The Freedom Fighter's Journal: Finding Out What's In It

Obamacare has moved from "we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what's in it" to finding out what's in it.

Editor's Note: I have gotten e-mails from some people who did not receive yesterday's edition of TIA Daily. I think the unusual length of that issue may have caused it to be blocked or not downloaded by some e-mail servers, so please access it at our website. It's currently available from the home page at www.TIADaily.com.
Now that yesterday's big task is over, I am very happy to get back to talking about the news, below.—RWT

Top News Stories

Commentary by Robert Tracinski

1. Finding Out What's In It

Jack Wakeland writes to me: "Obamacare has moved from 'we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what's in it' to finding out what's in it. And we're finding that the first and simplest set of requirements that go into effect are a vast, senseless, and costly regulatory burden imposed on businesses, employers, states, employees, contractors, etc. And that doesn't even count the impossibly growing set of burdens that will be imposed on health insurance companies and on doctors and other health care professionals."

The main link below sketches out the disastrous effects of ObamaCare that are already happening, years before the law has been fully implemented, while a new report indicates that insurers in Minnesota are already dropping their individual health-care plans.

Instead of relieving the uncertainty by passing ObamaCare, the administration and Congress has made the environment so uncertain that insurers can't even sell their plans—regardless of whether they comply with the mandates.

ObamaCare was supposed to be designed to provide a few splashy benefits up front, but delay its worst destruction until after Obama's 2012 re-election campaign. But it turns out—surprise, surprise—that Congress doesn't know what its own legislation actually does, and that businessmen plan ahead, so that they will anticipate future consequences and begin responding to them now.

The result: the destructive impact of ObamaCare is hitting the news just as we enter the last month of the mid-term election campaign, when people will decide whether to re-elect the congressmen who brought us this debacle.

That's a good context for this news:

With nothing else working, President Barack Obama is asking religious leaders to help him sell the public on health care reform.
Politico listened in to an Oval Office conference call Tuesday, where Obama and top administration officials, beseeched thousands of faith-based and community organizations to preach the gospel on new insurance reforms, chiefly the Patients' Bill of Rights.

No wonder Obama is appealing to divine intervention. That is the only thing that would be able to save him now.

"Obamacare Is Even Worse than Critics Thought," Washington Examiner, September 22

Six months ago, President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rammed Obamacare down the throats of an unwilling American public. Half a year removed from the unprecedented legislative chicanery and backroom dealing that characterized the bill's passage, we know much more about the bill than we did then. A few of the revelations:...
Obamacare won't allow employees or most small businesses to keep the coverage they have and like. By Obama's estimates, as many as 69 percent of employees, 80 percent of small businesses, and 64 percent of large businesses will be forced to change coverage, probably to more expensive plans....
Obamacare will increase insurance premiums—in some places, it already has. Insurers, suddenly forced to cover clients' children until age 26, have little choice but to raise premiums, and they attribute to Obamacare's mandates a 1 to 9 percent increase. Obama's only method of preventing massive rate increases so far has been to threaten insurers....
Obamacare imposes a huge nonmedical tax compliance burden on small business. It will require them to mail IRS 1099 tax forms to every vendor from whom they make purchases of more than $600 in a year, with duplicate forms going to the Internal Revenue Service. Like so much else in the 2,500-page bill, our senators and representatives were apparently unaware of this when they passed the measure.
Obamacare allows the IRS to confiscate part or all of your tax refund if you do not purchase a qualified insurance plan. The bill funds 16,000 new IRS agents to make sure Americans stay in line.

2. "They Lose Their Ideological Nerve"

A few years ago, someone made a generally forgettable movie from what ought to have been a very dramatic story: the US hockey team's "Miracle on Ice" victory over the Soviets at the 1980 Olympics. But there is one scene in the film that I do remember vividly.

Toward the end of the game, the US coach is intently watching his Soviet counterpart because he wants to know what the Russian coach will do to prevent his team's defeat. Then suddenly the US coach breaks out into a big grin when he realizes: "He doesn't know what to do." The Soviet coach is helplessly flailing because he has been caught off-guard and has no plan for how to recover.

That's pretty much what's happening right now to the Democratic Congress, except that in legislative terms, the result is not so much flailing as paralysis. Thus, after initiating a showdown over the extension of the Bush tax cuts, the Democrats have simply dropped the issue. They won't vote to extend the tax cuts, and they won't commit to raising the taxes, either. They have just punted the issue until after the election, and possibly until the new Congress convenes.

In the meantime, those in the economy who have the most money are suffering from their own paralysis: they can't make decisions about whether or not to invest, because they have no idea how much taxes they will be paying next year. Thus, the Democrats extend the "growth recession" by a few more months.

"The Democratic Tax Retreat," Wall Street Journal, September 27

Only a week ago, President Obama and his media supporters were asserting that they had Republicans caught in their class-war pincers: They'd lure the GOP into opposing an extension of lower tax rates for the middle class in order to defend lower tax rates for those making more than $200,000 a year.
In the event, the Democrats have cut and run, lest they get blamed for voting for a tax increase in a slow-growth economy. This is how legislative majorities behave when they've lost the political argument and can sense their days are numbered. They lose their ideological nerve and try to save their own individual careers....
Democrats will now enter the campaign's home stretch with the threat that all of the Bush-era tax rates could expire on January 1. That means the lowest tax bracket would revert to 15% from 10%, the per child tax credit would revert to $500 from $1,000, and millions of middle class families would pay thousands of dollars more in federal taxes.
Keep in mind that this is the not-so-secret desire of many on the left who think the country "can't afford" to let Americans keep so much of their own money. Peter Orszag has already admitted this since leaving his post as White House budget director. What these Democrats really mean is that they think the only way to pay for their spending plans is by soaking the middle class—because that's where the real money is.
Claiming to tax only the rich has always been more political strategy than fiscal realism. As we wrote in February 2009 ("The 2% Illusion"), IRS tax data show that you could have taken 100% of the taxable income of every American who earned more than $500,000 in the boom year of 2006 and still only have raised $1.3 trillion in revenue. That amount would not have closed the budget deficit in either of the last two fiscal years. Liberals pretend they can finance a European-style entitlement state by taxing only the rich because they know that soaking the middle class is unpopular.

3. "Staring at a Tidal Wave"

I said above that the legislative result of the Democrats' panic is paralysis. But the flailing can be seen on the campaign trail. I was completely amused by the main link below, which describes the efforts Democratic candidates are going through to hide their party affiliation.

Meanwhile, a liberal comments on the increasingly short lines and fire-sale prices for attendance at Obama fund-raisers, as well as Obama's lackluster performance at these events.

In a reminder of the new grassroots era of the Tea Parties, an independent group has produced what may be the most effective ad for the mid-terms: "Mourning in America," an inversion of the famous "Morning in America" ad for Reagan. It's supposed to remind us that we're not better off than we were two years ago.

But the biggest indication of the current political direction is that Peggy Noonan—in many ways, the voice of the conservative Washington establishment—has just posted a second column jumping onto the Tea Party bandwagon and seeking to praise the new force that everyone now expects will be driving American politics when the new Congress convenes next year.

"Vulnerable House Democrats Work to Hide Party Ties," Cristina Silva, AP via RealClearPolitics, September 26

Rep. Dina Titus has been a loyal soldier in pushing the Democrats' ambitious agenda, voting for health care legislation, extended unemployment benefits, new energy taxes and a repeal of the military's ban on gays serving openly.
Her campaign signs, however, proclaim Titus an "independent voice" for Nevadans.
Aware that their stock has taken the same tumble as home values, Congress' most vulnerable Democrats are declaring their independence from their party's agenda in Facebook profiles, television advertisements, news interviews and campaign websites leading up to the Nov. 2 election. That's when Republicans hope to retake control of the House they lost four years ago.
The rebranders include Democratic Reps. Betsy Markey and John Salazar in Colorado, Zack Space in Ohio, Jason Altmire in Pennsylvania, Glenn Nye in Virginia and Joe Donnelly in Indiana. In Texas, Rep. Chet Edwards, once promoted as a potential running mate for Barack Obama, has become a vocal critic of his party's policies.
The tactic could hurt Democratic turnout at a time when the party needs to protect its majority in Congress, some political strategists say.
"They want to get turnout as high as possible among those who vote for Democrats," said Joseph Bafumi, a government professor at Dartmouth College. "Running away from the president or the party might not be the way to do it."...
Titus and others have raised eyebrows for carrying water for Obama in vote after vote, only to pivot and say they are not beholden to a party....
"It's an act of desperation more than anything else. 'What can I do to persuade the voters that I can be representative of them?'" said Tom Brunell, a political science professor at the University of Texas at Dallas. "They are staring at a tidal wave and they are looking for any life buoy they can find."

4. The ClimateGate Hearings

The scientific and political establishment has tried hard to paper over the Climategate scandal that broke late last year, but the fallout continues. For one thing, it has emboldened the right to categorically reject global warming claims, leading to stories like this: the launch of a comprehensive legal challenge aimed at stripping the EPA of its claim to have authority to regulate carbon dioxide.

But the big story is the one below. If Republicans regain control of Congress, California Representative Darryl Issa has vowed to hold a comprehensive set of hearings on Climategate, seeking to publicly finish off the global warming dogma and to expose the scientific establishment that supports that dogma.

By the way, for an interesting reminder of how entrenched establishments tend to hold on to their authority, and how they can be overthrown by stubborn independent thinkers, I recommend an interesting interview with the Australian doctor who proved that most ulcers are caused by a bacterial infection, and not by stress as the conventional wisdom held.

"Rep. Issa Would Lead 'Climategate' Probe if House Goes to GOP," Robin Bravender, New York Times, September 23

The House's top Republican watchdog is planning to launch an investigation into international climate data if he takes the helm of the chamber's oversight panel next year.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), the ranking member of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said a probe of the "Climategate" scandal will top his environmental agenda if the Republicans take over the House next year and he gets the chairmanship.
"I do have a backburner investigation that I'm going to want to have completed, and that is, we paid a lot of money to have international evaluation, most of it done in Britain, that turns out to have been less than truthful in some of the figures," he said. "We're going to want to not investigate to get our money back, but we're going to want to have a do-over of good numbers so that everyone can have confidence."
The disputed climate data became the subject of heated controversy last year when hackers released e-mails from the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia in England. Climate skeptics pointed to the e-mails as evidence that prominent scientists tried to inappropriately manipulate and suppress raw climate data and silence their critics....
"For me, settled science starts out with settled raw data, then people negotiate and discuss and hypothecate from that data," Issa said. "If the raw data's in doubt, then the idea that we have settled science doesn't exist. I want settled science."...
Asked whether this Congress has been lax in its EPA oversight, Issa quipped, "You think?"
"We've seen no oversight, or virtually no oversight," he said.

5. Looters

One interesting consequence of the Tea Party rebellion is the exposure of massive looting by corrupt local officials—the sort of criminal activity that becomes easier to hide when government becomes more bloated and complex and rakes in more and more billions of our money.

In Bell, California, where local officials rigged the system to vote themselves into princely salaries, four of these officials have now been arrested and face criminal charges.

Meanwhile, in Illinois, an enterprising reporter for the Chicago Tribune has exposed massive and widespread pension fraud by local government officials, who give their friends a last-minute "spike" in their salary, just before retirement, in order to make them eligible for more generous pensions for life—at the taxpayers' expense.

But the most interesting story, because it combines both local political fraud and the impact of the Tea Party movement, is the one below, about a group of local Tea Partiers in Texas who have uncovered evidence of vote-rigging by government employees' unions.

"Local Tea Party Group May Have Uncovered Massive Vote Fraud in Texas," Mark Hemingway, Washington Examiner, September 26

The Examiner's Mark Tapscott wrote about this story over a week ago, but now Fox News is reporting on Tea Party activists in Texas uncovering vote fraud:
"When Catherine Engelbrecht and her friends sat down and started talking politics several years ago, they soon agreed that talking wasn't enough. They wanted to do more. So when the 2008 election came around, 'about 50' of her friends volunteered to work at Houston's polling places.
"'What we saw shocked us,' she said. 'There was no one checking IDs, judges would vote for people that asked for help. It was fraud, and we watched like deer in the headlights.'
"Their shared experience, she says, created 'True the Vote,' a citizen-based grassroots organization that began collecting publicly available voting data to prove that what they saw in their day at the polls was, indeed, happening—and that it was happening everywhere.
"'It was a true Tea Party moment,' she remembers."

6. Playing the India Card

There is a lot of bad news beginning to break in foreign policy—the consequences of having Obama in the White House. I'll be getting to that news in the next few days. But in the meantime, here is a story about one important step forward, which continues to move despite the Obama administration's indifference: the growing US-India alliance.

"India's Relationship with the Anglosphere Will Define the Twenty-First Century," Daniel Hannan, Daily Telegraph, September 25

The Anglosphere, for anyone who still doesn't know, is the community of free, English-speaking nations linked, not by governmental decree, but by shared values. Which nations, exactly? Good question. The UK and Ireland, obviously, the US and Canada, Australia and New Zealand, plus what's left of the Britain's extended archipelago (the Falkland Islands, Bermuda and so on). Who else? I'd say Malta, Singapore and perhaps Hong Kong. I hope these territories won't take it amiss, though, if I point out that, relatively speaking, they're tiddlers. The elephant—for once the metaphor seems apposite—is India....
While it might be awkward to talk of a nation of 1.3 billion people "joining" a club of 400 million, the orientation of India would determine the relative power of the English-speaking democracies for the rest of the century.
When passing through Delhi recently, I pointed out that the city feels more familiar, less foreign, than it did a decade ago—partly because the Indian middle class is ballooning, partly because the English language is more widespread and partly because of migration.
Communities of Indian descent remain in almost every corner of the Commonwealth, including those which British settlers evacuated long ago: Fiji, South Africa, Malaysia, East Africa, the Caribbean, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Canada—and increasingly, of course, the US. In Madras, once, I asked directions of a young woman in an exotic sari. "Sorry, love, I dunno," she replied in broad Cockney. Like me, she was a tourist—a small reminder of how affordable air travel has led to a convergence of nations separated by oceans and deserts, but bound by language and law. What Jet Airways has done for millions, the Internet has done for hundreds of millions, drawing the English-speaking peoples into a common conversation....
Almost all post-colonial governments begin by emphasising their distance from the former occupiers, and India was no exception. But technological change and rapid embourgeoisement are realigning India with the other Anglophone democracies. David Cameron, to his credit, grasps that power is shifting eastward, and sees the opportunity for Britain. Barack Obama, by contrast, seems to scorn the vast ally which Bush had secured. Fortunately, Indians seem content to wait for a different attitude from Washington. They are a patient and courteous people.