The RNC’s Health Care Bill of Rights for Seniors

Specifically distressing is the second point:

PROTECT MEDICARE AND NOT CUT IT IN THE NAME OF HEALTH CARE REFORM: President Obama and Congressional Democrats are promoting a government-run health care experiment that will cut over $500 billion from Medicare to be used to pay for their plan. Medicare should not be raided to pay for another entitlement.

Since when are we about “protecting” medicare? It’s a bloated program full of fraud and abuse. If we guarantee it won’t be “raided to pay for another entitlement”, we’re essentially demanding that government create two conflicting and somewhat duplicative health programs – both of which will likely be full of fraud and abuse.

To a cynic’s eye, this ‘proposal’ is the “let’s rile and confuse seniors so they’ll get even more flummoxed” plan. It’s disgusting to me that the party of small government is pushing a plan that would guarantee bureaucratic longevity simply to curry favor with seniors.

I’ve got a better idea for a plan. Why don’t we make the government fix Medicare and Medicaid – thus demonstrating they have a clue – before we let them create yet another program. If they can’t be fixed, then let’s figure out how to dismantle them.

The Washington Times reports on the fuzzy numbers behind Obama’s tax “cut”. WashTimes looks at the rather questionable assertion that you can give a tax cut to people who already pay no taxes. To achieve their goal of “cutting” taxes for 95% of America, it seems Team Obama will simply take $500 or $1000 from some people, and give it to somebody else – no questions asked.

That idea caught the attention of AFP’s Phil Kerpen (a very bright guy):

It’s got to raise alarm bells when you claim you are going to cut taxes for 95 percent of working families when more than 40 percent of them pay no income taxes.

Obama’s folks are justifying this wealth redistribution scheme by suggesting that Social Security taxes paid are now “refundable” through income tax rebates even if no income taxes were paid.

Unlike conservatives who have consistently pointed to the cumulative amount of taxes, the Democrats have suddenly discovered the “total tax burden”. They will use income taxes paid by some to rebate back Social Security taxes paid by others.

How exactly will that work, given that the Social Security trust is broke and about to start paying out far more that it takes in? Well, I suspect we’ll soon see another “soak the rich” campaign removing the social security cap so “the rich” will see dramatic increases in Social Security taxes to make up for the gap created by Obama’s rebates.

If you doubt that, you should read the quote from Obama’s campaign advisor. It may be the scariest thing you’ll ever see in print.

“Senator Obama believes that the tens of millions of families working hard and paying payroll taxes do not think that tax cuts are a form of ‘welfare’ or ‘redistribution’ – they think it is only fair to reward work,” said Jason Furman, the Obama campaign’s chief economic adviser.

You heard that right. Work that results in someone not getting ahead is to be rewarded with money taken from those whose work results in them actually making money (which is apparently work that needs to be punished).

An Obama administration will first absolve a huge segment of taxpayers from any tax responsibility at all, and then shift that obligation to those who create jobs and get ahead. The wealth redistribution schemes the Obama team wants to put in place should scare the bejeezus out of anybody with one ounce of grey matter in their brain case.

The fact is, we judge our elected officials by what they do for their state. The jobs they bring home, the scientific research centers located in our towns, the military bases, the bridges, etc. When someone is good at attracting that investment in their home state, we call them effective. If they fail at bringing federal dollars back home, we call them ineffective.

We hire politician’s to do a job where the goal is to get stuff for their state. We give them the power – through the nation’s checkbook – to get that stuff. Then, we demand that they not do their job. It’s ridiculous.

If earmarks are evil, and we want to get rid of them, then we need to fundamentally change the role of the elected official. We cannot support a system where their election depends on their ability to deliver for the people, and then blame them for delivering.

Banning earmarks outright would take more political will than Congress has ever had. It’s like challenging them to put down their machine gun and walk willingly into a knife fight. They know they have the advantage over their would-be rivals. As long as they bring back the pork, they don’t have to find a real job.

Why would they want to give up such a powerful tool?

One of Joe Biden’s major applause lines tonight came when he demanded equal pay for women. That’s a worthy cause to be sure. But is Biden practicing what he preaches?

Maybe not.

Despite the fact that Biden employs 27 women and only 14 men (could that be a Clinton problem?), very few of the women and men share common titles. The one job where there is overlap is staff assistants. These are traditionally entry level low-wage jobs in congressional offices.

So how do Biden’s salaries stack up?

The average male staff assistant in Biden’s office (based on the most recent salary figures) made $39,162 in the time period.

The average woman in that position made $21,323.

Hey Joe! Before you demand something of others, maybe you should lead by example. Why not start by giving the women in your office a raise?

Update: It also looks like the highest salaries are reserved for men, despite their minority status. 4 out of 14 men made more than $40,000 in the period, but only 5 of 27 women cleared that mark. Two of the men earned $70k, but the highest paid woman made only $46,000

Update 2: Does Obama walk the walk? It looks like he’s certainly better than Biden. A review of his staff for the same period at least shows remarkable consistency in pay for the jobs carrying the same title. Although of the twenty highest salaries in his office, 13 are men and 7 are women.

Update 3: It also works going the opposite direction. Of the 20 lowest salaries in Obama’s office, 13 are women and 7 are men. (And please note, there is no overlap between those two lists, and I have not included anyone that worked less than the full time period.)

Update 4: For those who asked, one final note before I do some real work. Of the 20 highest salaries on John McCain’s staff, 13 are women, and 7 are men.

The new Obama ad also pushes his proposal to revive a windfall profits tax on energy companies and asserts that McCain favors tax breaks for the oil industry.

“A windfall profits tax on big oil to give families a thousand-dollar rebate,” an announcer in the ad says.

Obama would use the tax to fund $1,000 emergency rebate checks for consumers besieged by high energy costs.

Congress enacted a windfall profits tax in 1980, during an earlier era of high oil prices, but repealed it in 1988 amid concern it discouraged domestic oil development. Last year, the House approved $18 billion in new taxes on the largest oil companies, but Senate Republicans blocked them.

And thank goodness they did. The windfall profits tax is a tremendously stupid idea premised on the fact that Americans want to take out their anger on someone. But a little digging provides more than a few examples of others that should be taxed. The Wall Street Journal today, helpfully, has a little list and some fact behind the “windfall” lunacy.

What is a “windfall” profit anyway? How does it differ from your everyday, run of the mill profit? Is it some absolute number, a matter of return on equity or sales — or does it merely depend on who earns it?

Enquiring entrepreneurs want to know. Unfortunately, Mr. Obama’s “emergency” plan, announced on Friday, doesn’t offer any clarity. To pay for “stimulus” checks of $1,000 for families and $500 for individuals, the Senator says government would take “a reasonable share” of oil company profits.

Exactly the problem. Who gets to define this ridiculous idea? Apparently, Dick Durbin.

Dick Durbin, the second-ranking Senate Democrat… recently declared that “The oil companies need to know that there is a limit on how much profit they can take in this economy.”

Ok, maybe the concept of capitalism has changed since I studied economics in school, but I don’t recall “there is a limit on how much profit you can take” being part of the economic formula. Let’s assume it is, however. Exxon should surely pay its share, right?

Between 2003 and 2007, Exxon paid $64.7 billion in U.S. taxes, exceeding its after-tax U.S. earnings by more than $19 billion.

That’s right, Exxon paid more in US taxes than it made in the US. Quite a bit more. You see, Exxon is a company that operates globally. It’s sales are global. So we actually see a US company taking money out of the hands of foreign nations, and depositing them into the hands of the US government. Now the Democrats in the US government want to take more money from around the world and spend it on us.

However, we’re not tasked with addressing that fact. We need to figure out what qualifies them for paying such a ridiculous tax. Since they’re entire US revenue already goes to taxes, maybe we can use some other metric to justify the windfall tax.

Maybe they have in mind profit margins as a percentage of sales. Yet by that standard Exxon’s profits don’t seem so large. Exxon’s profit margin stood at 10% for 2007, which is hardly out of line with the oil and gas industry average of 8.3%, or the 8.9% for U.S. manufacturing (excluding the sputtering auto makers).

If that’s what constitutes windfall profits, most of corporate America would qualify. Take aerospace or machinery — both 8.2% in 2007. Chemicals had an average margin of 12.7%. Computers: 13.7%. Electronics and appliances: 14.5%. Pharmaceuticals (18.4%) and beverages and tobacco (19.1%) round out the Census Bureau’s industry rankings.

None of those industries are being asked to pony up… So that can’t be it… Maybe it’s growth based…

In a tax bill on oil earlier this summer, no fewer than 51 Senators voted to impose a 25% windfall tax on a U.S.-based oil company whose profits grew by more than 10% in a single year… This suggests that a windfall is defined by profits growing too fast. No one knows where that 10% came from, besides political convenience. But if 10% is the new standard, the tech industry is going to have to rethink its growth arc. So will LG, the electronics company, which saw its profits grow by 505% in 2007. Abbott Laboratories hit 110%.

If Senator Obama is as exercised about “outrageous” profits as he says he is, he might also have to turn on a few liberal darlings. Oh, say, Berkshire Hathaway. Warren Buffett’s outfit pulled in $11 billion last year, up 29% from 2006.

The fact is, as the WSJ article points out, the idea of a “windfall” profits tax is ridiculous. It could be assessed against any company in America for any number of reasons. It’s simply another way for big government bureaucrats and politicians to redistribute wealth in America. Since Exxon’s US taxes already exceed its US income, in this case, it’s actually a way to redistribute wealth TO America.

That should make Obama’s European fans happy, huh?

The Politico today has a column penned by David All, a young GOP internet consultant, and Saul Anuzis, Chairman of the Michigan GOP. The column looks at the premise that the GOP is behind its Democratic counterparts online, and suggests one possible reason why – we don’t support the idea of big government intervention in regulating the Internet.

As Republicans, we must not only adopt the new techniques and structure of Internet democracy, but also understand the importance of preserving the open nature of the Net as a policy issue.The tools that are available at low cost to Republicans are only there because of an Internet ecosystem that has managed to remain open, despite the efforts of phone and cable companies.

Republicans need to adopt a lighter approach that will preserve the values of decentralization and freedom — essential conservative values — on the Internet. If we fail to engage in this effort, the Internet service providers, who control the last mile of the tubes into a customer’s house or small business, will choke off the affordable tools available to conservative activists.They have already started exercising their market power to block applications that enable Internet users to distribute information across the Net.

They will make the Internet look a lot more like cable TV, where citizens lack access to every legal channel available and where, consequently, conservative activists get shut out. Taking away these free tools will come at the major expense of the activists and small-businesspeople who are the core of our party’s strength.

Given the attacks on cable and telephone companies in this diatribe, it would be easy enough to discount any response from me as shilling on behalf of cable. Look at my bio, however, and you’ll see that I may be the one person uniquely qualified to address every inaccuracy and outrageous claim in his post. Prior to coming to work in the cable industry, I was the eCampaign Director for Bush-Cheney ’04, and the Republican National Committee. I’ve been involved in Republican politics – and online politics – since I launched one of the first state party websites (EVER) at the New Mexico GOP in 1995. At that time, there were only about 5 state parties online.

Since I have been active in GOP politics, and specifically online politics, since Andreesson released the browser in 1994, I have a bit to say about the reasons the GOP is behind (which virtually nobody argues). As an employee of the cable industry, I have a bit to say about what , if anything, that has to do with net neutrality.

The Cyclical Nature of Politics

To begin with, I, and many others, believe the GOP is behind online for the simple reason that it has never had to be ahead. When the GOP was previously in the minority it turned to talk radio to communicate and organize. In the early 1990s, talk radio was the most interactive medium and the party out of power generally gravitates to the best available method of message disbursement and organization.

In 2000, when the Democrats were out of power, they did the same and gravitated toward the Internet. The Republican Party still dominates talk radio, though the Democrats have been making inroads. Unfortunately, you can‚Äôt give money through your radio, so the media focused on the Internet and long ago stopped writing the “Why aren’t Democrats on talk radio?” stories.

Just as there is nothing preventing Democrats from building an audience on talk radio, there is nothing preventing Republicans from achieving online. Now that we are in the minority in Congress and, if Obama wins, may be completely out of power, Republicans will look to rebuild using the tools that offer the most capability to interact and spread a message. They will eventually catch up to and surpass what the Democrats are doing. That’s the cyclical nature of politics.

But What Does Net Neutrality Have to Do With This?

The short answer is absolutely nothing. But David is part of a group called Internet For Everyone whose founders have suggested nationalization of the Internet. The list of his coalition partners reads like a who’s who of the left. ACLU, ACORN, Care2, NOW and SEIU are just a few of the far left groups signed on to the project. David and his two web properties – SlateCard and Techrepublican – appear to be the only GOP organizations onboard with the project.

To his specific claim, it is simply absurd to make the suggestion that Republicans are behind because there is no national broadband solution. David might as well argue that the GOP is behind because the government hasn’t bought everyone a car. The two are just as closely related.

David, like most people arguing for Net Neutrality likes to throw out numbers that seem to support his point.

America’s rural voters are largely Republican. Yet they face major challenges in gaining access to a broadband Internet connection. The latest U.S. Census data show that only 39 percent of rural households subscribe to broadband — and nearly 10 million rural households are in areas not served by any broadband provider.

These figures come from an Internet for Everyone document, which cites a 2007 Current Population Survey (CPS) of the U.S. Census Bureau. There is a document available on the NTIA website that provides statistics from the CPS. According to the CPS, 39% of rural households did respond that they have broadband service, but 19% also said they have dial-up, and another 10% responded that they access the Internet outside of their home. Thus 68% of rural households access the Internet according to the CPS survey. The figures for urban households, the only other category, were 54% broadband, 9% dial-up, and 9% outside of the home, for a total of 72%. The spread between rural and urban households is only 4%, hardly qualifying as a great divide, or leaving the poor rural folks behind.

Neither the NTIA site nor the CPS study address the 10 million households claim. The 10 million figure may be arrived at by referring to the number of housing units not passed by cable broadband service, according to estimates provided by SNL Kagan – a media research firm. Kagan found that 10 million households, not rural households, don’t have access to cable broadband – not broadband at all, which is what David claims . Simply put, not all of these people live in rural areas. For instance, some areas in Montgomery County, Maryland – a suburb of Washington DC, are unserved by cable, but that is hardly a “rural” area. Moreover, some of those are served by telephone company broadband service – as in Montgomery County. There are suburban or exurban communities that cable doesn’t serve, for one reason or another.

David also fails to note that the cable broadband he denigrates was a) built with $130 billion in private capital, not government subsidies, and b) was built without the burden of government regulation that hampered development of DSL. It was the lack of regulation and the investment of private funds that created the platform we rely on for high bandwidth applications. The cable system that serves 92% of Americans with broadband was built under a system identical to the current regulatory regime, not under the ‘good old days’ of common carrier and forced access.

It’s worth noting, by comparison, that the telephone companies sat on DSL technology for more than a decade while under the exact regulatory regime the IFE folks are now promoting. There was simply no incentive to invest in a network technology they could not monetize and see returns on the initial outlay. Now that they have been freed of such regulations, the telephone companies are aggressively building a $100+ billion Fiber to the Home networkto compete with cable.

Since David’s whole argument hinges on getting rural, Republican voters connected, it’s important to note that he got his central supporting facts wrong with regard to the current status of rural broadband. David made the same arguments in a Washington Times video interview posted yesterday (in which he conveniently rounds the number of Americans without a broadband connection down to 50%, despite many current estimates which place the figure at between 42% and 45% and likely to drop to 40% when numbers are compiled for the second quarter of 2008).

Since he has a habit of misstating facts and figures, one must ask if he is uninformed or intentionally misquoting numbers to justify his thesis. My belief is the former, but I still have some suspicion it may be the latter.

Further Pandering

Part of the reason I believe David may simply be desperate to make his case and willing to clutch at straws is the way he characterized the AP “research” into the Comcast/BitTorrent issue.

For example, Comcast was caught red-handed by The Associated Press blocking the distribution of the King James Bible. Martin launched an investigation and convened public hearings that put Comcast in the hot seat.

That is an absolutely false characterization of what happened. The Comcast/BitTorrent flap was a matter of Comcast trying to guarantee the best possible experience for the vast majority of its users, and trying to restrict the impact that heavy users of P2P applications have on broadband networks.

David implies that a) Comcast was aware the content the AP used in its test was the King James Bible and b) specifically targeted that traffic. Why would he make such outrageous claims to make his case? Because David is trying to convince Republicans to support his cause, and Republicans identify strongly with issues of faith. By claiming “the big bad cable company tried to stop you from seeing the bible” he’s pandering in the worst possible way.

As a Republican

As a Republican, I would be skeptical of Internet regulation on the best day, and downright hostile on any other. I do not believe the imposition of a new regulatroy regime is the cure to the perceived ills of either the state of broadband or the state of my party. As someone who has been thinking of ways for Republicans to use the Internet for almost fifteen years, I disagree completely with David’s ridiculous claim that the only way to save the party is to create a new bureaucracy to regulate the Internet.

While I respect David’s opinion and right to speak out on whatever topic he chooses, I firmly believe he could not be further off track on this issue. I also hope he will take the time to address my deconstruction of his argument and answer my challenge to the factual basis of his column. He may perhaps become informed about the subject matter rather than irresponsibly disseminating mistruths.

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.

And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Most of the chatter focuses on Barack’s apparent elitism. The disdain through which he views those Americans in fly-over country is apparent. More than a couple of people have compared him to John Kerry.

What seems to be lost though, is the question of Obama trying to have it both ways. On the one hand, he tells the liberal elite wing of the party that religion is just a crutch for those who have fallen on hard economic times. On the other hand, Obama talks freely about his professed faith in God.

The bigger question we should be asking is which is the real Obama? Is Obama someone who shares the faith of millions of American’s? Or is Obama someone who fervently believes, as Marx once claimed, that religion is simply the opiate of the people?

Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusion about its condition is the demand to give up a condition which needs illusions.

Now I’m no linguistic expert, but Obama’s words sound an awful lot like Karl’s. People in distress turn to religion and religion prevents them from actually taking control of their own destiny. All Obama left out is the suggestion that we should abolish religion.

Compare that to his statements on religion earlier this year.

But kneeling beneath that cross on the South Side of Chicago, I felt God’s spirit beckoning me. I submitted myself to His will, and dedicated myself to discovering His truth.

But is Obama’s dedication to God one of true heartfelt commitment or one of political expediency. From the Christian Science Monitor piece referenced above:

[Obama] was largely indifferent toward religion until he moved to Chicago in 1985 for a job organizing impoverished South Side residents in campaigns for better jobs, schools, and housing. As the recent college graduate went from church to church to enlist clergy in his causes, he heard an oft-repeated refrain: What church do you belong to?

“He really came here with a very strong passion about how can we change things, and he understood the churches as being a vehicle for doing that,” recalls the Rev. Michael Pfleger, pastor of the Saint Sabina Church, a Catholic church on the South Side, who has known Obama since his early days in Chicago. But he also “realized that with some churches there would be a credibility issue if he were organizing churches but didn’t have a home church.”

If Obama wanted to organize religious people, he understood that he needed to appear religious.

Obama’s remarks to the liberal elite of San Francisco reek of elitism, to be sure. More disconcerting for millions of religious American’s should be the question of whether Obama is actually a man of faith, or simply wearing the robes of piousness to lead them down a trail. I’m not a religious person myself, but even I am aware of Matthew 7:15 which warns:

Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

Still, reprimanding him may cause future McCain operatives to think twice before doing their job. Is McCain recommending a sort of “limited war” in which the enemy can shoot at us, but we can’t shoot back?

Standing on principle is a good value, but so is supporting your subordinates and so is loyalty. It takes political courage to stand up for your team — even if it may cost you politically. Is McCain too concerned about wanting to come across as a nice guy?

The bigger point, and one I think that’s been lost in this, is that Soren was using his personal accounts in a personal communication. Unlike the Amanda Marcotte dust up, Soren was not hired as a spokesperson for the campaign and simultaneously promoting himself and his personal ideological agenda.

He didn’t use a campaign e-mail address to send the link to the video. He didn’t even use a McCain sponsored twitter account. He used his own personal accounts to share a thought with people he felt were friends about online politics – a field he happens to have both expertise in and familiarity with.

This was not like the Samantha Power incident where an adviser (albeit an unpaid one) was speaking with a reporter. This isn’t closer to the cases of Linda Olsen and Judy Rose who were fired for forwarding the “Obama is a Muslim” e-mail. While it was never clear to me whether the women in that case used official campaign addresses or their personal accounts, the material they sent was untrue and potentially slanderous.

Soren’s incident has none of that. The material in the video was predominantly Obama, his wife, and his pastor. Granted the video contains footage of Olympic athletes and Malcolm X that it should not have. The statements of Michelle Obama and Jeremiah Wright are more damaging without all that.

But again, Soren did not create the video. The message was not sent from the campaign systems. It was a personal note. He was not a spokesman, he was a private citizen working on a public campaign and using a personal address.

One thing about this incident sends a chill down my spine. Many people are afraid to run for public office because they fear the rectal probe that is our electoral process. They fear the media scrutiny and the potential that some past indiscretion – no matter how small – will make them a public spectacle.

Do political operatives now have to fear that their private communication will become tomorrow’s news story? Do the people that give selflessly in political campaigns have to dread every workday wondering if they will be the campaign’s latest black eye?

How many e-mails did you send today that, taken out of context and publicized on the news, could be an embarrassment to you or your employer? How many of your personal notes contain jokes about the office, your company’s competitors or some other matter best kept private?

If we have rewritten the political rules so every piece of personal communication sent by campaign staff is now fodder for political advantage, we will further degrade our political process.

There has been a lot of chatter about the fact that Bill Clinton is not a candidate for the Internet age. The storyline assumes that he doesn’t get the instant communication and was unprepared for the reaction and the speed with which it spread. I disagree. I think there is a good probability that the reaction had been the same if the old model still applied.

The fact is, Bill is revered by many, many Democrats in the same way Reagan was. He is seen as a larger than life figure, a hero to the little guy. If Reagan had, ten years after leaving office, popped back on the scene to savage a guy in his own party, or to throw petty charges at the media, it would have been undignified.

Obama is also seen by many as more of the heir apparent to Bill’s legacy than his wife. They see in him the same young(-ish), dynamic leader looking to rock DC and take America to a new era of greatness. They see Hillary as an opportunistic weasel looking to further capitalize on her husband’s success.

It also doesn’t help that the guy who lied to America about a BJ and dragged us into years of investigation was questioning someone else’s integrity. Hillary, as Mr. View argued, could be let off as an innocent victim of her husband’s philandering. Bill, however, has no moral high ground from which to challenge someone else.

That’s the problem Bill has. It’s not that the accusations are off about the media, it’s a matter of right message, wrong messenger.

It does, however, raise questions of what she knew and when she knew it? She wants to be seen as a candidate firmly in control of her surroundings, yet she also wants us to believe that Bill’s attack (an attack by her own husband) was completely his own doing and she had no knowledge of his intention to speak out. Frankly, I find it hard to accept that she had no idea what he was going to do. Her campaign is built on the “control and disseminate” model. They dole out information like rations to disaster victims, yet she had no idea what the man closest to her would say? I just don’t buy it.