Opinions
7/10/2009
A Conservative’s View Point By: Bob Steinburg
Uncle Sam No Mr. Fix-it
Growing up I remember a man referred to as Johnny Fix-it. Johnny had many skills from plumbing, electrical to carpentry and appliance repair. If it was broken you could depend on Johnny to repair it promptly, efficiently and well within the limited budget of a blue collar family of six in the 1950s and `60s.
If Johnny felt a job was beyond his level of expertise, he would either recommend someone or flatly say, “It can’t be fixed.” I remember him telling my Dad that there’s nothing worse than someone trying to do a job they know little-to-nothing about. He referred to these individuals as “jacklegs” – someone lacking in skill or training while proclaiming acumen for both.
While having Mr. Fix-it only a phone call away was often reassuring, Johnny was not someone who thought he should be giving us financial recommendations, telling us which doctors to use, or offering us career advice in a field other than his own. He knew his limitations. Unfortunately, all too often, government does not.
But that’s how many see government’s role; a nanny state that should be providing us with cradle to grave “security,” unburdening us from such “complicated” tasks as thinking for one’s self, assuming personal responsibility for our actions and decision making, along with lifting us from the overwhelming responsibility of having to utilize our common sense.
When banks and other financial institutions started having fiscal problems last fall, primarily because of mismanagement and greed, President George W. Bush along with Congress came to the “rescue” with $700 billion in tax dollars to underwrite the Troubled Asset and Relief Program (TARP). The management and boards of directors were not held accountable. They still aren’t. Government officials overseeing the bailout have acknowledged difficulties in tracking the money and measuring effectiveness. Interestingly, some of the banks and financial institutions that received $295 billion in bailout money had spent $114 million on lobbying and campaign contributions in the previous election cycle.
The Government now wants to fix global warming. In spite of the most reliable satellite weather data showing that atmospheric temperatures have declined over the last 11 years, a trend expected to continue for some time, the House felt it necessary to pass a climate bill that, according to the Charles River Associates, a Harvard based economics consulting firm, will result in a net loss of 2.5 million jobs each year and cost citizens billions in new taxes.
Last week in the American Spectator, Peter Ferrara wrote, “The rationale for this bill is to counter global warming by sharply reducing greenhouse gasses, primarily carbon dioxide.” He goes on to say, even if this bill works exactly as envisioned, the most radical environmentalists admit it will only slow temperatures by a ridiculous 9/100th of one degree Fahrenheit by 2050; this after reducing our use of fossil fuels by 83 percent!
And now Uncle Sam wants to “fix” healthcare. Democrats will be putting forth a plan by early fall. What’s the government’s track record on running healthcare? President Barack Obama admits Social Security is broke, including Medicare and Medicaid. Both lose billions each year because of mismanagement and fraud.
And how about the Veterans Hospitals? Veterans’ advocates and lawmakers say the VA Medical System is in shambles. They point to botched radiation treatments to nearly 100 cancer patients in Pennsylvania. That comes on the heels of exposing over 10,000 veterans to HIV and hepatitis viruses throughout the system because of faulty procedures. Advocates for national healthcare should have reason for pause.
Government was supposed to fix education as part of President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” reforms. In all too many instances the results are unremarkable. According to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy, 12-14 percent of adults rate below basic on reading and comprehension, while only 13 percent are rated proficient. Free market enterprises like Sylvan Learning Centers have sprung up to fill the gap between the shortcomings of public education and what employers expect and demand from graduates of our public schools.
The government spent $837 billion or $10,500 per student on education in 2008. With millions of students trapped in failing schools, many parents have no school choice. Even Sweden, the epitome of a taxpayer-funded cradle-to-grave welfare state, introduced a school voucher system in 1992 for independent state schools that is growing in popularity. The increasing competition for students is now raising the curriculum standards for all of Sweden’s schools.
Chrysler, a victim of Fiat and the United Auto Workers Union, is another project the government has taken on, along with General Motors. They not only financially bailed them out, but are even trying to mange the day to day business operations of each. Unfortunately, the very CAFÉ standards (Increased Corporate Average Fuel Economy) previously imposed by government could ultimately imperil the survival of both.
Obama and the Democrats told us the $787 billion stimulus package was needed “immediately” to stop the hemorrhaging of our economy. It’s not working. The only thing booming in the U. S. these days is escalating unemployment. And now we’re told we may need a Stimulus II, adding trillions more to the $11 trillion in debt already imposed on future generations.
Americans have historically been advocates for a limited role for government, preferring instead to emphasize the individual as primarily responsible for insuring his or her well-being. That’s not to say that government shouldn’t play a role in helping to ensure our safety and welfare, but it should not intrude into every aspect of our lives. Even Johnny Fix-it understood that.
6/25/2009
A Conservative’s Viewpoint By: Bob Steinburg
Yes we need Healthcare ‘Reform’
A friend recently returned from Canada and relayed the following: When picked up at the airport in Toronto, a cab driver asked if he was an American. He replied yes and then asked why. The cabby answered, “Please tell your government not to institute national health care. If you do us Canadians won’t have any place to go when we need to have a procedure or testing done right away.”
In spite of the many good things others say about healthcare in the U. S., our healthcare is seriously troubled and needs significant reform. If you’re one of the millions who can’t afford health insurance, the crisis is real. But so, too, would be the government telling us what treatment, surgery or medications we can or cannot have, and how long we’ll have to wait for access.
The last thing any of us want to risk is lowering the quality of care that is most certain to accompany politicians taking over our health care system. We don’t need politicians making healthcare decisions for us.
I’ve had the same doctor for 32 years. I can see him whenever I want. Through him I have complete access to healthcare and medical specialists as well as an entrée to the most advanced medical technology, procedures and medications in the world. Others have similarly longstanding personal physician – patient relationships. Our doctors know us and we know and trust them. Replacing the trust with a Washington bureaucrat trying to squeeze us into a cookie-cutter one size fits all health plan, is not good medicine, even if “free.” Rather than a politician run national health plan, what we really need in this country is serious healthcare reform.
First the cost of healthcare must be brought down to make it more accessible. Waste, fraud and abuse are rampant. The Washington Post reported in `08 that Medicare fraud alone amounted to more than $60 billion per year. Medicaid fraud costs taxpayers an additional $2 billion. The health care plan being drafted by congressional Democrats is estimated to cost taxpayers at least $3 trillion over the next five years. Imagine the potential for waste and fraud with those numbers?
President Barack Obama placed Vice President Joe Biden in charge of monitoring the flow of $789 billion in stimulus money to the states. Biden recently said he doesn’t have a handle on where some of the money is going. David Williams, who runs Deloittle Financial Services Advisory, may have Biden’s answer. He told the Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch last week that at least $50 billion in stimulus money will most likely be lost to fraud. If that same percentage of fraud were applied to the Democrats national healthcare plan, the dollars lost to waste and fraud could approach $ 200 billion.
Healthcare reform must include providing assistance to those who need it while at the same time allowing it to remain patient-centered rather than government-centered. Preserving the quality of healthcare should remain paramount. No one wants a system where patients have to wait weeks or months to get the procedures or treatments needed.
The government estimates the number of uninsured at 47 million. But according to the Media Research Center, a non-profit watchdog organization designed to bring balance and responsibility to the media, that figure includes 10 million folks who aren’t American citizens. The government numbers also include those who can afford to self insure as well as those who already qualify for government assistance but have yet to apply. They estimate the number of uninsured in America to be less than 10 million. In fact the “liberal” Kaiser Family Foundation estimates the number of chronically uninsured in the U. S. at somewhere between 8 and 13 million. While those numbers are significant, the situation with healthcare is not as dire as the president and the Democrats would have us believe.
A national dialogue on this critical issue is needed. President Obama and the Democrats, as they did with the stimulus, are in the midst of another full court press, creating an alarming sense of urgency to act now or else we’ll fall off a cliff. Healthcare affects every one of us and is sacrosanct to most. Simply gutting a healthcare system that is the envy of the world and that has contributed greatly to our over all well being and increased life expectancy in favor of a plan where politicians will be making the life and death calls is unacceptable.
It appears there are good reasons why President Obama appeared on ABC television last week to sell his healthcare prescription for America. He was allowed great latitude in controlling the give and take of questioning. And ABC insured any opposition to this initiative would be blocked from access to this broadcast by denying the opposition paid commercial air-time to present an opposing point of view. It appears once again that with the Democrats in Washington it’s my way or the highway.
When it comes to abortion most Democrats are pro-choice. When it comes to healthcare reform it appears they are anything but. What we need is real healthcare reform, not the politician’s radical prescription for healthcare they hope we’ll swallow at our peril. The goal for all Americans should be that every citizen has access to affordable, quality and timely healthcare. The best way to accomplish that is to engage the American people in an extended dialogue, not to rush into something we’ll all regret in the long run.
5/28/2009
A Conservative’s Viewpoint By: Bob Steinburg
Continuing the slide to Socialism
Is America heading further toward socialism? It seems so. There’s evidence that America’s love affair with capitalism, an economic philosophy that has fostered more individual wealth, freedom and opportunity than any other in the history of the world is beginning to dwindle. America’s been creeping toward socialism since 1933 when President Franklin Roosevelt ushered in his New Deal in hopes of helping America escape the Great Depression.
Supporters of the New Deal credit it with restoring economic vitality. While it did bring immediate relief to millions of suffering souls, it did not restore our economy to prosperity; our entry into World War II did.
When Roosevelt became president, unemployment was 24 percent. By 1938, five years into his “recovery program,” unemployment was still 19 percent and 15 percent by 1940. In 1943, in the midst of the war, unemployment finally shrank to less than two percent.
Critics argue that the primary reason the New Deal didn’t significantly reduce unemployment, was because FDR tripled personal and corporate income taxes. This resulted in less capital for individual spending and corporate expansion- both needed to create new jobs.
In spite of lessons learned from history, progressive Democrats and liberals continue to deride capitalism. Many reject this economic system in spite of the fact that it rewards hard work, honesty, self sufficiency and personal responsibility. It’s a system in which wealth and producing wealth are privately owned. Capitalism provides the greatest opportunity for individuals to break out of poverty and government dependence, to find prosperity and independence.
Conversely, Socialism is defined as an economic stage of Marxist theory, transitioning somewhere between capitalism and communism. Examples of current socialist states are Venezuela, China, Cuba, Vietnam and Sweden. Socialism emphasizes government ownership and its controlling the means of production and distribution of goods. It believes in a redistribution of wealth. Socialism in its purest form fosters a system of group living while de emphasizing individualism, personal freedoms and, at its apex, property ownership.
Results from an April Rasmussen Poll show support for socialism in America growing. Twenty percent of those polled say they favor socialism, while 53 percent prefer capitalism. Perhaps of more concern to conservatives are the 66 percent of those under 30 questioning the merits of capitalism.
Democrats are the primary architects of the welfare state. They’ve carefully crafted a financially dependent voter base by continually fostering ways to increase the numbers of folks on the federal dole. There’s little incentive to ever become self supporting. Usually all social programs, some perceived as good like Medicare, have little market accountability and oversight, and thus continue down the road toward insolvency.
Incredulously, another contributing factor to sustained mediocrity, failure and government dependence comes at the hands of the very system that should be helping one succeed-education. Minorities who are trapped in failing inner city schools overwhelmingly support school choice. Yet the Democrats, beholden to the ultra-liberal National Education Association, continually oppose it. Instead they continue to pour millions of dollars into failing public schools. Why? One reason may be the liberal education system in many of our public schools and universities is controlled by left leaning authorities who also control the curriculum and foster anti-parent, anti-religion and anti-American values; the hallmarks of socialism.
Democrats seek to create another dependent constituency by granting unconditional amnesty to 12 million plus illegal aliens. They’ll immediately qualify for federal and state benefits including welfare, food stamps, social security and housing assistance- and will have a fast track toward citizenship. The Heritage Foundation estimates that amnesty will cost taxpayers $2.6 trillion.
Democrats are also moving the oversight of the U. S. Census, previously under the auspices of the Department of Commerce, to the White House. Enlisting the support of questionable groups like Acorn to aid with gathering data will certainly bring into question the legitimacy of their findings. This is one more partisan ploy by the Democrats to solidify their power base for the future
Dr. David Nobel, author of The Socialization of America, writes that “Most Americans are totally unaware that the U. S. House of Representatives crawls with a large, well-organized assembly of socialist organizations that are dedicated to (a) bringing about the destruction of the capitalist economic system (portrayed as greedy, conservative, religious, and/or filthy rich) and (b) slowly but surely bringing production, education, food and health care under the complete control of the federal government.” According to Nobel these groups include the Progressive Democrats of America, the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the Congressional Black Caucus.
Christopher Horner of the Competitive Enterprise Institute recently wrote in the Weekly Standard that the government’s proposed cap-and-trade or carbon tax legislation, would punish industry’s use of gas and oil products (which Al Gore states will warm the planet by one degree over the next 100 years) by allowing the federal government to “control every aspect of our economy.”
When Obama said that “the federal government is the only entity left with the resources to jolt our economy,” folks should have started paying attention. Instead of tax and regulatory relief for businesses to jump start the economy, the Democrats enacted a “stimulus package” filled with pork and waste.
In spite of government’s inability to run anything efficiently, they’ve now injected their “expertise” into the automobile and banking industries. Now the Democrats want to take a whack at “reforming” healthcare. They also support eliminating the secret ballot in labor union voting. And Democratic Sen.’s. Harkin, Kerry, Durbin, Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would like to stifle the voice of conservatives questioning anything Democrats introduce, by reinstating the Fairness Doctrine, virtually shutting down conservative talk radio. Since moving south 30 plus years ago, many I’ve met tell me they’re Democrats because their Mama’s and Daddies were Democrats. But the Democratic Party today is not the party it was then; not by a long shot. Their ancestors must be rolling in their graves knowing that the party they loved and supported is well on its way to becoming the new Socialist Party of America.