I’ll drink to that

by David K. Williams, Jr. | 12:57 pm, December 21, 2009

A headline from today’s Denver Post reads

That’s like winning a temperance award from Dean Martin.

Senate Health Care Bill – Winners and Losers

by Chuck Moe | 12:46 pm, December 21, 2009

Here is your recap of the Senate Health Care Bill vote. The Associated Press has their version of the winners and losers of the health care legislation, but like so much of mainstream media, it fails to properly capture the essence of what kind of deals the public will pay for and who the real [...]

NCR Says Antitrust Not Right Approach for Video; Kiosks May Dent Netflix

by Ari Armstrong | 12:39 pm, December 21, 2009

As I wrote last month, I’ve stopped doing business with Redbox, the DVD kiosk service, because that company initiated antitrust actions against film companies.

Last week I learned that NCR has acquired DVDPlay and plans to convert those “kiosks to its BLOCKBUSTER Express brand.” It turns out that, in my region, these kiosks are placed in many Safeway stores.

On December 17, I sent the following e-mail to NCR:

Dear Mr. Dudash,

I no longer do business with Red Box because that company initiated antitrust actions against others, and I regard such action as unjust and a violation of individual rights.

Before I decide whether to do business with NCR/ DVDPlay, I’d like to know whether your company has initiated any antitrust actions or intends to do so. I will be happy to publish your response, and to make my consumer decisions accordingly.

Sincerely,
Ari Armstrong

Today I received the following reply:

Hi Ari, we have not initiated any lawsuits against the movie studios at this time. We have said publicly that we do not believe that is the right approach, and we are instead working with the studios to find a solution that addresses their needs, our needs and — most importantly — the needs of our consumers.

However, as I’m sure you can understand, I cannot comment on what actions we may or may not take in the future. But, certainly, we have not filed any lawsuits to date and have said publicly that we do not agree with the approach of litigation.

Jeff

Jeff Dudash
Public Relations
NCR

That is certainly good enough for me. I have already rented two videos from DVDPlay to see how the system works, and now I plan to rent from the service regularly.

The DVDPlay kiosk worked very well. The problem is that the consumer cannot view DVD availability by kiosk online, nor can the consumer reserve a rental online. Redbox allows both of these things, which makes that service quite a lot more useful. Hopefully, once the conversion to Blockbuster is complete, the service will upgrade its online capabilities. (I asked Dudash about this and will update this post if he answers.)

After I dropped Redbox, I upgraded my Netflix account from one-at-a-time DVD rentals to three-at-a-time. Now that I’ve found DVDPlay, I’ve reduced my Netflix account to a the single disc plan.

I figured that, while I was at it, I’d ask Netflix about its business plans. It seems to me that Netflix could offer the best of both worlds by renting DVDs through the mail and charging an additional per-rental fee for online new releases.

Right now Netflix rents DVDs for a monthly fee and offers online content at no additional charge. I’ve found some outstanding online offerings this way, such as Jim Henson’s The Storyteller. But Netflix offers none of the hot new releases online.

Obviously Netflix also rents new releases by mail. The problem is that they tend to be delayed. I dropped the new Terminator film and Hangover from my Netflix list and rented them from DVDPlay. Currently Inglourious Basterds is listed on my Netflix queue as a “very long wait,” as is Four Christmases. Public Enemies and Julie & Julia are listed as “long waits.” My plan is to remove all these films from my Netflix queue and rent them at DVDPlay (if available).

Meanwhile, Amazon and iTunes rent new-release movies online for $3.99. So I can pay a dollar at DVDPlay, or I can pay four times as much to view the same content through my cable modem. For me, this is no contest. The kiosk is within easy walking distance, and I like to walk around, anyway. While I have rented many movies from kiosks, I have paid not one red cent for online video rentals (not counting the online content included with my Netflix membership).

Is Netflix planning to compete with the kiosks and with the online rental sites for new-release business? No.

I called up Steve Swasey, Netflix’s Vice President of Corporate Communications. He graciously took my call. He said that Netflix is and intends to remain a subscription-based company. He pointed out that Netflix has been growing despite the competition.

Moreover, Swasey said that Netflix users tend to be more interested in the company’s deep catalog and excellent customer service. (I readily granted that these are strong points for the company.) Swasey sensibly said that “a great release from 1974 is a great movie,” whereas a new release may not be so great. With Netflix, he said, customers can find older movies “tailored to you.” As examples, he noted that the films Crash and Hotel Rwanda have been Netflix favorites. (I hated the first film and appreciated the second.)

Swasey said that “new releases just aren’t that important to most Netflix users,” who instead enjoy the large catalog, tailored recommendations, and “extreme simplicity” of the monthly subscription.

As much as I enjoyed talking with Swasey and appreciate his perspective, I just don’t buy his rationale. I think it would be in Netflix’s interests to offer pay-per-view online rentals for new releases.

I would gladly pay Netflix an extra couple bucks to watch a new release online, rather than wait for weeks for the DVD or deal with a kiosk. This would be an added service, so only customers who wanted it would have to worry about it. Everyone else could maintain the “extreme simplicity” of the monthly subscription. (I don’t regard online rentals as terribly complicated or confusing.)

I think it’s obvious to everybody that the DVD is a dated medium. Its days are numbered. So, within a few years (I don’t care to guess precisely how many), both DVD kiosks and the Netflix mail service will be aborted. Interestingly, NCR plans to enable consumers “to download movies from the kiosks to portable memory cards,” but I don’t see how this will ultimately compete with online rentals.

DVDs must be produced and physically distributed, whether by store, mail, or kiosk. They break. They cost money on top of the digital content. Meanwhile, as streaming costs go down, the marginal production cost of an online rental will drop closer and closer to zero.

Obviously Netflix is aware of this, as the company has already started offering online content. The problem is that Netflix wants to limit the number of any particular disc it buys, which is why new releases end up with “very long waits.” Yet Netflix can’t offer unlimited new releases online for $8.99 per month, which is the minimum plan for unlimited online viewing.

As I suggested to Swasey, I think the reason a lot of Netflix users aren’t as interested in new releases from Netflix is simply that it’s difficult to get them there, and, like me, they use some other service for new releases.

At some point Netflix is going to have to figure out how to offer new releases via online rentals, if the company wishes to continue to exist. Here’s my ideal plan: I pay $8.99 per month for unlimited online viewing of older content, plus $1.99 per viewing of a hot new release. (New releases could drop into the general pool after a certain number of weeks.) Under such a scheme, I would give Netflix 100 percent of my video rental business.

The problem for Netflix is getting from here to there. The company is stuck in a “Netflix hole” in which new releases are largely inaccessible to members.

How to solve this problem? Here is my suggestion. Netflix can keep its current plan for whoever wants to keep using it. Then Netflix can create an entirely new, online-only plan, as described above (monthly fee plus a modest pay-per-view fee on new releases).

Update: Here’s another obvious approach: Netflix could offer a standard online video program for, say, $9 per month plus pay-per-view on new releases, and a premium program that includes unlimited viewing of new releases for, say, $20 per month. That way, people who care nothing about new releases, or who only want to watch them occasionally, can sign up for the less-expensive account, while others can pay more for full access.

That, Mr. Swasey, is what I call “extreme simplicity” — and a business model that would vault Netflix to the top of the competition.

Until then, I will be happy to do new-release business with NCR, which has, at least for now, sworn off unjust antitrust actions.

Chins Up, Eyes on 2010 in the Obama Care Battle: Target #1=John Salazar

by Ben DeGrow | 9:45 am, December 21, 2009

In the spirit of the season, as Christmas Day blesses us later this week, let me boldly say: Fear not. As Rossputin ably reminds us (and to his credit, he’s been on a blogging roll lately), we do not need to be despondent or demoralized about what Harry Reid is doing to cram through the [...]

Health care: It’s not over yet; An opportunity for true bipartisanship?

by Rossputin | 4:28 am, December 21, 2009

[Update: A blogger at Redstate.com makes a similar point to mine about possible bipartisan opposition to the bill.]

As I watched soon-to-be-former Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) cave in on health care reform, my initial reaction was one of despondence followed by a Randian sort of “the voters are getting what they deserve.”  I’ve written many times in the past that I hope the country gets a bipyrg hard dose of socialism in some electoral orifice so that they learn once and for all not to vote for liberals (whether Democrats or Republicans).

But after a conversation with the indefatigable Connie Hair, she has convinced me that while the odds may not be on the side of liberty and rationality right now, this is not over and we should not give up.

Indeed, Connie made the point that one of the primary motivations behind Harry Reid’s push to have health care reform/destruction pass the Senate before Christmas is to demoralize political opponents of the plan (and of our nation’s current overall socialist/fascist trend.) She urged me not to let that happen, that there is simply too much to lose to give up, and that if the pro-liberty forces in America are allowed to feel defeated, then they will be defeated.  She convinced me, so I’ll try to convince you – as well as discussing some of the reprehensible substance of what just happened.  (Also – I’m pointing this out early so you’ll read the whole thing – I’ll explain at the end of this note why I believe this is a rare opportunity for “bipartisanship” as the left and the right both have legitimate reasons to oppose HarryCare.)

First, let’s start with Ben Nelson.

Nelson is just the latest, clearest example that “conservative Democrat” means “Democrat who wants to be able to extort more favors than the average politician”. Nelson is not up for re-election until 2012, but I believe and hope that his actions this week will cost him dearly.

[Before I jump into this next part, allow me to make clear that while I am pro-choice, I am against government funding of abortion.]

All the talk was about him being “strongly pro-life”.  Right.  He’s strongly pro-winning as a Democrat in a red state, and must have the support of pro-life forces in Nebraska (or at least not their opposition) to stand any chance. So while we see breathless reports of Nelson on the phone with a leading pro-life activist in Nebraska, he nevertheless settled for language which the House of Representative’s leading pro-life Democrat, Bart Stupak (D-MI) appears to find unacceptable.  Rather than a ban on government-funded abortions, the Examiner reports that Nelson went along with language that “any State may opt to prohibit any new insurance exchange from covering abortion services.” While Nelson may have gotten his Nebraska pro-lifers to cave in along with him, the Democrats will have a much harder time with national pro-life groups who may have just enough influence over just enough Democrats to prevent Pelosi from having enough House votes to pass a Motion to Concur with the Senate Bill.

As Connie pointed out to me, if Pelosi does not have the votes in the House to just go along with the Senate bill, she’ll have no choice but to send the bill to a Conference Committee where the odds increase dramatically of a change which will cause the bill to be unable to pass one or both chambers of Congress.

But let’s get back to Nelson.  As I said, all the talk was about abortion, trying to make Nelson look like a man of principle.  And I’m sure he cares a little bit on principle.  But two other issues seem to have been important to Nelson behind the scenes.  First, in a story which Connie broke on Saturday, Nelson seems to have gotten language removed from the Senate bill which would have removed the insurance industry’s anti-trust exemption.  I haven’t thought a lot about the issue, and the little academic research I’ve read is inconclusive. My gut instinct is that if Chuck Schumer wants it repealed, then we should keep it.  Essentially, it gives regulation of insurance to the states.  The major downside is that the regulation seems to be a primary reason that there is not interstate competition for health insurance, probably the thing that is singly most responsible for our health insurance inflation problems.

Given the size of Mutual of Omaha, with over 5,000 employees and over $4 billion in revenue, Nelson’s action is good news for one of his state’s largest businesses and certainly a political boon for him.

But even bigger fish hiding behind the minnow that is Ben Nelson’s pro-life position was the recognition that Harry Reid’s “reform” bill will bankrupt states by increasing the Medicaid rolls.  So, much like the $300 Medicaid payoff of Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Nelson got language added to the bill which will force all federal taxpayers to pay for Nebraska’s Medicaidme cost increase.  A must-read article in the Politico describes Reid’s payoffs to Democratic senators in order to reach 60 votes, “Nelson’s might be the most blatant – a deal carved out for a single state, a permanent exemption from the state share of Medicaid expansion for Nebraska, meaning federal taxpayers have to kick in an additional $45 million in the first decade.”

According to Politico, “Nelson and Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) carved out an exemption for non-profit insurers in their states from a hefty excise tax. Similar insurers in the other 48 states will pay the tax.”

Does anyone recall when just a few days ago, Nelson said his vote was “not for sale at any price?” Apparently there is a price, and it’s to be paid for almost entirely by people outside of Nebraska.

While there are clearly no rules in Washington DC anymore, how could it possibly be OK for politicians to carve out single-state (or 2- or 3-state) exemptions to federal rules, dumping their share of costs on to every other state?  Why don’t representatives of other states make more noise about this since those carve-outs damage not just the nation but also their constituents?

It points out the utter misunderstanding in Congress these days of the Commerce Clause which, when it talks about Congress “regulating” interstate commerce, meant the term in the sense of “making or keeping regular”, preventing tariffs and other barriers between states, etc, rather than how it is now interpreted as the right to make regulation about any commerce that crosses a states’ borders.  What could be less “regular” than 2 states getting an exemption from an excise tax or 1 state getting an exemption from funding its own Medicaid expansion? Again, I strongly urge you to read the Politico article, but not either just before or just after eating.

The bill itself relies for funding on new taxes, a Medicare tax increase, and Medicare spending cuts which will never happen.  As with all of the Democrat bills, it begins the tax increases immediately but doesn’t “reform” health care in any substantial way for several years.  Thus, it’s all pain up front in return for a promised gift several years from now.  Furthermore, the structure of paying for 6 years of “reform” with 10 years of taxes allows the Democrats to game the CBO score so that the measure appears to cut the deficit.  However, if you start counting at the time when all provisions of the bill are in force, the cost will end up somewhere between $1 trillion and $3 trillion dollars to the American taxpayer over 10 years.   For perspective, total US federal government spending, including “off-budget” items in 1986 was less than $1 trillion, and was about $2.4 trillion in 2006. In other words, this bill is likely add something on the order of 10% to the cost of the federal government while massively increasing the cost of insurance in the private sector.

President Obama came out (in his distinctly unpresidential shirt-with-collar-unbuttoned look) to say with a straight face that this bill was a great deficit-reducing measure.  I can’t imagine that even he believes it to be true, but certainly nobody else does.  Even the CBO when announcing the “score” noted several caveats, warning as best the CBO can that the “savings” the Democrats claim is unlikely to be achieved.

Reid wants to demoralize the “tea partyers”. Indeed, it would be easy to feel somewhat beaten after many of us thought the August/September “town hall meeting” revolts around the country would have scared enough Congressmen or at least one Democratic senator away from the bill to prevent its passage.  But politics ain’t beanbag. Reid and Pelosi know that this battle is for the medium-term future of their party. In my view, they can’t win no matter what happens at this point.  However, they clearly agree with Bill Clinton that passing anything is worse than passing nothing.

So we have Obama and others talking about a long “struggle” for health care reform when in fact the bill does NOT include a “public option” or government-run plan which is really the goal of the left.  Instead, it is just a massive tax hike to pay for massive regulation and some subsidies.

When the left (as represented by Howard Dean and the DailyKos, among others) complains that this bill is nothing but an enormous gift to insurance companies, they’re basically right.  Much like the tobacco “master settlement”, this measure simply guarantees customers to the insurers and guarantees them the ability to raise prices almost without limit.

Looking at the prices of health insurer stocks is instructive.  Look at THIS chart which shows two of the biggest, Wellpoint and United Health, in comparison to the S&P 500 (the green line).  What you can see is that they tracked the market fairly well until late September when it became clear that Congress was going to proceed with health care “reform” despite the public outcry against it.  The insurance stocks cratered and stayed weak through October. In November, when the Democrats’ plans became clearer, i.e. that they would force both willing and unwilling Americans to buy health insurance and would not encourage interstate competition, the health care stocks took off and have now outperformed the S&P over the last 3, 6, and 12 months.

My point is that nobody other than politicians and insurance companies want this deal. (Oh, and the AARP likes it too because the plan guts Medicare and one of AARP’s main sources of income is selling “Medigap” insurance.) The right should (and does) hate it.  The left should (and does) hate it.  I am not one who believes in bipartisanship as an end in itself.  But in this case, conservatives, libertarians, and liberals should be working together over the holiday break to put as much pressure on their Congressmen as possible to vote against this bill.  It is, as Mitch McConnell properly noted “a legislative train wreck.”  It accomplishes only two things: Increasing insurance company profits and allowing Democratic politicians to claim a victory, no matter how Pyrrhic. (And just watch Obama come out with his own victory lap even though he’s been strikingly absent from the entire debate, knowing as he must that he has in less than a year turned from The One into The Liability.)

I urge my friends on the left (of whom I have approximately none, but you get the point) and on the right to defeat this bill, to cause a Conference Committee Report to be unpassable, and then to start again with a true “war of ideas” and let the better argument win.

Job openings for aspiring health care bureaucrats!

by Brian Schwartz | 1:30 am, December 21, 2009

Jim Riemersma of Boulder wrote a clever and disturbingly accurate letter to the editor published in the Daily Camera (Boulder, CO):
For recent University of Colorado graduates seeking employment opportunities, I would urge them to consider a career in health and medical administration. As currently drafted, the 2,000 page health care reform legislation creates more than [...]

Government debt: the state lives at the expense of everybody

by Brian T. Schwartz | 10:24 pm, December 20, 2009

The Daily Camera (Boulder) published my response its  question about the biggest news story of 2009:

Government debt. In June Fortune reported that “chronic deficits are putting the country on a path to fiscal collapse.” The United States Government debt exceeds $12 trillion, or almost $40,000 per U.S. citizen. By 2019 …

Clear The Bench Colorado Director Matt Arnold presents the case for voting out four Colorado Supreme Court justices in Nov 2010 at Parker Breakfast Club Monday

by CTBC Director | 6:52 pm, December 20, 2009

Clear The Bench Colorado Director Matt Arnold is appearing as the guest speaker at this Monday’s (21 Dec) Parker Breakfast Club meeting at the Tailgate Tavern (19552 E. Main Street, Parker CO) at 7AM.
Join Matt at Monday morning’s meeting to learn more about the Mullarkey Court’s repeated assaults on the Colorado Constitution, the resulting impact to your wallet, the degradation or outright elimination of YOUR [...]

Harry Reid Has 60 Votes for Obama Care? Now It’s Time to Speak Out!

by Ben DeGrow | 4:24 pm, December 19, 2009

Harry Reid says he has 60 votes to pass the Obama Care monstrosity — Is he telling the truth? We’ll see. But if it wasn’t a given before, then passing this bill means Colorado will spend most of 2010 preparing to say “good-bye” to the short-lived disastrous Senate term of Michael Bennet.
As Red State reports, [...]

Dilbert explains RTD and FasTracks

by David K. Williams, Jr. | 10:07 am, December 19, 2009

The backers of this boondoggle said it would cost $4.7 billion. Too many people believed this fraud and said “OK” and approved a tax increase.

Woops. Now RTD says the actual cost will be $7.0 billion. They want voters to approve that, too.

Many will vote for it, thus sanctioning and approving their own robbery.

It starts to get hard to feel sorry for those that willingly submit to fraud. Of course, the bad part is that those voting for RTD want those that have not fallen for the scam to contribute, too.

And, due to the power of democracy, they can make it happen.

Giving the lie to “we don’t make anything anymore”

by Rossputin | 4:55 am, December 19, 2009

On Thursday, I heard Denver radio talk show host Craig Silverman (whom I generally like even though he’s nominally the liberal on the show) buy into one of the most dangerous economic lies propounded by the American labor movement. Following is the e-mail I sent to Mr. Silverman on the topic:

Hello Craig,

I wanted to briefly respond to a couple of things you said on the air yesterday.

First, you said that US businesses can’t compete with foreign businesses that have government-funded health insurance.  (Actually, to be fair, you said that that was one argument that supporters of ObamaCare make.)  I would suggest that that argument is a classic case of Bastiat’s “what is seen and what is unseen” fallacy.

Yes, in those countries the companies don’t have our companies’ health insurance costs.  Instead the people of the countries have much higher taxes than we do, leading to persistently higher unemployment and less disposable income – so they can buy less stuff from the companies.  “Free” health care is anything but free.  Indeed it is the “free” part of our health care system (free, or nearly free to the consumer that is) which is bankrupting the nation.  That health care is NOT free.  It is just paid for indirectly, by sucking resources from the rest of the economy.

Second, you said that the US “doesn’t make anything anymore”.  This is a line put out by industrial unions who want protectionist legislation, bailouts, etc., and it is an utter lie. 

Our industrial production (at least until just before the current recession) has never been higher.  Our share of world manufacturing has been fairly stable around 21% for decades.

From the Cato report linked below: “The year 2006 was a record year for output, revenues, profits, profit rates, and return on investment in the manufacturing sector. And
despite all the stories about the erosion of U.S. manufacturing primacy, the United States remains the world’s most prolific manufacturer—producing two and a half times more output than those vaunted Chinese factories in 2006.”

What is true is that manufacturing employment has dropped, to which I say “so what?”  Are you deeply worried that the number of American farmers has dropped from a majority to a tiny minority of our population?  Should we have a government program to “save the farmer”?  Of course not.  These changes are driven by extremely beneficial improvements in productivity which allow small numbers of people to grow record quantities of food and manufacture record quantities of widgets or whatever.

I would also point out that the declining manufacturing unemployment, much of which happened in the early part of this decade, did not translate into permanently higher levels of unemployment.  In other words, people got retrained and moved into newer, more productive work (and some people just retired.)

The reason it’s so important that you don’t make the mistake of buying into the “we don’t make anything anymore” error is that it is specifically designed to lead to economic and political policy which is very bad for the nation.  Free trade is an unvarnished benefit for the nation overall (which is not to say that it can’t temporarily displace some workers, who would then get other jobs.)  Free trade allows us to buy more things we want at lower prices, leaving us with the savings with which we can pay for our kids’ schools, pay for health care, buy a better house or car, or just take a vacation.  The savings to consumers from free trade are the most important and least discussed aspects of free trade.  Unions use the “we don’t make anything anymore” lie to argue for protection and bailouts which are tremendously damaging to the American consumer and taxpayer, and I urge you to make sure you understand the data before deciding whether you want to agree with the unions’ policy goals.

Here are some resources for you:

• http://www.uschamber.com/international/primer/manufacturing.htm
• http://www.cato.org/pubs/tpa/tpa-035.pdf

Best regards,
Ross Kaminsky

Little transparency in Democrat health care “reform”

by Brian Schwartz | 11:35 pm, December 18, 2009

A one-minute video shows the discrepency between their promises for transparency and how the House Bill and Senate bill have progressed:

(Via Patients First)

Letter To CSU President Dr. Tony Frank

by Rich Bratten | 9:56 pm, December 18, 2009

As you may or may not know, the Board of Governors at the Colorado State University, against the vocal wishes of the student body, has recommended to President Tony Frank that the school not allow licensed conceal carry permit holders to exercise their right to carry on campus. Below is my letter to Dr. Frank: [...]

A “meaningful deal”? I don’t think so.

by Rossputin | 4:08 pm, December 18, 2009

News reports from Copenhagen have Barack Obama saying that a “meaningful and unprecedented breakthrough” has been reached. Details are not yet available, but I’ll bet anyone a beer that no serious person will say that the deal is in fact meaningful.  It will be the thinnest fig leaf to cover yet another Obama failure.

Beyond this announcement, there are still “details to work out” to get to a binding treaty. I predict the US will not sign a binding treaty on this issue during Obama’s presidency.

Initially, the agreement will have a meaningless statement that those nations agreeing to this solution-in-search-of-a-problem will work to keep global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees centigrade.  Let’s stop continental drift while we’re at it.

Of course, there is almost no leading climate research organization which we can now trust now that we know that the British CRU and Hadley Center are both lying about the data, and NASA is corrupted with people of similar mindset, most famously James Hansen.  (Even without the lying, we need to pay much more attention to the satellite data which is less likely to be corrupted by measurement error.)

Yesterday, Obama’s spokesman said that an “empty deal” is worse than no deal.  Again, I’d bet we’ll see something that objective viewers will call an empty deal.  It’s fine with me.  Congress probably won’t send the money that Obama’s promising down the rat hole of developing nations’ corrupt governments.  No nation will sacrifice their economic development or recovery by actually cutting carbon emissions, which correlate nearly perfectly with GDP and almost as well with life expectancy.

The left will see this empty deal as another Obama disappointment.  The right will play that up, as they should for both substantive and political reasons. Obama will try to say they’re all wrong, but as we say in my business “the trend is your friend” (if you’re against Obama right now).

What’s worse, a bad deal or no deal?

by Rossputin | 2:13 pm, December 18, 2009

I’m trying to reconcile these two news reports:

From yesterday: “Coming back with an empty agreement would be far worse than coming back empty handed,” said spokesman Robert Gibbs, as President Barack Obama prepared to leave Washington and head to the talks.

From today’s NY Times:  President Obama, speaking to world leaders gathered here at the frenzied end of two weeks of climate talks, urged them to come to an agreement — no matter how imperfect — to address global warming and monitor whether countries are in compliance with promised emissions cuts.

Have it both ways much, Obama Administration?  (Please, no dirty jokes, please.)

What we have here is Obama/Gibbs/NY Times trying to salvage what little they can from Copenhagen’s certain failure.  If they fail to reach any agreement, they can fall back on Gibbs’ statement.  If they reach some agreement, it will be even more worthless than Kyoto and everybody will know it; then they can fall back on Obama’s willingness to accect an “imperfect” deal.

At the end of the day, this is a lose-lose situation for Obama who should have taken my advice/prediction and not gone to Copenhagen just to lose even more of his rapidly dwindling political capital both home and abroad.

Connie Hair with some serious health care “inside baseball”

by Rossputin | 1:28 pm, December 18, 2009

For those interested in the workings of the Senate as Harry Reid tries to guide the destruction of America’s health care system, Connie Hair of Human Events has another excellent and extremely detailed description of how Reid’s schedule will have to work if he’s going to reach his promised Christmas Eve vote.  It’s a fascinating read for those of us political nerds who are into these things.

See “Health Care by Christmas Eve?”, Connie Hair, HumanEvents.com, 12/18/09
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=34902

I asked Connie for a little clarification about the Manager’s Amendment versus the replacement amendment, and here’s what she said:

The manager’s amendment is the final amendment that always cleans up a bill, adding things at the last minute.  It is the prerogative of the person managing the bill, in this case Harry Reid.  There are manager’s amendments in both the House and the Senate.

The replacement amendment is the base health care bill.  When they brought the military tax bill to the floor of the Senate, they had gut it and put something there on health care that they could start amending.  What they put in place of the military tax is the replacement amendment.  We’ve been amending the replacement all along.

The manager’s amendment will likely replace the whole damn thing, striking everything that’s been done to date and replacing it with Reid’s bill that’s being written now.  That’s not usually the case with a manager’s amendment.  It’s intended to be something that cleans up loose ends to make sure the bill does what the lawmakers intended it did.  This one will likely replace the whole bill.

Communist Groups For CopenHagen (their own words)

by Mr. Bob | 1:04 pm, December 18, 2009

#tcot #socialism #che #Copenhagen #AGW #teaparty
video shows watermelon politics at its finest. Hat tip to New Zeal for the video

New IRS Tax Form

by Justin Longo | 12:49 pm, December 18, 2009

Hugo Chavez: An Honest Man.

by David K. Williams, Jr. | 11:08 am, December 18, 2009

Hugo Chavez gets to the heart of the matter at Copenhagen:

One could say, Mr. President, that a ghost is haunting Copenhagen, to paraphrase Karl Marx, the great Karl Marx, a ghost is haunting the streets of Copenhagen, and I think that ghost walks silently through this room, walking around among us, through the halls, out below, it rises, this ghost is a terrible ghost almost nobody wants to mention it: Capitalism is the ghost, almost nobody wants to mention it. It’s capitalism, the people roar, out there, hear them.

.…

Socialism, the other ghost Karl Marx spoke about, which walks here too, rather it is like a counter-ghost. Socialism, this is the direction, this is the path to save the planet, I don’t have the least doubt.

…

Our revolution seeks to help all people…socialism, the other ghost that is probably wandering around this room, that’s the way to save the planet, capitalism is the road to hell….let’s fight against capitalism and make it obey us.

The world is upside down- India, China walk out of Copenhagen

by Mr. Bob | 10:49 am, December 18, 2009

We should be walking out but emerging countries apparenlty see the results of this fiasco to be damaging to their economy much more than we do…..

China is less socialist than the US today….wow.

India and China have taken a united stand and walked out of the climate summit as Copenhagen talks fail.

Tensions prevailed at the climate talks at Copenhagen today, as Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh and China premier Wen Jiabao walked out of the summit along with their respective delegations, as talks failed. READ THE REST

On a side note; Some in leadership in China are more open to Christianity than the leadership in the US.

“Progressive” radio – same as it ever was.

by David K. Williams, Jr. | 10:20 am, December 18, 2009

Yesterday, I was listening to “progressive” talk radio host Mario Solis Marich‘s show on AM 760.

Climate lies and extortion

by Rossputin | 9:19 am, December 18, 2009

As Barack Obama desperately tries to cobble together an agreement, any agreement, in Copenhagen, it must be understood that the primary American beneficiary of such an agreement would be Obama’s rapidly dwindling political capital and his influence, both domestic and international.

In terms of economics, the conference represents nothing more than Third World nations trying to steal the money of American taxpayers and China trying to get the US government to kneecap the American economy to China’s competitive advantage. It’s not just for political reasons that I want Obama to fail.  Any substantial agreement would be a disaster for our nation – or at least it would be if it were ever actually implemented, a rather unlikely outcome given the inability or unwillingness of essentially every signer of the Kyoto Protocol to live up to those commitments.

Furthermore, it is far more likely that money given to developing countries would end up in dictators’ Swiss bank accounts than going to help the people (not that it’s the US’s responsibility to give money to poor foreigners just because they’re poor.) But if those dictators did “limit carbon emissions” from their countries, that would simply mean retarding those nations’ economic and industrial development, keeping their people cold, hungry, and poor – and causing them to need more foreign aid.  The best thing a developing country could do would be to ask the US for aid money to help them increase their carbon emissions with a promise that the development will wean them off the foreign aid teat forever.

In terms of science, however, it just gets worse and worse for the alarmists and the “scientists” who support them.  We all know about ClimateGate.  Now we have RussiaGate: It is being reported by Russia’s Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) that Britain’s Hadley Center, one of the most important keepers of climate data, left out 75% of Russia’s temperature sensors, representing over 40% of Russian territory (with Russia having 1/8th of the world’s total land mass).  The sensors which were included in the Hadley data tended to have two major flaws: position in urban areas subject to urban heat island effect, and stations having incomplete data.

The stations left out of the Hadley calculations tended to show no substantial warming over the last quarter century (or more…I don’t have the data, just the report.)

Several blogs have covered this story, and I recommend them to you for further reading:
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100020126/climategate-goes-serial-now-the-russians-confirm-that-uk-climate-scientists-manipulated-data-to-exaggerate-global-warming/

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/146517/Climate-change-lies-by-Britain%20-

And here’s a copy of an English translation of the original Russian news story:
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/BOMBSHELL.pdf

Obama Care’s Impending Christmas Crash: Dems Nearing Huge Demise?

by Ben DeGrow | 9:17 am, December 18, 2009

Update, 3:45 PM: Over at Human Events, Connie Hair goes through the procedural details of the health care debate to explain why Harry Reid’s goal to pass the bill by Christmas Eve is largely a pipe dream (H/T Rossputin). Meanwhile, Rasmussen notes that only 34 percent of Americans say passing a health care bill is [...]

Initiative and Referendum Featuring Super-Lawyers!

by Jon Caldara | 6:51 am, December 18, 2009

Check out this week’s Independent Thinking as local lawyers David Lane and Ryan Call join me to discuss the future of Colorado’s citizen initiative and referendum process, and House Bill 1326, which throws up numerous new roadblocks to the process. That’s tonight at 8:30 pm on KBDI Channel 12, re-broadcast on Monday at 1:30 [...]

Will the Democrats be saved, or at least helped, by their far left?

by Rossputin | 5:19 am, December 18, 2009

The natives are getting restless in the Daily-Kos, Huffington Post, Bernie Sanders socialist wing of the Democratic Party. It’s fascinating to watch, particularly given the general (and generally accurate) view among conservatives and libertarians that the leadership of the Democratic Party is very far left.

It turns out they’re not far left enough for those named above, as well as for former DNC Chairman Howard Dean.

When I first heard reports that Dean and “Kos” were calling for the Senate to scrap its current bill, my gut instinct was that it was a smart move to try to protect the Democratic majority in the House (and maybe even in the Senate) in the 2010 elections.

I was wrong.  The leftist fringe of the Democratic Party doesn’t like the Senate bill because it does not move far enough toward government control of health care nor toward putting private health insurers out of business.

Watching the health care debate is a sickening roller-coaster for those who make the mistake, as I do, of getting deeply involved with politics.  One day the bill looks dead, the next day Harry Reid says (lies about) having reached a “compromise”.  One day it looks like Ben Nelson is on board and that they’re putting hundreds of millions of dollars for military bases in Nebraska in the bill to pay him off, and the next day he says his vote is not for sale.  One day Joe Lieberman says he won’t support a bill with either a “public option” or an expansion of Medicare. The next day that stuff is reportedly out of the bill, but Bernie Sanders says he might not support the bill without at least one of those things.

If Howard Dean gets his way and the health care bill fails, either by not getting out of the Senate (the most likely way that happens is if they leave out a prohibition against public funding of abortion, causing Ben Nelson to refuse to vote for cloture) or by a revolt of the Democrats’ most liberal members in the House if they get a conference report to vote on that has no “public option”.

As I said, it’s a roller-coaster.  You’d have to be quite a gambler to bet more than a beer on what the outcome will be.

But the Democratic overreach here is so enormous that it is probably insurmountable by the next election. They have, in the way that political naifs like Barack Obama almost always do, painted themselves into a no-win corner.

If health care fails to pass now, Obama’s signature issue will be dead for many years to come and Obama’s political capital will be eroded even faster than it’s already been disappearing on him.  He could become the most obvious one-term president at this stage in a presidency that I am aware of; he could become a lame duck after one year in office.

If health care does pass now, the next 11 months will be taken up with a relentless barrage of attacks on the legislation, on how it raises taxes, raises health insurance premiums, pays off insurers and drug companies, and accomplishes nothing that the American public cares about. That is to say, it aims to increase the number of people covered by insurance, something voters care very little about, at the expense of passing legislation which would increase private sector competition, lessen the distance between providers and consumers of medical care thus allowing true market forces to discipline medical care price inflation, and generally “bend the cost curve down” – which is precisely what the public want.

I don’t envy the Democratic leadership now.  They made the cardinal mistake which I have written frequently about on these pages: They took their election victory as meaning that they had a broad mandate for anti-captialist, anti-liberty policies when the real meaning of the election was that people were sick of George W. Bush and Republicans who acted like Democrats.

In any case, don’t expect the roller coaster ride to end very soon. But when it does end, I expect the end will be sudden and dramatic.

State governments ration “free” cancer screenings

by Brian Schwartz | 1:30 am, December 18, 2009

When you empower government to provide “free” health care (paid by others through taxes), government gets to decide when it’s appropriate for you to receive it.  Here’s yet another example from the Associated Press:
…low-income women in at least 20 states are being turned away or put on long waiting lists for free cancer screenings, according [...]

Popular Tea Party Trumps Dems, GOP

by Ben DeGrow | 12:37 am, December 18, 2009

Check out Newsbusters’ coverage of the new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll (PDF). The Tea Party is “viewed quite a bit more favorably” than either the Democrats or the Republicans.
But of course, the Tea Party movement hasn’t had the opportunity and/or the reins of power to spend like drunken sailors and trample on the few [...]

Chavez brings down the house at Copenhagen

by Mr. Bob | 4:54 pm, December 17, 2009

#climatechange #copenhagen #agw #tcot #communist #che
You want to know what this is about? Chavez knows and he’s stupid enough to think he should say it. The communists in the U.S. hold their tongues and pretend to be caring Liberals but Chavez isn’t that smart…and we thank God for him.

This is about money, it’s always been about money, our money. We are free so we are prosperous, they are socialist dictatorships so they are not…and they want our money. They are using the trumped up fake science of climate change to do it. They accuse the prosperous nations of polluting their world. Are we stupid enough to fall for it? The current administration is.

From The Australian Herald Sun;

President Chavez brought the house down.

When he said the process in Copenhagen was “not democratic, it is not inclusive, but isn’t that the reality of our world, the world is really and imperial dictatorship…down with imperial dictatorships” he got a rousing round of applause.

When he said there was a “silent and terrible ghost in the room” and that ghost was called capitalism, the applause was deafening.

But then he wound up to his grand conclusion – 20 minutes after his 5 minute speaking time was supposed to have ended and after quoting everyone from Karl Marx to Jesus Christ – “our revolution seeks to help all people…socialism, the other ghost that is probably wandering around this room, that’s the way to save the planet, capitalism is the road to hell….let’s fight against capitalism and make it obey us.” He won a standing ovation……

Nothing is real in Copenhagen – not the temperature record, not the predictions, not the agenda, not the “solution”. In fact, here’s how fake it all is:

The lead negotiator for the small island nation of Tuvalu, the bow-tie wearing Ian Fry, broke down as he begged delegates to take tough action.

“I woke up this morning crying,” and that’s not easy for a grown man to admit,” Mr Fry said on Saturday, as his eyes welled with tears.

”The fate of my country rests in your hands,” he concluded, as the audience exploded with wild applause.

READ THE REST AND WATCH THE VIDEO AT AU.HERALD SUN

Clear The Bench Colorado Director Matt Arnold discusses recent Colorado Supreme Court rulings on “Seng Center” radio show

by CTBC Director | 4:11 pm, December 17, 2009

Clear The Bench Colorado Director Matt Arnold joins Jimmy Sengenberger on his “Seng Center” radio show Thursday at 6PM (KRCX 93.9 FM or online at regis.edu/krcx) to discuss the Mullarkey Court’s repeated assaults on the constitutional rights of Colorado citizens.
If you missed the broadcast, check out the podcasted show online – shows are posted every weekend at www.SengCenter.com. 
Tune in to [...]

The immorality of the Copenhagen conference

by David K. Williams, Jr. | 3:27 pm, December 17, 2009

The Copenhagen delegates, like primitive cavemen dancing around a fire, howling at the moon, offering human sacrifice to appease their false god, are prepared to offer up centuries of progress in a meaningless attempt to appease their false god.

The immorality of the modern day green cultists is staggering. They care not that they will make electricity, heat and basic modern comforts unavailable to the poorest of the world.

They ignore the staggering economic costs of forcing the aged and infirm to quit using cheap fossil fuels to warm their houses in the winter. The aged and infirm are mere casualties in the Green Crusaders’ war against progress – that same progress that allowed them to fly in jumbo jets to Europe, and that same progress that ignites the internal combustion engines in their limousines that idle outside their luxury hotels. That same progress that they, the elite, will be able to afford no matter how much electricity and heat cost the huddled masses.

The cultists have no interest in achieving their goals if the means do not give them control over others. If they actually believed that immediate action is necessary to save the planet from self-immolation, they would be building nuclear power plants.

That solution to their fictitious problem, however, does not allow them to decide who gets how much money. It does not require tribute. It does not require you to succumb.

And you must give tribute. And you must succumb. Or the oceans will boil! (Or some such fantastic tripe).

And, just like false evangelical television stars, they inflame the fear and ignorance of others for their own financial gain.

It is a disgrace.

« go back — keep looking »

Featured Posts

• Judge Rules Americans Can Be Forced to Testify Against Themselves

  In order to protect our rights, our security must be protected. In order to protect our security, our rights must be invaded. Nothing wrong with that, is there?

• World Economic Forum in Switzerland: Global Elites Celebrating Hypocrisy
• SCOTUS decision on warrantless GPS surveillance produces an expected friend of privacy
• You didn’t want your Fifth Amendment rights, anyway, did you?
• Keynesian Economists Finally Catch Up and Agree: China to Have Hard Landing
• The Beauty of Private Property—from China?
• Regime Uncertainty, Regulatory Surge, and Unemployment Numbers