The rest of this cartoon can be seen at the American Spectator blog.
Walter E. Williams: Sweden’s Government Health Care.
Government health care advocates used to sing the praises of Britain’s National Health Service (NHS). That’s until its poor delivery of health care services became known. A recent study by David Green and Laura Casper, “Delay, Denial and Dilution,” written for the London-based Institute of Economic Affairs, concludes that the NHS health care services are just about the worst in the developed world. The head of the World Health Organization calculated that Britain has as many as 25,000 unnecessary cancer deaths a year because of under-provision of care. Twelve percent of specialists surveyed admitted refusing kidney dialysis to patients suffering from kidney failure because of limits on cash. Waiting lists for medical treatment have become so long that there are now “waiting lists” for the waiting list.
Government health care advocates sing the praises of Canada’s single-payer system. Canada’s government system isn’t that different from Britain’s. For example, after a Canadian has been referred to a specialist, the waiting list for gynecological surgery is four to 12 weeks, cataract removal 12 to 18 weeks, tonsillectomy three to 36 weeks and neurosurgery five to 30 weeks. Toronto-area hospitals, concerned about lawsuits, ask patients to sign a legal release accepting that while delays in treatment may jeopardize their health, they nevertheless hold the hospital blameless. Canadians have an option Britainers don’t: close proximity of American hospitals. In fact, the Canadian government spends over $1 billion each year for Canadians to receive medical treatment in our country. I wonder how much money the U.S. government spends for Americans to be treated in Canada.
Philip Klein: The Myth of the 46 Million Uninsured.
Whether it’s in political speeches, commentary, newspaper features, or hard news stories, the statistic of 46 million uninsured is one of the most-widely cited numbers in the health care debate. It promotes the idea that nearly one out of every six Americans does not have access to health care and it plays into the arguments of those calling for massive expansion of government to fix the problem. Yet the ubiquitous figure is highly misleading.
To be clear, the statistic is not pulled out of thin air. It comes from an annual report by the Census Bureau, which most recently pegged the number of uninsured at 45.7 million for 2007. But the problem lies in the way the statistic is commonly cited and understood.
For starters, the statistic does not mean that there are “46 million uninsured Americans,” as the New York Times reported in a recent story on health care, and as is echoed throughout the media. Just a quick look inside the Census Bureau data shows that 9.7 million of the uninsured are not citizens of the United States. Liberals can argue that we still have a moral duty to cover non-citizens, but this doesn’t change the fact that as a matter of accuracy, the Census data only tells us that 36 million Americans are uninsured.
But this doesn’t fully convey the problematic nature of the 46-million statistic. As even the authors of the Census Bureau report themselves acknowledge, “health insurance coverage is likely to be underreported” in the Current Population Survey from which the health insurance data is derived. The reason is that respondents are asked in February through April about their health coverage status in the previous calendar year. Some may answer the question as intended, but others may cite their current insurance status, and others may say they were without insurance even if they only spent a portion of the year without coverage.
“[T]he estimate of the number of people without health insurance,” according to the report, “more closely approximates the number of people who are uninsured at a specific point in time during the year than the number of people uninsured for the entire year.”
In reality, a person who goes without coverage for a few months while between jobs is in a completely different boat from somebody who is permanently without insurance. But the broad citation of the headline figure would have you believe that there are literally 46 million people who never, ever, have coverage.
Investor’s Business Daily: Control Freaks.
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner’s proposed sweeping reform of our nation’s financial system puts the nation’s banks, insurers and hedge funds under direct government control — where they least need to be.
Geithner said Thursday that President Obama’s administration needs to impose “not modest repairs at the margin, but new rules of the game” for America’s banks, finance companies, insurers and hedge funds.
The only problem is, the old rules of the game were set by the very people in Congress who will set the new ones. This means the new rules likely won’t be much of an improvement — if any.
The irony of this, of course, was pointed out by political scientist Michael Barone, who notes the bank bailout plan unveiled by Geithner earlier this week actually relies heavily on mostly unregulated companies to bail out regulated ones.
Now, Geithner wants control of even those unregulated companies, though they’re guilty of nothing other than being successful…
Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve wants sweeping new powers to regulate, punish and oversee the financial industry, and to intervene if it thinks it needs to. And of course, in the middle of all this sits Congress itself, which will write the new laws and regulations.
Yet, with all these plans to exert ever more control over the economy, few people are asking the appropriate question: Do those in government have the knowledge and ability to run our economy?
The answer, put bluntly, is no.
The Wall Street Journal: Geithner is Overreaching on Regulatory Power.
This cartoon was originally posted on September 19, 2008.
Washington Times: Obama Secretly Ends Program That Let Pilots Carry Guns.
After the September 11 attacks, commercial airline pilots were allowed to carry guns if they completed a federal-safety program. No longer would unarmed pilots be defenseless as remorseless hijackers seized control of aircraft and rammed them into buildings.
Now President Obama is quietly ending the federal firearms program, risking public safety on airlines in the name of an anti-gun ideology…
Since Mr. Obama’s election, pilots have told us that the approval process for letting pilots carry guns on planes slowed significantly. Last week the problem went from bad to worse. Federal Flight Deck Officers - the pilots who have been approved to carry guns - indicate that the approval process has stalled out.
Pilots cannot openly speak about the changing policies for fear of retaliation from the Transportation Security Administration. Pilots who act in any way that causes a “loss of confidence” in the armed pilot program risk criminal prosecution as well as their removal from the program. Despite these threats, pilots in the Federal Flight Deck Officers program have raised real concerns in multiple interviews.
Fox News: Terrorism Is a ‘Man-Caused’ Disaster?
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano has an explanation about why she never mentioned the word “terrorism” during her first testimony on Capitol Hill.
Napolitano tells the German news site Spiegel Online that while she presumes there is always a threat from terrorism: “I referred to “man-caused” disasters. That is perhaps only a nuance, but it demonstrates that we want to move away from the politics of fear toward a policy of being prepared for all risks that can occur.”
The Wall Street Journal: Guantanamo Detainees May Be Released in U.S.
Reuters: Guantanamo Inmates No Longer “Enemy Combatants”.
Newsbusters: Media Forgets Obama’s Nominee to Justice Dept. Was a Terrorist’s Lawyer.
See the rest of this cartoon at the American Spectator blog.
Doug Bandow: Card Check’s Bounce.
Obviously, people have a right to join unions. But there is no reason for government to promote unions, especially in today’s world. For all the cant from union officials about how everyone in America is desperate to join a union, labor membership has been falling steadily for reasons unrelated to the latest National Labor Relations Board ruling.
Just 7.6 percent of private sector workers today belong to unions because most workers view unions as irrelevant in today’s rapidly changing economy. Sclerosis and stasis, the normal prescriptions of union leaders, benefit labor bureaucrats rather than workers.
But these unions won’t take no for an answer. Current law requires that an organizing election be held if 30 percent of workers sign a union card. But if that’s all a union collects, it is likely to lose the vote. In fact, organizers figure they have to collect the signatures of three-quarters of the workers to have a 50-50 chance of winning. Unions typically lose 40 percent of organizing contests. As a result, the AFL-CIO melodramatically claims, “workers still lack the freedom to form unions.” UAW President Ron Gettelfinger even compares the plight of union workers to that of blacks fighting Jim Crow.
To redress this phantom injustice, organized labor has concocted the so-called Employee Free Choice Act. The bill would force recognition of the union if 50 percent plus one person signed a card, a process known as card check. The legislation also would impose a contract through arbitration if the union and company could not agree.
The goals are to eliminate organizing elections and bias contract negotiations. Since it’s hard for unions to argue against elections — they demand them for decertifying unions and promote them for labor unions overseas — organized labor claims that the current system is unfair. Employers supposedly can fire organizers and propagandize workers.
But NLRB figures indicate that in fewer than three percent of organizing campaigns are union organizers illegally fired. The obvious solution to any abuses is to adjust penalties rather than end elections. Employers also have legitimate arguments to make, arguments best offered in the course of a secret ballot election.
The secret ballot is key. It protects workers from retaliation — that’s why the U.S. elects public officials, rather than allowing citizens to sign election cards. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to tell which worker is more vulnerable to pressure and even violence: one who gets to cast a secret ballot or one who must sign or not sign a card in public view. Four decades ago a federal appeals court declared: “it is beyond dispute that secret election is a more accurate reflection of the employees’ true desires than a check of authorization cards collected at the behest of a union organizer.”
Former union organizer Jen Jason testified before the House Education and Labor Committee: “During the course of my employment with the union, I began to understand the reality behind the rhetoric. I took in the ways that organizers were manipulating workers just to get a majority on ‘the cards’ and the various strategies that they employed. I began to appreciate that promises made by organizers at the worker’s house had little to do with how the union actually functions as a ’service’ organization.”
In fact, misrepresentation and intimidation are routine, as union organizers lie about what signing the care means (claiming, for example, that it certifies attending a meeting or requesting more information) and badger employees to sign (sending groups of pro-union workers to people’s homes). The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation has collected the stories of many employees, such as that of Mike Ivey, a South Carolina materials handler, who complained that the UAW “created a hostile work environment” through relentless pressure to sign cards. These abuses would be multiplied if card check automatically yielded recognition, foreclosing the need for a vote.
This may be why even union members favor elections. Polls have found that eight to nine of every ten of them favor a vote. Card check is a tool for union executives and Democratic politicians, not workers.
Rasmussen: “American workers are far more likely to belong to the investor class than a union. Just 9% of non-union workers would like to join a union.”
Investor’s Business Daily: Unionization Toll Is High Enough Without Throwing In ‘Card Check’.
Philip Klein: VIDEO- Big Labor Disrupts Senate Hearing on Card Check.
Reuters: Citigroup Downgrades Wal-Mart Stock on Card Check Concerns.
For the past few months the cartoons on this site have been created digitally. Here’s some actual ink on paper. See the whole thing at the American Spectator blog.
The Ayn Rand Center: Sales of “Atlas Shrugged” Soar in the Face of Economic Crisis (via Shawn Macomber).
Sales of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged
” have almost tripled over the first seven weeks of this year compared with sales for the same period in 2008. This continues a strong trend after bookstore sales reached an all-time annual high in 2008 of about 200,000 copies sold.
“Americans are flocking to buy and read ‘Atlas Shrugged’ because there are uncanny similarities between the plot-line of the book and the events of our day” said Yaron Brook, Executive Director at the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights. “Americans are rightfully concerned about the economic crisis and government’s increasing intervention and attempts to control the economy.”
The Washington Independent: We’re Living in “Atlas Shrugged.”
Rep. John Campbell (R-Calif.), who gives his departing interns copies of Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged,” told me today that the response to President Obama’s economic policies reminded him of what happened in the 51-year-old novel.
“People are starting to feel like we’re living through the scenario that happened in ‘Atlas Shrugged,’” said Campbell. “The achievers, the people who create all the things that benefit rest of us, are going on strike. I’m seeing, at a small level, a kind of protest from the people who create jobs, the people who create wealth, who are pulling back from their ambitions because they see how they’ll be punished for them.”
In Rand’s novel, creative people (the “Atlases” of the title) are hounded and punished for their labor by an oppressive, socialistic state. In response, they retreat from society to a hidden enclave where they watch civilization’s slow collapse.
AmmoLand: Outdoor Wire Names Obama Gun Salesman of the Year.
