Orlando's moonbat congressman, Alan Grayson, wants to throw even more money down the Medicare rat hole:

"Congressman Alan Grayson, D-Fla., today introduced a bill (H.R. 4789) which would give the option to buy into Medicare to every citizen of the United States. The Public Option Act, also known as the Medicare You Can Buy Into Act, would open up the Medicare network to anyone who can pay for it.

Congressman Grayson said, Obviously, America wants and needs more competition in health coverage, and a public option offers that. But its just as important that we offer people not just another choice, but another kind of choice. A lot of people don't want to be at the mercy of greedy insurance companies that will make money by denying them the care that they need to stay healthy, or to stay alive. We deserve to have a real alternative."

Well, it's easy to compete when you can operate at a perpetual, taxpayer funded loss and are making all the rules. Medicare is not only broke, but suffers from levels of fraud that would put any private insurer out of business, which is the ultimate goal of all these harebrained schemes.

Additionally, the government already accounts for around 50% of the health care system and the losses from its underpayments to doctors and hospitals are shifted to private insurers.


And you would think an industry that's so "greedy" would do a better job of ripping us off:

"According to the most recent Fortune 500 rankings, health insurers are not even among the top-30 United States industries in profit-margin. Health insurers rank 35th, with a profit-margin of just 2.2 percent — less than one-fifth the profit-margin of railroads. None of the ten largest American health insurers made profits of more than 4.5 percent, and two of them lost money. Health insurers’ collective profit-margin is less than one-eighth that of drug companies and less than one-seventh that of companies that sell medical products or equipment. It’s also less than that of medical facilities. Yet when was the last time you heard President Obama rail against greedy hospitals?

The combined profits of America’s ten largest health insurers are $8.3 billion. That’s less than two-thirds of the profits of Wal-Mart alone, less than half of the profits of General Electric alone, and less than one-seventh of what Medicare loses each year to fraud. Health insurers collectively have one-eighth the profit-margin of McDonald’s or Coke, one-ninth that of eBay, and one-fifteenth that of Merck."

Moving more people into a government system will shift more costs to a dwindling private insurance pool, resulting in even higher premiums or destructive losses that will eventually kill the private health care industry. With no one left to stick with these inefficiencies, they will paid for with higher taxes and reduced or denied care.

Then we are left no choice and have to rely on the tender mercies of the anointed in government who proclaim themselves immune from ordinary human failings, as they are possessed with unique wisdom and virtue.

The Conservation of Liberty

Another excellent essay from Doctor Zero. Here's the money quote:

Statists mistakenly believe the economy is a zero-sum game, in which the prosperity of one means the poverty of others. They hold this belief so tightly that it leaves them incapable of processing evidence to the contrary. Even liberals with advanced economic degrees are reduced to babbling idiots in the face of increased Treasury revenue through reduced tax rates. There is one crucial ingredient to prosperity whose supply is fixed: freedom. It is not a “renewable resource.” Every power seized by the government diminishes it. Each tax and subsidy melts down more of our liberty, to be forged into more pipes for a monstrous system of political plumbing. The ominous leaking and shuddering of those pipes heralds the utter failure and collapse of the system.

There’s nothing paranoid about pointing this out. The Tea Party critique of banks and the Fed has far too much documentation to be dismissed as a “conspiracy theory.” The assumption that government is “pure and virtuous” has led us to ruin. The truth is that once it reaches a certain size, it becomes all but incapable of virtuous action. The precious commodity of liberty has diminished so much that any further extraction of it becomes agonizing – a matter of brute force instead of persuasion. You can ask a rich man for a dollar, but you must take it from a pauper. We have all become impoverished in the coin of freedom, and in order to make his health-care scheme work, the President demands our bottom dollar.

California global warming law may lead to job losses, report says

May lead to job losses? Look, you don't have to be an economist to understand that channeling money from efficient to inefficient uses is going to have negative consequences:

"The state's nonpartisan legislative analyst's office examined 2008 economic modeling by the California Air Resources Board and concluded that it "may overstate the number of jobs" attributable to future implementation of the 2006 climate law..."

Anyone can make a predictive model say anything they want by changing the underlying assumptions to produce the desired result. But the real purpose of these predictions by the so-called smart people is to convince us to suspend common sense.

"The report came in response to a query from Sen. Dave Cogdill (R-Modesto), a critic of the law. Released by Cogdill on Monday, the report emphasized that job effects are "difficult to accurately predict . . . with gains in some occupations (including so-called green jobs) and losses in others (primarily involving fossil fuel-related energy production)."

Gee, no kidding. If we were to dictate that all farmers stop using tractors and go back to horse drawn plows, there would certainly be an increase in jobs for blacksmiths and plow makers, along with a decrease in energy usage. But farming will now be less efficient and productive as it will take more time and money to grow the same amount of produce. That has the net effect of killing jobs as capital that would have been used by the farmer to save, invest and spend in the larger economy is now being wasted on an inefficient technology.

The same holds true for alternative energy. Wind and solar are grossly inefficient as compared to fossil fuels, and the free market would never use them without a combination of government force and taxpayer funded subsidies. The only real increase in jobs is for the non productive bureaucrats that will now be needed to administer these stupid schemes.

"Asked about the legislative analyst report, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger cited new solar facilities and biofuel plants in the state and said, "I'm absolutely convinced that AB 32 will create more jobs than kill jobs."

I'm sure you are, Arnold. That's why you should have stuck to acting.

Health Care a Right?

With his usual clarity, Walter Williams breaks down the real difference between negative and positive rights:

"...Say a person, let's call him Harry, suffers from diabetes and he has no means to pay a laboratory for blood work, a doctor for treatment and a pharmacy for medication. Does Harry have a right to XYZ lab's and Dr. Jones' services and a prescription from a pharmacist? And, if those services are not provided without charge, should Harry be able to call for criminal sanctions against those persons for violating his rights to health care?

You say, "Williams, that would come very close to slavery if one person had the right to force someone to serve him without pay." You're right.

Suppose instead of Harry being able to force a lab, doctor and pharmacy to provide services without pay, Congress uses its taxing power to take a couple of hundred dollars out of the paycheck of some American to give to Harry so that he could pay the lab, doctor and pharmacist. Would there be any difference in principle, namely forcibly using one person to serve the purposes of another?...

...True rights, such as those in our Constitution, or those considered to be natural or human rights, exist simultaneously among people. That means exercise of a right by one person does not diminish those held by another. In other words, my rights to speech or travel impose no obligations on another except those of noninterference.

If we apply ideas behind rights to health care to my rights to speech or travel, my free speech rights would require government-imposed obligations on others to provide me with an auditorium, television studio or radio station. My right to travel freely would require government-imposed obligations on others to provide me with airfare and hotel accommodations.

For Congress to guarantee a right to health care, or any other good or service, whether a person can afford it or not, it must diminish someone else's rights, namely their rights to their earnings...

America's Richest Counties That You Pay For

Forbes has ranked the 25 richest counties based on median household incomes for 2008, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Browse through the slide show and you will notice that 12 of the 25 are Virginia and Maryland counties surrounding Washington DC. Those two states have a combined population of around 13 million people in a country of over 300 million.

This illustrates just how much money is now inefficiently spent by industries, interest groups and assorted parasites to either protect themselves, gain advantages or just get taxpayer cash.

The federal government produces nothing and everything of value it has is artificially created through the force of law. Money spent for tribute to an overbearing government is money that wont be used to create jobs and wealth in the private sector. Instead it is used to enhance the wealth and power of the governing elite at the expense of the taxpayer. In short, we are funding the destruction of our liberties and our economic well being.

Obama’s Bank Tax – The Victim is YOU!

This isn't news to anyone with a rudimentary understanding of economics, which is why most Americans don't get it:

"As ABC News reports, the CBO wrote a letter yesterday to Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) in which it highlighted that the American people will bear the true brunt of the President’s proposal. From the CBO’s letter:

[T]he ultimate cost of a tax or fee is not necessarily borne by the entity that writes the check to the government.

The cost of the proposed fee would ultimately be borne to varying degrees by an institution’s customers, employees, and investors.

Customers would probably absorb some of the cost in the form of higher borrowing rates and other charges, although competition from financial institutions not subject to the fee would limit the extent to which the cost could be passed to borrowers. Employees might bear some of the cost by accepting some reduction in their compensation, including income from bonuses, if they did not have better employment opportunities available to them. Investors could bear some of the cost in the form of lower prices of their stock if the fee reduced the institution’s future profits.

Obama promised not to raise taxes on anyone not guilty of the sin of earning more than $250,000. But what all too many don't realize is that any tax on anyone is ultimately a tax on everyone.

NY seeks 'fat tax' on sodas

UK Telegraph...State Health Commissioner Richard Daines took up the issue Monday, speaking of a "golden opportunity" to create the tax.

"The dramatic underpricing of sugar-sweetened beverages, their widespread availability, and the ceaseless marketing of these products constitute a stumbling block to good health and are a clear and present danger to the future of our children," Daines said.

Now that the statists have squeezed as much regulation and taxes out of tobacco that they can, they are now turning their attention to individual behaviors that will provide even bigger sources of power and money. New York is not alone as this latest liberty sapping scheme is being considered by several other states, and at the federal level.

It would be too easy to just say " I told you so" to all the people who have enthusiastically supported the confiscation of the rights and money of smokers. As predicted, the same faulty premise that's been used to trample the rights of a minority is now being used against the majority:

"Health experts blame insufficient exercise, but also the habit, particularly among the poor, of washing down fast food with extra-sugary soda.

The crisis has fed ballooning public costs - $7.6 billion (£5 billion) in annual obesity-related medical bills in New York state alone - much of which are covered by taxpayers.

Tax proponents say that soft drinks should be treated like tobacco so that the government can effectively price people away from their bad habits."

Let's break this down: The taxpayers fund public health costs, therefore the taxpayers should pay more in order to bring down those costs. As surreal as that logic is, it is identical to the rationale that's been used against taxpaying smokers. But now the tyranny of the majority is being used by the government against the majority itself. How do you now argue against the same crazy rationale that you once supported?

New York's most notorious lifestyle fascist has weighed in:

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, well known for his anti-smoking crusade in the city, also touted the idea in his weekly radio address Sunday.

"In these tough economic times, easy fixes to our problems are hard to come by," he said. "But the soda tax is a fix that just makes sense. It would save lives, it would cut rising health costs."

It wont do any of those things, just as the jihad against smoking has failed to produce similar results. But notice how Bloomberg views taking more money from the citizenry as an "easy fix" for the government's fiscal problems. In "tough economic times", the first thing to be fed is the insatiable state and that will somehow help the individuals that the food is being stolen from.

Trains To Nowhere

Reason TV adds more fuel to the argument against high speed rail:

1. The lowball costs. CNN estimates that delivering on the plan could cost well over $500 billion and take decades to build, all while failing to cover much of the country at all. Internationally, only two high-speed rail lines have recouped their capital costs and all depend on huge subsidies to stay in operation.

2. The supposed benefits. "We're gonna be taking cars off of congested highways and reducing carbon emissions," says Vice President Joe Biden, an ardent rail booster. But most traffic jams are urban, not inter-city, so high-speed rail between metro areas will have no effect on your daily commute. And when construction costs are factored in, high-speed rail "may yield only marginal net greenhouse gas reductions," say UC-Berkeley researchers.

3. The delusional Amtrak example. Obama and Biden look to Amtrak as precedent, but since its founding in 1971, the nation's passenger rail system has sucked up almost $35 billion in subsidies and, says The Washington Post's Robert J. Samuelson, "a typical trip is subsidized by about $50." About 140 million Americans shlep to work every day, while Amtrak carries just 78,000 passengers. There's no reason to think that high-speed rail will pump up those numbers, though there's every reason to believe its costs will grow and grow.

Meanwhile, the St. Pete Times reports that Florida's share of this boondoggle is facing an uphill battle. Let's hope so:

What's less certain is whether officials will be able to keep the project's money, public support and construction on track to start running trains in 2015, its architects said Thursday during a national rail conference in Orlando...

President Barack Obama promised $1.25 billion in stimulus money to start the project — about half of what the state requested...

"We're going to need full funding for the project or we can't move forward," said Nazih Haddad, chief operating officer of the Florida Rail Enterprise, who discounted the chances of lining up private construction financing given the economy.

Does anyone wonder why no private, for profit concern has ever proposed a project like this? They haven't because it makes no financial sense, which makes the government - and taxpayers - the suckers of last resort.

Based on 2.1 million riders a year with $20 average fares, the Florida Department of Transportation says high speed rail's revenue could pay for its costs. However, even Siemens and other possible contractors are skeptical of those numbers.

So even the beneficiaries of this taxpayer funded white elephant are questioning the government's rosy projections. This insanity needs to be stopped now.

Multi Family and Household Formation

From the NAR:

In the broad landscape of commercial properties, the multifamily sector has fared comparatively better. Demand for space was modest but positive. Net absorption closed the year at 105,458 units. Yet, there are factors which caused adverse impacts in the sector.

The Mutli-Family sector almost always fares better in a downturn. Companies downsize and disappear, people generally don't. Everyone needs someplace to live and an increasing population softens the blow to these investments:

Household formation seems to be one of those factors. More precisely, the prolonged recession of the past two years has taken a toll on the number of people starting a household. Based on household formation data from the Census Bureau, the 10-year average of new households being formed has been 1.3 million per year. However, this number decreased significantly in both 2008 and 2009. From a decade-high of 3.5 million in 2001, household formation dropped to 772,000 in 2008 and only 398,000 in 2009.

That's actually the bright spot of pent up demand. A household is any separate housing space occupied by one or more people. The drop in household formation means there's a lot of people living together who would rather not, such as the adult child living in your basement. If the economy improves in any meaningful way, that log jam will begin to break and cause a spike in demand for rentals and purchases.

That's a big if, of course and the expected rise in interest rates along with the economy strangling uncertainty coming out of Washington could keep the markets going sideways for a while.

For what it's worth, Warren Buffet thinks the Real Estate market will start to rebound in 2011. OK. It's as good a guess as any, if not paricularly original.

List: Cities Where The Recession Is Easing

From Forbes: I'm not a big fan of these economic lists because they're usually based on very rudimentary information. This one is interesting however, because four of the ten cities are in Texas, the most fiscally sane of our large states:

"To find out which metros were doing best in the economic downturn, Forbes used data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on job growth and unemployment, Moody's Economy.com's predictions for how much jobs would grow in three years, as well as their estimate of each metro's Gross Domestic Product"

Fannie to U.S.: We need another $15.3 billion

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Battered by the housing crisis, mortgage finance company Fannie Mae said Friday that it needs another $15.3 billion in bailout money from the federal government.

Fannie Mae (FNM, Fortune 500), which is controlled by the government, reported a fourth-quarter loss of $16.3 billion, including $1.2 billion in dividend payments to the Treasury Department. This is down from $25.2 billion a year earlier and $19.8 billion in the third quarter.

Dividends? Since when does a company distribute profits when it loses money? It does when the Federal government owns it and wants to show phony returns on a losing investment. Then it turns around and gives Fannie more borrowed taxpayer money to alleviate losses partially caused by the dividend payments themselves.

Would this be a crime if a private company did this. Why, yes. Yes it would. This is like having a Ponzi scheme with one investor who has agreed to rip off himself.

DEMINT: White House land grab

Democrat Presidents love to pay off their enviro-marxist allies by confiscating private property and taking it out of productive use:

"A secret administration memo has surfaced revealing plans for the federal government to seize more than 10 million acres from Montana to New Mexico, halting job- creating activities like ranching, forestry, mining and energy development. Worse, this land grab would dry up tax revenue that's essential for funding schools, firehouses and community centers...

It says all kinds of animals would be better off by doing so, like the coyotes, badgers, grouse, chickens and lizards. But giving the chickens more room to roost is no reason for the government to override states' rights...

Using the Antiquities Act, President Carter locked up more land than any other president had before him, taking more than 50 million acres in Alaska despite strong opposition from the state.

One of the monuments President Clinton created was the Grande Staircase-Escalante in Utah, where 135,000 acres of land were leased for oil and gas and about 65,000 barrels of oil were produced each year from five active wells. But, President Clinton put an end to developing those resources.

President Obama could do the same in other energy-rich places unless Congress takes action. At least 13.5 million acres are already on his Department of Interior's real estate shopping list...

This is a nationwide problem. The government currently owns 650 million acres, or 29 percent of the nation's total land..."MORE at the Washington Times

Idling almost a third of a nations land and its resources for dubious environmental purposes is not only economic suicide but is a gross violation of private property rights. But the statists don't believe that any property is or should be private since it produces private wealth and independence that reduces state power. Environmental concerns are merely a vehicle for the larger purpose of more government control of the nation's economy.

Florida's Public Option For Homeowners

A national public option in health insurance would work out in much the same way:

"Unlike private companies, when the government can't cover its costs, it does not go out of business; it just finds ways to tax someone else. So it is for Citizens. Unlike real businesses, Citizens' financial shortfalls are made up by charging "assessments" to all of the remaining homeowners, auto, boat, motorcycle and business insurance policies - including policies of competing private insurance. The bottom line is that well-managed and financially solvent private companies cannot compete against state-sanctioned and subsidized operations.

It means a slow death of the private insurance market, but a painful and costly one for consumers. As Citizens grows and charges the customers of private insurers for its financial misdeeds, more customers leave for Citizens, which pushes private insurers out of the market and increases the market share of Citizens.

It's an endless cycle. It's the public option. But the scheme will soon leave Citizens fewer privately served citizens to level its assessments upon and leave Citizens as the state's high-cost monopoly...More from TBO.com

The notion that government can fairly and efficiently compete with the private sector in any business is as preposterous as allowing a home sports team provide its own referees, change the rules at any time and take points away from the opposition when they fall behind.

After one-year blip, Florida's population to grow again

Florida's population should rebound this year from its first loss in more than half a century, according to new estimates from the University of Florida.

The state is expected to add about 23,000 residents between April 1, 2009, and April 1, 2010, following a loss of almost 57,000 residents the previous year, UF's Bureau of Economic and Business Research reported Tuesday.

They are probably right on this one. As more people find ways to unload their homes and escape overbearing and failing states e.g. New York, Michigan, California - the long term domestic migration trends will continue. The good news for Florida is that most of these people are the productive ones who are fed up with paying the bills for insatiable state governments and their union allies.

Another American Media Failure

Ed Morrissey at Hot Air has highlighted the Dinosaur Media's abject failure to report on the biggest and most expensive fraud in human history. He also documents and links to much of the damning evidence that continues to mount and will eventually collapse this global conspiracy:

• University of East Anglia e-mails that exposed data destruction, attempts to hide contradictory data, and conspiracies to sabotage the work of skeptical scientists
• The East Anglia CRU threw out their raw data, undermining any effort to check their work
• NOAA/GHCN “homogenization” falsified climate declines into increases
• East Anglia CRU’s below-standard computer modeling
• No rise in atmospheric carbon fraction over the last 150 years: University of Bristol
• IPCC withdraws claim that AGW will wipe out Himalayan glaciers by 2035
• IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri knew Himalayan claim was bogus for months before exposure
• Amazonian rainforest conclusions not based on scientific research but on advocacy group claims
• Mountain glacier claims based on unsubstantiated student theses and anecdotes from climber magazine
• Search of IPCC report footnotes exposes ten more student dissertations presented as peer-reviewed research
• Medieval Warming Period temperatures may have been global, undermining entire AGW case
• Measurements used for AGW case were influenced by urbanization, poor location, bad data sets
• African-crop claims exposed as false
• IPCC researchers excluded Southern Hemisphere data to exaggerate effects of warming on hurricanes
• Hurricane claims further exposed as false by actual peer-reviewed research — including by some AGW researchers
• Major scientific group concludes IPCC-linked researchers “complicit in the alleged scientific malpractices“

None of these — none — were exposed by a major American media outlet.

Chicago Gun Ban Goes to The Supreme Court

Oral arguments began today to decide whether the Second Amendment applies to the states. The plaintiff, Otis McDonald, sums up his case:

"There's more guns coming into this city than the police can take away from them. So if I've got a gun, and if others have guns in their homes to protect themselves, then that's one thing that police would have to worry about less." "It makes me feel like the city cares more for the thugs than they do me, and I'm the one paying taxes,"

Indeed. No matter how many arcane legal arguments are made, Mr. McDonald understands that his inalienable rights to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness are meaningless without the means to defend them.

In 1982, Chicago imposed the strict gun ordinance to help combat rampant gang and firearm violence that plagued the city.

In court papers, lawyers for the city of Chicago pointed out that 402 of the 412 firearm homicides occurred with the use of handguns in 2008.

Right, and those crimes were committed by criminals who don't give a rip about gun laws. The only thing Chicago's gun laws have succeeded in doing is to prevent law abiding citizens from defending themselves and their community.

Government's Not The Problem, It's Us

More pearls of wisdom from the anointed. This time it's Evan Thomas at Newsweek.

The problem is not the system. It's us—our "got mine" culture of entitlement. . ..The triumph of individual and civil rights, a wondrous fulfillment of the true meaning of the Constitution, was too often perverted into an "I got my rights" sense of victimhood.

He says this while the “system” is trying to shove another vote buying entitlement down our throats that we don’t want.

Mix shallow, one-dimensional thinking with generous amounts of condescension and you too can be an elitist.