WE UNDERSTAND the administration’s sense of urgency on health-care reform. But what is intended as a final sprint threatens to turn into something unseemly and, more important, contrary to Democrats’ promises of transparency and time for deliberation.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters Monday that she is leaning toward a parliamentary maneuver under which the House would vote on a package of changes to the Senate-approved reform bill, and the underlying Senate bill would then be “deemed” to have passed, even though the House had never voted on it. That may help some House members dodge a politically difficult decision, but it strikes us as a dodgy way to reform the health-care system. Democrats who vote for the package will be tagged with supporting the Senate bill in any event. Why not be straightforward about it?
More worrying is that Congress and the country have yet to see the changes, for which Democrats hope to win quick House approval and which they then hope to speed through the Senate under a procedure that would bar filibusters. These changes — the so-called reconciliation bill — are not all minor “fixes”; some could have far-reaching consequences. Such changes deserve to be fully understood and debated before they are voted on. The speaker’s office says the week-long “conversation” that Nancy Pelosi promised to have with members is taking place and that they are waiting for the final word from the Congressional Budget Office before releasing the package; in any event, they say, lawmakers and the public will have 72 hours to consider the changes. But why be so secretive about it? Any number of measures — including versions of the health-care bill itself — have been unveiled without CBO scores.
The health-care debate has been going on longer than a year, and House members want to get it over with. They don’t want it hanging over them during the Easter recess. President Obama wants progress to have been made before he leaves for Indonesia on Sunday. These are understandable desires, but they don’t outweigh the need for a reasonable process on a matter of such importance.
No wonder the moonbats see the WaPo as a right-wing rag — something I find quite humorous, having subscribed to and read the WaPo print edition every morning for six years while living in DC. ..bruce w..
Well, you've won my vote.
President Obama, Senate Majority Leader Reid, and Speaker Pelosi seemed determined to bend, twist, and subvert the rules and procedures of government — and possibly the Constitution itself — in order to pass Obamacare, which they seem to see as more important than any of those things. Their “whatever is necessary, the ends justifies the means” approach brings to mind the following passage from one of my favorite plays, “A Man for All Seasons” by Robert Bolt:
Alice: While you talk, he’s gone [referring to Richard Rich, who is a potential threat to Sir Thomas More].
More: And go he should if he was the devil himself until he broke the law.
Roper: So now you’d give the Devil benefit of law.
More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper: I’d cut down every law in England to do that.
More: Oh? And when the last law was down — and the Devil turned round on you — where would you hide, Roper, the laws being all flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast — Man’s laws, not God’s — and if you cut them down — and you’re just the man to do it — d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.
Being in my mid-50s and an avid reader of history, I tend to take a long-term view on politics; I’ve seen the pendulum swing any number of times. But Reid and Pelosi’s plan, encouraged by Obama, to use reconciliation and the so-called Slaughter Solution to get health care through Congress and onto Obama’s desk, strikes me as a profoundly dangerous and unwise approach, with implications that could last for decades. ..bruce w..
…the folks behind “DemonSheep 2010” have struck again. This is, I think, a better effort, though again overly long, and that image of Barbara Boxer’s floating head may haunt my dreams for a while (and not in a good way). Hat tip to Jim Geraghty’s “Morning Jolt” e-mail from the National Review Online. ..bruce w..
Deacon thirsts for your blood.
Actually, he’s a sweet old dog, though a bit crotchety and prone to barking. He turned 16 back in December, is mostly blind and hard of hearing, but still has a great appetite. He also has a great sense of smell — he can be asleep in our bedroom, but will wake up and start barking when I open the fridge in the kitchen and take out food. ..bruce w..
…we can start looking at potential candidates for next year. Hat tip to John in the comments to this post over at Language Log. ..bruce w..
Gerard Van der Leun at American Digest implores that this performance spread far and wide. Go, little video! ..bruce w..
From the Telegraph:
Advert for ‘reliable workers’ banned as discrimination by Jobcentre Plus
The boss of a recruitment firm said she was told she could not place an advert for ”reliable workers” because it discriminated against unreliable people.
Nicole Mamo, 48, wanted to post an advert for a £5.80-an-hour domestic cleaner on her local Jobcentre Plus website.
The text of the advert ended by stating that any applicants for the post ”must be very reliable and hard-working”.
But when Ms Mamo called the Jobcentre Plus in Thetford, Norfolk, the following day she was told that her advert would not be displayed instore.
A Jobcentre Plus worker claimed that the word ”reliable” meant they could be sued for discriminating against unreliable workers.
I would say that words fail me, but this sort of thing is becoming depressingly commonplace over in England. Even though Aldous Huxley and George Orwell wrote their dystopias more than half a century ago, they clearly saw something in the roots of British culture that worried them.
Hat tip to my old friend and fellow skydiver, Matt Yuen, who posted this over at Facebook. ..bruce w..
Yep. It really is worse than you thought. Hat tip to Gateway Pundit. ..bruce w..
How Will The End Of Print Journalism Affect Old Loons Who Hoard Newspapers?
That this comes from the Onion makes it all the better. ..bruce w..
Eric S. Raymond, author of “The Cathedral and the Bazaar“, has a thoughtful post on his blog this morning on how the current recession is impacting his circle of friends, two in particular. Here are the key paragraphs:
When I look at these guys, though, I can’t buy the explanation most people would jump for, which is that they simply fell behind in an increasingly skill-intensive job market. Thing is, they’re not uneducated; they’re not the stranded fruit-picker or construction worker that narrative would fit. Nor does offshoring explain what’s happened to these guys, because their jobs were the relatively hard-to-export kind.
No. What I think is: These are the people who go to the wall when the cost of employing someone gets too high. We’ve spent the last seventy years increasing the hidden overhead and downside risks associated with hiring a worker — which meant the minimum revenue-per-employee threshold below which hiring doesn’t make sense has crept up and up and up, gradually. This effect was partly masked by credit and asset bubbles, but those have now popped. Increasingly it’s not just the classic hard-core unemployables (alcoholics, criminal deviants, crazies) that can’t pull enough weight to justify a paycheck; it’s the marginal ones, the mediocre, and the mildly dysfunctional.
In other words, established ‘liberal’ policies actually hurt those whom the liberals would most like to protect. Read the whole thing.
Wayne Holder, a high school friend and my boss at Oasis Systems/FTL Games nearly 30 years ago, talked once about how he was a radical liberal through college, then turned hard-core conservative once he started his own business and had to hire people. He complained about the increased costs and legal/regulatory consequences of each new person he hired — and this was back in the 1980s! I can only imagine what it’s like today. ..bruce w..