Fleeing From the Public Option

Overriding all of the debate over nationalized healthcare, is the larger issue over the role of government. Will our country improve if the government becomes more involved in our day to day lives? Can government intervention fix the economy? Is government ever the "answer." Amidst all of this debate, the proverbial mud has been slung from both sides with one warning of death panels and the other making accusations of fear mongering.

I know that not everyone is passionate about these issues, and that sometimes its easy to get lost in all of the vitriol. I recall seeing one Facebook status last month that said "Got up early to study healthcare." This can be pretty heady stuff!

I think one of the best ways to evaluate this issue, is to consider these questions: 1. What has resulted from government involvement in industry? 2. How has government involvement in healthcare worked already, (in our country or others).

To this end, today's L.A. Times provides two excellent answers to these questions.

First, there was a front page article on the Canadian system in today's paper. This article goes a long way to answering our second question.

Though none of the bills currently in Congress contemplate the Canadian model, the system has for years been touted by the left as an example of successful government-controlled healthcare.

There are several anecdotes in the article. All detail the frustration Canadians have in waiting for health care. An active 72 year old is told she would have to wait a year and a half to have surgery. The justification for this delay? Her injury wasn't life threatening. Now ask yourself, if your in agony from back pain, would you want to wait eighteen months for surgery? What kind of quality of life is that? The woman in the story ultimately went to the U.S., paid out of pocket and received the care she needed.

To boot, the Canadian government is facing huge budget deficits. For example, health providers are being told to "[hold] the number of MRIs to last year's total...[and reduce] elective surgeries by 14%.

All of us have complain when public services get delayed, or when budget cuts affect our schools. But how would you like being told you can't get the care you need because services are being cut back? Now that's a budget cut that really hurts!

Another example of just how badly the government handles heathcare, is the Veteran's Administration. Have you ever talked to a veteran whose happy with the way he or she is treated at the VA? I have a classmate who is a Iraq veteran. Her take is, if the government can't treat returning soldiers right, it surely won't be able to handle taking care of the general population.

Think of your own interactions with government employees: the post office, county officials, the DMV - do these experiences inspire any confidence in the government?

Juxtaposed with today's article on Canadian health care, the Times also had a very frank opinion piece on the disfunction that occurs when government gets involved in private industry. The article discusses the mortgage industry and government sponsored companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac The Times editorial board is absolutely correct when it says:

The companies' troubles demonstrate that the mix of public mission and private ownership is too combustible to be sustained. The federal sponsorship and duties convey an implicit governmental guarantee against failure, which gives the companies an incentive to take excessive risks as they compete for market share. And grabbing the biggest possible share of the $10-trillion U.S. mortgage market works for shareholders, but it only increases the consequences for taxpayers if the companies go belly up. The private sector has shown in the past that it can sustain a secondary market for mortgages. The government should give it the chance to do so again after the wave of foreclosures has passed, either by cutting its ties to Fannie and Freddie or by dismantling them.

I suppose one could read this and argue that one solution then would be to eliminate private ownership from the equation. Of course this would be the very government takeover that those on the right have been warning of.

Of far greater value is the lesson to be learned from Fannie, Freddie and the mortgage debacle: the best fix to economic issues will always be based in private, market-based solutions. Does this mean the private sector had no role in causing the current crisis? Of course not. But it does mean that the best chance of solving the problem will be through private industry - not the Federal government.

In conclusion, I hope that as our leaders debate these issues, they will ignore the doomsday rhetoric from both sides, and focus on demonstrable track record that Canadian Health care has laid before us. I hope they see the havoc that the government mandates to broaden home ownership has wrought upon the mortgage industry.

The lessons from history are in front of us. We'd be foolish not to learn from them.

There is No Free Lunch

My wife is an amazing shopper. She smells out bargains like sharks smell blood in the water. She loves deals so much that after I buy her a gift, she's guaranteed to love it more if I got it on sale.

"Deals" and savings, however, are sometimes illusory. Have you ever had a post-shopping conversation where the shopper justifies an receipt by boasting how much they saved? Sure I spent $250, but I saved $75! As this very simple example exhibits, there is a cost that comes with these savings.

Our kids are on a traditional school schedule, so we just started back to school after labor day. Among the myriad of forms, letters, and disclosure notices (honestly, how many times do we need to print our name, address, phone numbers, DOBs, next of kin, emergency contacts, blood types) thrust at us by our school's dutiful faculty was the see-if-you-qualify form for the "free lunch" program.

What shocked us this year was that one of the teachers told us that the forms were to be filled out by everyone, regardless of income. Why we asked? Is it too much to require the allegedly needy to ask for it? Why does everyone need to fill this out? Heck we feed our children! This teacher's response was so telling: "because you may qualify for free lunch and not know it." In essence: you could be getting free lunch!

Folks, anyone who tells you school lunch is free clearly does not understand how the world works.

First, some brief discussion on the history of the "National School Lunch Program."

The program, paid for by the Federal Government started in the 1946. It's origins may surprise you. The goal of the program had nothing to do with poverty, starving children or child obesity. It was started as an effort to bulk-up America's youth for the military. Apparently too many would-be soldiers were being turned down for service due to poor nutrition. So Congress faced with the advent of the cold war and a need to combat the commies thought it would be a great idea for the Federal Government to feed kids directly.

Once again that when the government gets involved, it becomes so self-perpetual that even when the original goals of the program are met or become irrelevant, the program remains!

Any idea on what this program costs? Eight billion dollars a year. In 2008, nearly 31 million students in 101,650 schools and residential childcare institutions participated in the program.

Does anyone really believe that, were it not for this program, 31 million little kids would starve?

The Dept of Agriculture, who administers the program (I know, we really do still have a Dept. of Agriculture) of course touts the nutritional value of the food being served. From their website "[the program requires]... that lunches meet the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, and provide at least minimum calorie levels and one-third of Recommended Dietary Allowances of protein, vitamin A, vitamin C, iron, and calcium."

Next time you talk to a teacher, ask them about the lunch program and kids who receive the "free" lunches. They will tell you that for the most part it is wasted. Also, teachers I've talked to express widespread cynicism that the receivers are truly needy. Kids ignore the fresh fruits and healthy food, and throw away huge percentages of their lunches. And why shouldn't they? After all, can we really expect them to appreciate something they are being told is being given to them for free?

What has started as a lunch program has now blossomed into summertime lunches (they call it seamless summer), breakfast, and after school snacks. There's even a "Special Milk" fund!

What are we really teaching children when tell them they are being fed for free, especially when its a eight billion dollar lie? Is this really how life works? You just show up everyday and someone feeds you. Sure!

Why stop with breakfast and lunch? Let's have the Federal government pay for dinner! I propose that we have the Federal government, via the taxpayers cover three square meals a day. While we're at it, there are too many poor children with messy hair. I propose we start a National Shampoo and Hair Gel Program!

Would these children really go hungry without the "free" lunches? Even without the lunch program, the Federal Government spent thirty four billion dollars on food stamps last year.

Is it really too much to ask parents to feed their own children?

I told our son's teacher that even if we did qualify (and with five kids, we probably do) we wouldn't take the free lunch for our kids. Why not?

Because there is no such thing as a free lunch.

When Cars Get Named After Famous Carnivores

A lot goes into a car manufacturer naming a car. Though must luxury brands eschew traditional names, for manufacturers lower on the totem pole, the marketing goal becomes obvious in the choice of the name. Some examples of this are the Tundra, Highlander, Mustang or even Suburban. Other times, names are just made up like Sentra, Maxima or Acadia. What the heck is a Corolla anyway?

Today I read the first reviews for Ford's Special Vehicle Team's Raptor. Yes. That's right, Raptor. You remember the Raptors from Jurassic Park right? Those were those beady-eyed miniature T-Rex pack hunters that killed three fourths of the cast in every movie.

Ford has much to admire these days. They are the only one of the big three not to declare BK and so far they haven't taken any Federal Bailout money either. Plus the product line has improved as well.

Ford's SVT heretofore has focused nearly exclusively on traditional performance models, like the SVT Cobra Mustang, the Focus SVT and even the Ford Lightening (Ford's prior ridiculously fast F-150). But with the Raptor, the SVT has now focused on off-road performance. In fact, with the Raptor, they just went plain old insane.

If your reading this, take a moment to check out the video introduction to the Raptor. You know it's going to be good when they lead with a huge legal disclaimer (the usual: closed course, professional driver, we would never encourage you to actually do this at home). The disclaimer is followed by Van Halenesque metal music and video of the Raptor doing seventy in the desert.

Half-way through the videos I'm already thinking that surely there must be a way I can drop forty large for a truck that I can take on jumps.

Just imagine being the guy at work on Monday, who purchased a Prius the same weekend as the guy who bought the Raptor. You bought a what?

Look at the Raptor grill. You can read Ford from space!

The Raptor is proof positive that when you get a bunch of car guys together, remove all pretense of political correctness and let them build away, you end up with something pretty cool. And marketable too.

It also shows the lunacy of a Government controlled industry. Do you really think GM would build the Raptor now?

Conservatives Aren't Supposed to Protest

Though I spent most of my Saturday as I do nearly every Saturday - with my face buried in a book, I delighted in watching/ reading about the coverage of today's nationwide protests.

What brought the smile to face was not the protesters or their signs (okay some were pretty good, my favorite "Think Health Care is Expensive: Wait Till Its Free). No what I've enjoyed is the Mainstream Media's (MSM) totally inability to explain and come to grip with these protests. Who are these people? Why are there so many of them?

You see, conservatives aren't supposed to protest. They just don't do that. They're what Nixon famously called the "silent majority." Conservatives, holds the conventional wisdom, just sit at home, get angry and then take it out in letters to the editor and at the ballot box. They don't ever take to the streets.

When the Tea Parties first started, the MSM dismissed them as mere disingenuous orchestrations of the Republican Party. Later as the protests moved into the Health Care Town Hall meetings, Dem congressional leaders looked like fools maligning them as Un-American and Nazis.

Read this CNN piece on today's protest. Let's see, the protesters lack a central leader, come from a variety of local organizations, aren't affiliated with any particular political party and are unified by a common theme.

I think there's a phrase for this: It's called a grass-roots movement.

But CNN and the rest of the MSM even the Dems just can't get themselves to acknowledge this. They can't admit that this President's actions have inspired all of these protests.

It seems that finally, the MSM is realizing this is movement is more than the "angry white men" conservatives have long been portrayed as. They see people of all races, from different political parties. They see mothers with children, rich, poor, senior citizens. They see Americans.

Remember when Barack Obama promised he would be the great unifier by transcending our political parties and our red and blue states? Well today is proof positive that Obama has fulfilled his promise of unification.

He has unified the conservative movement.

Too Much of a Bad Thing?

Though those of us who live, breath, eat, sleep and excrete politics certainly were looking forward to tonight's "make or break" Obama speech, I'm wondering if all of this joint-session of congress, prime-time effort on the part of the President is futile?

Why? I think the President is suffering from a classic case of over-exposure.

Think about it. This man is more omnipresent than Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny and that song you hate on the radio combined.

Is it normal for the President to be in the news cycle on a regular basis? Of course. What isn't normal, is to have the President so utterly involved in every issue, every debate, every story. The man made a March Madness pick!

Of course this was most dramatically displayed during the "Cops Acted Stupidly" news conference debacle.

I think the President would do well to realize that big speeches aren't as exciting when you make one on every issue, every day. Same goes for town-hall meetings too.

Remember how sick you were hearing about MJ's death? Think of how most Americans must feel about Obama and healthcare.

The President clearly understands the "big stick" he carries. I think he just needs to use it a little less frequently.