired because he is the nephew of the Postmaster.