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Thursday, September 27, 2007
Children’s health care, and the deceit
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s weekend free-for-all. Pick a topic:
• Immediately after Congress passed expansion of a children’s health insurance entitlement, the interest groups took to the cameras. Up promptly was a 9-year-old Baltimore girl “who survived brain injuries from a car accident.” Interesting that none of those paraded before the cameras were 25-year-olds declared to be “children” for eligibility’s sake. You’re not likely to see illegals before the cameras, either, though they too could be beneficiaries.
• You won’t hear this in advocates’ press conferences either, but the bill projects the cost as being $14.25 billion in the first six months of 2012, before “dropping” to $1.75 billion in the second six months. Deceit, smoke and mirrors. No wonder 89 percent of Americans think Congress is the pits.
• U.S. Rep. Jim Marshall (D-Macon) appears to have learned the Max Cleland lesson: Go to Washington, vote as a central-casting national Democrat and Georgians will bring you home. Marshall was the only Georgia Democrat to vote against the big-dollar expansion of the campaign-fodder health insurance entitlement. He’s in a competitive district.
• United Auto Workers President Ron Gettelfinger is the most interesting figure in the American labor movement. One day he may rank among its giants. In an industry on the brink and locked in global competition that could devour both company and jobs, the Gettelfinger-led UAW negotiated a bold deal with GM on retiree health care that could be a major turning point toward revival for both company and union.
• Half an hour before U.S. Rep. David Scott (D-Atlanta) voted for the resolution condemning MoveOn.org for the “General Betray Us” newspaper ad, he voted against it in committee. He was one of 11 John Kerry Dems who were against it before they were for it.
• Thinking Right’s Special “Murder and mayhem are on the rise” edition: My favorite prison sentence of the week: Phillip E. Hill, a white-collar criminal, was sentenced by a federal judge to 28 years in prison and ordered to pay more than $41 million in restitution for running a massive mortgage scheme that generated $112 million in fraudulent loans. His take from the scheme, involving inflated sales prices to straw borrowers who paid him kickback, was $14 million. If my band of right-wingers need to work a few hours overtime to pay for his prison upkeep, send the bill. I hate armed robbers, child abusers and white-collar crooks. Armed robbers have made up their minds that they’ll kill you before they walk in the door.
• Good riddance, too, to Marla Nicole Wells of Union City, given 30 months and a $220,000 fine for recruiting and helping others to file false tax returns, for which she netted $225,597, money she used to buy a Mercedes.
• Substitute the language in O.J.’s Las Vegas words of rage and think of wife Nichole and Ron Goldman: “Think you can’t steal my s—- and sell it?” Methinks this is a guy who knew he belonged in jail, and has found a way to get there.
• Ah. So now we know the money source of Hillary’s campaign sugar-daddy, Norman Hsu. Federal officials in New York charged him with operating a massive Ponzi scheme that swindled at least $60 million from investors nationwide. Hillary’s returning the $850,000 Hsu raised. If convicted, he could do 20 in the slammer. Unless, of course, he’s pardoned.
• More good news on the legal front: Melvyn Weiss, co-founder of a New York law firm that collected $250 million from filing class-action lawsuits against big corporations, has been indicted on charges of conspiring to pay kickbacks to people who agreed to be plaintiffs. He was added to an existing indictment of his firm and other lawyers.
• A motorcyclist, with passenger, is clocked at 135 mph on Ga. 400. We don’t need hate-crime sentence multipliers. We need stupid-and-reckless multipliers. This one would fetch a lifetime motorcycling ban. And why do we have non-racing motorcycles capable of 135 mph speeds? My liberal, sensitive side would impose a $100 per mile buyer’s tax on every mph capacity beyond 85.
• No more Michael Vick stories for me. Too depressing. I hate stories, even in the movies, that force me to bear witness to a talented or promising individual’s self-destruction.
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Leave leave alone
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
An intown Democrat, State Rep. Margaret Kaiser of Atlanta, will introduce a bill in the General Assembly’s upcoming session requiring employers to provide up to 24 hours of unpaid leave per year for “medical or educational” needs.
It’s being proposed at the behest of an advocacy group, 9 to 5. As evidence of the need, the group cites a DeKalb County woman “with a previously flawless work history” during 20 years of company employment who allegedly was fired the day after she refused to work three hours of overtime. She couldn’t, she told the employer, because the overtime would conflict with the school registration schedule for her two children.
Now anybody who believes a company fires a loyal 20-year worker with a flawless work history over the inability to work three hours of overtime for the reason stated should, as former Gov. Marvin Griffin used to say, “pick up a bale of cotton and follow me.” (For city boys and girls, a bale of cotton is too heavy for an individual to lift.)
The legislation is unlikely to get very far. Democrats proposing to implement the agendas of liberal interest groups generally have a difficult time selling their proposals for more government regulation to their more conservative colleagues. It does, however, touch on a movement that should concern those who wish to see business and jobs grow in Georgia. That concern is more government mandates.
Mandates on minimum wages to be paid, on medical procedures to be covered by health insurance policies, and mandates of the sort proposed by the Atlanta legislator, have one of three consequences. They force businesses to flee to areas, often abroad, where costs are cheaper. They force higher prices on consumers — if consumers will pay. And they force business to seek taxpayer subsidies, or tax breaks, to pay for the higher costs that regulation imposes.
If government wants to create new social spending programs, legislators should propose them directly — not as mandates on the private sector.
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