Worcester County Freedom Trail

Great event coming up this week sponsored by the Worcester Tea Party. It’s their first public forum. Nicolas Sanchez, Professor of Economics at Holy Cross, has been an invited speaker at events across the country. Now he’s bringing his extensive knowledge home to us here in Worcester County to talk about Obama’s failed economic policies, how we got here, and what should be done instead.

“Why President Obama’s Economic Policy Will Not Solve Our Economic Problems”

Tuesday, June 30, 2009, 7-8:30pm
Worcester Public Library
3 Salem Square, Worcester

In the talk, Professor Sanchez will discuss:
- Origins of the economic crisis
- Structural problems to overcome
- The wrong policies to take
- The inflation that is to come
- What could have been done instead
- How the media misinforms America

If we care about electing more responsible officials, then we all need to have a better understanding of what’s going on and how things need to change.

The event is free and open to the public.

Wow, how did I miss that speech? Oh wait, Menino usually doesn’t have much to say so I always skip his speeches. But it appears that he recently gave a rather surprising speech about school reform. He came out in favor of charter schools, much to the consternation of the Boston Teachers Union. To this day, I don’t understand how they can be against school reform when so many Boston schools are an embarrassing failure. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Menino had good reason to change his mind…federal funds! Read on…

From Jon Keller in the Wall Street Journal:

Tom Menino, the longtime Democratic mayor of this city, is not known for rocking the boat or for eloquence. But earlier this month he stunned many in the city when he gave a powerful speech about school reform.

The speech took aim at the lack of progress in dozens of low-performing, inner-city Boston public schools, many of which have not met adequate yearly progress for five years running.

“To get the results we seek — at the speed we want — we must make transformative changes that boost achievement for students, improve quality choices for parents, and increase opportunities for teachers,” Mr. Menino said. “We need to empower our educators to quickly innovate and implement what works.” With that, Mr. Menino abandoned nearly two decades of personal opposition to nonunion charter schools, which have been bitterly resisted by Massachusetts teachers unions and their political allies. “I believe that the increased flexibility that charters provide can . . . help us close the achievement gap,” he declared.

“Betrayal,” cried the Boston Teachers Union on its Web site, decrying the “glee” with which Mr. Menino’s “sudden turnaround” was greeted by “anti-public school and anti-tax zealots.” That’s a typically hyperbolic reference to Massachusetts’ growing legions of charter-school supporters, an ideologically-diverse group that includes the Boston Globe’s liberal editorial page, a bipartisan group of state officeholders who’ve funneled billions in new revenue into the public schools, and at least 13,000 pro-charter Boston taxpayers — the 5,000 families with children in charter schools and 8,000 on waiting lists to enroll.

But the inflammatory rhetoric of the Boston Teachers Union reflects the alarm triggered by Mr. Menino’s speech. “He has really thrown down the gauntlet to the union,” notes Linda Brown of the charter-school support group Building Excellent Schools. “He’s responding to an enormous overcurrent and undercurrent of public pressure over the fact that nothing is changing in too many schools. He’s used his political acuteness to see there’s a perfect storm.”

What flashed on Mr. Menino’s radar screen so urgently? Political pressure, most notably from the Obama administration, which has explicitly linked charter-school expansion with access to $5 billion in new education reform funding.

The outrageous cap and trade energy bill narrowly passed in the House last night. I was hoping Minority Leader Boehner would do a real filibuster instead of the nice, but not enough, one hour speech he gave.

In the meantime, has anyone bothered to read the proposed legislation? Or are we doomed to have yet another bailout-style government disaster?

From the Wall Street Journal, a look inside the numbers. Apparently the CBO isn’t telling the truth. The cost per family for the Waxman-Markey Bill isn’t $175 per family in 2020, it’s $1870, and it rises to $6800 in 2035! Can we please make it a requirement that all elected officials have to pass at least 2 economics courses before they can serve?

Congressional Budget Office did an analysis of what has come to be known as the Waxman-Markey bill. According to the CBO, the climate legislation would cost the average household only $175 a year by 2020. Edward Markey, Mr. Waxman’s co-author, instantly set to crowing that the cost of upending the entire energy economy would be no more than a postage stamp a day for the average household. Amazing. A closer look at the CBO analysis finds that it contains so many caveats as to render it useless.

For starters, the CBO estimate is a one-year snapshot of taxes that will extend to infinity. Under a cap-and-trade system, government sets a cap on the total amount of carbon that can be emitted nationally; companies then buy or sell permits to emit CO2. The cap gets cranked down over time to reduce total carbon emissions.

To get support for his bill, Mr. Waxman was forced to water down the cap in early years to please rural Democrats, and then severely ratchet it up in later years to please liberal Democrats. The CBO’s analysis looks solely at the year 2020, before most of the tough restrictions kick in. As the cap is tightened and companies are stripped of initial opportunities to “offset” their emissions, the price of permits will skyrocket beyond the CBO estimate of $28 per ton of carbon. The corporate costs of buying these expensive permits will be passed to consumers.

The biggest doozy in the CBO analysis was its extraordinary decision to look only at the day-to-day costs of operating a trading program, rather than the wider consequences energy restriction would have on the economy. The CBO acknowledges this in a footnote: “The resource cost does not indicate the potential decrease in gross domestic product (GDP) that could result from the cap.”

The hit to GDP is the real threat in this bill. The whole point of cap and trade is to hike the price of electricity and gas so that Americans will use less. These higher prices will show up not just in electricity bills or at the gas station but in every manufactured good, from food to cars. Consumers will cut back on spending, which in turn will cut back on production, which results in fewer jobs created or higher unemployment. Some companies will instead move their operations overseas, with the same result.

When the Heritage Foundation did its analysis of Waxman-Markey, it broadly compared the economy with and without the carbon tax. Under this more comprehensive scenario, it found Waxman-Markey would cost the economy $161 billion in 2020, which is $1,870 for a family of four. As the bill’s restrictions kick in, that number rises to $6,800 for a family of four by 2035.

Heaven help us. Visions of Soylent Green keep popping into my head, but it’s not overpopulation that has us “eating our own,” it’s Obama’s wrong-headed view that the government should decide who lives and who dies (as long as it’s not one of his relatives who’s being denied health care services).

From the Wall Street Journal:

President Obama’s TV health-care forum on Wednesday evening was useful, because revealing. Namely, Mr. Obama shared more than he probably intended about the kind of rationing that his health plan will inevitably impose.

At one point in the town hall, broadcast from the East Room by ABC news, a woman named Jane Sturm told the story of her 105-year-old mother, who, at 100, was told by an arrhythmia specialist that she was too old for a pacemaker. She ended up getting a second option, and the operation, for which Ms. Sturm credits her survival.

“Look, the first thing for all of us to understand that is we actually have some — some choices to make about how we want to deal with our own end-of-life care,” Mr. Obama replied. After discussing ways “we as a culture and as a society [can start] to make better decisions within our own families and for ourselves,” he continued that in general “at least we can let doctors know and your mom know that, you know what? Maybe this isn’t going to help. Maybe you’re better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller.”

What Mr. Obama is describing is his preferred health-care future. If or when the Administration’s speculative cost-cutting measures under universal health care fail to produce savings, government will start explicitly limiting patient access to treatments and services regarded as too expensive. Democrats deny this eventuality, but health planners will have no choice, given that the current entitlement system is already barreling toward insolvency without adding millions of new people to the federal balance sheet.

Earlier, a physician asked Mr. Obama if he would subject his own family to the restrictions of a national health plan, even if specialists recommended treatments that weren’t covered. The President was noncommittal: “And you’re absolutely right that, if it’s my family member, if it’s my wife, if it’s my children, if it’s my grandmother, I always want them to get the very best care.” We suspect most Americans would agree.

I’ve heard this many times over…the vast majority of Americans are happy with the quality of their health care. Why, then, is President Obama trying to force a government-run health care program down our throats. He claims it will ease the cost of health care. The reality is that it will not (have you seen the price tag on his proposed program?), but it will drastically reduce the quality of care. The way to fix the health care system is to get government and third-parties out of the way…not more in the way.

Interesting column on Real Clear Politics:

President Obama and the Democratic Congress repeat a mantra so often that it has become a truism: America’s health care system is a scandalous failure, and it is absolutely urgent that we fix it now. The mainstream media nod their agreement, and yet, the polls tell us something else: Eighty percent of Americans say they are satisfied with the quality of their health care. In fact, the overwhelming majority of Americans, about three-fourths, are happy with their current health care coverage. (CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll, March 2009; Gallup poll, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2001; Quinnipiac University poll, October 2007).

So why, then, does a savvy politician like Barack Obama believe he has room to push for a radical overhaul of health care? The polls also show that the same majority of Americans who rate their own health care consistently join the critics when questioned about the “quality of the system” as an abstract whole. It is this unacknowledged inconsistency of American opinion that gives President Obama the opening he needs to push for what is, at heart, a plan for government-run health care. Perhaps it would concentrate our minds wonderfully, then, if we paused to consider the greatest consequence of ObamaCare: Rationed or restricted access to doctors, therapies and care. To see why, you need look no further than other nations with government-centralized health systems that our President and Congress are intent on emulating.

1. Less access to timely health care, especially by trained specialists
2. Less access to state-of-the-art drugs that are proven to cure serious diseases, like cancer
3. Less access to modern medical technologies that lead to earlier diagnoses, safer treatments, and better outcomes
4. Less access to choice of doctor and choice of treatments for patients and families
5. Less access to choice of health insurance coverage
6. Less access to the leading innovators and innovations in health care

It’s downright scary how much goes on behind closed doors on Beacon Hill. Even members of the committees are often left out of discussions and the development of legislation…especially Republican committee members.

Apparently Rep. Jeff Perry (R-Sandwich), ranking member of the House Ethics Committee and appointee to the Conference Committee on the pending Ethics Reform Bill, gets to see the legislation he’s supposed to sign AFTER it’s been written and just moments before it’s to be announced to the public. How bad is that?!? These atrocities need to be made public so voters can see how appallingly the Democrats “in charge” are behaving.

In a statement yesterday, Representative Jeffrey Davis Perry (R-Sandwich) expressed his disappointment with the process of drafting the Ethics Bill which was released yesterday.

Perry was selected to serve on the Conference Committee on the pending Ethics Reform Bill. Perry was among three members from the House of Representatives and three Senate members to serve on this Conference Committee which is charged with ironing out the differences between the different reform bills. In addition to this appointment, Perry also serves as the Ranking Member on the House Ethics Committee.

“With all the ethical scandals involving elected officials on Beacon Hill, citizens have lost a great deal of trust and confidence in their government. I viewed my role in this Conference Committee as making certain that any approved Bill has real and meaningful reforms. Disappointingly for the last nine days, there has been zero opportunity to meaningfully participate in the development of the Bill,” said Representative Perry from the State House.

Perry added: “As a Republican Legislator in Massachusetts, many times my point of view does not prevail. I will review the Bill this evening [Weds] and make my decision whether or not I can support the Bill. I will only support the Bill if it offers meaningful reform. Equally concerning than the substance of the proposal, which I was not allowed to review before the press conference, is the process which the Bill was developed.”

“The culture of Beacon Hill politics, even when developing an Ethics Bill, remains one of backroom deals where only a couple members of one political party have a say,” said Perry.

People wonder why I’m anti-union? Here’s yet another example of the abuses in the union system and the waste of taxpayer dollars.

From the Associated Press on Yahoo News:

Hundreds of New York City public school teachers accused of offenses ranging from insubordination to sexual misconduct are being paid their full salaries to sit around all day playing Scrabble, surfing the Internet or just staring at the wall, if that’s what they want to do.

Because their union contract makes it extremely difficult to fire them, the teachers have been banished by the school system to its “rubber rooms” — off-campus office space where they wait months, even years, for their disciplinary hearings.

The 700 or so teachers can practice yoga, work on their novels, paint portraits of their colleagues — pretty much anything but school work. They have summer vacation just like their classroom colleagues and enjoy weekends and holidays through the school year.

“You just basically sit there for eight hours,” said Orlando Ramos, who spent seven months in a rubber room, officially known as a temporary reassignment center, in 2004-05. “I saw several near-fights. `This is my seat.’ `I’ve been sitting here for six months.’ That sort of thing.”

Ramos was an assistant principal in East Harlem when he was accused of lying at a hearing on whether to suspend a student. Ramos denied the allegation but quit before his case was resolved and took a job in California.

Because the teachers collect their full salaries of $70,000 or more, the city Department of Education estimates the practice costs the taxpayers $65 million a year. The department blames union rules.

Government expansion, a shocking rise in national debt, socialized medicine…make sure your voice is heard.

Worcester Tea Party: Rally for Responsible Government
Saturday, June 20, 2009
12 noon - 3pm, rain or shine
Elm Park, Worcester

Sign protests along Highland St. and Park Ave. start at 11am.
Speakers start just after noon. Lots of music. Bring a picnic and the kids (and an umbrella, just in case

Speakers:
Ken Mandile, Worcester Tea Party
Chip Faulkner, Citizens for Limited Taxation
David Tuerck, Beacon Hill Institute
Carla Howell, Center for Small Government
Professor Nick Sanchez, Holy Cross
Kris Mineau, Mass Family Institute
Todd Feinburg, WRKO

Plus music by Olivia O’Toole, Bob St. Germaine, Pete Michaud, and The Big Guns!

In the Iranian elections, it’s looking like the wife of candidate Mousavi is the real revolutionary. From the Guardian:

A diminutive 64-year-old grandmother dressed top to toe in a modest black chador, Zahra Rahnavard is an unlikely icon, but the wife of the presidential candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi emerged as the star of Iran’s presidential campaign, and the secret weapon in what may yet prove to have been his electoral success.

Rahnavard appeared at a protest at Tehran University todayto urge students to continue their resistance and climb on to their rooftops to shout: “God is great!”

It was a bold intervention in a country where women rarely take a high profile role in politics, but Rahnavard, who holds a PhD in political science and was a political adviser to the former president Mohammad Khatami, is accustomed to breaking moulds.

Accompanying her husband on the campaign trail – unheard of in Iran – Rahnavard won rapt enthusiasm, especially among younger and female voters, addressing crowds with promises to eliminate discrimination against women, abolish the “morality police” and “help the youth to think freely”.

So rattled was Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by her popularity, he used a televised debate between the candidates to query the legitimacy of her doctorate. Rahnavard’s response was to threaten to sue him, and accuse him of lying, debasing women and abusing his office. “I will not relax until I teach him a ­lesson,” she said, to the astonishment of seasoned observers.

Rahnavard’s outspoken criticism of Ahmadinejad’s regime is lent credibility by her impeccable revolutionary credentials. She met her husband at university, when both were involved in the secret campaign to overthrow the shah, and was exiled to the US until his removal in 1979. She is also a vocal supporter of the veil, arguing that it liberates women, though she has said it should be a woman’s choice to wear it.

Her mantra on the campaign trail – that “getting rid of discrimination and demanding equal rights with men is the number one priority for women in Tehran” – is credited with galvanising young women to vote – long lines of them were described waiting outside polling stations last week.

I thought this was a joke the first time it crossed my desk today. Then I got a call from my friend and media host Bob Parks. This is no joke. Many people complained President Bush didn’t do enough “selling” of his ideas to build support. Well, now we’re seeing the exact opposite. President Obama is going overboard to sell his radical, pro-government plans. This time, it’s national healthcare.

As Bob so aptly puts it, “This whole era of Obama is resembling a bad sci-fi movie on how a rogue government took total control of industries, and eventually all modes of information to the public.”

ABC TURNS PROGRAMMING OVER TO OBAMA;
NEWS TO BE ANCHORED FROM INSIDE WHITE HOUSE

Tue Jun 16 2009 08:45:10 ET

On the night of June 24, the media and government become one, when ABC turns its programming over to President Obama and White House officials to push government run health care — a move that has ignited an ethical firestorm!

Highlights on the agenda:

ABCNEWS anchor Charlie Gibson will deliver WORLD NEWS from the Blue Room of the White House. The network plans a primetime special — ‘Prescription for America’ — originating from the East Room, exclude opposing voices on the debate.

Late Monday night, Republican National Committee Chief of Staff Ken McKay fired off a complaint to the head of ABCNEWS:

Dear Mr. Westin:

As the national debate on health care reform intensifies, I am deeply concerned and disappointed with ABC’s astonishing decision to exclude opposing voices on this critical issue on June 24, 2009. Next Wednesday, ABC News will air a primetime health care reform “town hall” at the White House with President Barack Obama. In addition, according to an ABC News report, GOOD MORNING AMERICA, WORLD NEWS, NIGHTLINE and ABC’s web news “will all feature special programming on the president’s health care agenda.” This does not include the promotion, over the next 9 days, the president’s health care agenda will receive on ABC News programming.

Today, the Republican National Committee requested an opportunity to add our Party’s views to those of the President’s to ensure that all sides of the health care reform debate are presented. Our request was rejected. I believe that the President should have the ability to speak directly to the America people. However, I find it outrageous that ABC would prohibit our Party’s opposing thoughts and ideas from this national debate, which affects millions of ABC viewers.

In the absence of opposition, I am concerned this event will become a glorified infomercial to promote the Democrat agenda. If that is the case, this primetime infomercial should be paid for out of the DNC coffers. President Obama does not hold a monopoly on health care reform ideas or on free airtime. The President has stated time and time again that he wants a bipartisan debate. Therefore, the Republican Party should be included in this primetime event, or the DNC should pay for your airtime.

Respectfully,
Ken McKay
Republican National Committee
Chief of Staff

ABCNEWS Senior Vice President Kerry Smith on Tuesday responded to the RNC complaint, saying it contained ‘false premises’:

“ABCNEWS prides itself on covering all sides of important issues and asking direct questions of all newsmakers — of all political persuasions — even when others have taken a more partisan approach and even in the face of criticism from extremes on both ends of the political spectrum. ABCNEWS is looking for the most thoughtful and diverse voices on this issue.

“ABCNEWS alone will select those who will be in the audience asking questions of the president. Like any programs we broadcast, ABC News will have complete editorial control. To suggest otherwise is quite unfair to both our journalists and our audience.”

Per Bob Parks:

Again I repeat myself: Imagine the screech from the left had George W. Bush done exactly the same thing.

This (like most things with this administration) is unprecedented, a blatant violation of journalism ethics, and the Republicans have been given a new gift to use against Democrats in 2010 and beyond.