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Morning Jolt January 6, 2013 'Senator Liz Cheney' Apparently Isn't Meant to Be, at Least for Now Good morning! Here's a minor political earthquake:
Is this ominous news for Dick Cheney's health? Lynne Cheney's? Democrats Insist Medicaid Expansion Works Wonders, Despite Evidence This sentiment, expressed by Eugene Robinson, is increasingly commonplace on the left: "Now that the fight over Obamacare is history, perhaps everyone can finally focus on making the program work the way it was designed. Or, preferably, better." Excuse me. The problems of the program aren't our fault. This thing didn't turn into a national pain in the neck because those of us outside government aren't helping enough. Nobody asked us to build the website. Nobody asked us to set up the requirements of insurance plans that spurred four to five million cancellations. We didn't make the president promise that people could keep their plans, or that they could keep their doctor, or that their premiums would go down $2,500. We're not the ones who insisted that requiring insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions wouldn't result in higher premiums for everyone. And we're not the ones insisting people buy insurance they say they don't need on an exchange that doesn't work or fork over one percent of their income and greater portions in the future. Robinson writes as if the primary problem with health care today is the 25 states with Republican governors that have chosen to not expand Medicaid. He must have missed the much discussed new study revealing that "Medicaid coverage increases emergency department use, both overall and for a broad range of types of visits, conditions, and subpopulations, visits for conditions that may be most readily treatable in primary care settings." Keep in mind, the Medicaid expansion is constantly touted as saving money because, advocates theorize, the access to preventative care will reduce those expensive trips to the emergency room for primary care. The only problem is that this Oregon study shows the theory doesn't work, meaning this is not the cost-saver the administration promised. And, oh, by the way, the New England Journal of Medicine found "Medicaid coverage generated no significant improvements in measured physical health outcomes in the first 2 years." So if it doesn't make people healthier and it doesn't lower health-care costs . . . why are we doing it? And why is it some outrageous crime for a state to say, "eh, no, we'll pass on that"? In other Obamacare news, Senator Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., announced he's "filing suit in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin to make Congress live by the letter of the health-care law it imposed on the rest of America. By arranging for me and other members of Congress and their staffs to receive benefits intentionally ruled out by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the administration has exceeded its legal authority." Oh, hey, the site's still not working: "More than 100,000 Americans who applied for insurance through HealthCare.gov and were told they are eligible for Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) remain unenrolled because of lingering software defects in the federal online marketplace, according to federal and state health officials." The administration now insists there's no "magic number" to get the exchanges to work, a claim that PolitiFact rates "mostly false," pointing to past statements by Sebelius and other officials setting the goal at 7 million paid enrollees. In the administration's defense, there is no "magic number" because numbers aren't magic. Let Seattle, or Some Other City, Be Our National Guinea Pig on Minimum-Wage Hikes The coming months will see a big Democratic push to raise the minimum wage. I thought the city of SeaTac, the small community encompassing Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, would provide a useful lesson for the rest of us. They just hiked the minimum wage to $15 per hour, the highest in the country. It's a great live-action economics experiment: If a cup of coffee at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport ended up costing fifteen bucks, and all the shops in the airport closed as a result of low sales, then the rest of us could finally realize that minimum wage hikes can impose costs on businesses that hurt profits and jobs. But there's now a catch:
Talk about an incentive to not expand beyond 24 or 29 employees! In the coming months, there's going to be a similar push in Seattle to raise the minimum wage to $15. Let's see if Seattle turns into an economic wasteland, or if the city's businesses and their customers can absorb a mandated hike in wages. Everyone Sees the Edward Snowden that They Want to See Last week, the editors of the New York Times argued, "It is time for the United States to offer Mr. Snowden a plea bargain or some form of clemency that would allow him to return home, face at least substantially reduced punishment in light of his role as a whistle-blower, and have the hope of a life advocating for greater privacy and far stronger oversight of the runaway intelligence community." The editors of National Review responded that Snowden "has done huge damage to the work of his country's security services — now and in the future — and is hiding from the due punishment by seeking refuge in a hostile foreign country that benefits from the fallout of his work. This sounds more like a defector than a whistleblower." Nina Burleigh objected to NR's point that "what is most striking about Snowden's leaks is the sheer amount of them that have nothing to do with Americans' privacy at all," contending that "any of these can and apparently are being used in the homeland." The revelations about the NSA's capabilities, yes, are applicable to discussions of domestic surveillance. But Snowden leaked a heck of a lot more information than that, and most of his defenders (and some of his detractors) focus on one portion of his leaks and avert their eyes from the rest. The statement "a significant portion of Snowden's leaks have nothing to do with domestic surveillance" is a controversial and outrageous statement among people who haven't followed Snowden that closely, and/or don't want to see the whole picture. Here's just a partial list of Snowden's leaks that have little or nothing to do with domestic surveillance of Americans: The classified portions of the U.S. intelligence budget, detailing how much we spend and where on efforts to spy on terror groups and foreign states, doesn't deal with Americans' privacy. This leak revealed the intelligence community's self-assessment in 50 major areas of counterterrorism, and that "blank spots include questions about the security of Pakistan's nuclear components when they are being transported, the capabilities of China's next-generation fighter aircraft, and how Russia's government leaders are likely to respond to 'potentially destabilizing events in Moscow, such as large protests and terrorist attacks.'" The Pakistani, Chinese, and Russian intelligence agencies surely appreciate the status report. Our cyber-warfare capabilities and targets don't deal with Americans' privacy. The revelation that the U.S. launched 231 cyber-attacks against "top-priority targets, which former officials say includes adversaries such as Iran, Russia, China and North Korea and activities such as nuclear proliferation" in 2011 has nothing to do with Americans' privacy. The extent and methods of our spying on China have nothing to do with Americans' privacy. British surveillance of South African and Turkish diplomats has nothing to do with Americans' privacy. The NSA's successful interceptions of communications of Russian President Dimitri Medvedev has nothing to do with Americans' privacy. This is not a scandal; it is literally the NSA's job, and now the Russians have a better idea of what messages were intercepted and when. Revealing NSA intercepts and CIA stations in Latin America -- again, nothing to do with U.S. citizens. Revealing a U.K. secret internet-monitoring station in the Middle East -- nothing to do with U.S. citizens. The extent and range of NSA communications monitoring in India. . . . The fact that the United States has "ramped up its surveillance of Pakistan's nuclear arms," has "previously undisclosed concerns about biological and chemical sites there," and details of "efforts to assess the loyalties of counterterrorism sources recruited by the CIA" . . . The U.S.'s spying on Al-Jazeera's internal communication system. . . . What we know about al-Qaeda efforts to hack our drones. . . . The NSA's ability to intercept the e-mail of al-Qaeda operative Hassan Ghul. . . . The NSA's ability to read the e-mail of the Mexican president. . . . The existence of NSA surveillance teams in 80 U.S. embassies around the globe . . . NSA's spying on OPEC . . . NSA's collecting data on the porn habits of Muslim extremist leaders in order to discredit them . . . . . . none of these stories have much of a tie to Americans' privacy. The all-or-nothing terms of the Snowden discussion are persistent, baffling, and obscuring the truth. The NSA's willingness to vacuum up and store the communications of ordinary Americans -- with no tie to terror, crime, or foreign governments at all -- obliterates any remaining meaning of the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution and deserves every bit of public outrage and rebuke. But that doesn't necessarily mean Snowden is the good guy in the story. This story probably doesn't have a good guy. ADDENDUM: Terrific news: Amy Chua -- best known as the "Tiger Mom" and her husband have already achieved their New Year's resolution to become the most insufferable parents in America:
I guess we know what MSNBC will spend the rest of the month talking about. To read more, visit www.nationalreview.com
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