Kirsten Mortensen's blog

Michael Ledeen, analyzing the causes of voter discontent, lists a bunch of fear-wracked constituencies. Let me add another candidate: sports teams. Considering that with a single phone call Obama managed to jinx the Kentucky Wildcats. The formerly #1 ranked Kentucky Wildcats . . .

I ain’t superstitious but . . . wow. Just wow.

If you blog, you’ve probably heard about the new FTC ruling.

Slate’s got a new piece up about it now.

Allowing these guidelines to take effect would be like giving the government a no-knock warrant to investigate hundreds of thousands of blogs and hundreds of millions of Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter users for … saying nice things about goods and services. [FTC spokesman Richard] Cleland tells Ad Age that a restaurant employee who gave his eatery a good review on Yelp would have to disclose. Given the billions of opinionated postings on the Web, there would be no end to FTC’s work.

Because of a pesky thing called the First Amendment, the guidelines don’t apply to news organizations, which receive thousands of free books, CDs, and DVDs each day from media companies hoping for reviews. But if the guidelines don’t apply to established media like the New York Review of Books, which also happens to publish reviews on the Web, why should they apply to Joe Blow’s blog? Regulating bloggers via the FTC while exempting establishment reporters looks like a back-door means of licensing journalists and policing speech.

This is a federal power grab of epic proportions, folks.

One more reason we need to pass the Federalism Amendment.

Frank Wilson, in his lead to a blog post titled Americans regard themselves as citizens, not subjects (YES!!!!), offers this quote by Lord John Dalberg-Acton (the fellow who also coined “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”):

Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.

THAT’s what I’m talkin’ about.

That’s the spirit that animates the American political ideal.

More: it’s the measure against which we should hold up any of these stupid laws our politicians want to pass. I.e., does “healthcare reform” advance our country to its highest political end?

Ha ha ha.

It does NOT.

Wilson goes on to make the point from which he takes his blog post’s title:

Americans regard themselves as citizens, not subjects. They may respect their government, but few feel servile toward it, and most are wary of it.

Exactly.

So here’s the “contrast” bit: how do we explain this move by The Commonwealth of Massachusetts to impose, among other things, forced vaccinations and/or quarantine in the event of a “declared emergency”?

That is NOT liberty.

That’s the government treating us as subjects.

You watch, too. New York will be next.

Horrible. Horrible.

So this August 10 Rasmussen poll says that 57 percent of voters nationwide oppose  single payer health care.

Yet all these stories have been popping up today, claiming that a substantial majority support it.

The source, apparently, is a new SurveyUSA (Moveon) poll.

This Think Progress article is an example of how the new poll is being covered by left-leaning websites. It quotes from a Huffington Post article as follows:

A new study by SurveyUSA puts support for a public option at a robust 77 percent, one percentage point higher than where it stood in June.

What gives? How could one poll’s findings be that different from another’s?

Turns out it’s a matter of wording — click through to the full HuffPo article to see. The poll results change depending on whether you ask people if they support single payer as a “choice” — or whether you just ask them, straight up, if the government should be creating a single payer system.

Earlier in the week, after pollsters for NBC dropped the word “choice” from their question on a public option, they found that only 43 percent of the public were in favor of “creating a public health care plan administered by the federal government that would compete directly with private health insurance companies.”

Splains it.

In the Think Progress comments, one person noted this clarification and cited it as evidence that the second poll is “skewed.”

I disagree. Neither poll is skewed; they’re asking different questions.

If anything, the word “choice” could skew results — it’s a word laden with value, like “free” or “love.”

It’s hard to come out against “choice.”

Here’s the thing. This from the Rasmussen article linked in my first paragraph:

Data released earlier today shows that 51% of voters fear the federal government more than private insurance companies when it comes to health care decisions.

Americans are largely skeptical about the government.

But when online venues like Think Progress publish information that isn’t precise enough — and in the loss of precision, essentially misrepresent a critical fact –  it does a disservice to its readers.

Another commenter, for instance, reacted with “YES – this just confirms that the screaming crazies are in the MINORITY!”

Only they aren’t.

I don’t care what side you’re on. It doesn’t serve anyone to have people who support Obama’s plan persuaded that they hold a majority view. Because then, should a different majority view prevail, they won’t have a constructive way to process it that turn of events. It won’t gibe with their version of reality.

Unless you don’t care about them, and your only goal is to whip them into a frenzy in the hopes that their passion and enthusiasm will somehow turn the tide of public opinion . . .

Stephen Glover in the Daily Mail. Spot on.

Yes, we need to take care of our poor. But we can’t do it at the expense of our overall standards of care and, equally important, our standards of healthcare service.

Click through & read the piece to see what I mean. From someone who’s actually experienced healthcare services in both countries.

And consider this. As noted in this 2007 Congressional report comparing healthcare costs and outcomes among the 30 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD):

The United States has the third-highest percentage of the population that reports their health status as being “good,” “very good,” or “excellent.”

(Perhaps Washington should have considered that before it proposed swapping out our system for one that would require some pretty significant trade-offs?)

And as for our healthcare spending, from the same report:

90% of the variation in health care spending across the 30 OECD countries may be attributable to GDP per capita.

Yes, the U.S. is an outlier, the report notes. Our spending is even higher than would be expected, given the GDP per capita factor. (Although with a sample of only 30 countries, being an outlier might be statistically meaningless . . . ?)

But even so:

1. We spend what we do because we are rich enough to be able to afford it. We have the money.
2. Being a relatively free market economy, we’re permitted to spend money as we wish.
3. And we’re happy with the results: we consider our health status good to excellent.

To me, that sounds like a system that is working pretty well. Yes, it’s messy. Yes, individuals sometimes have bad experiences. Yes, it doesn’t force the majority to kick in yet more money to care for people who are less well off, who don’t have legal status, etc.

But one of the reasons people are getting so upset is that the vast majority of us are satisfied with what we have.

Washington has overstepped. It’s misread the problem. It’s misread the needs and character of the American people.

Let’s hope this becomes a teaching moment that will result in a truly fundamental change in the relationship between the federal government and this country’s citizens . . .

And why we should care. John Stossel in Reason.

When people succumb to the progressive impulse to support centralizing power, they cede control over the very industries they hope to reform.

Lets hope we get that before it’s too late.

Excellent post over at 2Blowhards this afternoon.

The media loves to frame the country’s policy debates in terms of Dem vs. Repubs. But that’s not only naive & simplistic — it also makes it impossible to really understand who the players are and why they want what they do.

The good news is that a lot of people get this. It’s what’s driving the 3rd party movement: people recognize that we need to make a genuine break with both parties; we need to put a stop to Washington’s continuous power grabs.

My grandparents never threw anything out.

The Depression taught them that.

So it’s nauseating that, in the middle of the worst financial crisis since the Depression, our government is paying car dealers to ruin engines.

It’s a classic example of idiotic political logic. Let’s pay people to turn in gas guzzling cars. So good for the environment! Will help people and the auto industry!

But oooh! Can’t let dealers turn around and sell those cars to someone else! That would put them back in service!

I know! Let’s mandate that those awful old cars be ruined instead!

But think about it. By definition, older cars aren’t as desirable as newer ones. Over time, they’d be junked anyway, for the same reason old cars have been junked since the first Ford rolled off the assembly line.

And in the meantime, they are an economic ASSET. They are a physical repository of American wealth. Purposely degrading their value is no different than burning money.

If they weren’t ruined, their resale would have stimulated more economic activity.

Not only that, but a glut of older cars on the market would have driven down the price of older cars, which would have helped people who are too poor to take advantage of “cash for clunkers.”

“What?” you say? “Who’s too poor for cash for clunkers?”

Lots of people.

Anyone who can’t qualify for a new car loan.

Anyone who is unemployed. Anyone who has gone through a foreclosure and whose credit is a mess. Anyone who doesn’t have a few hundred extra dollars in their monthly budget to put towards a new car.

Honestly. The capacity of Washington for stupidity never ceases to amaze me. And the inanity of the Cash for Clunkers bill is downright sovietesque . . .

I have been mulling this video, linked by Instapundit the other day, in which Glenn Reynolds interviews Margaret Flowers, M.D., co-chair of the Maryland branch of Physicians for a National Health Program.

Flowers seems, at first gloss, to make a pretty convincing argument. The gist of her case is that the current system is too complex and onerous. There are some 1300 different health insurance companies. Processing associated paperwork costs physicians’ practices $70,000 annually. Because insurers are trying to make a profit, they are inherently inclined to short patients on care.

A single-payer system would simplify the process for both doctors and patients, she says. She also says Medicare reimburses physicians at rates that are roughly on par with reimbursement rates of private insurers — the implication being that physicians would earn just as much if we extend Medicare to all Americans.

Since it would be a public system, you’d dispense with issues related to profit motives.

The flaws in her case are some of the same ones I’ve made here before.

A biggie: centralized systems are more vulnerable to corruption.

And while Flowers insists people will still have the right to choose their doctors, etc., what they won’t have is the right to opt out of health insurance  — and paying for it — altogether.

I do sympathize with her in one respect: doctors aren’t really in the driver’s seat when it comes to the patient/insurance/physician relationship. The insurers are.

That seems to me to be the fundamental issue.

If physicians had more power, they could “force” insurers to cover expenses based on the physicians’ evaluation of patients’ needs. They could force insurers to standardize their paperwork. Etc.

So here’s what’s interesting.

Physicians’ ability to band together and advocate for themselves is limited — by none other than the federal government.

Specifically, the National Labor Relations Board, as described by this 1998 article from Physician’s News Digest.

The critical issue for physicans is that only employees can unionize, and depending on the situation, the NLRB often classifies physicians as supervisors; if they are independent contractors they are also denied the right to organize.

So there you have it. Flowers, like everyone else, realizes there’s a problem. But she has failed to ask the right question. Therefore the solution she’s proposed is trapped in the deep dark confines of the proverbial box.

Perhaps physicians should look instead at the Labor Management Relations Act.

Maybe they should advocate that an 80-year old law be updated (repeal is probably too much to wish for!) so that it better serves the American people.

I mean, think about the last time the topic of insurance came up between you and your doctor. He/she feels completely helpless, right?

That isn’t right.

So why not upset the status quo by actually challenging it.

The exact opposite of handing even more control over to Washington.

Seems like a no-brainer to me.

Here’s a thought to chew on: the larger/more centralized the government, the more unwieldy the laws.

As per this excellent piece by Richard Fernandez, who in turn riffs off Mark Steyn’s observation that “Thousand page bills . . . are the death of representative government.”

I can’t imagine holding a Congressional seat and voting on bills I haven’t read or don’t understand. But it’s a routine occurance — you can bet on it.

Yet another reason we need to bring Washington to heel.