How the CIB is bankrupting Indianapolis..

What is Conservatism?

"What is conservatism? Is it not adherence to the old and tried, against the new and untried? We stick to, contend for, the identical old policy on the point in controversy which was adopted by "our fathers who framed the Government under which we live;" while you with one accord reject, and scout, and spit upon that old policy, and insist upon substituting something new."


--Abraham Lincoln,
Cooper Union Speech
New York, New York
February 27, 1860

Amend Indiana's Constitution?

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels’ proposal to codify property tax caps in the Indiana Constitution is well-intended, but fraught with risk. He would be wise to heed the cautions of Sara Arnold in last Sunday’s Indy Star (“Caps Create Winners, Losers). Unintended consequences are often more significant and lasting than those that are intended.

The proposal involves Amending the Constitution to incorporate caps on property taxes at 1% for residential properties, 2% for farms and rental properties, and 3% for all other businesses. Governor Daniels argues as follows:

As important as the size of the reductions was the nature of the reform, which ended completely the use of local property taxes to pay for certain expensive and fast-growing government functions such as child welfare, health care for the indigent and school operating costs. Those and other activities are now the responsibility of state government, meaning that we rely on sales, income and other tax sources and not on taxing property to pay for them. That's a major new protection against local taxes growing again as they have after previous relief efforts.

Also, Gov. Daniels claims that:

…[by] “eliminating the power to shift the burden from one category to another, our bill has meant that local schools and units cannot simply pick a desired spending level and then ratchet tax rates up to generate it. Instead, like every family, business or state government, they will have to live within the means that taxpayers can afford.”

Now who wouldn’t want lower property taxes? It sure sounds innocent enough on the surface.

However, we should be VERY vigilant against the usurpation of local authority by the State. If the State is requiring it, then the State should be funding it. But when we let the State “help” the local authorities, the result can be a loss of discretion that transfers power to a less accountable and less approachable State bureaucracy.

A tax dollar is a tax dollar in terms of what it costs me; it frankly matters not if I pay it in the form of sales tax, income tax, or property tax—it’s a dollar I don’t have that the Government now does.

But tax dollars are NOT the same in terms of value of what they buy. A local dollar goes much, much farther than a State dollar, just as a State dollar goes much farther than a Federal dollar. The smaller bureaucracy and vastly fewer number of times that the dollar changes hands mean my local dollar goes farther.

So while we all would like to have lower property tax rates, let’s not take our eye off the ball. Lower property tax rates don’t automatically mean we pay less for Government. In fact, if we end up having to go back to the State to get back more of our local money taken in other taxes , it may mean we end up spending more for the same level of service.

Honoring September 11th: He Kept Us Safe

Honoring September 11th: He Kept Us Safe

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The real purpose of Healthcare Reform (ObamaCare)

Anyone with an inherent skepticism of Government by now must be asking themselves: "What is the real purpose of healthcare reform? How does if differ from what is purported?
First we can outline the stated claims of the reform: extend coverage to the 46 million Americans (oops, he meant 30 million people..) who so desperately need health insurance. After all, as President Obama outlined in his speech to Congress, "our deficit will grow, more families will bankrupt...and more will die as a result..." of not adopting ObamaCare. (Yes, the same speech in which he accused Republicans of using scare tactics!). So in short we have a list of stated goals that goes something like this: 1) Increase the number of people who can participate in the healtcare system, and 2) cut costs.
What? We are going to increase the number of people consuming healthcare and have the total cost go down? How's that again? How will these miraculous savings appear? Ahhh--through that time-honored standby of "reducing waste." Of course, the begged question is why the waste reduction cannot occur now, without a radical overhaul of the system the manifestly increases the role of Government. Anyone?
So the stated purposes don't pass even a basic sniff test-- never mind the myriad details that have already been unearthed to confirm that this proposal is ill-advised (and presently 52% of Americans oppose it).
What, then, is the real purpose of Obamacare?

It appears to me that the real objectives of Obamacare are these:

• Force millions of younger, healthier, Americans into a system they won't use and don't need so they can subsidize the high costs of the main consumers of healthcare: the elderly
• Enrich certain preferred medical companies (with political connections) by increasing the size of the pool of available dollars. Any company will charge whatever the market will bear-- and if that "market" is borne by a massive pool of (usually borrowed) taxpayer dollars, what then should a company charge?
• Stave off the day of reckoning for the unsustainable institution known as Medicare. This is essentially "doubling down" on the failed experiment of Government involvement in healthcare.

The fact that these goals are being pursued via significant expansion of the Federal Bureacracy is just gravy to the Democrats who have never met a Gov't program they didn't like.

More proof that Obamacare is to be Feared

More evidence is now coming out about the "devil in the details" of Obamacare. It turns out that much of the enabling legislation was embedded in the Stimulus Bill. Yes, that super-urgent, must-do-without-reading Bill contained the very language that is now going to provide the levers for Obamacare to enslave us all.

If you aren't free to be the arbiter of what happens to your body, then you are not free. The moral equivalency here is to assault, essentially.

Please view and listen with keen ears:

Meet the Scare Force..

Meet the Evil Insurance Company Agents who are spreading lies about Obamacare:





via Michelle Malkin

The Five Sentences.

From Adrian Rogers, via my Dad:

You cannot legislate the poor into prosperity by legislating the wealthy out of prosperity. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is the beginning of the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."

--Adrian Rogers, 1931

Five Freedoms You Will Lose under Obamacare

I realize that not everyone really cares to be free, so some may find this post uninteresting. But those of use who have the courage and work ethic to be free may be VERY alarmed to learn of some verified content of Obamacare.

From Shawn Tully at CNN/Money.com:

In short, the Obama platform would mandate extremely full, expensive, and highly subsidized coverage -- including a lot of benefits people would never pay for with their own money -- but deliver it through a highly restrictive, HMO-style plan that will determine what care and tests you can and can't have. It's a revolution, all right, but in the wrong direction.

Let's explore the five freedoms that Americans would lose under Obamacare:

1. Freedom to choose what's in your plan

The bills in both houses require that Americans purchase insurance through "qualified" plans offered by health-care "exchanges" that would be set up in each state. The rub is that the plans can't really compete based on what they offer. The reason: The federal government will impose a minimum list of benefits that each plan is required to offer.



Today, many states require these "standard benefits packages" -- and they're a major cause for the rise in health-care costs. Every group, from chiropractors to alcohol-abuse counselors, do lobbying to get included. Connecticut, for example, requires reimbursement for hair transplants, hearing aids, and in vitro fertilization.

The Senate bill would require coverage for prescription drugs, mental-health benefits, and substance-abuse services. It also requires policies to insure "children" until the age of 26. That's just the starting list. The bills would allow the Department of Health and Human Services to add to the list of required benefits, based on recommendations from a committee of experts. Americans, therefore, wouldn't even know what's in their plans and what they're required to pay for, directly or indirectly, until after the bills become law.

2. Freedom to be rewarded for healthy living, or pay your real costs

As with the previous example, the Obama plan enshrines into federal law one of the worst features of state legislation: community rating. Eleven states, ranging from New York to Oregon, have some form of community rating. In its purest form, community rating requires that all patients pay the same rates for their level of coverage regardless of their age or medical condition.

Americans with pre-existing conditions need subsidies under any plan, but community rating is a dubious way to bring fairness to health care. The reason is twofold: First, it forces young people, who typically have lower incomes than older workers, to pay far more than their actual cost, and gives older workers, who can afford to pay more, a big discount. The state laws gouging the young are a major reason so many of them have joined the ranks of uninsured.

Under the Senate plan, insurers would be barred from charging any more than twice as much for one patient vs. any other patient with the same coverage. So if a 20-year-old who costs just $800 a year to insure is forced to pay $2,500, a 62-year-old who costs $7,500 would pay no more than $5,000.

Second, the bills would ban insurers from charging differing premiums based on the health of their customers. Again, that's understandable for folks with diabetes or cancer. But the bills would bar rewarding people who pursue a healthy lifestyle of exercise or a cholesterol-conscious diet. That's hardly a formula for lower costs. It's as if car insurers had to charge the same rates to safe drivers as to chronic speeders with a history of accidents.

3. Freedom to choose high-deductible coverage

The bills threaten to eliminate the one part of the market truly driven by consumers spending their own money. That's what makes a market, and health care needs more of it, not less.

Hundreds of companies now offer Health Savings Accounts to about 5 million employees. Those workers deposit tax-free money in the accounts and get a matching contribution from their employer. They can use the funds to buy a high-deductible plan -- say for major medical costs over $12,000. Preventive care is reimbursed, but patients pay all other routine doctor visits and tests with their own money from the HSA account. As a result, HSA users are far more cost-conscious than customers who are reimbursed for the majority of their care.

The bills seriously endanger the trend toward consumer-driven care in general. By requiring minimum packages, they would prevent patients from choosing stripped-down plans that cover only major medical expenses. "The government could set extremely low deductibles that would eliminate HSAs," says John Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a free-market research group. "And they could do it after the bills are passed."

4. Freedom to keep your existing plan

This is the freedom that the President keeps emphasizing. Yet the bills appear to say otherwise. It's worth diving into the weeds -- the territory where most pundits and politicians don't seem to have ventured.

The legislation divides the insured into two main groups, and those two groups are treated differently with respect to their current plans. The first are employees covered by the Employee Retirement Security Act of 1974. ERISA regulates companies that are self-insured, meaning they pay claims out of their cash flow, and don't have real insurance. Those are the GEs (GE, Fortune 500) and Time Warners (TWX, Fortune 500) and most other big companies.

The House bill states that employees covered by ERISA plans are "grandfathered." Under ERISA, the plans can do pretty much what they want -- they're exempt from standard packages and community rating and can reward employees for healthy lifestyles even in restrictive states.

But read on.

The bill gives ERISA employers a five-year grace period when they can keep offering plans free from the restrictions of the "qualified" policies offered on the exchanges. But after five years, they would have to offer only approved plans, with the myriad rules we've already discussed. So for Americans in large corporations, "keeping your own plan" has a strict deadline. In five years, like it or not, you'll get dumped into the exchange. As we'll see, it could happen a lot earlier.

The outlook is worse for the second group. It encompasses employees who aren't under ERISA but get actual insurance either on their own or through small businesses. After the legislation passes, all insurers that offer a wide range of plans to these employees will be forced to offer only "qualified" plans to new customers, via the exchanges.

The employees who got their coverage before the law goes into effect can keep their plans, but once again, there's a catch. If the plan changes in any way -- by altering co-pays, deductibles, or even switching coverage for this or that drug -- the employee must drop out and shop through the exchange. Since these plans generally change their policies every year, it's likely that millions of employees will lose their plans in 12 months.

5. Freedom to choose your doctors

The Senate bill requires that Americans buying through the exchanges -- and as we've seen, that will soon be most Americans -- must get their care through something called "medical home." Medical home is similar to an HMO. You're assigned a primary care doctor, and the doctor controls your access to specialists. The primary care physicians will decide which services, like MRIs and other diagnostic scans, are best for you, and will decide when you really need to see a cardiologists or orthopedists.

Under the proposals, the gatekeepers would theoretically guide patients to tests and treatments that have proved most cost-effective. The danger is that doctors will be financially rewarded for denying care, as were HMO physicians more than a decade ago. It was consumer outrage over despotic gatekeepers that made the HMOs so unpopular, and killed what was billed as the solution to America's health-care cost explosion.

The bills do not specifically rule out fee-for-service plans as options to be offered through the exchanges. But remember, those plans -- if they exist -- would be barred from charging sick or elderly patients more than young and healthy ones. So patients would be inclined to game the system, staying in the HMO while they're healthy and switching to fee-for-service when they become seriously ill. "That would kill fee-for-service in a hurry," says Goodman.

In reality, the flexible, employer-based plans that now dominate the landscape, and that Americans so cherish, could disappear far faster than the 5 year "grace period" that's barely being discussed.

Companies would have the option of paying an 8% payroll tax into a fund that pays for coverage for Americans who aren't covered by their employers. It won't happen right away -- large companies must wait a couple of years before they opt out. But it will happen, since it's likely that the tax will rise a lot more slowly than corporate health-care costs, especially since they'll be lobbying Washington to keep the tax under control in the righteous name of job creation.

The best solution is to move to a let-freedom-ring regime of high deductibles, no community rating, no standard benefits, and cross-state shopping for bargains (another market-based reform that's strictly taboo in the bills). I'll propose my own solution in another piece soon on Fortune.com. For now, we suffer with a flawed health-care system, but we still have our Five Freedoms. Call them the Five Endangered Freedoms

I trust that America is still courageous enough to resist this brazen attempt to expand Statism here.

Sen. Conrad cleared of Ethics Violations in Countrywide scheme..

The Senate Ethics Committee (I know, the ultimate oxymoron) has concluded that Sens. Kent Conrad and Chris Dodd did not accept gifts by participating in a VIP loan program with disgraced mortgage lender Countrywide Financial.

Here is the letter the Committee sent to Sen Conrad. Apprarently, he just needs to "exercise more vigilance" in anticipating the possible appearance of impropriety..

Correcting the Record on Iran

I think that we've missed the boat in understanding the uprising in Iran. It's NOT about one candidate winning over another. What it *is* about is the rejection of the pre-selected, Mullah-approved palette of choices in favor of truly free and open elections for Iranian Government.

As always, our amoral President continues to exude weakness both with the meager words he chooses to utter as well as the silence he so often resorts to.

The idea of "Mr Ahmedinajad, tear down this wall!" coming from the mouth of the current American President seems to me impossibly farfetched.

The Relationship of a State to its People..

This piece should get you thinking!

What about? Frankly, about whether our nation can survive. History is littered with the remnants of formerly great nations that headed down the path Statism.

Mark Steyn does a brilliant job of documenting how a distortion of the relationship between the state and the people inevitably infantilizes us all and leads to a nation in bondage.

With a little help...

I'd always wondered exactly what were the lyrics to this classic Joe Cocker tune.