Democrats Go 'Nuclear,' Eliminate Filibusters on Most Nominees

In an attempt to distract attention away from Obamacare and pack the DC circuit court, the Democratic Majority in the US Senate has gone 'nuclear,' today:

Senate Democrats succeeded Thursday in deploying the “nuclear option” to make the most fundamental change to floor operations in almost four decades, ending the minority’s ability to kill most presidential nominations by filibuster.

The Senate voted, 52-48, to effectively change the rules by rejecting the opinion of the presiding officer that a supermajority is required to limit debate, or invoke cloture, on executive branch nominees and those for seats on federal courts short of the Supreme Court.

A couple of things are worth noting.

1. When this came up in 2005, parties reversed, I said that [I]f the Republicans don't change the rules, the Democrats will, as soon as it becomes in their best interest to do so. They felt it in their best interest today, so there we go.
2. When the Democrats in the majority propose this, the New York Times supports it.  When Republicans in the majority propose it, it's a dangerous proposition that must be stopped.  I suspect that the Times editorial tomorrow won't condemn Harry Reid for actually doing what it would have strongly condemned Bill Frist for doing.   "Because it's not about principle. Never has been, never will be. The Times, despite its pretense to being a non-partisan purveyor of the news, is a partisan political actor. They are pro-Democrat, anti-Republican, leftist progressives and, to the extent that there's ever a "principle" behind their positions, that's the extent of it."
3. Unlike the New York Times, I'm not going to switch my position based on whose ox is being gored.  When the Democrats were filibustering Bush nominees, I said that nominees should get an up-or-down vote from the Senate.  That was my position then; that's my position today.

Unintended consequences - not just a good idea: It's the Law...

Who'd'a thunk it?

Obamacare reducing full-time employment:

In an experiment apparently aimed at keeping down the cost of health-care reform, Orlando-based Darden Restaurants has stopped offering full-time schedules to many hourly workers in at least a few Olive Gardens, Red Lobsters and LongHorn Steakhouses.

Darden said the test is taking place in "a select number" of restaurants in four markets, including Central Florida, but would not give details. The company said there has been no decision made about expanding it.

In an emailed statement, Darden said staffing changes are "just one of the many things we are evaluating to help us address the cost implications health care reform will have on our business. There are still many unanswered questions regarding the health care regulations and we simply do not have enough information to make any decisions at this time."

Gosh, who could have seen that coming?

And, of course, no one could have done a better job in this economy than President Obama has.   No one could possibly, under these conditions, done more to keep unemployment down.

But hey, I'm sure that those restaurant workers who now aren't getting enough hours to get health care, and are forgoing that income, are proud "economic patriots," happy to forgo that income for the common good...

Eugenics Rising...

A couple of different, and very disturbing, recent news stories.

Decision blasts judge’s order to force abortion

In a December hearing, the Department of Mental Health applied for temporary guardianship for the parents of the 32-year-old woman — referred to as “Mary Moe” — to let them consent to an abortion for their daughter, who already had one child currently in their care.

Harms approved guardianship, ruling Moe could be “ ‘coaxed, bribed, or even enticed ... by ruse’ into a hospital where she would be sedated and an abortion performed,” the appellate ruling states. “Additionally ... and without notice, the judge directed that any medical facility that performed the abortion also sterilize Moe at the same time to avoid this painful situation from recurring.”

The decision was overturned by the appeals court, but what if the Judges on that court had agreed?

Three-year old with kidney disease kept off transplant waiting list.

I begin to shake. My whole body trembles and he begins to tell me how she will never be able to get on the waiting list because she is mentally retarded.

A bit of hope. I sit up and get excited.

“Oh, that’s ok! We plan on donating. If we aren’t a match, we come from a large family and someone will donate. We don’t want to be on the list. We will find our own donor.”

“Noooo. She—is—not—eligible –because—of—her—quality– of –life—Because—of—her—mental—delays”

...

“So you mean to tell me that as a doctor, you are not recommending the transplant, and when her kidneys fail in six months to a year, you want me to let her die because she is mentally retarded? There is no other medical reason for her not to have this transplant other than she is MENTALLY RETARDED!”

“Yes.”

Ask yourself this question: If more authority to make medical decisions is transferred from parents to Government officials, does the occurrence of this scenario, or scenarios like it, get more common or less common?

I think we all know the answer¹ to that...

What we call Man's power is, in reality, a power possessed by some men which they may, or may not, allow other men to profit by. Again, as regards the powers manifested in the aeroplane or the wireless, Man is as much the patient or subject as the possessor, since he is the target both for bombs and for propaganda. And as regards contraceptives, there is a paradoxical, negative sense in which all possible future generations are the patients or subjects of a power wielded by those already alive. By contraception simply, they are denied existence; by contraception used as a means of selective breeding, they are, without their concurring voice, made to be what one generation, for its own reasons, may choose to prefer. From this point of view, what we call Man's power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.

- C.S. Lewis, The Abolition Of Man²

¹ - In a world of scarcity, there is always going to be conflict over allocation of scarce resources. A donor kidney is obviously a scarce commodity. There are many ways to look at this particular issue, and a long discussion that I don't have the time for at the moment. But there's a surface callousness here that, in conjunction with the Massachusetts story, makes the Lewis take fresh and relevant. Again.

² - And no, I do not scan the internet everyday desperately looking for a story which can, however tenuously, justify quoting The Abolition of Man, or Lewis in general. It was a brilliant and prescient work, clearly articulating the road that society was traveling, and, having read it several times, I'm struck by its foresight frequently...

An Ugly Side Effect ...

OK, this just made me laugh...

An Ugly Side Effect of New 1099 Law: More Tax Evasion

Tax pros now fear that tax evasion could go viral if the health-reform bill’s new 1099 requirement takes effect next year. They say more small businesses will likely opt to do all-cash transactions under the table to avoid the 1099 reporting requirement, and all of its onerous provisions, which are worse than small businesses may realize.

That's the direct opposite effect of what lawmakers had hoped for, and it would pose a bad development for the Internal Revenue Service, which for years has been under pressure from Congress to bring in more tax revenue.

The Law Of (come on now, all together) Unintended Consequences Rides Again!

Let's go back, for just a moment, to a few really fundamental, basic economic principles:

• People respond to incentives.
• Subsidize something and you get more of it.
• Punish something and you get less of it.

The more onerous and punitive and costly you make the process of compliance, the more remunerative and profitable the act of non-compliance, the less compliance you're going to get. A blind man could have seen this coming, but not those super-geniuses that put together this legislative obscenity.

Orphan Drug Discounts Ended for Children’s Hospitals

They passed it, so we can find out what's in it...

In an unintended consequence of the new health care law, drug companies have begun notifying children’s hospitals around the country that they no longer qualify for large discounts on drugs used to treat rare medical conditions.

As a result, prices are going up for these specialized “orphan drugs,” some of which are also used to treat more common conditions.

Over the last 18 years, Congress has required drug manufacturers to provide discounts to a variety of health care providers, including community health centers, AIDS clinics and hospitals that care for large numbers of low-income people.

Several years ago, Congress broadened the program to include children’s hospitals. But this year Congress, in revising the drug discount program as part of the new health care law, blocked these hospitals from continuing to receive price cuts on orphan drugs intended for treatment of diseases affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the United States.

So my question for all of the Obamacare supporters out there is this - why were you so eager to cut off drugs for sick children? That's seems pretty heartless and greedy to me, cutting off drugs for sick kids to satisfy your own desires...

"Thanks To Obama And Health Care Reform, I'm No Longer Paying For My Employees' Insurance"

You know, some of us saw this coming...

Thanks To Obama And Health Care Reform, I'm No Longer Paying For My Employees' Insurance

Politics mandated that Obama and his fellow Democrats at least pretend that their legislation will constrain runaway spending. The new law’s very name is part of that pretense. But there is little in the actual legislation that has any real prospect of controlling spending; instead, the law attempts to control premiums by fiat through new regulations and oversight. Government may be able to prevent insurers from pricing policies in ways that make sense, but it can’t force them to operate at a loss. The other shoe, in the form of higher premium prices or a rollback of the new law’s mandates, is certain to drop. Higher prices are the more likely outcome.

...

The law’s supporters will portray employers like me as bad guys who are using the new law as a smokescreen to make changes we wanted to make anyway. Though the accusation is false, it has a germ of truth: Runaway health insurance costs have been a burden for every business that pays them. Every sensible manager has at least considered steps to stem this financial hemorrhage. Many of us were just holding on so as not to disrupt employees’ lives while we waited for policymakers to do something.

Now they have done something, and it only made the problem worse.

Can you say un-in-tend-ed con-se-quenc-es?

I thought you could...

Health care law: the turmoil begins

There will be more of this. Much, much more. Hopefully, there's enough of it between now and November to enable more of it to be prevented down the road...

Health care law: the turmoil begins - Jacksonville Daily News

During the debates on federalized health care, there was no shortage of people projecting the negative consequences of such a policy. Those consequences are beginning to be realized.

Two of the country’s largest insurance providers, UnitedHealtcare and Blue Cross Blue Shield, already have stopped issuing new coverage for children and other plans.

...

Officials were quick to call this an “unintended consequence” of the federal health care law. Unintended it might be, but it certainly wasn’t unexpected.

Expect it to get worse. With two of the largest companies out of the pool, the risk will become more concentrated among those that remain. The incentives for other companies to bail out, then, will only increase.

...

We were warned about what would happen if we turned health care into yet another massive government bureaucracy. As those consequences begin to materialize we may express dismay or even anger. One thing we can’t honestly express, however, is surprise.

Of course, I'm not at all certain that this is, in fact, an unintended consequence. It is such an obvious consequence that it's much easier to believe that it is an intended consequence - it's not a bug, it's a feature! It is intended to drive us closer to the "holy grail" of socialized medicine - the single-payer universal health care that provides uniformly rotten rationed care for everyone, regardless of achievement or ability to pay.

Well, there will still be some who are able to "buy" better care than the great unwashed multitudes, but the currency will be pull, not legal tender...

et plus le deluge...

And hey, what about that bastion of evil, Caterpillar¹?

Caterpillar Inc. said Wednesday it will take a $100 million² charge to earnings this quarter to reflect taxes stemming from the newly enacted U.S. health-care legislation.

The world's largest construction equipment manufacturer by sales warned last week that provisions in the legislation would subject it to federal income taxes on the subsidies it receives for providing prescription drug benefits for its retirees and their spouses.

Since the Medicare Part D program was enacted in 2003, the Peoria, Ill., company and more than 3,500 others that already provided drug-benefit expenses to retirees have received tax-free subsidies as an incentive to maintain their drug programs.

The subsidies average $665 per person covered by a company-sponsored prescription program, according to benefits consultant Towers Watson.

About 40,000 Caterpillar retirees receive company-sponsored drug benefits, which are more generous than Medicare's drug plan, which requires recipients to pay some out-of-pocket expenses.

The charge is expected to be a one-time cost, but Caterpillar argues that higher taxes and other potential cost increases related to insurance mandates in the legislation will hinder the company's recovery this year after a 75% profit plunge in 2009.

Thank God - THANK GOD! - that we have Obamacare in place to provide health insurance for all of those workers that will be put out of work by ... Obamacare...



¹ - Bob Tita. (2010, March 25). Caterpillar Income Hit By Health Bill Provision. Wall Street Journal (Eastern Edition), p. B.1. Retrieved March 25, 2010, from ABI/INFORM Global. (Document ID: 1992661551).

² - What's Caterpillar going to do with $100 million anyway? Pay employees? Stockholders? Suppliers? Nah, much, much better that the Federal government take that money and use it to pay IRS agents and health-care bureaucrats...

Plus le deluge...

Zoll Medical has had it too good for too long. It must be punished to increase equity in our society...

The bill passed by the House Sunday night contains a particularly damaging version of the $20 billion hit for the medical device industry, meaning Zoll and other medical device makers could well be headed for hard times.

"We believe that the tax will cost us somewhere between $5 million and $10 million a year," says Richard Packer, Zoll's chairman and chief executive officer. "Our profit in 2009 was $9.5 million."

That would be a devastating blow. Zoll employs about 1,800 people. Roughly 1,600 of them are in the United States, and about 650 of those are in Massachusetts. Once the new tax kicks in, that could all change. "We can't run this company at a break-even or a negative rate," says Packer, "so we will be forced to look at alternatives."

Thank God - THANK GOD! - that we have Obamacare in place to provide health insurance for all of those workers that will be put out of work by ... Obamacare...

Apres Barack, le deluge...

Nothing runs like a Deere:

Deere & Company announced today that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act signed into law this week will adversely impact its expenses for fiscal 2010. As a result of the legislation, the company's expenses are expected to be about $150 million higher on an after-tax basis, primarily in the second quarter. This impact was not included in the 2010 outlook for net income attributable to Deere & Company of approximately $1.3 billion disclosed in the company's first-quarter earnings report on February 17th.

Thank God - THANK GOD! - that we have Obamacare in place to provide health insurance for all of those workers that will be put out of work by ... Obamacare...


(H/T: Jonah Goldberg)