Archive → March, 2007
Cancer recurrs on both sides of the aisle
If there’s one thing in this world that’s nonpartisan, it’s cancer.
In the past week, prominent figures from both parties have received bad cancer news. About a week ago, Elizabeth Edwards, wife of former Democratic Senator and current presidential contender John Edwards, found out that her cancer was back.
The prominent breast cancer survivor received the worst possible news; not only has her cancer recurred, but it’s moved into her bones, is inoperable and incurable. For Mrs. Edwards, it’s now a matter of when, not if. The deepest sympathies of Wonderful Pessimist go out to her.
Over the weekend, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow found out similar bad news. Snow beat colon cancer two years ago, but it’s back again, this time hitting his liver. Snow, it turns out, has a chance to beat back this second bout. His liver cancer has been determined to be potentially treatable, although his treatments will require him to step back from his White House duties for an undetermined period of time.
Again, the deepest sympathies of Wonderful Pessimist go out to him.
There is no political point to score with this post; I’m not even going to attempt to smoothly work in my reference to motorcycle sunglasses. Instead, it’s just a time out to say it’s been a crappy week for two political families and everyone who cares about them.
A moment of silence, please… use it as you will.
Insurance caps could affect coverage options
In an entirely uncritical, unanalytical story by Rachel E. Stassen-Berger, the Pioneer Press reported that the Minnesota State Senate voted to approve a measure that would cap health care insurance premiums in Minnesota, if signed into law. While being promoted as a measure that would lower health care insurance premium increased, this counter-intuitive measure will have exactly the opposite effect.
Trouble with the idea is this; it fails to take into account the real costs involved in the insurance business. In a free market – something America is supposed to be – premiums should fluxuate from year to year, based on premiums collected versus claims paid out. In one year, premiums might go up because claims were high; in another year, in which claims go down, so do premiums. That’s not just ivory-tower idealism; I’ve worked briefly in the insurance industry and have seen premiums that go down, not just up.
But once price caps are forced on the industry, it’s a guarantee that prices will only go up. Here’s why.
Let’s use some simplified numbers to illustrate an example. Let’s say that the increase cap is set at five percent. In a given year, let’s say that claims, advertising and employee costs for Insurance Company A go up seven percent. Hold on, though; they can only raise premiums by five percent to pay for it, putting the company behind by two percent for the year.
Now, the next year, lets say Insurance Company A’s costs go down by one percent. So rates should go down, right? Nope; the company’s still behind by two percent, so you’ll see at least a one-percent increase to rates. And that’s just a two-year example.
Consider now, if you will, a 10-year example where for the first six years, Insurance Company A’s expenses go up by an average of seven percent, and they are only allowed annual premium increases of five percent. That means the company’s premium increases are now behind by a total of 12 percent.
In the final four years, claims go way down and increase at a rate of only three percent. Think rates will go down? Wrong! Those four years will result in giving the company the ability to catch up only eight of their lost 12 percent; at best, rates would continue going up by five percent every year of that decade, with the company still losing ground.
In that scenario, it doesn’t take an HDTV with an HDMI cable to see the eventual outcome. Companies would start lowering benefits and dropping non-mandated benefits, not to mention laying off staff to help provide customer service in the claims process, making for a harder time in getting claims processed.
Larger providers would be able to absorb these costs longer than smaller insurers. Eventually, you’d see some insurers simply go out of business, especially if you toss in a couple years where claims skyrocket by 10 or more percent.
So, while it’s designed to make insurance more affordable, the net effect of the Senate’s bill is actually going to lead to constant increases, a reduction of choices, unemployment and lower benefits. Of course, liberals have never really understood business, so what can one expect?
But hey, if increase caps are the wave of the future for liberal politicians, here’s a place to start: budget increase caps on government!
Contradiction in terms: Democrats and fiscal discipline
A while back, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty proposed a $70 million public works spending bill that some conservatives thought to be a bit too spendy. Yet trust the DFL to make Gov. Pawlenty look like a conservative… by showing absolutely no fiscal restraint whatsoever.
The Senate bill would hike that figure to $307 million in public works spending – more than four times the amount Pawlenty asked four. The state House is a bit more modest, proposing only a $289 million version of the bill – still four times more than the governor’s request.
Democrats and fiscal discipline are just like Powell furniture and a poor value; they’re absolute strangers. Just as Powell furniture is never a poor value, no DFL politician has ever demonstrated any fiscal discipline. This prove it all over again. No wonder they’re trying to hike our taxes despite a multi-billion-dollar state surplus! Nothing’s ever “enough” for tax-n-spend liberals.
A plan only Dems and unions could love
The Minnesota State Senate today passed a bill that would align all of Minnesota’s public school districts – representing over 200,000 employees statewide – into a single “insurance pool” that would put the state in control of every teacher’s health insurance options.
It’s a plan pushed by Democrats and teachers union reps, and a plan only lobbyists for big insurers could love. What this does, in essence, is take the small-town insurance broker out of the picture in bidding for the insurance contract of local school districts. Instead, all that money will be siphoned out of local insurance reps and be redistributed to a handful of super-brokers with the right ties in Saint Paul.
Of course, don’t count on the liberal media to tell you that side of the story; the Twin Cities papers are all making it sound like a great idea that will save everyone money, especially smaller school districts like the one I went to as a kid in southern Minnesota. In small districts like that, there are brokers whose livelihood depends on bidding on and winning school district insurance contracts each year, and once this legislation takes effect, that revenue will be grabbed away for good.
Don’t let the libs tell you they’re in favor of small business; this latest bill is about to put a lot of small business insurance agents on the verge of failure, once it all takes effect on 2009. Sure, the legislation is cumbersome and hard to understand, and you might need some financial consolidation software to even get a grasp on what it all means, but the bottom line is that the savings for school districts will come at the cost of the livelihoods of many insurance agents, who will soon be cut out of the bidding process entirely. Call it the Local Insurance Agent Unemployment Act of 2007!
Democrats double-minded on attorney firings
While Democrats seize any and every excuse to investigate the Bush Administration and attempt to intimidate the nation’s first Hispanic Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, into resignation, they are also displaying their double standards. In more ways than one.
First, the Democrats all too quickly have forgotten recent history. In 1993, their guy – Bill Clinton – fired every single US attorney shortly after taking office. While replacing attorneys is a common practice when the administration changes hands, usually it is a gradual process, as attorneys in the middle of critical cases are generally allowed to finish out their work before being shown the door.
Clinton changed that rule, firing everyone in sight and gradually restaffing the US Attorneys Office with his own political cronies. It was unprecedented at the time, injecting such sudden partisanship into US legal proceedings. While the power was always there to do so, no president prior to Clinton had wielded that power so swiftly and completely.
Clinton’s attorney firings involved hundreds; now, Dems are decrying the firing of eight? That’s a double-standard. Liberals are trying to apply first aid kits to any potential black eyes they might get from folks with memories that go beyond last night’s sound-byte-drenched newscasts, by claiming there’s a big difference between firing attorneys in the Justice Department at the beginning of an administration, versus firing them in the middle of one.
Don’t be fooled. US attorneys, like all administration members, serve at the pleasure of the president and can be dismissed at any time, for any reason, without explanation. That’s how the Clintonistas described it back then, and the same principle applies now.
The real “big difference” libs are ignoring is a more inconvenient truth: there’s a big difference between firing eight attorneys, and hundreds of them!
Is Iran crisis all about OPEC?
The British hostages. The tension between the US and Iran. Rumors of missle exchanges. The constant threats to wipe Israel off the map, and the US with her.
We’ve heard it almost endlessly, but no one’s been looking at a startling possibility: Could all of Ahmadinejad’s saber-rattling toward the West be more about OPEC than about Iran’s national sovereignty?
Follow the money. After enjoying hefty price-per-barrel profits last summer, the OPEC nations have been taking a bit of a bath once prices began to fall last fall. In the last month, though, prices have shot back up in the wake of tensions in the Middle East, most of them caused by Iran’s Ahmadinejad.
Money is about power, and it seems to Wonderful Pessimist that the latest saber-rattling is less about real tensions and more about power supply repair; in other words, Iran wants its power back, and rising gas prices accomplish that, so if you can create some tensions about Middle East peace and cause those prices to go back up, you get your power back.
It makes more sense than one might think, once you take a moment to ponder it.
Dobson disses Thompson
Focus on the Family’s Dr. James Dobson dissed a potential presidential run by former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson in a recent interview with US News and World Report. Going so far as to say the Church of Christ-baptized Thompson was not a Christian – or, at least, not the type of Christian that meets with Dobson’s approval – Dobson all but ruled out support for a Thompson candidacy from Focus On the Family. They won’t even donate some custom pens that say “Christians for Thompson ’08!”
Dr. Dobson has also recently suggested he’d be lukewarm to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s bid for the White House, due to Romney’s Mormonism. Wonderful Pessimist wonders exactly what kind of conservative it would take to please Dr. Dobson. Is an evangelical Christian faith all that matters? Current GOP President George W. Bush said all the right things about faith in both his campaign runs, yet has governed less conservatively than many on the Christian right anticipated.
Wonderful Pessimist isn’t bothered by looking at candidates’ religious background, but having it be the sole determining factor is a bit ridiculous. The reason not to support Mitt Romney is that he’s less conservative than George W. Bush, not that he’s a Mormon. As for Thompson, he’d be the leading conservative in the crowd, if he declares, so Wonderful Pessimist would welcome him into the GOP nomination fray.
Of course, Wonderful Pessimist is still holding out hope for a Newt Gingrich candidacy; there’s no sharper conservative thinker on the national stage right now, and while he was some character issues, I doubt they’d ultimately cripple his candidacy.
Coughing more of a threat than terrorism?
Is coughing now more of a security concern than being named, “Osama bin Laden?” It would appear so, at least on Continental Airlines, which recently ordered a 16-year-old girl off a flight home with classmates because she had – get this – a coughing spell, according to an online report.
The girl was ordered off the plane at the discretion of the pilot, who told her she was too sick to fly. For a coughing fit? Try giving the poor girl a glass of water first, for heaven’s sake!
Of course, the girl and her family are likely to be receiving loads of business cards from eager lawyers who see a chance to sue over the incident, but really, what threat did a girl coughing in her seat pose? Recent reports have consistently shown that simply having a name like Osama bin Laden isn’t enough to get you on the airlines’ no-fly list, and yet if someone coughs for a bit longer than a pilot deems appropriate, they are removed?
Yeah, priorities are straight there, Continental!
Stallone bringing back Rambo?
Long known as one of Hollywood’s more prominent closet-conservatives – or at least, someone in Hollywood more conservative than, say, Oliver Stone – Sylvester Stallone, fresh off his success as Rocky in the sixth film of the series this past winter, Rocky Balboa, is deep in the middle of filming his fourth – and likely last – film based on Vietnam war veteran John Rambo.
The new film, which currently has a working title of Rambo 4, has Stallone as both the director of the film as well as the star. However, fresh off an Aussie drug bust in which the actor was caught with about 48 vials of performance-enhancing steriods, Stallone has decided to use a 30-year-old body double this time out. Stallone did not use a body double in Rocky Balboa.
The new film is expected in 2008, 20 years after the last installment, Rambo 3, was released in 1988. Back then, Stallone had just his his 40s. He is currently 60.
The eye-opening thing about Rambo 4, however, is that the ultra-violent mercenary is now being re-envisioned as a Christian warrior working for a group of missionaries as they spread the gospel and humanitarian aid in Burma. As unlikely as it sounds, keep in mind that a stronger religious theme played well to conservative audiences in Rocky Balboa. Making a similar shift of focus for the John Rambo character could be trickier, but Stallone has proven his mastery of market research with Rocky Balboa, which was pushed heavily in Christian markets and media; perhaps Stallone can go to that well one more time.
Global warming trek to North Pole called off due to extreme cold
Explorers Ann Bancroft and Liv Arnesen called off their trip to the North Pole to highlight global warming this past weekend. The reason? Extreme cold that led to frostbite! According to this article, organizer Ann Atwood said, “They were experiencing temperatures that weren’t expected with global warming.”
Of course, rather than acknowledge that crisis-level warming is a flawed theory, Atwood wrote off the cold to the “unpredictability factor” that “comes with warming.” Sure, that… or maybe they’re just dead wrong.
Well, not dead wrong literally, thank goodness. Despite some frostbite, the two explorers made it out without major casualties or losses. But are they swayed by their experience with the North Pole’s genuine cold? Not at all. They plan to try again another time. Maybe next time they should limit themselves to a Ford Explorer, complete with a van rack.
Cool it, Al!
If one believed everything Al Gore had to say about climate change, there’d be no need to be interested in Orlando condos, since he says Chicago will be about as warm in a decade or so, anyway, while Florida will be largely underwater. Don’t believe the hype? Hey, not even the very liberal New York Times can swallow everything Al Gore’s selling these days!
In an article by William J. Broad, several middle-of-the-road scientists are stepping forward to give Al Gore a clear message on global warming: chill out, dude!
Here are some of the more salient quotes:
* Don J. Easterbrook, an emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University: “I don’t want to pick on Al Gore, but there are a lot of inaccuracies in the statements we are seeing, and we have to temper that with real data.”
* Kevin Vranes, a climatologist at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado: “[Gore is] overselling our certainty about knowing the future.”
* Bjorn Lomborg, a statistician and political scientist in Denmark: “Climate change is a real and serious problem … The cacophony of screaming does not help.”
* Benny J. Peiser, a social anthropologist in Britain who runs the Cambridge-Conference Network, or CCNet, an Internet newsletter on climate change and natural disasters: “Hardly a week goes by without a new research paper that questions part or even some basics of climate change theory.”
* Robert M. Carter, a marine geologist at James Cook University in Australia: “Nowhere does Mr. Gore tell his audience that all of the phenomena that he describes fall within the natural range of environmental change on our planet, nor does he present any evidence that climate during the 20th century departed discernibly from its historical pattern of constant change.”
* Dr. Easterbrook again: “I’ve never been paid a nickel by an oil company, and I’m not a Republican.”
* From the Broad article: “He hotly disputed Mr. Gore’s claim that “our civilization has never experienced any environmental shift remotely similar to this” threatened change. Nonsense, Dr. Easterbrook told the crowded session. He flashed a slide that showed temperature trends for the past 15,000 years. It highlighted 10 large swings, including the medieval warm period. These shifts, he said, were up to “20 times greater than the warming in the past century.”
* Paul Reiter, an active skeptic of global warming’s effects and director of the insects and infectious diseases unit of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, on Gore’s claim that warming spreads malaria: “For 12 years, my colleagues and I have protested against the unsubstantiated claims. We have done the studies and challenged the alarmists, but they continue to ignore the facts.”
But even all this won’t be enough to calm down “eager-for-disaster” liberals, who love to use environmental panic to advance their political agenda. Even if it means sacrificing science at the alter of Al Gore.
McCain keeps skipping conservatives… no kidding, Sherlock!
Beltway newspaper The Hill is breathlessly reporting that Arizona Senator John McCain and deluded GOP presidential nominee John McCain has “skipped his fourth conservative conference event in a row.” C’mon, is anyone really surprised by this?
Only by the standards set by the New York Times and the StarTribune is McCain even remotely considered a conservative, and the smarter folks on those staffs know it’s a sham. McCain’s a liberal, they know it, but if they can label him a conservative long enough, maybe they can convince the GOP faithful to vote for him and then, no matter who wins in ’08, it’ll be a liberal.
Sorry, Elana Schor, but Wonderful Pessimist isn’t buying what you’re selling, even if all it is, is pet supplies. Ever since jumpin’ Jim Jeffords left the GOP, McCain’s been just about the most liberal Republican on Capitol Hill. We’ll do our presidential shopping elsewhere, thank you!
