Obama’s ‘Public’ Health Plan Will Bankrupt the Nation

By Larry Kudlow

Does anybody really believe that adding 50 million people to the public health-care rolls will not cost the government more money? About $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion more? At least.

So let’s be serious when evaluating President Obama’s goal of universal health care, and the idea that it’s a cost-cutter. Can’t happen. Won’t happen. Costs are going to explode.

Think of it: Can anyone name a federal program that ever cut costs for anything? Let’s not forget that the existing Medicare system is roughly $80 trillion in the hole.

And does anybody believe Obama’s new “public” health-insurance plan isn’t really a bridge to single-payer government-run health care? And does anyone think this plan won’t produce a government gatekeeper that will allocate health services and control prices and therefore crowd-out the private-insurance doctor/hospital system?

Federal boards are going to decide what’s good for you and me. And what’s not good for you and me. These boards will drive a wedge between doctors and patients.

The president, in his New York Times Magazine interview with David Leonhardt, said his elderly mother should not (in theory) have had a hip-replacement operation. Yes, Obama would have fought for that operation for his mother’s sake. But a federal board of so-called experts would have told the rest of us, “No way.”

And then there’s the charade of all those private health providers visiting the White House and promising $2 trillion in savings. Utter nonsense.

And even if you put aside the demerits of a government-run health system, Obama’s health-care “funding” plans are completely falling apart. Not only will Obama’s health program cost at least twice as much as his $650 billion estimate, but his original plan to fund the program by auctioning off carbon-emissions warrants (through the misbegotten cap-and-trade system) has fallen through. In an attempt to buy off hundreds of energy, industrial, and other companies, the White House is now going to give away those carbon-cap-emissions trading warrants. So all those revenues are out the window. Fictitious.

Anyway, the cap-and-tax system won’t pass Congress. The science is wrong. The economics are root-canal austerity — Malthusian limits to growth. And there are too many oil and coal senators who will vote against it.

All of this is why the national-health-care debate is so outrageous. At some point we have to get serious about solving Medicare by limiting middle-class benefits and funding the program properly. There is no other way out. We can grow our way out of the Social Security deficit if we pursue pro-growth policies that maintain low tax and inflation rates. Prospects for that don’t look any too good right now, though it could be done. But government health care is nothing but a massive, unfunded, middle-class entitlement problem. (The poor are already in Medicaid.)

Sen. Max Baucus (D., Mont.) proposes to solve health care by limiting employer tax breaks. He’s on to something, but he’s only got half the story. All the tax breaks for health care should go to individuals and small businesses. Let them shop around for the best health deal wherever they can find it with essentially pre-tax dollars.

Additionally, insurance companies should be permitted to sell their products across state lines. And popular health savings accounts — which combine investor retirements with proper insurance by removing the smothering red tape — should be promoted. This approach of consumer choice and market competition will strengthen our private health-care system.

So private enterprise can coexist with public health care and not be crowded out by the heavy-handed overreach of government. But the Obama Democrats are determined to force through a state-run system that will bankrupt the country.

I’m not somebody who obsesses about the national debt or deficit. But I have to admit: Today’s spending-and-borrowing is blowing my mind. As a share of GDP, we’re looking at double-digit deficits as far as the eye can see. Over the next ten years, the CBO predicts federal debt in the hands of the public will absorb 80 percent of GDP. And that doesn’t include the real cost of state-run health care. Other than the temporary financial conditions surrounding WWII, we’ve never seen anything like this.

The president’s grandiose government-takeover-and-control strategies are going to make things worse and worse — that is, unless members of that tiny band known as the Republican party can stand on their hind legs and just say no. The Republicans must come up with some pro-competition, private-enterprise alternatives for health, energy, education, taxes, and trade that will meet the yearning of voter-taxpayers for a return to private-enterprise American prosperity and opportunity.

Free-market competition will lower costs in health care just as it has every place else. It also will grow the economy. The GOP must return to this basic conservative principle and reject Obama’s massive government assault.

MSNBC's Shuster asks 'what if Cheney is right'

Obama threatens to limit U.S. intel with Brits

By Eli Lake

The Obama administration says it may curtail Anglo-American intelligence sharing if the British High Court discloses new details of the treatment of a former Guantanamo detainee.

A court filing from the British Foreign Office released recently includes a letter from the U.S. government, identified as the "Obama administration's communication." Other information identifying the U.S. agency and author of the letter appears to have been redacted.

The letter says:

"If it is determined that [her majesty's government] is unable to protect information we provide to it, even if that inability is caused by your judicial system, we will necessarily have to review with the greatest care the sensitivity of information we can provide in the future."

The letter stands in contrast to President Obama's decision last month to release four memos from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel providing fresh detail on the CIA's enhanced interrogation program.

But, the U.S. letter points out: "Neither in [those four] memoranda, nor in any statements of the administration accompanying their release, was reference made to the identity of any foreign government that might have assisted the United States.

"Given the declassification of the highly sensitive information contained in the memoranda, the fact that the president refrained from providing any information about foreign governments is indicative that the United States continues to preserve the secrecy of such information as critical to our national security."

At issue is whether the British courts will disclose a seven-paragraph summary of the treatment of Binyam Mohamed, a former detainee who was released from Guantanamo Bay prison in February.

The British terrorism suspect was set free after charges that he had collaborated with convicted terrorist Jose Padilla in a plot to set off a "dirty bomb" in the United States fell apart. Mr. Mohamed says he was tortured while in U.S., Pakistani and Moroccan custody.

In February, the British Foreign Office claimed that the U.S. government had threatened to reduce intelligence cooperation if details of the interrogations and treatment of Mr. Mohamed were disclosed.

The High Court agreed on Feb. 4 to keep the details of Mr. Mohamed's treatment from the public. But two days later, the court decided to take up the matter again in response to an argument that the position of the U.S. government may have represented the Bush administration's view and not that of the Obama administration.

The letter, however, put to rest any doubt that it reflects the position of Mr. Obama's administration. Depending on what the court decides, it also may quash Mr. Mohamed's efforts to get the court to disclose any U.S. confirmation that he was tortured.

"The seven paragraphs at issue are based upon classified information shared between our countries," the U.S. letter said. "Public disclosure of this information, reasonably could be expected to cause serious damage to the United Kingdom's national security.

"Specifically, disclosure of this information may result in a constriction of the U.S.-U.K. relationship, as well as U.K. relationships with other countries."

Clive Stafford Smith, an attorney for Mr. Mohamed, said in a telephone interview that he was disappointed.

"What they are doing is twisting the arm of the British to keep evidence of torture committed by American officials secret," said Mr. Smith, a U.S. citizen. "I had high hopes for the Obama administration. I voted for the guy, and one hopes the new administration would not continue to cover up evidence of criminal activity."

The Metropolitan Police of London is investigating whether Mr. Mohamed was tortured when he was in American custody.

Mr. Smith said that by attempting to keep evidence of Mr. Mohamed's "abuse" secret, the U.S. official who communicated the threats to the British Foreign Office was in breach of British law, specifically the International Criminal Court Act of 2001.

"The U.S. is committing a criminal offense in Britain by seeking to conceal this information. What the Obama administration did is not just ill-advised, it is illegal," he said.

Mr. Smith said he is scheduled to meet with the Metropolitan Police next week. "One of the questions that will come up is whether these statements by the U.S. government are an independent crime that should be investigated," he said.

David Rose, a contributing editor for Vanity Fair and one of the parties in the case petitioning the British court to release the details of Mr. Mohamed's interrogation, said the U.S. government might be helping the British government shroud its own hand in Mr. Mohamed's treatment.

"Binyam Mohamed has always alleged that MI5 agents colluded in his maltreatment and reiterated this in an interview with me after his release," Mr. Rose said. "The British government's attitude towards this case has been characterized by an absence of candor for many months. One has to wonder if this is in order to protect the true role the British agencies played."

The White House and Justice Department declined to comment for this story.

Last month, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed to proceed with another case Mr. Mohamed was bringing against Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen Dataplan, claiming the company renditioned him to foreign jails from Pakistan to Morocco.

In that case, the Obama Justice Department requested that the circuit court vacate the case on the grounds that it would disclose state secrets, a plea the Justice Department lost.

Last month, Mr. Obama said at a press conference that the state secret privilege should be modified and that it was "overly broad."

"But keep in mind, what happens is we come into office; we're in for a week and suddenly we've got a court filing that's coming up," the president said. "And so we don't have the time to effectively think through what exactly should a[n] overarching reform of that doctrine take. We've got to respond to the immediate case in front of us.

"There - I think - it is appropriate to say that there are going to be cases in which national-security interests are genuinely at stake, and that you can't litigate without revealing covert activities or classified information that would genuinely compromise our safety," the president said.

Ben Wizner, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) who represents Mr. Mohamed and others in a civil lawsuit against Jeppesen Dataplan, which is accused of supplying the equipment and personnel used to transport prisoners among nations, said the Obama administration should have no problem releasing the seven paragraphs disclosing details of Mr. Mohamed's treatment.

"The U.S. actions viewed as a whole seem aimed at preventing accountability in either the United States or in Europe for the past administration's crimes," Mr. Wizner said.

Ed Freeman

(Compiler's note: Source -- a friend.)

You're a 19 year old kid.

You're critically wounded, and dying in the jungle in the Ia Drang Valley ,

11-14-1965, LZ X-ray , Vietnam .. Your infantry unit is outnumbered 8 - 1, and the enemy fire is so intense, from 100 or 200 yards away, that your own Infantry Commander has ordered the MediVac helicopters to stop coming in.

You're lying there, listening to the enemy machine guns, and you know you're not getting out. Your family is 1/2 way around the world, 12,000 miles away, and you'll never see them again.

As the world starts to fade in and out, you know this is the day.
Then, over the machine gun noise, you faintly hear that sound of a helicopter, and you look up to see an un-armed Huey, but it doesn't seem real, because no Medi-Vac markings are on it... Ed Freeman is coming for you.

He's not Medi-Vac, so it's not his job, but he's flying his Huey down into the machine gun fire, after the Medi-Vacs were ordered not to come.
He's coming anyway.. And he drops it in, and sits there in the machine gun fire, as they load 2 or 3 of you on board. Then he flies you up and out through the gunfire, to the Doctors and Nurses. And, he kept coming back.... 13 more times..... And took about 30 of you and your buddies out, who would never have gotten out.

Medal of Honor Recipient, Ed Freeman, died last Wednesday at the age of 80, in Boise , ID

........ May God rest his soul......

I bet you didn't hear about this hero's passing, but we sure were told a whole
bunch about some Hip-Hop Coward beating the crap out of his "girlfriend".


Medal of Honor Winner
Ed Freeman!

The WWII/Korean War Version of "Before You Go" A tribute and thank-you to Veterans of WWII and Veterans of the Korean War

Obama Breaks With Gates, Cancels Nuke Program

(Compiler's note: He told us he’d do this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fU4sVQV3Lhk The Russians and the Chinese are licking their chops. They are modernizing and increasing their nuclear weapons capabilities while we are doing this.)

Obama's new budget plan includes a little-noted sea change in U.S. nuclear policy, and a step towards his vision of a denuclearized world. It provides no funding for the Reliable Replacement Warhead program, created to design a new generation of long-lasting nuclear weapons that don't need to be tested. (The military is worried that a nuclear test moratorium in effect since 1992 might endanger the reliability of an aging US arsenal.) But this spring Obama issued a bold call for a world free of nuclear weapons, and part of that vision entails leading by example. That means halting programs that expand the American nuclear stockpile. For the past two budget years the Democratic Congress has refused to fund the Bush-era program. But Obama's budget kills the National Nuclear Security Administration program once and for all.

"My colleagues just stared at that line," says Joe Cirincione, a longtime nonproliferation expert and president of the Ploughshares Fund. "They had never seen anything like that." Killing the program, he said, was "the first programmatic impact of the new [zero nukes] policy. People have said they want to see more than words, this is the very first action."

Here's the relevant language from Obama's budget explaining the thinking behind the move:

In the upcoming year, NNSA will participate in the national debate to lay out a vision for our nation’s nuclear security and non-proliferation goals. This vision is based on the reality that nuclear security is not just about warheads and the size of the stockpile. The vision emphasizes that we must increase our focus on nuclear security and transforming the Cold War nuclear weapons complex into a 21st century national security enterprise. We must ensure our evolving strategic posture places the stewardship of our nuclear arsenal, nonproliferation programs, missile defenses, and the international arms control objectives into one comprehensive strategy that protects the American people and our allies.

One particularly interesting angle here: Obama has overruled his secretary of defense, Robert Gates, who has been pushing for months to maintain the warhead program. Last October, Gates warned that

"[t]o be blunt, there is absolutely no way we can maintain a credible deterrent and reduce the number of weapons in our stockpile without resorting to testing our stockpile or pursuing a modernization program."

But even though "modernization" has now been halted, Obama will almost certainly not resume nuclear testing. So one has to presume Gates is not a happy camper on this score.

--Michael Crowley

Amateur Biological Research Raises Security Concerns

The growing market for preassembled DNA and public access to genetic blueprints for smallpox, Ebola and other diseases have raised concerns that an individual might build a devastating biological threat from scratch, the Wall Street Journal reported today (see GSN, Dec. 24, 2008).

Synthetic DNA is routinely sought out by professional biologists as well as "biohackers," typically well-intentioned hobbyists who tinker with the genetic material of simple organisms.

However, existing biological material regulations leave open the risk that a skilled amateur could construct a dangerous pathogen, scientists and FBI officials warned in a Nature Biotechnology article published two years ago. "Current government oversight of the DNA-synthesis industry falls short of addressing this unfortunate reality," the article said.

The federal government should require firms that market synthetic DNA to watch for suspicious orders, according to the U.S. National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity. Washington should also mandate that amateur and professional biologists obtain a license before buying DNA, added George Church, a Harvard University genetics professor.

The FBI is attempting to communicate biological security risks to academic institutions and private industry, "particularly in light of the expansion of affordable molecular biology equipment" and genetic data, said a high-level official in the bureau's Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate.

One new graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said the threat is being overblown.

Amateur researchers hope to "build a slingshot ... and there are people out there talking about, oh, no, what happens if they move on to nuclear weapons?" said Katherine Aull, who is seeking to further cancer research through work with a transformed E.coli at her apartment (Jeanne Whalen, Wall Street Journal, May 13).

Machiavelli, Misunderstood Now is not the time to keep our enemies closer than our friends.

By Alexander Benard

After 100 days in office, a discomforting pattern has emerged in Barack Obama’s approach to foreign relations: He is keeping friends close, but enemies closer. Although this might have been a shrewd tactic in the royal court when Niccolo Machiavelli voiced the idea (or when Michael Corleone put it into that memorable phrase), it is not a viable foundation on which the United States can build a 21st-century foreign policy.

To be sure, President Obama has met with the prime ministers of two important American allies, Canada and the United Kingdom, and last week played host to the presidents of Pakistan and Afghanistan; his most visible diplomatic initiatives, however, have been directed at Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, and North Korea. Obama taped a video message for the Iranian regime and people, offering his best wishes for the Islamic New Year and stating his desire to pursue “constructive ties among the United States, Iran, and the international community.” He smilingly shook hands with Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and declined to criticize the strongman for removing limits on his term of office. He made overtures to Cuba in what one senior administration official described as a test of whether the two countries could develop a “serious, civil, open relationship.” And during his first month in office, he sent conciliatory messages to Syria and North Korea.

Obama’s supporters argue that this outreach has no downside. If effective, it will enable the administration to solve foreign-policy problems, such as nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea, without military confrontation. If it is ineffective, the United States will at least have appeared reasonable and accommodating, making it easier for Obama to garner international support for sanctions or other punitive measures.

But this analysis ignores several important considerations, beginning with the acutely dispiriting effect Obama’s efforts are having on dissidents and human-rights activists in countries such as Iran and Venezuela. Speaking of term limits in Venezuela, Obama said that it is “important for the United States not to tell other countries how to structure their democratic practices and what should be contained in their constitutions.” But the problem in Venezuela, Iran, and Cuba is not the structure of democratic practices, but their total absence. In these and similar countries, advocates of civil liberties and free elections are routinely intimidated and jailed, as are political opponents of the regime. These dissidents need an American president who is willing to cry foul and to encourage their efforts to hold the leaders of their countries accountable.

The dictators Obama has courted so far have reacted to his overtures with contempt rather than courtesy. In Cuba, Fidel Castro suggested that the United States was looking to “return [Cuba] to the fold of slaves.” And Venezuela’s Chávez used his first meeting with Obama to give the president a book titled Open Veins of Latin America, which chronicles, among other things, the alleged abuses Latin Americans suffered at the hands of the United States.

This sort of gamesmanship might not matter much in Latin America. It matters in Iran, where the Grand Ayatollah graciously indicated that he might be interested in talks once the United States renounced its backing of Israel and lifted sanctions against Tehran, and it matters in North Korea, which test-fired a missile in early April. Every passing day allows these countries to further develop their nuclear capabilities.

Our allies, meanwhile, are unsettled. On a recent trip to the Middle East, Defense Secretary Robert Gates was peppered with questions about whether the United States is on the cusp of a “grand bargain” with Iran. Gates replied that the United States will “keep our friends informed about what is going on so that nobody gets surprised,” but the Obama administration can expect allies—including Israel—to be nervous. Their cooperation will be harder to secure if they begin to hedge against what they perceive as an increasingly unreliable partnership with the United States.

That hedging may yet develop into something more sinister. Allies will see a president who glad-hands Hugo Chávez but has no time for Colombia’s President Uribe, one who does nothing to shepherd a free-trade agreement with Colombia through Congress, who sends holiday greetings to Ahmadinejad in Iran but not to Hamid Karzai in Afghanistan or Nouri al-Maliki in Iraq, and who pens a letter to Russia’s President Medvedev offering to forgo missile defense in Poland and the Czech Republic in exchange for U.S.-Russian cooperation in other areas. Our allies may begin to wonder: If all the special treatment is reserved for America’s foes, is there any point in being America’s friend?

— Alexander Benard, a New York attorney, has worked at the Department of Defense and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Treasury nominee to keep corporate pay $3 million in deferred pay

President Obama's nominee for the Treasury Department's top legal job still can receive almost $3 million in pay over the next three years from one of the nation's largest financial-services companies under a compensation plan approved by government ethics lawyers.

If confirmed as the department's next general counsel, George W. Madison would earn a government salary of $153,200 and get an additional $955,000 next year from his previous employer, TIAA-CREF, as a participant in the New York-based company's "long-term compensation plan," according to a government ethics filing.

• Click here to view the financial disclosure form for George Madison. (PDF) ....