Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Just the Facts, Ma'am: A Compendium of Liberal Fiction -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (78574)	3/23/2010 9:16:00 PM
From: Sully-	1 Recommendation Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 90947

Democratic Party Corruption By John Power Line Sometimes we assume that people are aware of how corrupt the Democratic Party is, but it isn't necessarily so. I was surprised to learn that my well-informed wife didn't know about Alcee Hastings, the paradigm of liberalism. Hastings was once a federal judge, but he was impeached--it is hard to articulate what a difficult, cumbersome process that is--because he solicited bribes from criminal defendants. That is, he approached the criminals and told them that he would let them off if they paid him. That's a little extreme, even for a Democrat. Hastings' efforts to make himself rich in this criminal fashion came to light and he was investigated. He responded to the investigation by committing perjury. As a result of his multiple crimes, Hastings was removed as a federal judge by the United States Senate, one of the few times in history that has happened. Here is the really astonishing thing: instead of going to jail, Alcee Hastings went to Congress! Democratic voters were not in the least concerned that he is a criminal of the most verminous sort. On the contrary, they elected him to represent them in Florida's 23rd Congressional District! That, really, tells you all you need to know about the depravity to which the Democratic Party has sunk. Now, Alcee Hastings, exposed as a criminal and a betrayer of his oath as a federal judge, is playing a key role in the Democrats' effort to jam Obamacare down the throats of unwilling voters. Here is Hastings explaining that the Democrats have no intention of following House rules; rather, they are just making it up as they go along: Alcee Hastings: "All This Talk About Rules... We Make 'Em Up As We Go Along..." Alcee Hastings, a disgraced criminal who escaped prison by trading on his privileged status as a Presidential appointee: a perfect representative of today's Democratic Party. We are being ruled by people who should be behind bars. .

To: Brumar89 who wrote (78574)	3/23/2010 11:20:07 PM
From: Sully-	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 90947

Health Care and Life Expectancy By: Jonah Goldberg The Corner For a number of reasons, I’ve been going a bit Galt during the Great Transformation to social democracy. I don’t have too much to add to the zone-flooding coverage already on display at NRO, though I’m sure more will come to me in the days and weeks ahead. I do want to commend this post by Megan McArdle, because I think it’s both good and a good example of the sort of stuff folks on the right should be doing. I’m all in favor of invoking first principles, American exceptionalism, the Constitution, and all sorts of arguments grounded in morality and philosophy. But it’s also important to start immediately building the case that the left’s cure-all won’t cure -- isn’t curing -- anything. McCardle runs through eight predictions of what will happen next in terms of the specific outcomes of this massive and ill-conceived social experiment. She runs through all of the wonderful things supporters have said will happen thanks to Obamacare and she explains why she thinks such promises are hollow. Let me focus on one. She notes that Nick Kristof insists that we will see massive improvements in American life expectancy thanks to Obamacare (note to Ramesh: Kristof runs with T. R. Reid’s flimsy abortion arguments as well). Kristof, whose historical analysis glides right over such things as inoculations, antibiotics, and medical improvements generally, claims that the history of rising life-expectancy is the history of expanding health-care coverage. Obviously, there’s some truth to that. But the low-hanging fruit has already been picked. Kids get inoculated in America and if they don’t, it’s not because of a lack of access. Anyway, I’m glad Kristof is on record, because liberals have been insisting that our low life-expectancy is one of the key reasons why Europe’s system of nationalized health care is superior to ours. Hence, all liberals who invoked this disparity should be now be held to accountable to the claim. McCardle writes, in part: <<< I do not think that there will be a noticeable kink in the trend line around 2014. The death rate jumps around quite a lot, so there may be a big drop (or increase) in 2014, neither of which would be meaningful. By 2025, however, I'm skeptical that we'll see a major inflection in the trend. >>> I’m even more skeptical. As Mark Steyn and others around here have noted (including yours truly), America’s “low” life-expectancy doesn’t have much to do with health-insurance. Yes, obviously it has something to do with it. And of course there are plenty of anecdotes that feed into this argument. But the simple fact is that when Americans die has a lot more to do with diet, alcohol, guns, cars, genes, and culture. Britain’s life-expectancy is a whopping 79.4. America’s is 78.2. Cuba’s is 78.3. Britain and Cuba have had socialized medicine for half a century or more. America hasn’t, until this week. What I love is the idea that we need to have this wrenching transformation of the system in order to move our standing a few tenths of a percent up the charts (I’m stipulating that nobody believes Obamacare is really about bending the cost curve downward. After all, nobody argues we need to extend life-expectancy to cut costs). Still, I suppose you could predict that improved access to healthcare will close this horrendous gap. But I doubt that. Consider that Robert Ohsfeldt and John Schneider factored out injuries (intentional and unintentional) from life-expectancy statistics and found (in The Business of Health) that Americans who don’t die in car crashes or homicides live longer than people in any other Western country. That would partly explain why American life-expectancy at higherage 65 is than Britain’s. But even if you don’t buy that finding entirely (I’m a bit skeptical), the simple fact remains that there is just way too much else going on to rely on these absurd reductio ad healthcarum arguments (don’t even get me started on the bogusness inherent to debates over infant mortality). According to the 2006 study Eight Americas, Asian American women have a life-expectancy of 87 (in Bergen County, N.J., it is 91 years). Asian Americans as a group have a life-expectancy of 84.9 years. Their per-capita income is $21,556. Second-generation Asian American women live three years longer than women in Japan -- the longest-living national group. Meanwhile, American Indians in South Dakota, have an average life expectancy of only 58 years (and they already have access to the Indian Health Service, run by HHS). Black inner-city men do almost as badly, living to 66.7 years. White folks in the Northern Plains live longer than most other whites, especially whites from Appalachia and the Mississippi Valley. Now maybe you can look at all that and say, expanding coverage will iron-out the discrepancies. But I can’t. Oh and, just to be clear, the report found that the variation in life-expectancy was significantly greater than the variation in health-insurance or access to medical care. In other words, there are bigger things at work. .