Category Archives: Politics

Vintage Pelosi Spinning Like a Top

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ALLAHPUNDIT shares Pelosi’s nutty spin here.

“For sheer comic alarmism, this is topped only by The One’s warning at last week’s presser that greedy doctors are after your tonsils. But remember, you’re the ones who are fearmongering.

“They are the villains in this,” Pelosi said of private insurers. “They have been part of the problem in a major way. They are doing everything in their power to stop a public option from happening. And the public has to know that. They can disguise their arguments any way they want, but the fact is that they don’t want the competition.”…

“It’s almost immoral what they are doing,” added Pelosi, who stood outside her office long after her press conference ended to continue speaking to reporters, even as aides tried in vain to usher her inside. “Of course they’ve been immoral all along in how they have treated the people that they insure with pre-existing conditions, you know, the litany of it all.”

Translation: Private insurers are selfishly defending themselves from a statist boondoggle that’ll likely drive them out of business and create a government monopoly. I can’t believe it’s come to this, but Yale Law prof Stephen Carter was so distressed by Democratic attacks on nefarious profit-seekers that he felt obliged to write an op-ed this morning reminding America that profits are actually a good thing:

High profits are excellent news. When corporate earnings reach record levels, we should be celebrating. The only way a firm can make money is to sell people what they want at a price they are willing to pay. If a firm makes lots of money, lots of people are getting what they want.

To the country, profit is a benefit. Record profit means record taxes paid. But put that aside. When profits are high, firms are able to reinvest, expand and hire. And profits accrue to the benefit of those who own stocks: overwhelmingly, pension funds and mutual funds. In other words, high corporate profits today signal better retirements tomorrow.

Another reason to celebrate profit is the incentive it creates. When profits can be made, entrepreneurs provide more of needed goods and services…

We want health care to be cheaper, and the for-profit health-care industry has every incentive to make it so. Supporters of the public option tout Medicare’s cost advantages over private insurance, but those are largely obtained by setting below-market reimbursement rates for medical services (meaning that private patients subsidize Medicare patients). Moreover, the costs of compliance with the hundreds of pages of Medicare regulations are also transferred to the providers, and thus, again, to private patients.

Anchoress take on it:


“MMMhhmmmm, that’s just the sort of incompetent, inefficient nightmare bureaucracy I want managing my health care! The billion-dollar program is already broke, even though the dealers haven’t been paid. And the White House is considering asking for “more money”?

Let’s take another look at that handy budget chart, and pity these poor dealers who are just trying to stay in business and keep people employed and have no idea when they’ll ever see a dime of their $4,500 advances paid back.

Please note: Pelosi is not the only one running around pointing the finger and shrieking “villain!” The Democrats are scolding their obedient-monkey-press. Bad, bad mediamonkies!

Senate Democratic leaders on Thursday blamed Capitol Hill media for setting an August deadline for health reform and Republicans for blocking the bill’s progress. . . . [Sen Harry] Reid said reporters created a fictitious deadline of a successful vote by the August recess, and downplayed the fact that the chamber won’t meet that mark.

“That is a deadline that you created,” Reid told a group of about 75 reporters. “It’s not like we don’t have a product. Significant progress has been made …

Open Letter to Senator Tom Udall

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My dear Senator Udall,

You say, “I firmly believe that reproductive health care is a personal matter that should be left to individuals, their families, their doctors, and their religious counselors.” That sounds good, but in actuality it ignores the fact that a new life in already in this world, growing as we all do from day to day in this life.  Reproductive health care must begin with that new life in the womb, to nurture and provide a wholesome,supportive environment.  Your position, ignores each individual’s right to their own life.  Your position abandons your responsibility while giving to a doctor or a religious counselor a sacrosanct role. Mother, father, counselor, minister; none of these, has the authority to take a human life because tragic, untimely or inconvenient circumstances surround the new life coming into this world, and present in the womb.  It is not a question of choice.  We are not given the choice of taking another’s life.  When we choose to take a life, we kill what God has begun.  You do not have that authority, nor does a mother, father, doctor, priest or counselor.  Words do not change truth.  Truth is staring you in the face and your look the other way, when you support legislation that treats life as some material commodity rather than the holy gift of God that it is.
In closing, I refer you to Archbishop Chaput’s words:
“America is not a secular state. As historian Paul Johnson once said, America was ”born Protestant.” It has uniquely and deeply religious roots. Obviously it has no established Church, and it has non-sectarian public institutions. It also has plenty of room for both believers and non-believers. But the United States was never intended to be a ‘’secular” country in the radical modern sense. Nearly all the Founders were either Christian or at least religion-friendly. And all of our public institutions and all of our ideas about the human person are based in a religiously shaped vocabulary. So if we cut God out of our public life, we cut the foundation out from under our national ideals.”
“As Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George said recently, too many Americans have ”no recognition of the fact that children continue to be killed [by abortion], and we live therefore, in a country drenched in blood. This can’t be something you start playing off pragmatically against other issues.”

“Risky Experimentation” “Socialism”

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Breitbart.com reports:

“The chairman of the Republican Party on Monday called President Barack Obama’s plan to overhaul health care “socialism,” accusing the president of conducting a risky experiment that will hurt the economy and force millions to drop their current coverage.”

Michael Steele, RNC chairman said:

“Obama-Pelosi want to start building a colossal, closed health care system where Washington decides. Republicans want and support an open health care system where patients and doctors make the decisions”

“Many Democrats outside of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid-Waxman cabal know that voters won’t stand for these kinds of foolish prescriptions for our health care. We do too. That’s why Republicans will stop at nothing to remind voters about the risky experimentation going on in Washington”

According to Breitbart: “In his speech, Steele broadened his attack beyond health care to question Obama’s truthfulness.

The president “tells us he doesn’t want to spend more than we have, he doesn’t want the deficit to go up, he doesn’t want to live off borrowed money. But he also told us he didn’t want to run an auto company. President Obama justifies this spending by saying the devil made him do it. He doesn’t want to spend trillions we can’t afford, but he says he just can’t help it,” Steele said in the prepared excerpts.

The Republican chairman is making his speech at a time when Obama is struggling to advance his trademark health care proposal after a period of evident progress. Two of three House committees have approved their portions of the bill, while one of two Senate panels have acted.

But conservative Democrats have raised objections to some elements of the legislation, and efforts in the Senate to reach a bipartisan agreement have yet to bear fruit. Obama’s attempt to impose an early August deadline on both the House and Senate for passage of legislation is in jeopardy.”

Read article here.

‘Jane Roe” Arrested

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Todd J. Gillman reports:

Norma McCorvey – the Dallas woman known as Jane Roe in the landmark abortion rights case Roe v. Wade – was among the protesters arrested today for disrupting the confirmation hearing for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor.

The case that bears McCorvey’s court-picked pseudonym – and that of longtime Dallas district attorney Henry Wade, her legal adversary in the case – has been a central issue in judicial nomination fights for years. But McCorvey herself long ago decided that she regretted her role in the fight to legalize abortion, and has worked with anti-abortion activists as a potent symbol of the effort to overturn the Roe decision.

McCorvey, 61, is being charged with unlawful conduct/disruption of Congress, said Capitol Police spokeswoman Sgt. Kimberly Schneider.

“Love in Truth” – “Caritas in Veritate”

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From the Introduction of Caritas in Veritate

“Love in truth — caritas in veritate — is a great challenge for the Church in a world that is becoming progressively and pervasively globalized. The risk for our time is that the de facto interdependence of people and nations is not matched by ethical interaction of consciences and minds that would give rise to truly human development. Only in charity, illumined by the light of reason and faith, is it possible to pursue development goals that possess a more humane and humanizing value. The sharing of goods and resources, from which authentic development proceeds, is not guaranteed by merely technical progress and relationships of utility, but by the potential of love that overcomes evil with good (cf. Rom 12:21), opening up the path towards reciprocity of consciences and liberties.

The Wall Street Journal reports “Anyone seeking a repudiatyion of the market economy will be disappointed.”

The Pope on ‘Love in Truth’

By ROBERT A. SIRICO

In his much anticipated third encyclical, Caritas in Veritate (Love in Truth), Pope Benedict XVI does not focus on specific systems of economics — he is not attempting to shore up anyone’s political agenda. He is rather concerned with morality and the theological foundation of culture. The context is of course a global economic crisis — a crisis that’s taken place in a moral vacuum, where the love of truth has been abandoned in favor of a crude materialism. The pope urges that this crisis become “an opportunity for discernment, in which to shape a new vision for the future.” Yet his encyclical contains no talk of seeking a third way between markets and socialism. Words like greed and capitalism make no appearance here, despite press headlines following the publication of the encyclical earlier this week. People seeking a blueprint for the political restructuring of the world economy won’t find it here. But if they look to this document as a means for the moral reconstruction of the world’s cultures and societies, which in turn influence economic events, they will find much to reflect upon. Caritas in Veritate is an eloquent restatement of old truths casually dismissed in modern times. The pope is pointing to a path neglected in all the talk of economic stimulus, namely a global embrace of truth-filled charity. Benedict rightly attributes the crisis itself to “badly managed and largely speculative financial dealing.” But he resists the current fashion of blaming all existing world problems on the market economy. “The Church,” he writes, “has always held that economic action is not to be regarded as something opposed to society.” Further: “Society does not have to protect itself from the market, as if the development of the latter were ipso facto to entail the death of authentically human relations.” The market is rather shaped by culture. “Economy and finance . . . can be used badly when those at the helm are motivated by purely selfish ends. Instruments that are good in themselves can thereby be transformed into harmful ones. But it is man’s darkened reason that produces these consequences, not the instrument per se. Therefore it is not the instrument that must be called to account, but individuals, their moral conscience and their personal and social responsibility.” The pope does not reject globalization: “Blind opposition would be a mistaken and prejudiced attitude, incapable of recognizing the positive aspects of the process, with the consequent risk of missing the chance to take advantage of its many opportunities for development.” He says that “the world-wide diffusions of prosperity should not . . . be held up by projects that are protectionist.” More, not less, trade is needed: “the principal form of assistance needed by developing countries is that of allowing and encouraging the gradual penetration of their products into international markets.” The encyclical doesn’t attack capitalism or offer models for nations to adopt. “The Church does not have technical solutions to offer,” the pope firmly states, “and does not claim ‘to interfere in any way in the politics of States.’ She does, however, have a mission of truth to accomplish, in every time and circumstance . . .” Benedict is profoundly aware that economic science has much to contribute to human betterment. The Church’s role is not to dictate the path of research but to focus its goals. “Economic science tells us that structural insecurity generates anti-productive attitudes wasteful of human resources. . . . Human costs always include economic costs, and economic dysfunctions always involve human costs.” He constantly returns to two practical applications of the principle of truth in charity. First, this principle takes us beyond earthly demands of justice, defined by rights and duties, and introduces essential moral priorities of generosity, mercy and communion — priorities which provide salvific and theological value. Second, truth in charity is always focused on the common good, defined as an extension of the good of individuals who live in society and have broad social responsibilities. As for issues of population, he can’t be clearer: “To consider population increase as the primary cause of underdevelopment is mistaken, even from an economic point of view.” Several commentators have worried about his frequent calls for wealth redistribution. Benedict does see a role for the state here, but much of the needed redistribution is the result of every voluntary and mutually beneficial exchange. To understand such passages fully and accurately, we do well to put our political biases on the shelf. This encyclical is a theological version of his predecessor’s more philosophical effort to anchor the free economy’s ethical foundation. Much of it stands squarely with a long tradition of writings of a certain “classical liberal” tradition, one centered on the moral foundation of economics, from St. Thomas Aquinas and his disciples, Frederic Bastiat in the 19th century, Wilhelm Roepke, and even the secular F.A. Hayek in the 20th century. It also clearly resonates with some European Christian democratic thought. Caritas in Veritate is a reminder that we cannot understand ourselves as a human community if we do not understand ourselves as something more than the sum or our material parts; if we do not understand our capacity for sin; and if we do not understand the principle of communion rooted in the gratuitousness of God’s grace. Simply put, to this pope’s mind, there is no just or moral system without just and moral people. Father Sirico is president and co-founder of the Acton Institute.

Death Knell for Affirmative Action?

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eCharles Krauthammer sounds the death knell for reverse racism with the Supreme Courts Ricci decision:

Ricci left Sotomayor relatively unscathed. But not affirmative action. Ricci raised the bar considerably on overt discrimination against one racial group simply to undo the unintentionally racially skewed results of otherwise fair and objective employment procedures (in this case, examinations).

Krauthammer notes (bemoans?) Sotomayor’s survival:

While overturned on Ricci, she is protected by the four dissenting justices who upheld the side of the case she had taken as an appeals court judge. Sotomayor was additionally helped by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s insistence on reading her dissent from the bench, as if to emphasize the legitimacy of her position — and, by implication, Sotomayor’s.