Powerline brings up a good point that the most damning e-mail from the hacked East Anglia climate files was written in 1999.  But, this no where near exonerates the pack of rogues of who have been pushing the anthropogenic global warming (AGM) fraud.

The authors of these e-mail, as the putative experts in the field of global climate changes would have had the most detailed knowledge of the weaknesses of their AGM arguments.  They, for example would have known about the Roman warming (about 300 BC to 400 AD) and the Medieval warming (about 900 AD to 1300 AD) periods.  They would have also know about the bad effects of the global cooling following those warming periods.  Little events, like, the fall of Rome and the ushering in the dark ages; literally and figuratively.  Or, with the onset of the little ice age, in 1300, the black plague.

Could it be, that maybe the books were being cooked, even back in 1999, because these researchers needed to make this latest bout of global warming look really bad?  Did they need a little extra to explain away the fact that the internal combustion engine wasn’t around for the Roman or Medieval warmings?

We know from the asides and the chatter that these ’scientists’ were engaged in a political agenda.  They’re entitled to their opinions, political and otherwise.  But, the tenor of these e-mails demonstrate that these guys didn’t check their personal opinions at the door when they punched the clock going to work at East Anglia.

And, if they did have an agenda, what was it?  Were they out to ride the hobby horse of AGM with the goal of pinning the blame on carbon dioxide?  Was the goal of making carbon dioxide the ‘fall guy’ the creation of rationalizations to further agendas of global governance in the name of cutting green house gas emissions?  Or, to create a case for the regulatory monstrosity that is the cap and trade bill voted out of the House earlier this year?  Or, an excuse to create a economy and job killing tax regime that is integral to this House bill?

Did these researchers know that there were serious shortcomings to their AGM theories that would eventually see the light of day?  Did they, even in 1999, have to manufacture data to create air tight case that there is global warming, show that it was worse than any other such on record and then create the inference that carbon dioxide  is the culprit to segue into the the above agendas?

Okay.  This makes me a right-wing conspiracy nut-job.  But, the raw data that these ‘researchers’ and ’scientists’ are sitting on are courtesy public money and government grants.  Likewise, these guys are getting paid to write these e-mails via grants that come from public monies.  My money.  My tax dollars.

But, there’s a simple solution to this problem.  It involves taking a page from the campaign promises of our el maximo leader, Obama.  Transparency.  I simply propose that the raw climate data, in large part paid with my taxes, be completely and with reservation, placed in the public domain.  No hacking necessary.  Put all the raw data on the internet.  All of it.

Here’s the report from the Fox News web site.  And here.  A coalition of health care leaders will present a program to “save” two trillion dollars over the next ten years; thereby making Obama’s health care reform fiscally possible by reducing the up-front costs.  What this really is is crony capitalism.  These players get a place at the table, and a cut in the profits.  In exchange, they will do what everyone in government is unwilling to say–ration.

In going to the nirvana of single payer health care, the government is going to take over the private sector to the tune of one trillion dollars per year.  Of the two or so trillions dollars that make up 18 percent of the GDP, the share that is spent on health care, about 45 percent is already tied up in governmental medical programs.  The rest, in the private sector, is what takes care of the rest of us.  And, through cost shifting and unfunded mandates, props up the shortfalls of the governmental sector.  

There is no such thing as “uninsured.”  Thanks to EMTALA (emergency medical treatment and active labor act), you can walk into any emergency room and must be seen, evaluated and deemed “stabilized” regardless of ability to pay–even if you’re an illegal immigrant.  Whether, you show up for a cold or you show up, flat on your back, having just smeared your face over a mile of interstate after wrecking your motorcycle, drunk.  In fact, so 50 percent of emergency visits are gratis thanks to EMTALA.  The fact is, once the private sector is consumed by the government for matters medical, the government will formally own all of those mandates.  That trillion dollars that will be confiscated by the single payer government program is already accounted for.  It will be a recurring cost, above and beyond the current Medicare/Medicaid tab, forever.

So, two trillion divided by ten means that we have to come up with 200 billion dollars of “savings” for the next ten years.  This is assuming that the profligate spending and loose monetary policy doesn’t ignite a round of inflation like that of the 1970’s.  

What this savings really means is there will be an effort to forgo 200 billion dollars of medical care each year.  For hospitals, forgoing expansions and modernizations.  Forgo new investments in equipment.  And certainly, no acquisitions of technology to push into new treatments; since we can’t have even more cost with even newer medical techniques.

But, I don’t know how our hospitals are going to turn down nurses who want raises to cope with rising tax and inflation burdens.

For the pharmaceutical companies; new drugs cost a billions dollars or more to bring to market.  You can kiss drugs with limited applications goodbye, the so-called orphan drugs.  There have been incredible breakthroughs for myriads of diseases; but at a price.  People griping about these new medicines forget that many have replaced surgery or offered a treatment where heretofore there was none.  Welcome to the brave new world of none.  Most of these big drug companies have their fingers in the manufacture and distribution of generics.  I suspect that emphasizing generics rather than innovation will be the new business model for Barry O’s brave new world of single payer health care.

Insurance companies?  They just hired themselves out as the price enforcers.  They, not their governmental overlords, will take the heat for poor reimbursement rates and care denials.  All to keep our politicians accountability-free.  They’ll make a nice profit at being the fall guy.

And the doctors.  Well, you can get free care right now by walking into any emergency room.  It’s required by law.  You’ll also wait 12 hours to get seen.  Only, now the waiting will extend to every clinic and doctor’s office in the land.  

Ration.  That’s the real deal being cut between these health care players and the administration.  Protected turf in exchange for taking the fall for rationing.

A few thoughts about Barry O’s plan to take us to universal health care nirvana.  It’s real expensive.  Now in a the-dog-ate-my-homework moment, we have even newer tax proposals to pay for the monstrosity.  

First the stiffing.  Medical care consumes about 14 to 18 percent of the GDP which works out to about 1.8 trillion dollars annually (these are rough figures).  Already 800 billions dollars are in some way tied up with governmental programs such as Medicare and the like.  So, the question is what to do about the one trillion dollars that still lie in the private sector.  But, the biggest dead beat in the medical system is the government; not the uninsured.  Which means that trillion dollars isn’t just lying around just waiting to be expropriated, banana republic style.  That trillion dollars is already tied up in propping up governmental programs.  

This money, the private sector money, already makes up for shortfalls in the form of cost shifting.  The practice of charging more in other areas to make up for shortfalls in governmental reimbursement.  Moreover, there are any of a number of unfunded governmental mandates regarding requirements of the rendering of care.  EMTALA (the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act) requires, regardless of ability to pay, legal status or citizenship, that hospitals provide emergency treatment regardless of ability to pay.  The law provides no mechanism for funding this mandate.  And, something like half of all emergency room presentations go uncompensated.  These costs are written off as bad debt by the hospitals.  Or, these costs are built into general costs and charges of the hospital to make up that shortfall.

And, as big a money loser EMTALA is, it really get expensive when it comes to trauma care where you can run through $20,000 worth of care in the first 2o minutes of presentation.  And, a lot of these folks aren’t just innocent bystanders.  Drunks with jaw fractures who were “just minding their own business” at the local bar.  Or, drunks, laced with other illicit drugs who happened to roll their cars in a motor vehicle accident.  Also, very likely not wearing seat belts.

The bottom line is that that trillion dollars in the private sector isn’t free and clear.  Huge chunks of the money are already accounted for and spent to keep Medicare and Medicaid from collapsing.  Trauma and emergency rooms services are, in essence a tax amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, given gratis but virtue of unfunded governmental mandates.

This trillion dollars is also what brings new innovation to medical care.  Demographically driven medicine, a large part what falls into public health, will no longer yield significant savings or new treatment horizons.  Epidemics of, say, cholera, are largely things of the past simple because we’ve already invested in sewers and municipal water systems.  Vaccines are now common place.  And, so on.  Health Maintenance Organizations (HMO’s) have been playing this worn out turn since the 1930’s without any measurable effect.  

In the same fashion, Obama’s proposal to create some governmental program to “honestly broker” treatment options.  He makes a hypothetical of say Minnesota doctors treating patients of 25 percent less than, say, Florida doctors.  But, these guidelines work except in exceptions.  Which happen just about every time you see a patient.  Moreover, Florida’s residents being, on average, older that those of Minnesota, will likely have sicker patients requiring more resources to obtain a similar outcome.  And, everyone would just be healthier if they would all just exercise, cut those trans-fats and stop sitting in front of computers blogging.  So, shall we have the health police banging on our doors every morning so we get out and exercise.  And, shutter every McDonald’s.  Maybe, in the name of health care savings those Florida residents should do their patriotic duty and just die (more below).

The real frontier is technology driven medicine.  This frontier is hard to predict in terms of breakthroughs; and these breakthroughs create new arenas for medical treatment.  They create more demand.  They create more cost.  Because people actually want this treatment because they want to live and live comfortably.  But, this area will be sucked dry because of the cost and in order to limit care (see, again, below).  MRI scanners have allowed more accurate diagnosis in a myriad of disorders.  Our small town of Casper, Wyoming has four or five such machines.  More that entire Canadian provinces.  But, accurate diagnosis leads to unanticipated demands in whole new arenas of treatment.  Socialism above all requires stasis and ossification.

Then, to, is the fact that much of the medical infrastructure comes from the private sector.  Whether a private doctor’s office or a major medical center.  Governmental medical programs have largely piggy-backed on the infrastructure.  In many respects, governmental medical programs have largely survived because these programs merely make use of capacity at the margins.  Economic medical decision making is first of all, based on the economics of private sector finances.  Only then do you figure out if a given service can stand, economically, on governmental reimbursement.  If new medical initiatives rested on reasonable profits from governmental medical programs, you’d see all sorts of medical construction in our inner cities.

Finally, of course, will be the stiffing of the doctors themselves.  It will be some sort of pressure that will evolve from government fiat and monosopy power as a single payer.  Surgeons and specialties that do procedures can better survive, to a point, because one can be reimbursed both the procedure and the visit.  But, a primary care doctor, without the benefit of procedures, is going to go out of business.  A grim reality even today as Medicare patients are having increasing difficulty finding doctors that will take Medicare.

But, while those “bad” doctors may be everyone’s favorite whipping boy, are you also going to cut reimbursements in the form of salary cuts to our nurses?

The bottom line is that trillion private sector dollars will become a recurrent cost annually.  It might inject some honesty into the system since the unfunded mandates will also become a formal governmental responsibility.  Therefore, each and every year, the federal government will need to raise one trillion extra dollars just to nationalize what we have.  New initiatives?  New coverages?  New innovations?  That’s going to cost extra.

Now the snuffing.  As in killing.  And, this will ultimately be the effect of rationing.  In some fashion, rationing of medical care will result in people dying.  And, on purpose for reasons outlined below. 

Can this really happen?  Well, yes, because is already is in a sub rosa fashion.  The great tobacco settlements were supposed to drive a stake in the heart of big tobacco.  And, those settlement monies were to educate the public to finally put an end to that filthy habit of smoking.  We’ll pass over the fact that humans have been smoking and fermenting just about every plant since time immemorial.  What really happened was that every state in this settlement became a knowing partner in the enterprise of tobacco use because of the tax revenues.  And, states, instead of taxing cigarettes out of existence, tax at a rate to maximize revenue.  Moreover, state treasury officials know that smoking usually kills the smoker of a nice clean heart attack at about age 60; thereby freeing the state of any expense for future state Medicare and Medicaid expenditures.  It’s a wonder that the Social Security Administration isn’t pushing to revitalize smoking habits.

Debates over state motorcycle helmet laws now revolve on the fact that lack of helmet wearing usually results in the motorcycle rider being killed outright.  A much cheaper out come that treating a helmet-wearing rider who survives but with severe, very expensive to treat injuries.

Europe’s experience with euthanasia has already crossed a number of ethical barriers.  Doctors increasingly make decisions out of greater loyalty ”gate-keeping” state medical resources than loyalty to a patient.  Elderly in Holland are afraid to go to the hospital over this very fact.  This fear serves as a great rationing tool since the hospital isn’t expending resources on that patient.  If that patient were to die, all the better, since dead patients are really cheap to treat.

A colleague tells me, that in New Zealand, cardiac surgeons don’t work very hard.  On purpose.  It can literally take months to get a heart operation.  You might even die in the interim.  More bottom line savings.

And, oh, did you know that approximately 50 bucks of Pentothal is a lot cheaper than 100,000 dollars of hospice care?

Rationing is particularly pernicious to American Exceptionalism and a governing philosophy that organizes around the concept of the maximization of individual liberty (the pursuit of happiness).  Yes, as a surgeon, I have participated in the agonizing decision on when to “pull the plug” on a hopeless ill, dying patient.  And, in doing so, have had to face the fact the in this particular case, any further efforts are simply futile.  But, this was a decision entirely made by private parties.  Done only after assuring ourselves that we left no stone unturned.  Done without the intrusion or pressure of outside parties with other agenda, read financial, forcing a decision.  This was a decision with me acting with an overarching philosophy that only the best interest of my patient matters in this decision.

One must understand the tension of medical economics and Judeo-Christian morality that plays in this issue; and how government sponsored rationing will tear down the latter.  In tearing down the latter, to spawn an attitude that runs contrary to the importance of the individual and individual rights.  Those individual rights that are central to this thing we call Western Civilization. 

Modern medicine operates at the margins.  As a volunteer manager of our mutual medical insurance plan, I note, in reviewing our financial data, that 20 percent of our members covered consume 80 percent of the resources (in the form of medical benefits paid out) and the other 80 percent consume on 20 percent of the resources.  In the case of Medicare, we find that your last year of life, your last hospital admission, will be the most expensive.  Some 30 to 50 percent of Medicare expenditures specifically fund these very expensive end-of-life events.  Note, by being on the margins that many of these patients are in no real position to defend themselves.  Their illnesses impair their ability to work with a concomitant income disadvantage.  They are individuals, who if they died, wouldn’t materially affect statistics such as longevity and infant birth rates; especially if you knew how to fudge those statistics.  If you count infant mortality rate as only term babies, the infant mortality rate for premature births never comes on the radar.  You’re only a step away from saving enormous bucks by letting those premies, just, go.  If you’re in the last year of life, on that last hospital admission, national longevity statistics aren’t going to materially change if, you, just, pull the plug.  There’s hundreds of millions of dollars on the line if you do.

On the other hand, there is the temptation to move  into post-Christian (? pre-Islamic) America and abandon the Ten Commandments and their requirement to honor our mothers and fathers.  Well, maybe the ten suggestions.  There is the temptation to abandon the concept that every human is indeed a unique individual, created by God in His own image.  There is temptation no longer respect a life time of work and contributions of our elders and give comfort  and respect in their old age; rather, to discard them with the old Chicago Machine greeting of “Yeah, but what have you done for me lately.”

There is a temptation to embrace your inner socialist and no longer regard each citizen of our republic as a resource and spark of creativity.  But, to regard people as so many parts of a machine that consume food, shelter and create a big carbon footprint.  Machine parts to be discarded and replaced as they are worn out.  It becomes tempting as a “gate-keeper” to dole out medical resources only to repair those “parts” that are still functioning and “worth” repairing.  It becomes tempting to, say, regard every retiree as useless dead weight, past prime and past repair, to be discarded since maintenance now far exceeds the replacement cost.  Especially if your butt isn’t on the line.

It is only that trillion dollars, in private hands, that will effectively enforce the precepts of the sanctity of the individual and stand firm against the financial temptations to cut ethical corners in the name of preserving the public’s” medical resources.

With Senator Spector jumping to the Democratic brand, we will have the legislative and executive branch firmly in the hands of the Democrats.  Unless, the Democratic leadership cannot trust it’s rank and file, the trillion dollar agenda that will beggar our grandchildren can not proceed unobstructed.  Won’t even be a need for the charade of “reconciliation” to push this agenda through.  And, most of all, Obama can shed the pretense that he is president and revert to this true calling as prime minister (or secretary general).  

Have it all!  Canadian-style single payer health care.  Cap and trade.  And, the next time Obama meets the king of Saudi Arabia, he needs not stop at a bow; go on, go all the way, the royal crotch was only another six inches away.  Chavez, Castro, Kim, Ahmadinejad, your reservation at the Lincoln Bedrooms awaits.

Spread the wealth?  Spread away.  Why stop at 90% AIG-style tax rates?  If you making $250K per year, you’re rich enough.  Everything above that belongs to the feds (and by extension ACORN).

And, we can all be greener than Kermit.  The folks out in Pennsylvania will now really have a reason to be bitter when our carbon-free future throws them all out into the unemployment line when their coal mines are shut down.  All they will have, then, is their guns and religion to cling to.

Torture “truth” commissions?  Why stop there?  Call up Robespierre and the Committee for Public Safety.  Why stop with some DOJ lawyers who nobody can remember?  How about Rove?  Heck, why not Cheney or even W?

Hyperbole?  Hopefully no, but stripping away some of the sarcasm, everything in this post has happened.  Obama did bow to a king.  Obama talked about more than cap and trade.  He talked about bankrupting new coal fired generation plants.  He talked about checking your tire pressure as an alternative to drilling for more oil.Pelosi is pushing for a “truth” commission.  

Ninty percent tax rate?  Such a thing existed from the 1930’s until the 1960’s.  The top marginal rate then remained at 70 percent until the Reagan tax cut of 1981.  The Obama, Reid, Pelosi trioka are just testing the waters.  They’re getting us used to the word “trillion.”  And, to banana republic economics; the ones that issue paper money that has the feel of Monopoly money.  First it was taxing away the AIG bonuses.  Again testing the waters to see if we’re ready for settling for the mediocracy of “free” health care in exchange for having everything over $250,000 taxed away since that’s rich enough.

But, there is a silver lining to all of this.  Now, Obama and the Democrats will be in complete, and I mean complete, ownership of this mess.  The high taxes, prolonged recession (?depression) and the hyperinflation.

In some respects, getting canned is exactly what Wagoner deserved.  But, not for poor performance at GM.  Rather, for his failure to speak “truth to power” last year.  Truth to power, when it really counted.  Not, the some childish stunt by some crackpot liberal to embarrass a conservative politician; knowing that, for such rudeness, a well deserved punch in the face will not be forthcoming because of a raucous fourth estate.

And, Wagoner was in a position to do exactly that.  I would guess that whether Wagoner ever holds another job, he has accumulated enough wealth to more than comfortably support a sumptuous lifestyle.  With that economic underpinning, Wagoner was in a relatively invulnerable position to tell and tell off the solons of congress what the real problems for GM were.  Moreover, to tell Congress that many of these problems were made in Washington.  

Wagoner could have told Congress that GM’s problems stemmed from running a company for the purposes of de facto social security and medicare programs for the benefit of the UAW.  It also happens to make cars.  He could have told Congress that the CAFE standards were in place to preserve UAW jobs by forcing the manufacture of money-losing econoboxes, that no one wanted, in the US.  He could have told Congress that the CAFE standard business model was predicated on healthy sales of trucks, large cars and SUV’s to generate enough profit to offset the losses on the small cars.  He could have told Congress that anthromorphic global warming was a fraud, and a poor excuse for an economy killing tax called cap-and-trade.  He could have told Congress there was plentiful energy if bans on drilling off America’s coast lines and in ANWR were lifted.  If bans on shale oil extraction were abandoned.

Then, Wagoner could have spoken truth to his power and realized that he need to take the bull by the horns and taken GM to bankruptcy court.

But, Wagoner, being the good crony capitalist, played court jester and prostrated himself before the grandees of Congress and played to the fiction that these hypocritical blowhards actually knew something about running a business and about manufacturing cars.

The jester act was ridiculous.  He flew coach to the Washington hearing when it became known that he flew a corporate jet to the first hearing.  Never mind that jet junkets member of Congress avail themselves.  Or, never mind the veritable darkening of the skies with Hollywood’s private jets coming in for the Obama inaugural.  Never mind, that Wagoner, as CEO of an enterprise as large as GM owes his shareholders the most efficient use of his time; hence private jets.

Then the little joyride in the Chevy Volt with prominent members of Congress.  As if.  As if people with the power and clout of Senator Levin or Dodd are going to ever park their fat behinds in an overpriced econobox that will ultimately join the Trabant on the ash heap of automotive history.  Come on, a car that gets 40 miles between recharges.  And costs 40 grand.  

So, what did these prostrations get?  What did all the congressional butt kissing do (other than Barney loving it, euuu)?  Just another Obama signature throwing under the bus.  Nothing personal, Rick, just business, we needed someone to sacrifice on the altar of populism.  Just like those AIG employees.

The irony is that Wagoner actually has done a yeoman’s job in pulling GM back from the brink.  I very much suspect that even in bankruptcy court, any judge would have recognized Wagoner’s talents and work and probably kept him on for the restructuring.  In the arena of making cars, Wagoner was a star.  His failing was not really his.  Rather, it was coming up against problems and obstacles made in Washington; a UAW protected by CAFE standards, energy policies designed to jack up the price of gas.  Bankruptcy would have laid bare all of this Washington stupidity.

At least in bankruptcy court, Wagoner could have gone with his pride intact, knowing that managed GM with an honest appraisal of the realities that faced GM.

Once upon the time there were the Country Club Republicans.  The monied old boy network of the right prep schools, ivy league universities followed by employment in the toniest of banks, brokerages and law firms.  And, membership in the right country clubs.  It could be pernicious since there were many practices of exclusion of those not WASP-ish enough from participation in the above venue.  This was back when Protestant meant something more than a transitional state to some “higher” spritial enlightment such as Gaia or Islam.  Even from the opportunity to buy a home in certain neighborhoods or communities was limited by “quota or point system dependent on your overall WASP bona fides.  And, this is above and beyond discrimination pointed at blacks.

I remember my mother telling me about an aquaitance that couldn’t find a home in the Chicago north shore suburbs because her name was mistaken to be Jewish.  I remember my childhood peditrician relating how lucky he was getting past the Jewish quota to get into medical school.

But, as pernicious as these things were, they were largely private sector affairs that had not the force of law (unlike Jim Crow) and, thanks to individual freedom, easily overcome within a generation or two.  There arose all sorts of mutual self-help organizations.  The founding of new medical schools and hospitals to specifically overcome such things as Jewish quotas.  And, there was just opportunity to amass wealth that would simply drown out WASP enclaves of privilege by creating all sorts of parallel universes.

But, now there’s a new country club and its called socialism.  What makes it particularly pernicious is that this has the force of law to enforce membership.  Socialism is merely the social ossification of royalty; just covered in the thin veneer of egalitarianism.  These country club Democrats are all very wealthy individuals, some so because of the unbroken prosperity of Reagan’s economic boom.  But, they know that they made it by upsetting the status quo.  In fact, every American fortune was made exactly that way.  Moreover, every American fortune shares the common dominator of bringing to the common man what was once reserved for the wealthy and privileged.  The bi-costal elite is populated with these types of individuals.  People who made it big and now are supporting a party that is diametrically opposed to the concept of wealth creation.

But, these same said plutocrats, want to shut the door behind them now that they made it.  Now that they rabble-roused their way to the top, they want to make sure that no one will do to them what they did to arrive at the top.  They, the once icky Joe-the-Plumbers, want to insure that there will be no future Joe-the-Plumbers joining them at their tony country clubs.

What to do?  Destroy the path that led them to success.  Nancy Pelosi’s 90% AIG tax is indeed a stalking horse.  This tax’s real purpose is to establish a method to cap economic attainment and success.  She and her elites can determine what each American may ultimately possess and how high they may rise.  And, hold the ability to determine who may so rise.  Pelosi, and her fellow travelers in the House and Senate leadership,  her fellow traveller in the Oval Office, are all already very wealthy individuals.  There taxes scheme miraculously leave their wealth untouched.  And, the captains of industry and finance, those who populate the Hamptons’ A-list social register are now seeing their firms bailed-out and their personal wealth largely untouched.  

But, any young whippersnapper is going to have his attainments capped at $250,000.  Or less.  Because you can bet that the need for control will slowly but surely ratchet down that $250,000 because, in reality, Democratic reality, $250,000 is really too rich.  And, in this manner, Country Club Socialism, we will have created a de jure system of social stratification that our Declaration of Independence overturned by rejecting the royalist paradigms Europe.  It is not the irritation of the nanny state, but this social stratification and ossification that makes this the Europeanization of America pernicious.

“We can’t drive our SUV’s and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times…and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK.”

The pillars that stood behind Obama at his Denver nomination acceptance speech were not evocative of ancient Athens, where the Athenian hoplites stood shoulder to shoulder in their phalanx to stop the maw of the Persian Empire at Marathon and Plataea.  It is not evocative of the Roman Republic were Rome’s citizen-soldiers filled the ranks of Rome’s legions.

No, it is evocative of Imperial Rome.  With Barack, divine Caesar , will dispense largess to the masses from the public treasury.  It is evocative of Leni Riefenstahl.

The first is a quote given by Obama, on a campaign stop in May  19, 2008.  In Oregon.  This represents yet, perhaps more elegant, blame-America-first speech.  SUV, eating and heating our homes, all wrapped up in the cloak of environmental correctness.  Just three more examples of America’s baleful presence upon the earth.  

But, this too was a real campaign promise.  A promise to rein big bad America.  It render America subservient to the rest of the “world.”  To make sure that our domestic and foreign policies are “okay” with the rest of the world.  Our national sovereignty will check in with some “world government,” some UN “consensus.”  With Obama himself, who, by virtue of his high melanin content and third world name graces the Oval Office with this magical “world cred.”

Riding this economic crisis is an exercise to lower American expectations.  To have American’s accept lessened hopes and dreams.  To extinguish the concept of American exceptionalism.  To prepare Americans to accept the new age of mediocrity and dependence (ht; William Katz, Urgent Agenda).  Commentators continue to critique Obama’s economic plans as exactly the wrong prescription to restore prosperity.  And, that’s exactly the point.  This economic plan is to destroy the legacy of growth and hope for a better tomorrow; to replace that hope with the acceptance of a permanent second place.  To accept that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights must now subordinate to the will of “international” consensus.

Obama is a complete stranger to American exceptionalism.  He spend the first ten years of his life in the third world with a upbringing in the Muslim ideology (not religion).  An ideology that is a polar opposite to the defense of individual liberty; the centerpiece of Western Civilization.  And, when Obama came back to the US, his mind was well prepared to accept the ranting of Reverend Wright, Bill Ayers and every chic Marxist professor that he ran into.  Not America the great, but America the second place.

And, to arrive at that state, he needs to build an electoral coalition of 51 percent who will permanently accept second place.  A 51 percent who will forever depend on the government to fill it’s needs and accept it largess as a birthright.  A 51 percent who will exchange it’s real birthright, the one secured by the Bill of Rights, for a mess of pottage.  A 51 percent who will look to the government for the proper cues on all manner of morals and attitudes.  

And, above all, a 51 percent who will forever look upon the other 49 percent as permanent tax slaves. For, that productive 49 percent, the real water carriers (to use CNBC’s Santarelli’s terminology), are the new Kulaks who must have the fruits of their productivity expropriated for being the rapacious, productive louts that they truly are.

Mr. Obama’s Ivy League credentials indicate that the man has at least enough intelligence to at least understand the principles that undergird free market economics.  Yet, he chooses to proceed in precisely the opposite direction and pursues spending policies that will leave a legacy that will beggar our grandchildren’s children.  On purpose.  He does to create a society that will permanently accept lowered expectations.  To create an inverse, where the state defines the individual.  Not, which is the source of our greatness, where the individual and his individual efforts define the state.  His policies invite us to accept serfdom and build our huts next to the moat and castle of the state.  To accept what ever pittance Obama and his acolytes will dispense in exchange for obedience to the diktats from his royal, heated to 72 degrees, court.

And, for that pittance you will accept Obama and his acolytes as your betters; your philosopher kings.   Rules and laws are for other people.  Boy-wonder  Geithner doesn’t have to taxes.  And, Obama, regardless that we bad Americans have to ask the “world” for permission to as to what to drive, eat and set our thermostats, will eat $100 per pound wagyu steak, drive around in a limousine based on a Chevy 2500 pick-up truck chassis and set the Oval Office thermostat to 72 degrees.  Hypocrisy by our betters, is okay with Plato, in his Republic, since our betters, in engineering and directing our lives, are above the law.

And, so for the pittance of the cradle to grave socialism.  For the beggaring of our children.  For permanent diminution of our horizons and hopes, we shall worship at the altar of whatever fad or fancy our leaders deem important.  The latest such fad is the false religion of environmentalism. We are to ignore the man behind the curtain and worship the great Oz, who tells us, despite real scientific evidence to the contrary, that “global warming” is threatening our planet.  And, we will save the earth by “cap and trade.”   The “green” agenda of “renewable” energy is actually a Luddite agenda.  The first solar photovoltaic cell was invented in 1883.  Wind power and windmills have been around since the middle ages.  

The horseless carriage has been in existence for over a century.  There have been battery cars and steam cars and all sorts of novel methods of propulsion.  The Prius is nothing new; it’s fuel efficiency is more due to the fact it’s a small light car.  A Ford Pinto, an AMC Gremlin, a Renault LeCar, updated to look good in front of a Starbucks.  How radical, innovative, is a internal combustion engine mated to a generator?  Every modern railroad locomotive uses a diesel engine to run a generator that powers motors to drive the locomotive forward.  A diesel Prius on steel wheels.

The fact is that we burn hydrocarbons for transportation and electrical generation because it turns out to be the most efficient and most economical way to accomplish the task at hand.  Yet, somehow, our all-knowing leaders, under the beneficent smile of our President, will find us a new, carbon-free solution known only to them; solutions that somehow eluded eluded the thousands  upon thousands of engineers who ever worked in the automotive or power generation industries.  But, of course, we lesser folks do not have the booby prize bauble from Stockholm like our new Energy Secretary (the Nobel Prize now places you in the company of Jimmy Carter, Yasser Arafat and Albert Gore).

But, no matter, our car czar will dictate the car we will drive, if we are deemed deserving to rate personal transportation and allowed to buy such a conveyance.  But, second class will be acceptable so long as we get our allotments of free food, housing and health care.  As long as we do not dare to aspire to a life or lifestyle that would exceed whatever would be “OK” with the rest of the world. 

To those who cared to look beyond the MSM smokescreen of the last election, this comes as no surprise.  But, the evidence is all in that Barry’s nothing but a tax and spend liberal.  We’ve got a budget outline that approached four trillion dollars.  And, after congress gets through it will be four trillion since Barry on set a floor on his budget proposal and has a tacit understanding with Reid and Pelosi, to run the tab up even more since he’s going to sign anything.

Then, we have proposals for more than a trillion dollars in tax increases.  The combined wet dreams of FDR, LBJ, Carter and Clinton, combined could not imagine such a number.  Well, maybe Clinton.

And, then we have the other boiler plate to the standard liberal.  The slow pre-emptive surrender to Islamic imperialism.  In Iraq, all our enemies have to do is run the clock until August 2010.  How’s that for telegraphing your attentions.

And gun control.  It seems that his lacky at justice, Holder, is making noises about re-instating the so-called “assault-weapons” ban in part because assault weapons are flowing from the north into Mexico, supplying the drug lords in their civil war against the government.  Never mind that Mexico is just this side of being a failed state.  Of course, this stuff never came out of Obama himself.  But, he like Pelosi, Reid and Schumer are just waiting…

Bait and switch.  The true intentions covered up by a compliant press.

But, it is worse.  If only we could have the day’s of Jimmy Carter.  What we really have is not a president but the UN secretary general occupying the Oval Office.  This man is a natural born citizen by virtue of the technicality of being born over US soil.  But, he spent his first ten years of life abroad.  Not at a military brat, who lived with a sense that he was a part of America.  But, as a Muslim in Indonesia, including attendance to a madrass.  So, not only did he live physically away from America, his upbringing was in a Muslim world-view; an antithesis of individual liberty which is the root of Western Civilization.

And, though he didn’t wind up practicing Islam.  His choice of “Christianity” was the virulent anti-American, anti-semitic variant of the “Reverend” Wright.

So, to add to the cheap vote-buying ethics of a Chicago ward-heeler.  So, to add to the fact that this man’s enitre adult life was living off other peoples’ money, extorting other people’s money.  So, to add to the fact that this man never ran a business, hired employees or met a payroll.  This man is now engaging in a third-world mentality of reducing his fellow citizens to the status of serf and subject.  

Obama’s spending and tax proposals make a mockery of the notion of private property.  These are whole sale expropriations of property that place him squarely in the company of Evo Morales and Hugo Chavez.  No, the comparison isn’t meant as a compliment.

Consider this.  A survey, completed in the mid-90’s calculated that the average American family had tax liabilities (federal, FICA, state, local, ect) that consumed 40 percent of that family income.  That’s the average.  You have to know that liability is much higher in localities like New Jersey or California.  That is, in round numbers, the need to earn two dollars before you can have one dollar to put food on the table, clothes on your children’s backs and a roof over their heads.

But, on a macro level, every transaction, whether buyer or seller has this assumption built in–that any purchase must account for the fact that for every dollar spent, another dollar will go to the government.

Now, consider this.  There was another survey of generation X’ers done in the mid-90’s that determined that a greater percentage believed that Elvis would return to earth on a UFO than ever seeing a dime out of Social Security.  The 90’s, before our latest financial meltdown, back when time were really good.  Aside from the humor in this survey there is an undercurrent that nobody really believes that US government is going to really deliver.

So, here’s the pink elephant, standing in the middle of the living room, that everyone seems to tip-toe around.  The enormous incentives to “game” the system to eek out an extra dollar from wherever you can find it.  It is not to justify the moral righteousness of the excesses of Wall Street or the tawdry tax evasions of Obama cabinet appointment after appointment.  But, we live in an era of such moral turpitude in which our money is being spent by our solons in congress that will beggar our grandchildren’s grandchildren.  We have seen tax evasions on the part of cabinet appointees, an ex-senator in one case, that gets off with a slap on a wrist or appointment anyway to Treasury Secretary.  And, we therefore have a tax cheat as head of the IRS.  What sort of wrath would be visited upon the “unconnected” by the IRS for similiar offenses.

In Obama’s home town of Chicago it isn’t subtle.  Everything is for sale.  Even Senate seats.  There is a resultant cynicism seeped into the bones of every Chicagoan that makes even the rare examples of true public spiritedness suspect.

And, in so may ways we have governance by people who seem to think that laws and rules are for other people.  And, so with such conditions of confiscatory taxes and moral turpitude the temptation to cheat starts to grow.  It becomes a game.  Minimizing exposure to the IRS.  Bartering dental fillings for an auto tune-up.  Everything done on the black market is an automatic 50 percent discount.

If people could actually keep more of what they earned would there be less cheating?  Would there be less incentive to take short cuts?  It’s interesting to note that VAT taxes never yield more than ten percent of the items being taxes.  Since any VAT tax over ten percent stimulates the establishment of a black market that immediately drives the the VAT tax yield back down to ten percent.

A while back, I read in the WSJ that a socialist economist, I think in the 50’s, calculated the most efficient tax rate to maximize wealth transfer.  This taking into account that higher tax rates would depress economic activity to drive down the amount of wealth that could be transfered.  His result; his optimal tax rate was 20 percent.  The exact same percentage that Pharaoh, at Joseph’s behest, taxed to have enough save away from the seven good years for the seven lean years.

The patterns are coming clear about Obama’s world view and economic views.  His stimulus plan falls into the pattern.  No, Obama didn’t write it.  But, he didn’t care so long as it spent a lot of money.  And, it starts this nation down the past of big city machine politics.

What has been slowly metastizing from local, to state and now to the federal level is a model of governance that seeks to fleece some minority of taxpayers for the benefit of a given politician’s friends and allies.  This was the model that to some degree afflicts almost every large city in our country.  This has been the model of economic stagnation for the last century.  Big city machine politics creates a voting bloc of 51 percent to steal from the other 49 percent; economic justice and fairness don’t you know.  The 49 percent vote with their feet, leaving said city an economic wasteland.  So, since that city can control a significant block of representatives in the state legislature, this same city machine needs to go further afield to find that 49 percent to tax, but at the state level.  The net result is to saddle, at the state level, the same diastrous economic policies that now render that state an economic wasteland.

And, regions and states mimic stellar evolution going from the young blue-white star of economic vitality, to the to the aging red giant start of a state-wide economy where private sector economic activity is beginning to struggle to keep ahead of taxes and public spending.  Then, there’s the black hole; the where the citizen is just regarded as a sheep to be fleeced and flayed to generate revenue for the sake of the friends and dependents of the ruling political machine.  

And, this country is now littered with economic black holes.  Whole metropolitan areas, whole states where governmental entities lurch from budget crisis to budget crisis in search of tax revenue to make it another year.  States like New York, California or New Jersey.  New York used to be a veritable hot house of economic activity and innovation.  Corning, Kodak, Xerox, Westinghouse.  Out on Long Island, yes on the same island that now hosts the oh so politically correct Hamptons, was Grumman, grinding out Hellcats and Wildcats that helped on our march to victory in the Pacific against imperial Japan.  Victory, what a quaint term.  Now, economic news out of Rochester consists of how many more layoffs are coming out of Xerox or Kodak.  Meanwhile, back in Albany, you have the same set of buccaneers trying to figure how to pay off their constituencies by trying to find something else to tax.  New Jersey, speaking of innovation, was where Thomas Edison invented and innovated. 

California?  What’s to say. Other than the fact that California seems to be the harbinger of trends that sweep the nation.  Maybe, in the light of Hoover, when we are indeed thrown into a real depression, we can name our shantytowns Obamavilles or Pelosivilles.

But, after a century of this Ponzi scheme of creating coalitions of 51 percent to stick it to the other 49 percent, we only have one way to go.  Now you have to take city-wide extortion that metastasized to state wide extortion to a national scale.  And, somehow this model of economic extortion will now work on a federal level when it failed, over the long term, in various and sundry places at the local and state level.  And, internationally, wherever socialism has pushed out free-markets.

And, yet, the President of Cool, the President of “change” comes to Washington D.C. to promote an economic model that is failing or failed in so many diverse places by doubling down and trying to promote this last-century economic of political machine bossism (socialism, American style) on the country at large.  Yes, at this point, the productive 49 percent will no longer be able to vote with their feet, but they will vote with their cessation of productivity.