Monthly Archives: June 2008

An RTBA Sponsor in Congress?

Today’s Downsizer-Dispatch . . .::::::Media notice: Tune-in to hear Jim Babka on the Jerry Hughes show today. Details below my signature.
:::
:::Quote of the Day:
:::
:::”The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced.” – Frank Zappa
:::
:::Subject: Unrelated bills rolled into one
:::
:::H.R. 2642 was introduced in June, 2007 to finance military construction and Veterans Affairs. Since then, Congress has added 230 pages of amendments to what was once a 50-page bill. Among the additions is the “Iraq Supplemental” to fund the the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
:::
:::H.R. 2642 is bad, but it could have been worse . . .
:::
:::Two weeks ago, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted to add a 100-page amendment granting amnesty to over a million illegal immigrant farm workers. However, Democrat Sen. Robert Menendez raised a point of order against the amendment, and Majority Leader Harry Reid agreed to remove it.
:::
:::Perhaps they remembered the backlash when Congress added the REAL ID Act to the Iraq Supplemental in 2005. Perhaps they’re feeling pressure to pass the One Subject At A Time Act (OSTA) and know that adding an unpopular amnesty bill into the Iraq Supplemental would only intensify calls to pass OSTA.
:::
:::In any case, H.R. 2642 still contains numerous unrelated provisions:

Change the political environment. Recruit more DC Downsizers. Share this message with others.
:::
:::Quote of the Day:
:::
:::Remember, it used to be global cooling they worried about . . .
:::
:::”The continued rapid cooling of the earth since WWII is in accord with the increase in global air pollution associated with industrialization, mechanization, urbanization and exploding population.”
:::—Reid Bryson, “Global Ecology; Readings towards a rational strategy for Man”, (1971)
:::
:::Subject: The Senate read the bill!
:::
:::Something incredible happened last night. The U.S. Senate actually read the so-called “Climate Security Act” and a substitute amendment — out loud, word for word.
:::
:::500+ pages. 10 hours to read!
:::
:::This legislation, which would impose a huge tax and regulatory system on all carbon emissions, is about 300 pages long. Congress constantly passes bills this large, or larger, without reading them. If it took 10 hours to read this one bill, just imagine what would happen if they had to read ALL their bills.
:::
:::The pace of legislation, and the growth of government, would slow down. It might even be possible for a citizen group (like DownsizeDC.org), or a reporter, or a talk-show host, or even just an ordinary citizen, to keep up with all the things Congress is doing.
:::
:::For the very few people who oppose DownsizeDC.org’s “Read the Bills Act” (in our experience, that’s not even one out of every ten people who hear about it) this would be a bad thing. These people think we need more government, even if it must come at the cost of passing legislation that the members of Congress haven’t read, let alone understood.
:::
:::We think this is irresponsible. Remember,

CORRECTION: In our rush to keep up with the Senate yesterday we provided you with the wrong bill number for the “cap and trade” legislation currently pending for a vote. This won’t matter for those of you who sent messages to Congress. The politicians knew what bill you were talking about. We’ve corrected the number in our campaign. It is S. 3036.
:::
:::Quote of the Day:
:::
:::”While commonly known as cap-and-trade, which sounds pithy and free-market oriented, a more accurate but less sexy-sounding name would be a system of tradable rationing coupons. In plain English, that would mean putting a price on greenhouse gas emissions, which would raise costs for anyone burning fossil fuels, whether in a gasoline tank, a coal-fired power plant, or a natural gas stove.”
:::– Steve Mufson, energy reporter for the Washington Post
:::
:::Subject: Regulating your gas stove
:::
:::Notice the last words in our quote of the day: “gas stove.” This gives you a good idea of how far-reaching and intrusive the so-called “Climate Security Act” could be. In the short run it may only regulate fossil fuels at their source. In the long-run the regulations are likely to extend to every aspect of life, from the large to the small.
:::
:::Notice also the name of the bill, and its use of the word “security.” This name reflects the politician’s standard operating procedure. First they incite fear, and then they promise security. It would have been more honest to call it something straightforward, like the “Anti-Global Warming Act.”
:::
:::More honest still would be something like

Quote of the Day:::::::I love to go to Washington, if only to be near my money.:::~Bob Hope::::::Subject: Urgent danger from “cap and trade” bill in the Senate::::::The U.S. Senate is debating a bill to impose a “cap and trade” system on the U.S. economy. This bill, S. 2191, the “Climate Security Act” would . . .

• Place a cap on the level of CO2 emissions
• Sell permits to businesses that would allow them to emit CO2 in amounts equal to the cap
• Allow businesses to trade and/or sell these permits to each other — allegedly creating a market to encourage innovations that would reduce CO2 emissions
• Use the proceeds from the sale of these permits to create a vast new research bureaucracy designed to help corporations cope with the cap

  As a practical matter, S. 2191 will . . .

Today’s Downsizer-Dispatch . . .::::::Quote of the Day:
:::
:::In a truly free market, there is no restriction, imposed cost, or arbitrary subsidy on peaceful and honest enterprise. The U.S.A. has never in its history had a truly free market. – Economist Fred Foldvary
:::
:::Subject: Real Regulation
:::
:::In a true free market (something we’ve never had) businesses have a clear incentive to provide safety, so they won’t lose customers and employees to their competitors. More importantly . . .
:::
:::In a true free market businesses are legally liable for the safety of their products, services, and work-places. To limit this liability businesses seek insurance. The insurance providers then do oversight to limit their own risk of loss by making sure that products, services, and work-places, are in fact safe.
:::
:::This free-market approach to safety regulation is what funds the existence — even in our current un-free market — of something like Underwriter’s Laboratory (UL). UL tests product safety in order to protect insurers from losses. The result is increased safety for you.
:::
:::The other approach to safety is one driven by top-down regulations and inspections provided by unaccountable bureaucrats and paid for with tax dollars. The problem with this system is that it greatly muddies the water as to whom is actually liable for safety failures.

On today’s (Sunday) Downsize DC Conference Call (radio show), “America’s Health Care Crisis Solved.” It’s the name of a new book by J. Patrick Rooney and Dan Perrin. Mr. Perrin, President of the HSA Coalition, will be my guest.
:::
:::”Solved” is a big claim — like truth, justice, and the check is in mail. But the plan outlined in this book is quite compelling. Rooney and Perrin apply practical, transitional “market magic” to solve pressing problems, like insuring all Americans and bringing hospital prices down and under control, all while reducing the cost to and involvement of both the federal government and insurance companies.
:::
:::One might think that a book on health care might be a stale polemic or just plain complicated — a bunch of political double-talk. Well, this book is very practical and the authors “put the cookies on the lowest shelf.” So if you call in today, you can expect a REAL answer that you can understand and use from my guest, Dan Perrin. Here’s how you can participate . . .
:::
:::Toll-free 1-800-259-9231, or type this address to email me, “CALL at DOWNSIZEDC dot ORG”
:::
:::My TWO (2) hour show starts at 3:06 PM Eastern (2:06 PM Central, 1:06 PM Mountain, and 12:06 PM Pacific), and I really want to encourage you to tune in, because. . .
:::

“You can’t beat something with nothing.”
:::

There is tremendous pressure and, I believe, a likelihood that the next President and the next Congress will dramatically change how health care is financed. Frankly, the system should be changed. It’s too complex, too expensive, and too often a serious illness can destroy a family’s finances. But the changes being proposed by the current politicians will, inevitably, mean greater government involvement, and that will