We don't do big things very well, anymore, do we?

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The glitches that have plagued rolling disaster that is the launching of ObamaCare and specifically that of the online exchanges through which an individual can purchase health insurance has resulted in a meme over the past couple of weeks within conservative and libertarian circles: this isn't so much about a website and it isn't so much about another entitlement program we cannot afford rather the failure of the online exchanges and which should scare the beejeezus out of statists everywhere is that this becomes an existential question of the sustainability and effectiveness of big government progressivism.



Here's Glenn Reynolds aka Instapundit breaking it down in his latest column from USA Today:

As it's gotten bigger, the federal government appears to have gotten less competent. Apollo was a success on its own terms, but the big government policies that followed -- the War On Poverty, the War On Drugs, the War On Cancer -- have all been pretty much failures, sometimes disastrous ones.


Even Obama himself is evidence of this problem. His 2012 presidential campaign was famous for its mastery of technology, building up an electronic campaign infrastructure in just a few months that helped him win the election. But, of course, it wasn't a government operation. Obama without the government - a technological success. Obama within the government - a technological embarrassment. The difference between success and failure here, as even Obama-haters will have to admit, wasn't Obama. It's more likely that a political campaign has clear goals, and lots of freedom to improvise, while a federal program is much more encumbered by law and bureaucracy.

Whatever the cause, it remains indisputable that the federal government isn't very good at delivering on big projects. The obvious response is to not trust the federal government with big projects on which it can't deliver. Instead, they should be left to those who can.

Let's bumper sticker this, shall we: We used to put men on the moon, now we can't even build a website.





And we've noted a change of tune from our liberal friends with respect to ObamaCare in that they've gone all rule-of-law on us claiming its wrong, just plain wrong, to not be onboard with what is the law of the land.


Phooey, we say. Why should we be onboard with a counterproductive law that represents only a further incursion into our private affairs and which is proving already to be doomed to failure?




Here's George Will on "Fox News Sunday" responding to Juan Williams' lament that some folks were spiking the ball in response to the healthcare law's completely bungled rollout:

“Oh, it will end,” Will said. “Because in fact what they’re trying to do is micromanage one-sixth of the American economy. What we have learned throughout the 20th century is in fact the micromanagement, central planning of complex societies doesn’t work.”

“I want to assure brother Williams that there is no schadenfreude because I’m not even pretending to be sorrowful,” Will continued. “Of course I want Obamacare to fail, because if it doesn’t fail, it will just further entangle American society with a government that is not up to this. For 100 years, Juan, the narratives of progressives from Woodrow Wilson on, is that progress will come if and only if we concentrate more and more power in Washington, more and more Washington power in the executive branch and more executive power in the hands of experts — disinterested experts such as those who designed HealthCare.gov.”

Brother Williams...? Dude.



But Will is exactly right. From the moment this thing became law, in case after case and example after example, it became apparent that the Affordable Care Act was proving to be neither about affordability nor care... only control from and by centralized authority in Washington D.C.


And back to our friends and our alleged incivility in not getting onboard with this legislative sham. We're old enough to remember a war in the Middle East that was entered into just over 10 years ago with bi-partisan congressional support but which was still railed against by a quite vocal and vehement opposition. Yes, dear readers, we're old enough to remember when dissent was patriotic and remaining ungovernable with respect to debacles like ObamaCare is precisely what we will continue to do.

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#OWS: Succeeding where the tea party could not...

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...though succeeding in ways they did not anticipate.

The City of Los Angeles reportedly faces millions of dollars in expenses brought about by the Occupy LA movement.

City agencies have been ordered to calculate what was spent on the Occupy LA protests.

Repairs to City Hall’s lawn where the Occupy group set up camp on Oct. 1 will require an estimated $400,000. The police action to clear out the encampment on Nov. 30 cost more than $700,000.

Additional expenses are attributed to hauling away debris from the camp, and cleaning up graffiti that defaced City Hall marble walls and trees.

Mayor Villaraigosa says more budget cuts will be necessary to offset the costs.

(emphasis, ours)






This is just too rich: Statist Occupiers are the cause of budget cuts to statist big government, ultimately succeeding in curtailing the very thing for which they are occupying: the expansion of government power.

/taking a second look at the Occupy movement?

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Hey, maybe it saved the Senate

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Alternate headline: Solyndra: the scandal that keeps on giving


'Suppose it just wasn't enough to give a completely ill-advised $537 billion loan that was opposed by the Treasury Department and independent auditors and with near-zero interest rates far more favorable than similar DOE loans (with a loan restructuring that put private interests ahead of that of tax-payers') and to a company with ties an Obama bundler/fundraiser.

OK, then, how about delaying announcing your closing up shop until after the 2010 midterms at the behest of the White House?:

The Obama administration, which gave the solar company Solyndra a half-billion-dollar loan to help create jobs, asked the company to delay announcing it would lay off workers until after the hotly contested November 2010 midterm elections that imperiled Democratic control of Congress, newly released e-mails show.

The announcement could have been politically damaging because President Obama and others in the administration had held up Solyndra as a poster child of its clean-energy initiative, saying the company’s new factory, built with the help of stimulus money, could create 1,000 jobs. Six months before the midterm elections, Obama visited Solyndra’s California plant to praise its success, even though outside auditors had questioned whether the operation might collapse in debt.

As the contentious 2010 elections approached, Solyndra found itself foundering, and it warned the Energy Department that it would need an emergency cash infusion. A Solyndra investment adviser wrote in an Oct. 30, 2010, e-mail — without explaining the reason — that Energy Department officials were pushing “very hard” to delay making the layoffs public until the day after the elections.

The announcement ultimately was made on Nov. 3, 2010 — immediately following the Nov. 2 vote.

Aside from the blatant impropriety if not outright illegality of this, we find it almost quaint, cute, in a way.

Now, we can work ourselves into a righteous lather with respect to the aforementioned transgressions of this Solyndra mess but thinking that delaying the announcement of 1,000 layoffs was going to make one iota of difference in that "hotly contested" midterm election shellacking of 2010 has to be one of the more amusing things we've heard in a while.

An ass-kicking that anyone with a pulse could've seen coming would somehow become not so or lesser so due to delaying a layoff announcement of a company no one had really heard of at the time. Awesome.

The Government's war on cameras

Just recently two reporters, Jim Epstein and Pete Tucker, were arrested, detained and charged with "unlawful entry" and "disorderly conduct" while at a Washington D.C. taxi cab commission meeting.

What kind of government do we have that watches us with cameras everywhere we go but recoils in horror and uses force when we try to watch the government with cameras?

Fortunately, this is a bit of a losing battle for big brother owing to slicker technology that allows for greater concealment of recording devices. However, what does that say about the state of our 1st amendment rights when those rights become dependent upon a mini/micro/nano technology arms race with the other side?

Death, taxes and...

... Government entitlement programs that always, repeat, always, cost more than originally projected.

The reasons are myriad, of course, from the inherent inefficiencies of the government to accounting tricks in the legislation that would make Enron blush to the pols simply not carrying out what they promised to do (in straight parlance, "lie"). All 3 come into play with ObamaCare and in the case of the pols just lying through their teeth without any intention of carrying out the promises they made while campaigning for passage of ObamaCare, it is with respect to Medicare.

The Democrats claimed they will pay for ObamaCare, in part, by cutting $500 billion from Medicare over the next decade. Seriously, they actually said that. But you and we both know that doesn't have a ghost of a chance of happening. In fact, we'll bet a pay check that not a single, honest-to-god, cut gets made to Medicare.

Anyway, check out the chart below, courtesy reason.com, on the actual costs of government health programs vs. the original projections.



All things being equal, what this chart tells us is that British politicians lie to their constituents to a far lesser degree than do their American counterparts.

Great moments in the history of government-managed health care

Health officials are recalling hundreds of thousands of doses of swine flu vaccine after tests indicated they may not be potent enough to protect against the virus.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notified doctors about the recall Tuesday. The recall involves about 800,000 doses made by Sanofi Pasteur. The doses are pre-filled syringes intended for young children, ages 6 months to almost three years.

Health officials recommend children those ages get two doses, spaced about a month apart.

Health officials say it's not clear how many doses have already been given, but they don't think children need to be re-vaccinated. The lots passed potency tests when they were first shipped, but tests indicate the potency waned after.

They don’t think the children need to be re-vaccinated? That’s reassuring.

Again, massive government efforts at the federal level are fine when it comes to fighting wars as degrees of inefficiency and inaccuracy are acceptable in order to “get the job done”. Not so much, however, when it comes to your personal health or that of your children.

P.S. Prepare yourself for some more “thinking”. They finally broke Nelson.

Can we Van Jones Kevin Jennings?

Discuss or teach sexual fetish techniques to a 14 yr. old who isn’t related to you and you will get yourself some jail time and a flag on your home on the sex offender map. Approve the same as workshop curriculum when your name is Kevin Jennings and you get named as the Safe Schools Czar.

We linked to this story in our Quickies a few days ago but decided to liberate it as a dedicated post because of the sheer appalling nature of it.

Seriously? Safe Schools Czar? That’s not ironic, that’s just sick.

Is the White House really that inept with their vetting or do they just not care. After nationalizing the domestic auto industry (which included firing the CEO of Chrysler and shafting the secured creditors in favor of the unions), attempting to nationalize the health care industry, regulating by fiat the very breath we exhale which renders moot the legislative efforts to do the same for carbon emissions and unprecedented intervention into the housing and financial sectors in order to "save it", we suspect it’s a basketball-sized set of the latter.

How quickly can we 'cap this guy's tenure at the White House and why is it that we have to depend on blogs to discover this stuff?

Quote of the Day

“No business wants to invest in a place where the government skims 20 percent off the top”

Who said it? Thomas Sowell? Nope. Larry Kudlow? Nada. Walter Williams? Guess again.

The quote above came from our President during his speech this past week in Ghana.

Only 20%…? Got to find us one of these places.

B.O.H.I.C.A. (UPDATED)

(UPDATE #1): Representative Alan Grayson (D-Florida) who wrote the Pay for Performance Bill was on Neil Cavuto's show two days ago. In this 8-minute clip, he is unable to even give a range of what pay or bonuses would be deeemed "excessive" seeming content that he did his civic duty by leaving it to the Treasury Department to sort out as it sees fit. While some may argue that companies receiving government funding should be subject to some compensation oversight may have a point, the vagueness in which these laws are written is a blank check for political chicanery and leverage. Afterall, even we can come up with a range of definitions for arbitrary.

Embed no workie, please click here for video.





After quietly backing off continued efforts to back tax at 90% the AIG bonuses Congress is looking for other ways to demonstrate to the public that via massive extension of power, they are really on the public’s side.

The new legislation, the "Pay for Performance Act of 2009," would impose government controls on the pay of all employees -- not just top executives -- of companies that have received a capital investment from the U.S. government. It would, like the tax measure, be retroactive, changing the terms of compensation agreements already in place. And it would give Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner extraordinary power to determine the pay of thousands of employees of American companies.

In addition, the bill gives Geithner the authority to decide what pay is "unreasonable" or "excessive." And it directs the Treasury Department to come up with a method to evaluate "the performance of the individual executive or employee to whom the payment relates."

This arrangement will be sure to attract the best and brightest: A two-time tax cheat will be determining pay rates. A job in the financial sector is sounding more and more like a civil servant job.

But continuing on the theme of never wasting a crisis, it wouldn’t be D.C. if there wasn’t some… a lot of politics involved:

Rep. Alan Grayson, the Florida Democrat who wrote the bill, told me its basic message is "you should not get rich off public money, and you should not get rich off of abject failure." Grayson expects the bill to pass the House, and as we talked, he framed the issue in a way to suggest that virtuous lawmakers will vote for it, while corrupt lawmakers will vote against it.

"This bill will show which Republicans are so much on the take from the financial services industry that they're willing to actually bless compensation that has no bearing on performance and is excessive and unreasonable," Grayson said. "We'll find out who are the people who understand that the public's money needs to be protected, and who are the people who simply want to suck up to their patrons on Wall Street."

Did you catch that? If you are not onboard with the most radical expansion of governmental power since the New Deal, then you are without virtue. If you are not down with the overarching plan of the One then you are somehow lacking moral fiber. Assent is patriotic.

And lastly:

After the AIG bonus tax bill was passed, some members of the House privately expressed regret for having supported it and were quietly relieved when the White House and Senate leadership sent it to an unceremonious death. But populist rage did not die with it, and now the House is preparing to do it all again.

Having been effectively told to stand down, the pitch fork-wielding nightriders are back.

Yep, we’re in good hands

$500 Billion... make that $700 Billion and counting...

Well isn’t that just dandy. Stocks are back up, Wall St. traders are all smiles and we can get back to the business of poor business practices because… it apparently just doesn’t matter anymore.

The Bush administration proposed a $700-billion taxpayer-funded plan on Saturday to buy up toxic mortgage-related securities in an urgent effort to calm financial markets and attack the nation's housing crisis.

Under the program, the U.S. Treasury Department would buy, or commit to buy, "mortgage-related assets from any financial institution having its headquarters in the United States," said a copy of the Treasury Department's draft legislation obtained by Reuters.

And oh, by the way. What makes this “intervention” even better is the fact we’re writing one big fat bad check after another that we won’t ever have to worry about. We’ll leave that for our children and grandchildren to sort out when we’re all dead and gone.

For his part, McCain has been critical of these buy-outs saying the Federal Reserve should in the future must stop bailing out failed financial institutions and get back to its “core business of responsibly managing our money supply and inflation.” Fat chance of that ever happening again.

And Suit…? He looks to be assuming the mantle of Bush III quite well, approving of this unprecedented bail-out plan. And while he’s mentioning it, how about another check in the mail from the government to get the economy moving? And of course, as B-Daddy detailed here, how about some more “tough government oversight?”.

What a joke this guy is. He is part of the very socio-political caste of people that raised hell with the mortgage industry for freezing-out minorities back in the good ol’ days of the housing boom and threatened all manner of investigations, legislation, lawsuits and bad publicity.

So lenders responding to the “red-lining” threats threw open the books and with arms and legs flailing and flopping all over the damn place, the orgy was on. Hello, subprime lending practices.

And all this from a guy who has close ties to the leadership of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two of the biggest abusers in this mortgage meltdown.

The “regulation” in a free market is the risk. You make a foolish business decision, you pay. You get into a bad loan, you pay. You play fast and loose with common sense lending practices, you pay. That’s the regulation. That’s what keeps things in line.

Well, now that we don’t have to worry about all that unsavory “risk” stuff anymore, we can hardly wait to see what brilliantly conceived and executed “tough government oversight” will do to spur long-term economic growth and stability.


Articles here, here and here.

Actions of the Government have caused fear and panic among its citizens Pt. II

In public education’s never-ending quest to drive kids into private schools and home schooling, the Rock Hill, SC school officials struck a blow for lunacy and inanity when a weekend sweep of high school commencement ceremonies netted 7 arrests of scofflaws in the audience who had the temerity to cheer friends and family members when their names were announced to receive their diplomas. This after having been warned by Rock Hill school officials to refrain from cheering until after the ceremony. Story here.

Obscene...?

Big Oil – Big Government update:

… and introducing Shell Oil’s new CEO… Maxine Waters.

Firmly reasserting itself atop the dung heap of shameless pandering and completely insane ideas, the House jumped into the fray with some suggestions of their own. Head Madam Maxine Waters (D-CA) felt that if privately owned and operated Big Oil could not bring down the price of oil perhaps government could.

Link: sevenload.com

If video fails to launch go here. If that fails, here is the gist: Ol’ SMaxine wants to sociali………………………………… wants the government to take over oil production.

You know, it’s a sad, sad day in American politics when a Leftist like Waters is unable to even articulate the term “nationalize” in its proper context. It makes one wonder just what the hell is going on with our public education system where the language and terminology of socialist policy is not being properly taught.

Update #1: Mongo reminded us in the comments of something we saw but forgot to point out. At the end of Waters' finger-wagging, check out the expression on the gentleman and especially that of the lady to Waters' right. She has this sort of endeared expression that is reserved for batty old aunts... as in, "poor old aunt Maxine... she really has been dealing well with her dementia but sometimes, well sometimes she just kind of loses it and says the wackiest things, bless her little heart."

H/T: Hot Air