“Third party payer systems are always inflationary.” Steyn points to one of those truisms Obama seems to have never understood. Subsidiarity is another. Someone from Romney’s background knows that – knows efficiency, responsibility, community – with every fiber of his being because this is his life – as Shannon so solidly summarizes below. It isn’t just that Obama doesn’t take care of his blood relations and Romney has long stretched that responsibility out to increasingly large communities. He knows what fulfills him and what works. He probably also thinks it is good. What are we doing with a president that can’t even imagine such responsibilities?
I want to hear my president talk and to have a sense that he doesn’t see
• a dead ambassador dragged through the streets as a “bump” in the road
• a president’s responsibility as filming ads to distance his administration from a private citizen’s expression – and then instructs the government to subsidize an ad buy in another country?
• his second term as one in which, as he tells Russia, he need no longer consider voters’ opinions
• “noise” that needs to be discounted coming from another nation’s leader, a relationship he desribes with the cattiness one might expect from the women of “The View” – a program on which he finds himself considerably more at ease than with his Jobs Council or his Foreign Relations advisors
• his appropriate milieu as raising funds with a sorry crony capitalist like Corzine or a misogynistic and violent rapper or a television personality known for spewing misogynist nonsense
• his appropriate audience as Whoopi Goldberg rather than the leaders of countries moving toward economic catastrophes, on fire, or facing an existential threat
• his role as increasing the cost of gas, oil, and coal – ignoring (either from stupidity or . . .? what?) the remarkable increase in life expectancy and health, as well as leisure, of the lower classes (as well as the wealthy) that energy and innovation have produced in the last three hundred years
• his role as developing cradle to grave assistance programs, with built-in committees to make decisions about the most important and most trivial aspects of our lives
• his role as backing an Attorney General who sees himself as protecting “his people” rather than fair elections, for purposes still hazy endangers border guards and hundreds of foreign nationals.
I can go on. Romney may not be sufficiently conservative, but surely he (or, indeed, any sane person) won’t close the coal mines, the refineries, the pipeline from Canada. My sense is that Romney sees as well or better than most of us the importance of energy, of small businesses, of open government, of free markets. But, if I’m wrong and he doesn’t, surely he doesn’t share Obama’s disdain for technology, for history, for family, for free commerce, for faith. Indeed, few do. But a large number of people gathered around Obama & populating the bureaucracies of Washington do.
I want Mitt Romney to win. I get the feeling he doesn’t need to be loved; he’s certainly not a man of broad and extroverted gestures, he’s more stiff than beguiling. But he doesn’t sneer and he does radiate an earnestness. Perhaps he won’t take the risks necessary to right our clearly sinking ship. But he’s in a business that took risks. Of the people who’ve lately contemplated the presidency, he has the most experience cutting away deadwood to revive the living tree within – and sometimes, of course, there is no life left and the whole thing needs to head for the sawmill. That may be true of the EPA, the Department of Education. . . . He did such surgery on the companies Bain took over. If Obama sees it as a problem that Bain led to smaller workforces, that is the very skill we most need.
Ryan inspires, but then he’s spent his life understanding how important votes are. It isn’t just that he’s young – I’d have voted for him for president, sure. But I think we really do need the kind of experience business gives. I may be wrong – Romney may try to do what he did and it may not work. We always say we need an outsider – and often they can’t do it. They don’t know how. But if a legislator from the House joins a man of Romney’s experience, perhaps – perhaps – changes can come. We’ll see if they win. One thing I’m sure of: Obama wasn’t an outsider – he was the quintessential political insider, so far inside he hadn’t spent much time needing to press the flesh. He just was an insider of a kind we’ve known about throughout history, but assumed the free press would uncover and the Constitution restrain. Neither happened – and how much worse could another four years be?
“Obama sees it as a problem that Bain led to smaller workforces, that is the very skill we most need most”
Yes Ginny, but only if, to some greater extent, “we” are taxpayers (or say “contributors”) rather than recipients of the many forms of government payments and largesse. Taxpayers as stockholders isn’t a perfect analogy but it’s a pretty good one.
The above being so, only a philistine (collecting one from of largesse or another) would object to a CEO, presidential candidate on the grounds that he rescued failing organizations by making them survive by whatever means, including cutting payroll. Survival and prosperity is better than what amounts to unionist objections.
Obama is an apostate. He was born a muslim because his father was a muslim. That makes him a muslim in the eyes Sharia Law. He renounced Islam and became a Christian. That makes him an apostate. Sharia law outlaws apostacy. Middle East Muslims may not tollerate an apostate.
By electing an apostate to be America’s president, we have insulted all Islam in the Middle East.
Furthermore Obama has come out in favor of same sex marriage and supports gays everywhere in the world, even in Moslem countries. But Sharia law outlaws gays.
No wonder the people in muslim dominated countries attack our embassies. Americans have grossly insulted every one of these muslims by electing Obama and Obama wants these muslims to grant gays full rights.
On the other hand, maybe Obama thinks it is our duty to force tolleration down their throats.
“By electing an apostate to be America’s president, we have insulted all Islam in the Middle East.”
Exactly ! How in the world did anyone think electing Obama would improve relations with the Muslim world ? I’ll tell you. People who know nothing about Islam or geography think so.
I have been impressed all along with the phony aspect of Obama. He criticized Americans for not speaking other languages, but he does not speak any and thinks Austrians speak “Austrian.”
I have seen repeated instances of his ignorance. I was very unhappy with Bush’s ignorance of the name of Mushareff when he was running but the media pounced on him for it. They ignored a number of Obama gaffes, some pretty serious. His ignorance of energy policy is staggering. Even Kevin Rudd, a very green lefty when elected PM of Australia, reversed course on energy when a few wise men told him the facts after Labour’s election. Obama’s ignorance is invincible.
God help us if he is elected again. Fortunately, I am getting optimistic about Romney lately.
Mike,
What is making you optimistic? (She said, grasping for straws.) There seem to be some awfully strange things going on – the # at Obama rallies, for instance. And I have this confidence that America doesn’t like a president who goes to bed while an ambassador is being (tortured?) & murdered.
But the polls and Intrade seem quite depressing. And, really, will we not go crazy with another 2 years of Reid and the disappearing budgets?
This sloppy post came from sitting in my office and contemplating how crazy a country would have to be to elect a guy that’s shutting down the coal mines, stopping the pipeline, discouraging drilling in the Gulf (BP’s notoriously bad practices should not have meant other, competent companies – oh, well, we all know the drill . . .) I’m forcing my students to do a paper on Fogel – it may be a mistake, they may be bored out of their skulls, but I do want them to recognize that energy and industry have made their lives better. I don’t think they know how I vote, but perhaps, speaking of connecting dots, they may realize long, healthy lives trump about anything (other than freedom) else. And they will get neither freedom nor health with this crew.
With apologies to Robert.
• a dead ambassador dragged through the streets as a “bump” in the road
Yup and now the outraged people have chased off the perps at some cost to themselves. Exactly who were you going to attack over this?
• a president’s responsibility as filming ads to distance his administration from a private citizen’s expression – and then instructs the government to subsidize an ad buy in another country?
I dunno, this the Muslim insult film you all hold so dear? In Canada we don’t have your problem with liberty so we outlawed hate speech. Not ideal but another way to deal with this kind of stuff.
• his second term as one in which, as he tells Russia, he need no longer consider voters’ opinions
Well it’s simple logic. If he is elected he can do reasonable things as he won’t be running again. With the extreme polarization you have and the crippled congress it is very difficult to do anything.
• “noise” that needs to be discounted coming from another nation’s leader, a relationship he desribes with the cattiness one might expect from the women of “The View” – a program on which he finds himself considerably more at ease than with his Jobs Council or his Foreign Relations advisors
Well Netanyahu will not stop trying to railroad Obama. I think noise is quite polite.
• his appropriate milieu as raising funds with a sorry crony capitalist like Corzine or a misogynistic and violent rapper or a television personality known for spewing misogynist nonsense
The characters backing Romney are far more unsavory.
• his appropriate audience as Whoopi Goldberg rather than the leaders of countries moving toward economic catastrophes, on fire, or facing an existential threat
Unsure what this means. Something wrong?
• his role as increasing the cost of gas, oil, and coal – ignoring (either from stupidity or . . .? what?) the remarkable increase in life expectancy and health, as well as leisure, of the lower classes (as well as the wealthy) that energy and innovation have produced in the last three hundred years
You cannot blame the price of oil on Obama. Bernanke to some extent but it’s a dwindling resource.
• his role as developing cradle to grave assistance programs, with built-in committees to make decisions about the most important and most trivial aspects of our lives
Somebody has to run any program. All the assistance programs have to be closely monitored and some require expert opinion, doctors have a lot to do with medical programs, social workers for assistance programs.
• his role as backing an Attorney General who sees himself as protecting “his people” rather than fair elections, for purposes still hazy endangers border guards and hundreds of foreign nationals.
There has been shown to be vanishingly small amounts of real voter fraud. The push to disenfranchise the weak is quite pitiful. Yup that was dumb, the stupid sting trick.
“Americans have grossly insulted every one of these muslims by electing Obama”
Which is why we must reelect him, or else we would send a message to the world that we are craven appeasers who crumble at at the mere hint of Muslim displeasure with us.
Ginny…”a paper on Fogel”
Who’s Fogel?
“But the polls and Intrade seem quite depressing. And, really, will we not go crazy with another 2 years of Reid and the disappearing budgets?”
@Ginny it isn’t all bad, the Rs will likely win the Senate and House so the zero will have to do some major league compromising. To me it is all about his SCOTUS nominations anyway and having the Senate in the R column will help derail crazy nominees sooner rather than later.
Dan, look at the Intrade for the Senate. Does that cheer you? Not that I don’t like your attitude.
David, I wrote a long response with links (probably too many) to Fogel and it has disappeared until properly moderated.
[Sorry, it now appears below. Jonathan]
Sorry. The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700-2100. Fogel’s page. Wikipedia. Chicago. Since I have no background in economics and his tables alone are too complex for my non-graphic mind, I just mined it for the generalizations. I figured I’d heard about it from you or someone else on this site – this isn’t my normal kind of reading. But it is incredibly eye-opening (I started giving it as gifts because it was so cheerful).
As I pointed out to my students, one of his facts would be that in 1900 – not much more than a century ago and after my grandparents would have been born – around a third of them would have died before they were five, now it’s about one in every three classes. And my chances of being dead would be about 4 out of 5, rather than the current 18%. If you want to be thankful for medicine, the industrial revolution, modern farming methods – and we should be thankful for all these – that book will do it. And if you want to alter your thinking from a zero sum game, the movement in equality he describes will cheer.
His discussion is of the remarkable changes in length of life, productivity and health during life, quality of life in terms of leisure of this period – across cultures and leading to a greater equalilty between classes. It is remarkably optimistic – he believes changes can be greater in the future. Whatever you want to do with your time, having more of it be yours and less of it hauling coal and digging vegetables is likely to be a plus.
I gave my students some passages to work with to demonstrate their ability to integrate into another’s work into their own paragraph or brief argument, formatting and giving credit appropriately. Since most such exercises from our books are about inequality, women’s oppression, etc., I thought some work from a Chicagoboyz perspective might at least not be so depressing. I don’t know if the content of work in such exercises sinks in – most of the time I hope not; today, I hope so.
Dan,
I’m sure you’ve seen the Senate #’s on Intrade.
“the Rs will likely win the Senate”
Actually, that has gone from being the received wisdom regarding this election, to a somewhat iffy prospect, to now being quite unlikely. The latest numbers and predictions I have seen peg the probability of a GOP takeover as being LOWER than the probability that the Dems will actually gain a seat or two. Both of those are low probabilities – the most likely outcome today is a wash, or a GOP pickup of one or two seats, leaving the Dems in control.
“doctors have a lot to do with medical programs,”
This alone, I choose not to mention your other comments, proves to me that you know nothing you don’t read in the New York Times. Aside from academics who have no responsibility for the economics of their careers, and a few lefties, doctors are universally opposed to Obamacare. Many of the older ones, who can afford it, plan to retire or shift to cash practices soon. In California, a couple of years ago, no doctor group practice was solvent. That is why they are all selling out (in several ways) to hospitals.
Obamacare cannot work without harsh rationing. That is why the IPAB is sheltered from any oversight.
Canada has now acknowledged the failure of its single payer model and private care is again legal.
For example.
“Aside from academics who have no responsibility for the economics of their careers, and a few lefties, doctors are universally opposed to Obamacare.”
This is an exaggeration that extends to being an untruth.
FYI, the American Medical Association, the American College of Physicians, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American College of Surgeons, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Society of Anesthesiologists, the American Osteopathic Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American College of Cardiology all endorsed Obamacare.
And on the more general question of what kind of a system do doctors support, around 75% in a 2009 poll expressed support for either a purely public system (10%) or a mix of private and public (63% – i.e. the “public option” that Obama did not go along with).
Citation, Joe?
Poll link
An NPR story, “…. It was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a health care research organization that favors health reform.”
It would be helpful, not to mention logical and even-handed, if NPR (or any news organization) provided a copy or link to a copy of any poll it writes about.
Dick Morris tells the whole story of this election in this article and this video. (Yes, Morris is a partisan, but he’s honest. He told everyone early on the Republicans were going to lose big in ’06.) ALL the polls agree that, if BO’s core voters (Blacks, Latinos, college students, unmarried women) turn out in anything approaching the numbers they turned out in ’08, then BO will win. If, however, they turn out in line with their historic turn out numbers, Romney will win. It’s as simple as that. This, of course, means that Romney was essentially correct in his 47% remark. If those most dependent on government turn out big, BO wins because, for obvious reason, and, as the polls show, Romney will never get their votes. It’s clear BO understands the facts of life of this election. This is why, among other things, he goes on THE VIEW and Letterman, instead of meeting with Netanyahu.
Now, I wish BO’s core voters thought differently,but it’s not entirely their fault, given over forty years of Leftist cultivation of a culture of dependency and anti-American exceptionalism. Returning to the question of “break up” songs, they are like Tammy Wynette in this song. Like Tammy, BO’s voters are afraid they can’t make it on their own because for over forty years they’ve been told by the Lefties, the people who pretend to be their friends, they can’t. It’s hard to end an abusive relationship.
I’ve maintained for a long time that this election, more than any other in recent history, will show the score, i.e. will show what kind of country the USA is now and will be in the future. If BO wins, we will have reached Tocqueville’s tipping point (DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA, Book Four, Chapter 6). At best, we will then go the way of European socialism with its inevitable crash and burn. If Romney wins, we will have a chance to pull back from the brink. Still, it will only be a chance with a lot of hard work left to do. Like the boy in the parable, the baby hawk, or, more aptly, the eaglet, is in our hands.
P.S.: IMHO, the INTRADERS are being stampeded by the lamestream media hype. Almost all INTRADERS are non-Americans; so, they don’t understand that who turns out almost always decides American elections. People in America, much more than in Europe, usually tend to vote by using or not using their feet to go to the polling place. (BTW, I think one of the reasons for this is that our elections are held on a weekday, while European elections are generally held on Sundays. Early voting may change this, but it’s still bother to vote early, since, usually, you can only do it on a weekday.)
But where did you get the “endorsement” of the numerous physician’s associations you mention?
“FYI, the American Medical Association, the American College of Physicians, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the American College of Surgeons, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Society of Anesthesiologists, the American Osteopathic Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American College of Cardiology all endorsed Obamacare.”
You could not have demonstrated how clueless you are any more clearly. These groups, and you forgot the hospital association and the insurance companies, are all planning to benefit from Obamacare. The AMA has few members whose membership is not paid for by their employer. I was once a delegate and quit the organization after attending some national meetings. The scientific meetings were OK but the business meetings was where you saw the real AMA. The College, of which I am a member, is run by academics. The two young women who attended that phony Obama “doctor” support session in 2009 were employees of a hospital in Kansas and newly graduated. The rest of the attendees were not doctors; they just handed out white coats.
There is a physician-only web site that would be useful for you to see but it’s not available to non-members. The comments would be an education for you, although I doubt you would profit from it.
The American College of Physicians, who you also missed, has now changed the code of ethics and now promotes “parsimonious care” as the optimal. Social Justice has taken over all the medical associations that are rent seekers. The AMA is the worst. Who do you think write the new Medicare fee schedule in 1992 ? The “Resource Based Relative Value Scale” was authored by a Harvard professor and the AMA. They sold the idea to the ACP on the premise that it would pay internists more than surgeons. A cardiologist I used to know said it best. “I want to see cardiac surgeons driving Chevrolets when cardiologists are driving Mercedes.”
Of course the internists were fooled and their fees never went up; the surgeons just went down. The dopes the AMA put on the consultant panel knew so little that the RBRVS started out paying more for opening the pericardium than for open heart surgery. The “experts” from the AMA which has always been a GP organization, didn’t know the difference. The Thoracic surgery society hired Abt and Associates to review the data and redesign the RBRVS for thoracic surgery. It was a mess but typical of the AMA, which fools think controls American medicine.
“Canada has now acknowledged the failure of its single payer model and private care is again legal.”
Well, not really. From the website you linked:
“Note: All medically necessary diagnostic and treatment services that may be provided by the physicians practicing from the Copeman Healthcare Centre – or from your family doctor – are paid for by the government under your provincial health insurance plan. The fees charged by Copeman Healthcare are strictly for non-insured health services.”
We do like our healthcare. There is no chance we will vote for a party that does not support it. Even our present right wing government will only allow additional care to charge outside of it.
Pengun, as usual, you missed the point. ANY private care was banned until the past couple of years. Now it is permitted. In fact, that could be a much better model for Medicare. Allow some services to be paid by Medicare and others to be optional and paid by the patient. That is currently not allowed here so doctors are dropping Medicare which pays slowly and very little.
Mike the original point was that medical personnel are involved in deciding on medical assistance.
The Canadian public has allowed, with the most right wing government we have perhaps ever had, to let medical practitioners charge for non essential services. The people that would use such services used to just go to the US, now they can get limited service in Canada. It does not threaten our medical setup in any real way.