Mark Kirk Takes AFP Climate Tax Pledge; Panders to Rationality

From AFP:

“The Illinois chapter of the free-market grassroots group Americans for Prosperity (AFP-IL) today applauded U.S. Senate candidate and current U.S. Representative Mark Kirk (10th District) for signing the group’s “No Climate Tax Pledge.” By doing so, Kirk joins over 280 lawmakers and candidates on the federal, state and local levels pledging to “oppose any legislation relating to climate change that includes a net increase in government revenue, unless it is offset by tax cuts equal to or greater than the revenues generated.”

“The one thing elected officials should all be able to agree on is that global warming shouldn’t be used as an excuse to hike taxes on citizens and businesses,” said AFP-IL State Director Joe Calomino. “We encourage all of Illinois’ elected officials and candidates for elected office to sign.”

Other Illinois signers include: U.S. Senate candidates Patrick Hughes and Eric Wallace; U.S. House candidates John Dawson, David McAloon and Henry Meers; and State Senator Ira Silverstein.

Cap-and-trade took its first step toward enactment when the U.S. House narrowly passed the Waxman-Markey energy tax bill, which escaped the lower chamber by a scant seven votes despite significant bipartisan opposition. Senators Boxer (D-Calif.) and Kerry (D-Mass.) have just begun committee hearings on companion legislation in the Senate. However, key Democratic senators have expressed opposition to attempting to pass cap-and-trade this year.”

I’m sure Rich Miller will cry that that Kirk is pandering to the right, again.  He prefers Kirk to pander to a minority of out-of-touch suburban ditzes. The truth is Kirk is free to support environmental policies, just not ones that hurt the economy.  Of course, again channeling Glenn Reynolds, thats a bug for lefties like Rich (granted he’s got a cool libertarian streak, like me, too) not a feature.  The more economic health we have, the less need we have for govt. That ain’t good for political journalists.

As I noted yesterday, we’ve been told for 128 years about the impending disaster of the polar ice cap melt.   The CRU email debacle on AGW continues to raise questions about the veracity of the science behind “climate change.”

Kirk isn’t pandering to the right on this one.  He’s pandering to rationality.

Of course that’s another thing the suburban ditzes and the political reporters won’t be able to accept.

State Govt. Funded Economists Call for More State Funding

Economists at the University of Illinois Institute for Government & Public Affairs — a state funded parachute think tank for retired governor Jim Edgar – is calling for higher taxes on cash strapped Illinoisans to pay their salaries:

Tax increases are the only solution to a widening budget crisis that a new study says has landed Illinois among the nation’s most financially troubled states, a soon-to-be-released report by a team of University of Illinois economists warns.

Illinois is among nine states spiraling toward an economic disaster that could rival California, where a $24 billion budget shortfall has netted IOUs, widespread layoffs and forced furloughs, according to a study released last week by the Pew Center on the States, a nonpartisan think tank.

With a roughly $11 billion budget gap of its own, Illinois can only duck a similar meltdown by raising taxes, says Daniel McMillen, an economist with the U. of I. Institute of Government and Public Affairs who co-wrote an analysis of the state’s fiscal crisis for an upcoming report on critical issues facing Illinois.”

We on the right are always accused of being in the back pocket of “corporations,” so if this seems harsh, I can only say what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.  That this kind of attack really gets us no where, is something I would heartily agree with.

Enough with the pet peeve.

The real problem is that the Illinois taxpayer doesn’t have the money.  With the official unemployment rate at 11 plus percent and those who have given up looking for work much higher, now is not the time to be hiking taxes.  That will only result in it taking longer for people to find work or more people joining the ranks of the unemployed.  This will drive more demand for “state services” and thus more spending which will only make matters worse.

Of course forcing more spending and more dependency on government is a feature, as Instapundit says, for those on the govt. payroll, not a bug.

Another feature, I’m sure from their point of view, is that politicians will spend what new revenue they do get on new programs and new dependents, not on old bills that have already served their purpose of buying votes in previous elections.

We raised taxes on businesses to close budget gaps in 2003.  We just spent more.  If Springfield is sincere then it will drastically reduce spending and then once they’ve proven they can, I’ll be more than happy to talk higher taxes.

I can say that because it will never happen.

128 Years of Melting Polar Ice

Tim Blair notes the NY Times has warned us that the sky if falling the North Pole is melting 17 times since 1881:

From the New York Times, 128 years of looming polar doom:

• 1881: “This past Winter, both inside and outside the Arctic circle, appears to have been unusually mild. The ice is very light and rapidly melting …”

• 1932: “NEXT GREAT DELUGE FORECAST BY SCIENCE; Melting Polar Ice Caps to Raise the Level of Seas and Flood the Continents”

• 1934: “New Evidence Supports Geology’s View That the Arctic Is Growing Warmer”

• 1937: “Continued warm weather at the Pole, melting snow and ice.”

• 1954: “The particular point of inquiry concerns whether the ice is melting at such a rate as to imperil low-lying coastal areas through raising the level of the sea in the near future.”

• 1957: “U.S. Arctic Station Melting”

Check out the entire list.

Hypcorisy, Thy Policy Is Illinois Gun Control

Steve Chapman:  ”In Chicago, only criminals and aldermen are armed. Forgive me for being redundant.”

If the average Illinoisan had as much contempt for the rule of law as the political then Illinois would be anarchy…

Presidents Ju Jintao and Obama on SNL

The best humor always has a hint of truth in it, no?

Maximizing Liberty Maximizes the Common Good

My letter to the editor in response to the State Journal-Register’s call to consider the common good when determining whether to support health care reform:

Don’t trade liberty for the common good
If you truly consider the common good when deciding whether to support health-care reform (“Consider the greater good on health care reform,” Sunday) as The State Journal-Register editorial board implores, then you aren’t going to reach the conclusion the editorial board desires. In fact, given how the common good has been pursued compared to how it’s been best served, the editorial board’s efforts do more to harm than help.

In the 20th century, we did it the editorial board’s way, and each time the costs greatly exceeded the benefits.

Prohibition was to serve the common good. It was to empty the prisons and turn jails into warehouses. Social Security was to provide seniors with retirement and Medicare and Medicaid were to care for the elderly and poor. However, it turns out the reformers’ self-interest more often than not trumped the greater good.

Prohibition was the first time that the federal government imposed an individual mandate. Politicians preened morally while citizens were turned into lawbreakers that led to organized crime’s heyday.

Social Security has served the common good by transferring wealth from the young and poor to the old and affluent.

Medicare and Medicaid enriched a medical industrial complex while limiting access to quality care by the poor and the elderly. Higher health-care costs fell on the rest of us.

Instead of heeding the editorial board, perhaps we should recall Adam Smith’s observation on how the common good is really served: “By pursuing his own interest, he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.”

And when it comes to reformers, maybe we should heed the warning of Justice Louis Brandeis: “The greater dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding.”

Trading liberty or “our country’s unique individualism” for the common good as the editorial board suggests is not how we serve the common good. It’s how we destroy it.

Gregory Blankenship
President
Illinois Alliance for Growth

Of course the title gets it totally wrong.  It’s not a trade. They aren’t mutually exclusive the common good has proven to be largely dependent on individual freedom.   You harm the common good by giving up liberty which has proven for more than 2 centuries now that it’s the best way to provide for the common good.

The point of the letter is that if you truly consider the common good, then you wouldn’t sacrifice liberty.  Adam Smith’s point about the hidden hand was that the common good was best served by looking out for your own interests.  The baker produces the bread, you exchange your money for his bread so you don’t have to spend your time making the bread.  He then buys what you produce and we are better off as a result.

When government enters the equation it interferes with this balance.  You still are self interested but other considerations must now come into play.  This distorts your behavior which causes unintended negative consequences.

It’s worth noting that one of the comments below the letters takes me to task.  He uses the draft and the income tax to say that other individual mandates have been foisted upon us.  Well, first the income tax isn’t an individual mandate because you don’t have to work.  And often as we learned people often don’t work or don’t invest to avoid paying taxes.

The draft was only for men of a certain age, and it was seen as wrong we’ve subsequently proven that an all volunteer force serves the domestic defense much, much better than draftees.  It actually proves the point… And oh… you could buy yourself out of the draft during the civil war or pay someone to go in your stead.

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Some Good Health Care Reform News

One problem with markets is asymmetrical information.  When one side in a market exchange has more information on a given transaction, they have advantage that they can press against the other side.  Markets really only work when both sides gain from a transaction.  When one side games the system that creates mis-trust and the market system becomes distorted and dysfunctional.

When, for example, a person buying health insurance doesn’t disclose they have a pre-existing condition they can use that information to get a lower health care premium than they otherwise would. This hurts everybody in the insurance pool.  Ways to combat that are disclosure clauses for insured  and recision clauses for the insurer.  Remember before warrantees and lemon laws how you could never trust a used car salesman?  It’s the same thing.  Here, the seller had more information — the auto was wrecked, had a bad engine, flood, etc.

Hospitals have never  – because they are so often monopolies in their communities or when they aren’t they engage in behavior that would illegal under our anti-trust system if they were any other business –published prices or other consumer information.   This puts the hospital industry in a pretty sweet spot compared to the health care consumer.

The answer to this problem has been an effort to get hospitals to become more transparent.  And now Illinois has taken that first step:

“For the first time, consumers can pore over abundant data – much of it previously unpublished — about Illinois hospitals and surgery centers on a state-sponsored Web site that launches Thursday.

The 2008 data include information about what these medical providers charge, how many procedures they perform, how often they deliver recommended care, and how consumers rate their care.”

The site should be up by now.  It is being launched today. You can go to:  www.idph.state.il.us or www.healthcarereportcard.illinois.gov to find it.

By disclosing information on both cost and care, hospitals will have to compete on price and quality.  That in a normal market is how you get better goods and services for lower and lower prices.  Introducing competition is a better more efficient way than government interference in the provisioning of care.  And it’s lot better than anything coming out of Washington these days.

I know this is a first step and I’m sure some will try undermine to protect their interests, but this is a good first step and a step that all Illinoisans can be proud of.

The Self Interests of “Reformers” and Health Care Reform

Jeffrey Flier, Dean of the Harvard Medical School, today offers us his thoughts on health care reform.  And it isn’t very reassuring:

“In discussions with dozens of health-care leaders and economists, I find near unanimity of opinion that, whatever its shape, the final legislation that will emerge from Congress will markedly accelerate national health-care spending rather than restrain it. Likewise, nearly all agree that the legislation would do little or nothing to improve quality or change health-care’s dysfunctional delivery system. The system we have now promotes fragmented care and makes it more difficult than it should be to assess outcomes and patient satisfaction. The true costs of health care are disguised, competition based on price and quality are almost impossible, and patients lose their ability to be the ultimate judges of value.

Worse, currently proposed federal legislation would undermine any potential for real innovation in insurance and the provision of care. It would do so by overregulating the health-care system in the service of special interests such as insurance companies, hospitals, professional organizations and pharmaceutical companies, rather than the patients who should be our primary concern.

In effect, while the legislation would enhance access to insurance, the trade-off would be an accelerated crisis of health-care costs and perpetuation of the current dysfunctional system—now with many more participants. This will make an eventual solution even more difficult. Ultimately, our capacity to innovate and develop new therapies would suffer most of all.

There are important lessons to be learned from recent experience with reform in Massachusetts. Here, insurance mandates similar to those proposed in the federal legislation succeeded in expanding coverage but—despite initial predictions—increased total spending.”

The problem with health care reform is the problem with every liberal reform since prohibition.  It offers us lot’s of promises for the common good, but the common good as defined by the proponents is their self interest.

The formula works like this.

your self interest =  selfishness, greed and profit.

the common good = the self interest of those proposing reform.

Get it?

The challenge of health care is the cost, access, quality triangle.  In other words, how do we give the most people possible access to quality health care services in a cost efficient manner?  It’s pretty clear that the health care reform worming its way through Washington doesn’t do that. Instead, according to the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services the major plank of health care reform is expanding Medicaid up the income ladder.   Don’t believe me then consider this from Megan McArdle at the Atlantic:

“Second, what does the CMS report tell us about health care reform, and specifically HR 3962, the bill it analyzed?  For one thing, it tells us that the exchanges, the mandates, and the subsidies are mostly a complicated sideshow.  The real action is in Medicaid.  Expanding Medicaid to 133% of the poverty line accounts for most of the decrease in the number of uninsured.  The exchanges are expected to cover only 13 million new people, or less than 5% of the population.  We’re not so much restructuring the health system as making one of its sectors much bigger.

Which accounts for another important finding:  the bill is not going to control national health care expenditures.  In fact, it’s going to slightly increase them.  Under current law, the CMS has a projection of 20.8% of GDP going to health care in 2019.  The new bill will bring that up to 21.1%.  That’s not particularly surprising, since they think the bill will cover 34 million new people.  Unless those new people weren’t planning on actually consuming any health care–in which case, why are we bothering?–spending was bound to go up.

Social Security and Medicare were supposed to benefit the common good.  Instead, it’s been a huge transfer of wealth from the young and poor to the old and affluent.  Medicare has resulted in a medical industrial complex that games the system in order to make a buck.  Think of the advertisements for free motor driven wheel chairs on cable.  Medicaid and Medicare both pass costs on to those of us who have private insurance.  There are clear winners and losers from these liberal reforms and it’s the “winners” who are defining the common good. It’s a good gig if you can get it.

Some Sound Advice on Thomson/Gitmo

Rich Miller’s headline says, “Take a breath and stick to the facts”

Indeed.

It notes that two senators, Bill Brady and Matt Murphy, are offering some thoughtful responses.  That’s good to know.

Again, if we are going to close Gitmo — which I’m against — a place like Thomson may meet the requirements.  But it will require an adult conversation — political jobs posturing and knee jerk responses.

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