The Progressive President

Monday night, in Los Angeles, Obama said

“President Obama told a Hollywood fundraiser Monday night that he and congressional Democrats have passed the most progressive legislation in decades. “

He said that as if it were a good thing. We know, though, that “progressive” is the current word for “socialist”.

Besides announcing in unmistakable terms his devotion to socialism, he generated a world-class traffic jam in West Los Angeles. His arrival was carefully timed to coincide with afternoon rush-hour traffic (which under the best circumstances, is not nearly as much fun as a root-canal). Thousands of people were stuck in traffic for up to four hours.

“The massive traffic jam that resulted from President Obama’s motorcade and speech Monday night in Hancock Park is prompting calls for an investigation from some residents, who say they were caught in traffic for hours. “

“I can’t believe they did it during rush hour on a Monday.”

The next day, his departure was cleverly timed to coincide with morning rush-hour traffic.

Los Angeles voted heavily for Obama in 2008 – you’d think they’d be overjoyed to be stuck in traffic for four hours for their Golden Boy.

Trouble at the Border

There have been occasional reports of violence along the Arizona/Mexico border. The violence has affected two National Parks.

Not to worry – the Federal Government is all over this sort of thing. Here’s an example of the stern measures we’re taking:

Signs warning visitors to Sonoran Desert National Monument

“According to eight new signs that have been posted recently and have been circulated heavily across the Internet, visitors to the national park are advised to avoid camping south of Interstate 8 to avoid drug and human smuggling activity.
The signs go on to say, “Visitors may encounter armed criminals and smuggling vehicles traveling at a high rate of speed.”

Naturally, there’s no mention of these “armed criminals” origins.

This next part is just as scary:

“Most may believe the signs were placed by an anti-immigration organization, or were an Internet hoax.”

“Most”?

“… they were put there [by the Government] to provide more detail than the previous signs that cautioned travelers , “Smuggling and illegal immigration may be encountered in this area.”

“Eighty miles north of the Mexican border, federal employees have opted to warn visitors to stay clear of the criminal behavior.
“We have the authority and responsibility to manage the monument area,” Godfrey said. “That includes public safety, managing the resources, wildlife and natural resources. But our first responsibility is to protect law abiding citizens.”

Except, of course, inquiring into someone’s nationality.

“… according to the signs, the rampant crime taking place in that region is too dangerous for hikers and campers.”

The Helping Hand of the Government concludes

“The solution, according to the federal government, is to simply avoid the area.”

Now I feel ever so much more secure.

Then there’s this:

Portion of national park on border closed to Americans due to violence

“The federal government closed a portion of a US park in Arizona four years ago due to violence perpetuated by illegal aliens and smugglers along the US/Mexico border.
…
The sheriff’s … one office is responsible for an area the size of Connecticut.”

Here’s a pdf of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service note:

Closure of Refuge Lands Adjacent to the border

“… effective October 3, 2006…
The situation in this zone has reached a point where continued public use of the area is not prudent.”

They could be more honest and direct and have the signs read

“Keep out. You may be killed by invaders from another country.”

Michelle Obama’s Little Vacation

Life can be stressful in Washington, D.C. To help celebrate President Obama’s birthday (Aug 4), Michelle and her daughter Sasha, took a little vacation, traveling to Marbella, Spain. Marbella is on the southern coast, near Gibraltar.

Obama, however, will be in Chicago, having a simple dinner at Graham Elliot, with a few friends, including Oprah Winfrey.

Michelle and her daughter will be staying for four days at the Hotel Villa Padierna, one of the Ritz-Carlton chain (and one of the three in Spain). It’s considered “one of the world’s top 30 hotels”, and, according to the owner, “recently voted Spain’s most luxurious”. He said, “They don’t want anything special.”

According to the hotel’s website, it has 129 rooms, three 18-hole golf courses (too bad Obama won’t be there), no less than two Presidential Suites, three Villas, a 21,000 square foot spa “with more than eight themed baths”, and the other usual amenities expected in a 5-star hotel. The rooms start at $382/night, up to $552. The villas go for $6500. I can’t find a rate for the Presidential Suites, but they’re much smaller than the villas.

Part of “not wanting anything special” is that they reserved 60 of the 129 rooms – just about half the entire hotel. That’s understandable, considering that Mrs Obama and her daughter brought along “40 friends”. Then there are the bodyguards. You might be able to see a few of them in the photos on the Daily Mail website. The article says

About 70 U.S. Secret Service agents are also in Marbella, some of them dressed undercover as touriststs.

Look closely at photos 1, 3, and 5. Be the first to “Spot the Agent”. In photos 3 and 5, the tall bald guy seems to be wearing some sort of decorative pin at the top front of his shirt. Another one of the “tourists”, in photo 5, seems to be taking an interest in the photographer.

Travel to and from Spain is on Air Force Two. That’s the call sign used by any aircraft carrying the Vice President, First Lady, members of the Cabinet or Congress. The plane is a modified Boeing 757.

One estimate puts the cost of the trip, including those 70 Secret Service agents, at about $238,000.

But don’t think that this is a cushy jaunt at taxpayer’s expense. Not at all. The taxpayers are footing the bill for a serious diplomatic purpose:

Mrs Obama and her daughter are expected to visit Spain’s King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia at their summer palace on the island of Majorca, a short flight from Marbella.

Of course, nobody on the Left is going to say a word about the “carbon footprint” that the 7600-mile (round trip, D.C. To Madrid) generated.

The trainwreck known as California

We’ve been fixated on the health-care fiasco for so long, we’ve lost touch with the rest of the world. Here’s a little story about businesses leaving California (where we live).

These are from the Orange County Register.

First, an Ace Hardware store closes after 33 years:

The Thoele family has owned an Ace Hardware store in Orange County since 1977 …
Declining sales, rising rents and increasing government regulations have combined with the presence of two Home Depots and two Lowes in the area to make it impossible to be profitable, Thoele said.
…
Building contractors were 10% to 15% of the store’s business, but most of them have disappeared.
…
… a series of costly new government regulations including:

• California’s lead-free law effective in January forced Thoele to remove hundreds of items from his shelves and replace them with higher-priced alternatives.
• Requirements for energy efficient light bulbs…
• AQMD has imposed paint regulations to meet air quality standards
• The agriculture department spent hours checking the nursery department for certain insects.

They’re not alone. Two O.C. company headquarters are leaving.

• TriZetto, a Newport Beach health management software company, has moved its corporate headquarters to Colorado.
• eEye Digital Security, which manages computer security for companies, has moved its headquarters from Irvine to Phoenix.

Both companies are keeping some divisions in Orange County.

The real news is about the 84 other companies that are leaving so far in 2010. That compares to 44 in 2009.

• 25 from Orange County
• 19 from Los Angeles County
• 16 from Santa Clara County

The companies are moving to Texas, Canada, Oregon, Tijuana, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Wyoming, Malaysia, Singapore, Tennessee, Las Vegas, Chicago, among other places.

The list is maintaned by John Vranich, a business relocation coach. He says

It’s no mystery what California’s problems are – high taxes, undue regulation, excessive fines and fees, high workers’ comp costs, a legal environment stacked against businesses, and lengthy permitting requirements.

Vranich’s site has a detailed list of the companies relocating or expanding out-of-state, going back to 2006. You’ll recognize a lot of names: Apple, Intel, Google, Yahoo, Fluor, Pay Pal, J. C. Penney, Hilton Hotels, Cessna, Coca-Cola North America, Lockheed Martin, ……..

One company gives its reasons:

King Kelly Marmalade in Cerritos was sold, the work shipped to Ripon, Wisconsin, and the local plant closed. The owner cited difficulties with regulations, fees, taxes and other government actions, saying to the Orange County Register, “At one point we started making copies of the different city, county, state and federal government agencies that we had to deal with . . . We posted their forms on one wall of the office. We quit at 44.”

Another company, Numira Biosciences, told the Register

“The tipping point was when someone from the Orange County tax (assessor) wanted to see our facility to tax every piece of equipment I had.” (It’s called the business property tax.)

“In Salt Lake City at my first networking event I met the mayor and the president of the Utah Senate, and they asked what they could do to help me. No (elected official) ever asked me that in California,” he said.

California seems to be at odds with the current administration, which tells us almost daily that their first priority is to “create jobs”.

… Obama signed legislation to jumpstart our economy, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, less than a month after his inauguration. The plan will save or create 3.5 million new jobs, make critical investments in our infrastructure and give 95 percent of working Americans a tax cut.

There are two problems with this pretty picture:

• We haven’t seen any of those 3.5 million jobs yet. A lot of them turned out to be Census workers, but obviously, they’re not working any more.
• The lowest tax rate goes from the current 10% to 15% starting in January 2011. No matter how you look at it, that’s a 50% increase for the bottom level.

As the old saying goes, what they do speaks so loudly, we can’t hear what they’re saying.

Obama’s Army

The newly-passed health-care bill (passed in the middle of the night on a Sunday) has a lot of things in it that we don’t know about. And that Congress didn’t know about – see the previous post, Congress shoots itself in the foot.

Another little-known facet of the bill has to do with raising an army. Here’s one report, from Right Side News, with text from the bill

SEC. 430. ESTABLISHING A READY RESERVE CORPS.
(1) IN GENERAL.-There shall be in the Service a commissioned Regular Corps and a Ready Reserve Corps for service in time of national emergency.

“The Service” refers to the Public Health Service. This bill amends the Act establishing that agency.

(3) APPOINTMENT.-Commissioned officers of the Ready Reserve Corps shall be appointed by the President …

In the military services, commissioned officers (Lieutenants, Captains, Majors, Colonels) are not appointed by the President, but are promoted from within – almost exclusively on the basis of merit or combat experience.

Obama intends to appoint his own officers. One wonders what color those uniforms will be.

(4) ACTIVE DUTY.-Commissioned officers of the Ready Reserve Corps shall at all times be subject to call to active duty by the Surgeon General, including active duty for the purpose of training….

Well, he is a General.

Wait – no he’s not. He’s an Admiral. Remember Surgeon General Koop?

(5) WARRANT OFFICERS.-Warrant officers may be appointed to the Service for the purpose of providing support to the health and delivery systems maintained by the Service …

It’s going to be so popular that we need armed forces to make sure that everybody gets their share.

Congress shoots itself in the foot

Call this poetic justice. The New York Times reports:

… the law may “remove members of Congress and Congressional staff” from their current coverage, in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, before any alternatives are available.

… even if current members of Congress can stay in the popular program for federal employees, that option will probably not be available to newly elected lawmakers, the report says.

Lawmakers of both parties have repeatedly said their goal is to provide all Americans with access to health insurance as good as what Congress has.

We already said that one way to do that is to reduce Congress’ benefits.

“If members of Congress cannot explain how it’s going to work for them and their staff, how will they explain it to the rest of America?” Mr. Chaffetz asked in an interview.

Speaker Pelosi said, not too long ago

But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.

So now, they’re finding out.

It’s reasonable to ask whether Senators and Congressmen knew about this before they voted.

It’s reasonable to believe that they did not.

It’s reasonable to ask whether any of them cared what was in it.

It’s reasonable to believe that they did not.

It was never about health care. It was – and is – all about power and control.

Supreme Court nominations

Supreme Court Justice Stevens announced his retirement. At age 90, he has served on the Court since 1975, when he was appointed by President Ford.

Stevens is generally regarded as the court’s liberal leader. He wrote the majority opinion to uphold the constitutionality of the Kelo case (Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469 (2005) ), which held that the City of New London was within its rights to use eminent domain to transfer land ”from one private owner to give to another in furtherance of economic development”.

In acknowledging Steven’s service on the Court, Obama said that he considers

… retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens an “impartial guardian of the law” who is leaving at the “top of his game,”

This will create a vacancy on the Supreme Court, for which President Obama will submit nominations to the Senate for their “advice and consent” (U.S. Constitution, Article 2, Section 2).

There will certainly be Republican resistance to Obama’s nominations, just as there has been Democratic resistance to any Republican president’s nominations.

Let’s take a look at how the Democrats reacted to President Bush’s 2005 nomination of Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. The Senate Judiciary Committee approved the nomination, but Senators Ted Kennedy, Charles Schumer, Joe Biden, Richard Durbin, and Diane Feinstein voted against the nomination. In the Senate, all the Republicans voted for, and the Democrats split, with 22 votes for, and 22 against – Senator Obama among them.

Then-Senator Obama explained his position :

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind Judge Roberts is qualified to sit on the highest court in the land. Moreover, he seems to have the comportment and the temperament that makes for a good judge.
…
The problem I had is that when I examined Judge Roberts’ record and history of public service, it is my personal estimation that he has far more often used his formidable skills on behalf of the strong in opposition to the weak.

(Unlike Justice Stevens, perhaps?)

The bottom line is this: I will be voting against John Roberts’ nomination.

(As an aside, Justice Roberts administered the Oath of Office to President Obama in 2009.)

The Washington Post reports that Senator Obama wanted to vote for Roberts – Obama admired Roberts’ intellectual abilities.

Besides, Obama said, if he were president he wouldn’t want his judicial nominees opposed simply on ideological grounds.

[Hold that thought.]

And then Rouse, his chief of staff, spoke up. This was no Harvard moot-court exercise, he said. If Obama voted for Roberts, Rouse told him, people would remind him of that every time the Supreme Court issued another conservative ruling, something that could cripple a future presidential run. Obama took it in. And when the roll was called, he voted no.

I find it fascinating that in 2005, Obama and his chief of staff were considering a presidential run.

Obama has talked about his ideas for Supreme Court nominations, at a conference at Planned Parenthood Today, in 2007.

We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old. And that’s the criteria by which I’m going to be selecting my judges.

That certainly explains his nomination of Justice Sotomayor (a wise Latina). Or maybe we could find a young teenage mom to put on the bench. And some knuckle-dragging conservatives would grumble that a Justice’s job is to interpret the Constitution – not to act as a schoolyard referee of “fairness” and “morality”.

In any event, the next few months will tell us how little “ideological grounds” will enter into the hearings.

Verizon joins AT&T

A previous post, “Early consequences of the Health Care Bill” noted that AT&T, Caterpillar, John Deere nad a few other large companies announced that they are taking hefty charges as a result of the new national health care plan. At the time, I didn’t have a figure for Verizon. Here it is:

April 2 (Bloomberg) — Verizon Communications Inc., the second-largest U.S. phone company, became the latest company to record a cost related to the U.S. health-care overhaul, saying it will incur a $970 million expense.

A Tale of Two Healthcare Plans

First, Massachusetts.

MASSACHUSETTS HAS been lauded for its healthcare reform, but the program is a failure. Created solely to achieve universal insurance coverage, the plan does not even begin to address the other essential components of a successful healthcare system.

The prestigious Institute of Medicine, part of the National Academy of Sciences, has defined five criteria for healthcare reform. Coverage should be: universal, not tied to a job, affordable for individuals and families, affordable for society, and it should provide access to high-quality care for everyone.

The state’s plan flunks on all counts.

The Massachusetts plan has also been tried in Tennesee and Maine:

In fact, each of these states [Massachusetts, Tennesee and Maine] have begun to cut services to people because the costs have skyrocketed despite claims that “savings” would occur and that everyone would get more coverage.

Second, Indiana. Their program is called the Healthy Indiana Plan:

The Healthy Indiana Plan, or HIP, puts Indiana among the states that are attempting to do something good for low-income residents who have been unable to purchase health insurance coverage. In fact, it provides a double positive for the health of Hoosiers, while also helping the pocketbook of others.

First, it makes low-cost insurance available to adults who earn no more than twice the federal poverty level. That would be no more than $20,420 for a single person and $41,300 for a family of four. It allows those people who qualify access to health care that they might otherwise bypass until more intense and costly care was required.

… other benefits for those accepted in to the Healthy Indiana Plan. These include up to $500 a year in preventive care, such as for mammograms, flu shots and smoking cessation programs, and health savings accounts worth $1,100, with enrollees contributing 2 percent to 5 percent of gross household income.

At a time when Congress finds itself trapped in the morass of partisan politics, it is reassuring to see that in this state, the executive and legislative branches of government can come together for the common good of the people.

Which model did our wise leaders is Washington pick to go national?

Here’s Indiana Governor Daniels:

As if governors these days don’t have enough on their plates. Now that ObamaCare has become law, there’s a whole new to-do list for my state:

1) Plan for the termination of our Healthy Indiana Plan.
2) Start preparing voters for a state tax increase. The axe won’t fall until someone else is governor. But when we are forced to expand Medicaid to one in every four citizens, the cost will add several hundred million dollars to the budget.
3) Check to see if Indiana should drop its health insurance plans and dump its government workers into the exchanges. Paying the new tax penalty might actually be cheaper for the state, … I’m not certain the same rule applies to government as to business, but since no member of Congress read this entire bill before the vote, I don’t feel embarrassed about not knowing.
4) Ramp up our job retraining programs to handle those who will be fired by our medical device companies, student loan providers, and small businesses as they wrestle with new taxes, penalties, or in the student loan case, outright nationalization of their business.
6) Investigate an offset to all this extra cost. We may no longer need the Department of Insurance since insurers will now be operating as regulated utilities under the thumb of the federal government.

Republicans should push to lower barriers for buying insurance across state lines, create incentives for states to repeal mandates, and limit frivolous lawsuits that increase the price of insurance.

But for the moment, our federal overlords have ruled. We better start adjusting to our new status as good Europeans.

If something fails, we just have to try harder, on a bigger scale.

Early consequences of the Health Care Bill

It didn’t take long for the impact of the Bill to be recognized. A few companies have filed their required financial statements with the SEC. These aren’t just “scare tactic” announcements. From the Wall Street Journal article:

U.S. accounting laws also require businesses to immediately restate their earnings in light of the higher tax burden on their long-term retiree health liabilities.

From 3M:

3M Company (NYSE: MMM) said today that it expects to record a one-time non-cash charge of $85 to $90 million after tax, or approximately 12 cents per share, in the first quarter of 2010, resulting from the recently enacted Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, including modifications made in the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 passed by Congress on March 25, 2010.

Other companies report:

AT&T:

… about $1 billion in the first quarter of 2010 to reflect the impact of a change in the tax treatment of the Medicare Part D subsidy under the health care reform law.

AK Steel (one of the country’s largest steel producers):

… a non-cash charge of about $31 million in the first quarter of 2010 resulting from the new health care law.

Medtronic:

“The impact of the tax [on medical devices], we estimate, will be roughly $150 million to $200 million on Medtronic annually beginning in 2013,…”

John Deere:

Deere said it expects its expenses to rise by around $150 million on an after-tax basis, mainly in the second quarter, as a result of the legislation.

Caterpillar:

… first-quarter earnings will be hit with a $100 million after-tax charge under tax law changes attached to the new health care reform legislation.