The Lancet response to Bjørn Lomborg

A Bjørn Lomborg Wall Street Journal article (Climate Change and the Lancet’s ‘Heat Death’ Deception With COP27 approaching, {Lancet} claims rising temperatures have killed people but ignores that they appear to have saved far more.) criticized a Lancet study that found a increasing heat deaths among old people without adjusting for the fact that there are a lot more old people now, thanks to medical and environmental progress as a result of fossil fuel use.

Lancet then responded by going wildly off topic: "Behind this discussion lies an ethical conflict. Older generations have enjoyed enormous benefits from industrialization, mostly based on fossil fuels. But global heating from fossil-fuel greenhouse gases leads to extreme weather events such as floods and droughts, wildfires, reduced crop yields, increased risk of infectious disease, biodiversity loss and sea-level rise, all with effects on health and survival. We are putting our children’s future in the balance. The generational injustice can’t be ignored."

Now it's not the old people, who are actually doing better because of fossil fueled progress, but the young in a distant future who are threatened by climate change events that, with all the scrutiny today, still haven't materialized. In fact, this chart shows that our children's risks caused by climate change have declined dramatically over the past 100 years of rapidly expanding fossil fuel use.

Heat and cold deaths?

The Lancet is hoist on its own petard.

Droughts?

Floods and droughts?

Extreme weather events?

Wildfires?

Reduced crop yields?

 

Increased risk of infectious disease?

Apparently the Lancet physicians never heard of the pandemics that killed hundreds of millions in colder periods of past centuries: the Black Death (Bubonic Plague) that killed 200 million over six hundred years ago; Smallpox killed 56 million about 500 years ago; Spanish Flu killed almost 50 million only one hundred years ago; the Plague of Justinian killed perhaps 50 million 1,500 years ago; and AIDS/HIV so far has killed around 30 million. 

Of the roughly 259 pandemics spanning the past several thousand years, the probable link to climate change is rapid increase in population and cities after the end of the last glacial period (Ice Age) about 11,700 years ago.

Sea level rise?

Historic sea level higher for most of the past 3,000 years.

Honolulu sea level?

Honolulu rate of sea level rise is six inches per century and steady.

The key points of the Lancet response are all unsupported.

So I wrote a letter to the Editor of the Wall Street Journal:

Editor

The Lancet response to Bjorn Lomborg’s article (Climate Change and the Lancet’s ‘Heat Death Deception’” was breathtaking in its deceptions. Its portent of fossil fuel doom didn’t acknowledge the 99% decrease in climate related deaths during the past 100 years due to wealth creation and development as a result of fossil fuel use. Placing the present in the context of the last 1,000 years, we find in the past greater weather events such as droughts and floods and over ten times the acreage burnt by wildfires annually. Rather than “reduced crop yields”, the world now produces record harvests without increased acres planted on an almost annual basis. Sea levels, now lower than during half of the past 10,000 years, are increasing at a rate of six inches per century with no signs of acceleration, per the world’s tide gauge records. 

 

The Lancet letter then goes off tangent about deaths caused by small particulate matter air pollution. Unmentioned by Lancet, these deaths are primarily due to burning wood and dung to cook and heat in enclosed spaces and have been since humans mastered fire. The growing use of natural gas and electricity generated from burning fossil fuels reduces these deaths dramatically.

 

“ Physician (Lancet), heal thyself!”

Veterans Health Administration is a failed single-payer system

On Memorial Day I’m writing this to protest the shabby treatment of fellow veterans and to challenge Liberal support for a single-payer health system.

“The Veterans Health Administration (VHA) is America’s largest integrated health care system with over 1,700 sites of care, serving 8.76 million Veterans each year.” It is a single-payer system and has often been held up as a model by Obamacare supporters. Paul Krugman, Vouchers for Veterans, The New York Times, November 13, 2011, put down Mitt Romney’s veterans health privatization plan by touting the VHA as a socialized medicine success story.

Two years earlier, another Times columnist, Nicholas Kristof, wrote: “(The VHA) is fully government run, much more ‘socialized medicine’ than is Canadian health care with its private doctors and hospitals. And the system for veterans is by all accounts one of the best-performing and most cost-effective elements in the American medical establishment.”

The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein wrote in 2009 that one of his favorite ideas was expanding VHA to non-veterans, and that the VHA was America’s best-functioning health system.

Nancy Pelosi was quick to blame the emerging VHA scandal on President Bush, speaking as if Democrats had no VHA responsibilities since Bush left office in 2009. 

However, in 2004 the left-leaning Rand Corporation found that: “(T)he VA system delivered higher-quality care than the national sample of private hospitals on all measures except acute care ... In nearly every other respect, VA patients received consistently better care across the board, including screening, diagnosis, treatment, and access to follow-up.”

The Rand Corporation reported that quality improved significantly 2007 to 2009, again during Bush’s presidency.

The VHA, like Obamacare, is another shining example of government incompetently competing with the private sector, and should be privatized. Our veterans deserve better treatment than politicians. 

How Insurance Really Works - Not Obamacare

I dislike belaboring the obvious, but often the ICO leaves me no choice. In this instance, it’s the “Shared responsibility” editorial about health insurance, particularly: “The way to pay for it, of course, is for everyone to participate, including those who are currently in good health. That’s how insurance works.”

Except that’s not how insurance works.

Alice and I recently purchased our next 15 years of term life insurance just before our 70^th birthdays. Our excellent health qualified us for the lowest rates for our age group, but we are now paying three times what we did 15 years ago. If we smoked it would be four to seven times our current rate. A term life insurance rate depends on your state, age, gender, height, weight, health classification, and if you are a smoker or when you stopped smoking. If your state of health is in the lowest of four classes instead of the highest, your premium increases about 40%. The healthy don’t subsidize the unhealthy.

Auto and home insurance are similarly discriminatory.

The argument that everyone, insured or not, will place demands on the taxpayer funded system is specious. The Los Angeles Times reported (Cash discount for health care, May 28, 2012), that it was much cheaper to pay for health services in cash than through many health insurers. For example, a $6,707 CT scan cost an insured person $2,336, but only $1,054 if paid in cash and not claimed on insurance. A $4,423 CT abdominal scan through insurance cost $2,400, but the cash price was $250.

One of my friends in Fort Bragg has paid cash for health care all his life, saving a fortune while never burdening taxpayers. For more about paying your own way and saving money, see Paying Cash for Healthcare.

An Interview with President Obama and Senator Obama on the Individual Mandate

(My particular hero is Al Gore. I especially admire his ability to channel past events in a way that supports his current postions. I remember how we raptly listened as he told us how his mother used to sing "Look for the union label" to him when he was a boy - or at least a very youthful 27-year old. Now we find another has come along who shares Al's trait. The following is an interview I channeled with the new practitioner of the Gore art, drawn from the news of the day.)

President Obama, federal judge Roger Vinson said in his ruling that the individual mandate was unconstitutional, and compared it to congress compelling all Americans to eat broccoli (click here for this news item). A White House official speaking for you said that sort of “surpassingly curious reading” called into question Judge Vinson‘s entire ruling, and added “There’s something thoroughly odd and unconventional about (his) analysis.”


Mr. President, since this is a health matter we wanted a second opinion, so we wondered what Senator Obama thought of the individual mandate proposed by Senator Clinton. Senator Obama told us (2008): “If a mandate was the solution, we can try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody to buy a house.”

Mr. President, wouldn’t it be healthier to make everybody eat broccoli instead of buying a house?

Obamacare - Arbitary and Capricious, A Liberal Dream

Commerce Clause abuse is a Liberal mainstay. Article I, Section 8, Clause 3, simply states: “[The Congress shall have power] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes.” Thus, the original purpose of the Commerce Clause was primarily to eliminate trade barriers among the states.


Nowhere in the Commerce Clause does it provide the power to regulate commerce within a state. This is in keeping with the Tenth Amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

In a 1942 Supreme Court ruling against Filburn, a small farmer was fined for growing 12 acres of wheat above his government allotment on his own land for his own use.

More recently and closer to home, the Court decided that the Commerce Clause permits Congress to prohibit the medicinal use of cannabis (Gonzales vs Raich), even though two California women following doctors’ recommendations only grew six cannabis plants on their own property for their own use .

However, as our new local marijuana dispensary illustrates, enforcement of the federal Controlled Substances Act is arbitrary and capricious. For example, Congress has permitted all fifty states to erect the type of barriers that the Commerce Clause was written precisely to tear down, the barring of insurers from selling policies to people in another state.

Which brings us to the mandated healthcare so lavishly praised by Liberals. In the words of Ben Stein, "(It’s hypocritical) that Obama wants every citizen to prove they are insured, but people don't have to prove they are citizens."

It can’t get any more arbitrary and capricious than that.

The Public Option - We're Going There When England is Coming Back

My recurring healthcare theme has been that our demographics are lagging Europe's, and that we can learn from their mistakes and not mess things up.

One of the liberal's guiding lights to lead us all to the public option has been the British National Health Service (NHS). It gives universal coverage for free, so the liberals say, and is a model of what our healthcare should be.

I've begged to differ, since I observed the NHS on a first-hand basis for five years living in England (1970-1975). A bloke who worked for me then was one of my best friends, the late Arthur Sharman. Arthur suffered under the NHS for a decade until he died waiting vainly for a hip replacement. Each year he would be scheduled for the operation, and each year higher priorities and budget crunches would cause his hip replacement to be rescheduled for the following year.

For several years before his death, it became obvious that the damage done by not having the hip replacement earlier had gone too far for the operation to restore his quality of life.

The new British government, the conservative party named Tories, have now made clear what has been known for decades: the NHS will have to severely reduce and ration healthcare, and in particular such procedures as hip and knee replacements, cataract surgery, services for the terminally ill, and long-term care. (click here for the article on the massive cuts proposed for the NHS)

The slang name for the English healthcare screening units could easily be "Death" panels. That's obviously what must be part of a publically funded universal healthcare system. The "free" systems, like the NHS, depend on government taxing half or more of income away from its citizens, and healthcare has to compete for a share against education, transportation, welfare, and all the other government programs.

Also, to an extent greater than the other government programs, healthcare must serve a rapidly aging population and at the same time intergrate inceasingly expensive improvements in medical detection and treatment of illness.

We're lucky in the United States. We can watch Europe go blindly where we're headed, and learn from their mistakes.

Unless our leaders persist in following Europe blindly.

Experience is a great teacher, and teaches best when we can learn from the mistakes of others rather than our own.

The Left's Census, Post Office, and Healthcare Follies

The Left here in northern California has an incredible faith in government, quite unlike the Left of thirty or thereabouts years ago. For example, they want a single payer system for healthcare, the total abolishment of private insurance companies; in other words, a government monopoly.

Not long ago Alice and one of our leading leftists were comparing notes about another government program, the Census. Every ten years the Census lays an egg in our area, since the Post Office will not do home delivery in our rural area, and the Census will not allow post office box delivery of the mailed Census forms. Therefore, all the Census forms mailed to our area are returned to the Census office as undeliverable, since they are addressed to our property addresses instead of our Post Office boxes.

Knowing this to be the case, we do a variety of things to comply with Census requirements, such as getting forms from a local non-government social services office and mailing them in.

However, even after we do that the Census hires and sends in an army of Census workers hired outside of our area and therefore paid wages plus transportation, lodging, and meals expenses to come here and go house to house to complete the census. The landlady of one of the downtown inns said June was her best month in years because she was full of Census workers. At the same time, we had an abnormally high rate of unemployed in our area who, if hired by the Census, could have worked from their homes and saved the government the expenses of the out-of-towners, plus cut down on unemployment and welfare benefits paid to locals.

After I filled out and sent in our census form ahead of the deadline, Alice and I went on an African safari vacation. When we came back we found notices from three different census workers, two pinned on our front door and one on a side gate we rarely use. They had made their calls over two weeks after we sent in the completed form.

(The Census chief says that their shaky computer system won't be a problem in getting an accurate census. For more about this, click here.)

We called one of the numbers and answered the same questions that we had previously provided via mail almost a month before.

When Alice and the prominent local lefty discussed this, Alice asked: "Is there anything the government runs well?" and the Lefty replied: "The Post Office."

At this point, we need to recap that the root of our Census problem every ten years is that the Post Office will not deliver mail to our home addresses, and will not put mail addressed to our homes into our post office boxes - even though the Post Office employees know our names and our box numbers from memory.

Meanwhile, every week day United Parcel, Federal Express, and other delivery companies drive throughout our lightly populated rural area delivering to our home addresses. Frequently their service is amazing. I'll buy an item over the internet in the evening, and often the next day it will be delivered to my door, even though I haven't paid extra for expedited delivery.

And concerning healthcare, the very low Medicaid (called MediCal in California) reimbursement rate drains so much money from our small local medical center that evening and weekend services have had to be reduced severely. In Texas many doctors are dropping Medicaid patient service completely because they can't afford to provide it.

Yet the Left wants the government to run more things.

I know what the Left is smoking, because this area is one of the leading sources of marijuana, but its users say that it's supposed to be harmless.

Not if it makes the Democrats think that the government should run everything, it isn't!

Obamacare – Bad and Badder

The Obama administration and Democrats placed their bets on passing any health reform bill they could, and then selling it to voters before the November elections. They felt they could do this because little if anything would change before the election, so all they would have to do is tell the voters how wonderful things will be.

The problem is that evidence is piling up that Obamacare will be far from wonderful. Estimated costs have been steadily revised upwards as unrealistic assumptions are examined and rejected. The most obvious assumption was that payments to doctors and hospitals would be cut to finance the expansion. The truth is that planned cuts are always rescinded, and the only cutting has been doctors and hospitals dropping coverage of Medicare and Medicaid patients because the low reimbursement rates don’t cover costs. Simply, they cause losses.

The whole scheme will soon collapse like a house of cards when compelling all citizens to buy a product – health insurance – is ruled unconstitutional. It’s one thing to say you can’t drive without a license, or get a mortgage without home insurance, but to say that the mere fact that you are an American is cause to be compelled to buy health insurance will not be considered a legitimate use of government power.

We have a Constitution, you know.

Karl Rove in an excellent Wall Street Journal article provides cogent analysis of the problems of Obamacare, which you can access by merely clicking here.

Congress F's Up Their Own Health Care

The New York Times reports that Congress screwed itself out of its own health care program by mistake.

This is poetic justice - the comment was made over and over that Congress didn't know what was in the Health Care Bill, but still Democrats rushed to pass it to save their political asses. They knew if they took their time that their constituents would be all over them on their Spring break.

"Pass anything, then hope something will work out before November elections."

Well "anything" was passed, and it's hard to criticize because no one understands it - particularly the Democrats.

When the New York Times gives Democrats a hard time, you know they really messed up.

I Hate White Guys' Health Care Plans

I must confess that I oppose all the health care reform plans that white guys have come up with for over forty years. It all started with LBJ, who gave us a plan which is not only already bankrupt, but which will bankrupt generations not yet born until it is mercifully euthanized. Then Jimmy Carter proposed a health care reform, but he had things so screwed up that America pulled the plug on him and turned the mess over to Ronald Reagan to clean up.

I have to thank Bill and Hillary Clinton for their attempt at health care reform. It was so awful than it brought us the Republican takeover in 1994, which lasted until the Republicans forgot why the American people voted for them to replace the feckless Democrats.

Al Gore had a plan, and John Kerry too, which the voters spared us from suffering.

Now another white guy has a plan, and I now know, thanks to the media, what motivates me to oppose it: racism.

That's right.

All along I thought I didn't like dumb Democrat health care plans, but thanks to the media I see the light.

It was racism all along.

LBJ, Jimmy, Bill and Hillary, Gore, Kerry, Obama - what's the common link?

That's right, they're white!

And I don't like their health care plans because I'm racist.

Of course!

Jimmy Carter Continues Idiocy

Jimmy Carter continues to show us why he is considered the worst president of all. His comments about racist motivation are both stupid and irresponsible. And his comment about how it smacks of Nazism is particularly egregious, given that Democrats continually compared George Bush and Republicans to Nazis.

In fact, Democrats love to "Nazify" Republicans, as you will find if you click on this link which will take you to voluminous examples.

Bill Clinton may have earned the title of our first Black president when he started messing with Monica, but he was still lilly white when Hillarycare was shot down.

Jimmy Carter has been called many things over the years, but Black isn't one of them. Still, his health care reform was shot down on the basis of its lack of merit, just like Clinton's and Obama's.

Calling your opponents' disagreement with your policies racism is the last refuge of desperate scoundrels.

New York Times is Right - Obamacare

Once again I find myself agreeing with The New York Times.

That's scary!

Now The Times editorializes that the Democrats should pass Obamacare without any Republican votes.

I agree.

I can't think of a faster way for Democrats to commit political hari kari. The effect on the political futures of Blue Dog Democrats would be delightfully drastic. Election Day 2010 is just around the corner, and public support of Democrats is falling because of their attempts to socialize healthcare reform, not because of their inability to do so.

Medicare/Medicaid are bankrupt.

Obama wants Medicare/Medicaid for all.

"Everybody abandon the healthcare insurance that you like, and jump onto the USS (Universally Sinking Swiftly) Obamacare."

"And have faith in our Great Pilot."

Mao?

Kim Jong Il?

No, in Obama-messiah, following the wisdom of his Great Teacher, Saint Teddy of Chappaquiddick.

Ted Kenndy Died to Save Our Healthcare

Teddy died for us - for our healthcare - and Mary Jo Kopechne can finally tell him how proud she is of her part in making it all come true.

Healthcare Apostle Harry Reid brings us the gospel according to Obama.

Hallelujah!

Democrats for Public Healthcare Oppose School Choice

Democrats for government healthcare – the public option – oppose school choice.

Our publicly funded education option is not working well. A realistic assessment of it would declare it a failure. Evidence of failure is objective and unequivocal: over half our high school graduates require remedial courses in math and English when they go on to college. And the percentage of graduates without satisfactory math and English skills that don’t go to college is probably in the range of eighty to ninety percent.

Taxpayers are given bitter choices to educate their children. They can send them to public schools, accepting inadequate education outcomes. They can move into expensive housing areas which have high-performing public schools. Or they can scrape and save to send their children to private schools. No matter the choice, the taxpayer funded education monopoly produces an unsatisfactory product.

The Liberals who preach that a government funded healthcare system will drive down costs through competition want nothing to do with competition from private schools. The Liberals say such competition would take money out of the public schools system, making even worse. Yet our public education costs are very high, and unlike our expensive private healthcare system, our public education system is failing us at the worse time, when education weaknesses threaten our global competitiveness.

At least our healthcare system is the most responsive to patient need in the world – as measured by the World Health Organization – and produces bestter outcomes for treating serious health problems.

Our education system is among the worst.

The former premier of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev, once said that capitalists would sell the Soviets the rope to hang us.

That’s not true. We’re hanging ourselves.

Obama’s Healthcare Adviser Was Right! Obama’s Plan is Worthless!

I rarely agree with anything a liberal Democrat says, but sometimes they hit the nail right on the head. So it is with Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, health adviser to President Barack Obama, brother of presidential adviser Rahm Emanuel. As a bioethicist, he has written extensively about who should get medical care, who should decide, and whose life is worth saving.

Dr. Emanuel says that health reform will not be pain free, and that the usual recommendations for cutting medical spending (often urged by the president) are mere window dressing. As he wrote in the Feb. 27, 2008, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA): "Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality of care are merely 'lipstick' cost control, more for show and public relations than for true change."

Dr. Emanuel just described the Democrat healthcare reform plan.

In other words, the Obama plan for financing healthcare reform is worthless, from the mouth of one of his closest advisers.

And this was all known over a year ago.

More recently, White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod emailed that, "It's a myth that health insurance reform would be financed by cutting Medicare benefits." This was sent out the day before Mr. Obama told a Montana town hall that he'd pay for health-care reform by "eliminating . . . about $177 billion over 10 years" for "what's called Medicare Advantage." And it was two days before Mr. Obama told a Colorado town hall he'd cover "two-thirds" of the "roughly $900 billion" of his plan's cost by "eliminating waste," again citing Medicare Advantage.

So who's right? Obama says one thing, his advisers say another. And then Obama tells the American public that his changes won't make anyone give up their current healthcare.

Tell that to the millions in Medicare Advantage. There is no way their current coverage can be continued if Obama makes the cuts in Medicare Advantage he proposes.

If he listens to his advisers, he knows that. He's either as dumb as Ted Kennedy, or as dishonest. Either way America loses.

How to Lose Friends and Energize Enemies – “Blue Dog” Democrats are brain dead

Representative Pete Stark, Dem.-California, who heads the health subcommittee on the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, told reporters on a conference call that Moderate Blue Dog Democrats "just want to cause trouble. They're for the most part, I hate to say, brain dead, but they're just looking to raise money from insurance companies and promote a right-wing agenda that is not really very useful in this whole process."

Thanks, Pete.

It’s wonderful to hear such words from a Democrat speaking about other Democrats. It goes with out saying that you think the voters who elected the Blue Dog Democrats are brain dead too.

Pete, whatever you do, please don’t stop talking.

If It Doesn't Work, Do More!

A writer to our local weekly newspaper, the Independent Coast Observer, once decried a “bunch of hypocrites” who “collect big government pensions including government health care” and “would be the last to voluntarily give up their Medicare!” Since I’ve collected military retired pay since retiring in 1984, and military health care since enlisting in 1962 – Medicare since 2007 – my ears were burning.

It’s nice to finally be envied for the fruits of military service. Few envied me while I served, 1962 to 1984. In over 21 years the Air Force gave me thirteen permanent assignments, and only once was I stationed at a base where I could afford to buy a house. For eight years the Air Force told me my next assignment was Viet Nam – then sent me somewhere else each time. If things get really nasty I can still be involuntarily recalled to active duty - I placed myself on a voluntary recall roster for Gulf War I, but the Air Force didn't need me then.

I’ve drawn Social Security for just over a decade, after paying into it since 1960, and Alice and I pay income taxes on 85% of what we receive. I used to propose that Social Security return my contributions, and in exchange I would foreswear its benefits. Social Security ignored my generous offer.

Concerning the writer’s assumption about giving up Medicare, Alice and I were financially better off before the government forced us to take Medicare. Medicare costs us $8,564 more per year for less coverage than my military health care provided. Importantly for Alice and me, Medicare does not cover us on our frequent travels overseas, and according to the news, local Medicare patients have been severely impacted by government grant reductions.

Our taxation system, because it is dependent on taxing the wealthy (the top 20% of tax filers pay over 90% of personal income taxes, the bottom 50% pay 3%), implodes with every downturn. Our government’s solution is to tax the wealthy more. “If what you do doesn’t work, do more of it!”

Ain't No Such Thing as a Free Lunch

I was saddened today to hear of the death of Ted Kennedy. He lived his life as a self-indulgent frat boy, cowardly let Mary Jo Kopechne die while he worried about his political future, was a drunken philanderer, and was a poster boy for all things wrong with Democrat politics. His usefulness to Republicans was enormous - he was a living, breathing illustration of all we opposed.

Now in death the Democrats are trying to get a health-care bill passed that had no hope while Teddy was alive. As is always the case with Democrats, the facts didn't change, but emotions rule. However, here are the facts.

What they don’t have to pay for, people always want in abundance. Lost in the universal healthcare discussion is that our existing public options, Medicare and Medicaid, are already bankrupt (And Social Security is operating in the red). Not only bankrupt, but without drastic changes their unfunded liabilities (equal to the World’s GDP) will bankrupt future generations of Americans.

Over 70 percent of Americans like their health insurance, and with good reasons. The World Health Organization rates our health system the most responsive to medical needs in the world. Compared by outcomes, we have the highest survival rates for cancers and other life threatening illnesses. That’s the essence of what you want in a healthcare system: fast, effective service. Although the Canadian system is the darling of our Left, Cleveland, Ohio is known as the “hip replacement center of Canada.”

Unlike Democrats, Republicans have sound ideas for gaining Universal Healthcare. First, end the tax subsidy for employer provided healthcare, then give tax credits (vouchers for the poor) for purchasing health insurance. Health insurance then would be available and portable – you could change jobs without losing it.

Important Republican health insurance reforms are fought by Democrats, since Democrats are owned by the trial lawyers and the teacher and public employees unions. Republicans would dump the lawyers and let medical experts examine damage claims and award compensation. Malpractice insurance adds enormous costs and invites lawsuits, but even worse, threats of lawsuits make doctors examine and prescribe defensively and wastes billion of dollars.

Besides trial lawyers, unions are the other special interest group Democrats pander to, and they will fight to hang on to an accident of World War II, tax-subsidized health insurance, that never should have been allowed in the first place.

Democrats want special interests out of healthcare unless they contribute to Democrats.

Democrats Plan to Tax and Spend us to Prosperity

Representative Lynn Woolsey, Democrat, represents one of the most liberal districts in California. Her district includes storied Marin County, just accross the Golden Gate from San Francisco, but oddly stretches in its gerrymandering way up to include The Sea Ranch on the far northern tip of Sonoma County. How or why she picked The Sea Ranch to do a town-hall meeting is a real conundrum. It is sparsly populated - only a couple of hundred full-time residents - and far from the main-stream news media. In fact, our local weekly newspaper, the Independent Coast Observer, appears to have provided the only news coverage.

Several friends and neighbors asked me - begged me - to attend and ask Ms. Woolsey questions. Unfortunately, I was the parking czar for our annual Art in the Redwoods and had committed myself to running the parking the same afternoon as Ms. Woolsey's visit.

So I read the report of her visit, then sent the Independent Coast Observer editor the following commentary and questions I would have presented had I been able to attend:

Edidtor

I’m sorry I missed Lynn Woolsey’s love fest at The Sea Ranch and her message to everyone that they have rights to unlimited health care and to have someone else pay for it. Of course I had several questions I wanted to ask. The first and most important: “Ms. Woolsey, since Medicare and Medicaid are already bankrupt failures, why do you want everyone in them?”

Then, “Thank you for avoiding the question, Ms. Woolsey. You know Mr. Obama says he will fund universal health care by eliminating the thirty percent of Medicare and Medicaid costs that are due to fraud, waste, and abuse. Despite the fact that all politicians say they will do that, it never gets done – it just gets worse. Why isn’t Mr. Obama already eliminating the fraud, waste, and abuse to demonstrate that he can do it?”

“Thanks for ducking that question too. Ms. Woolsey, you, Nancy Pelosi, Mr. Obama, and other Democrat leaders say that opposition to health care reform is an “Astroturf” rather than “grass-roots” movement. However, John Sweeney, president of the National AFL-CIO, said that 250,000 union workers nationwide are being trained to advocate for health care reform. Is 250,000 paid and trained union thugs your idea of a Democrat grass-roots movement?”

“Ms. Woolsey, Mr. Obama now admits the deficit will be two trillion dollars larger in the next ten years than his previous estimate - nine trillion instead of seven trillion dollars - an almost thirty percent increase. With Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid now running deficits, tax revenues decreasing steadily, and China and other lenders worried about our falling credit worthiness, what sense is there in spending us into a deeper hole?”

“Ms. Woolsey, thank you and Democrats for demonstrating total lack of knowledge of economics.”

Democrats Love to Nazify Republicans

Apparently Nancy Pelosi saw a Republican demonstrator with a sign that had a Swastika overwritten with a red “No.” I would have interpreted the sign as meaning “no national socialist healthcare!” or something of that ilk, but it was definitely against, not an endorsement of, socialism.

(For those who are abysmally ignorant of history, also known as “Democrats” for short, Nazi is short for National Socialist, and no clear-headed thinker has ever concluded that Republicans are socialists. Or that the party of freedom, responsibility, and individualism would ever put itself in the hands of a power-mad demagogue. Republicans leave all those sorts of things to Democrats.)

Democrats use of Nazi imagery also reared its ugly head in Washington state, where Congressman Brian Baird, D-Vancouver said of anti-government healthcare demonstrators, "What we're seeing right now is close to Brown Shirt tactics."

Perhaps Congressman Baird was confused about which were the Republicans and which the Democrats in a video of union thugs forcing demonstrators from a Democrat Townhall meeting in Tampa.

I had hoped that the Democrats would stop smearing Nazi imagery on Republicans after President Bush (“Bush-Hitler”) completed his presidency, but Democrats are still falling back on it at any sign of opposition. (Here’s a very large gallery of Democrats invoking Nazi imagery about President Bush)

Democrats are enormous hypocrites. They're whining about a poster of Obama as The Joker, but no one was upset when Vanity Fair ran a picture of President Bush as The Joker.

Democrat hypocrites are a coalition of special interest groups, and for many years for almost any occasion they have made very vocal appearances carrying mass produced signs – their unions in particular perform as “Rent a Mob” agencies.

Alice and I went to a Republican rally in Walnut Creek circa 1996 featuring Speaker Of The House Newt Gingrich. As we approached the venue, the Lesher Center for the Arts, well supplied union-employed demonstrators and activists for other causes were waving their professionally printed signs and chanting in unison. Alice and I were early, so we went among the demonstrators and started arguing with them and disrupting their chants by being more energetic and animated than they. At one point we were interviewed and photographed by a crew from Time Magazine, and also by reporters for the Oakland Tribune and other East Bay papers. The demonstrators were visibly upset that the two of us were getting all the attention of the news crews.

We discovered our notoriety when the phone rudely awoke us as we slept in the next day, Sunday morning. Alice answered and after verifying that she was Alice Combs, the caller said:”You’re not nice people,” and hung up. A moment later the phone rang again, only this time it was a Livermore friend asking if we had seen the Sunday Tri-Valley Herald: “Your pictures are on the front page!”

News about the Pope probably bumped us from Time, but pictures of us made the front pages of the Oakland Tribune, Tri-Valley Herald, and Contra Costa Times the following day.