Andrew is a government relations and communications intern at the Heartland Institute. He has written for several foreign and domestic policy journals, including the Illini Independent, the American Security Council Foundation, and the Diplomat, the University of Illinois’ international affairs review journal. He also hosts a political affairs program, Firing Line: Reloaded.
America’s fixation on diversity is logical. We are a nation of immigrants, a great “melting pot” of ethnicities, nationalities and cultures, brought together by a choice to be an American made by us or our ancestors, and by a shared commitment to a unique set of values that constitute what George Will has called the “catechism” of America’s civil religion.
To acknowledge and appreciate our national diversity is to embrace our American heritage and culture. But diversity itself pales in comparison to the values that all Americans share; we come together as Americans not because we respect everyone’s differences, but because we are commonly invested in a core set of beliefs enumerated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. These ideals transcend diversity.
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As the gradual implementation of Obamacare continues and debate over the intelligence of socialized medicine mounts, the budgetary malaise of the current Medicaid system should be a red flag to supporters of the President’s health care plan. The current degree of governmental control over healthcare is proving calamitous for states with financial troubles, and the expanded bureaucracy that is Obamacare will only make matters worse.
The contradictions and logistical maladies manifest in government-controlled healthcare have never been more evident than in the recent series of cuts in the Pennsylvania Medicaid apparatus. Over the next nine years, $1.2 trillion in reductions will mean the elimination of care for 150,000 people (43,000 of which are children) and more than 80,000 in job losses.
The uncertain economy has meant a surge in those receiving Medicaid across the nation, but since the summer of 2011, Pennsylvania has seen a steady decline because of the Department of Public Welfare’s (DPW) efforts to cut those no longer living in state and those who are dead or otherwise ineligible for aid. Patient advocates are saying otherwise, calling the cuts “disastrous.”
The bureaucratic nightmare that the cuts have unleashed on eligible patient care could be called Orwellian, as Pennsylvania’s push to close the backlog of cases has resulted in an overload for an already understaffed DPW. Hundreds of thousands of pending cases were “reviewed” in a matter of weeks, and technical omissions that would regularly necessitate simple clarification from the patient, such as lack of information, resulted in the cancellation of thousands of cases.
But the bureaucratic incompetence doesn’t end there.
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Culturally and politically, the United States and Great Britain have much in common; a shared heritage, similar economic and foreign policy goals, and a recently, a mutual proclivity toward socialized medicine. As opposition to Obamacare continues to mount in the U.S., an examination of how socialized medicine is fairing in light of global financial troubles is necessary.
The UK’s National Health Service, or NHS, established in 1948, is experiencing massive cutbacks, to the tune of $31 billion by 2015. As the Service’s 2011/2012 budget is approximately £106 billion pounds, such cuts are already taking a toll.
In order to compensate for its losses, the NHS is reducing the number of treatments given and medical personnel employed. Surgeries deemed to be “non-lifesaving” are being postponed, waitlists for simple procedures are growing longer and longer, and more than 50,000 doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals will be let go in the next four years, according to The Telegraph.
It makes sense then, that those unable or unwilling to postpone surgeries or submit to months of waiting seek out private “self-pay” services instead. As the Daily Mail points out:
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In the midst of state budgetary turmoil, it is not surprising that legislators are turning to unconstitutional regulatory measures in the pursuit of a few extra tax dollars. Arkansas, Connecticut, Colorado, North Carolina, and Rhode Island are among those states that have attempted to force Amazon.com to collect taxes on Internet sales. The tax has become a reality in Illinois, with Gov. Quinn’s signing of the “Mainstreet Fairness Act.” The online retailer has challenged and resisted these attempts at taxation, shutting down its affiliates program in the aforementioned states in retaliation.
Justifying the selective elimination its affiliates, Amazon points to the economic losses that are starting to add up as a result of these regulations. In a letter sent to its affiliates in Arkansas and Connecticut on June 10 2011, the company asserted that the increased regulatory efforts are the work of “big box retailers” hoping to harm the competition:
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On the orders of President Theodore Roosevelt, from December 16, 1907, to February 2, 1909, two squadrons of naval vessels circumnavigated the globe in a display of the United States’ growing naval power, and consequential increased global influence. This action, taken by what was known as the “Great White Fleet” would serve as a precursor to decades of political and military dominance by the United States on the world stage.
Today, the need for a powerful naval force has never been greater, and with constant innovation, the United States Navy continues to be a world leader in the pursuit of freedom and all those who threaten it. This continued dominance is achieved through perpetual increases in technology, not only in weaponry, but in the means of powering our fleet — from coal, to steam, to nuclear power, the development and advancement of fuels has been closely tied to the larger abilities of the U.S. naval force.
A recent undertaking by the Department of Defense, however, raises questions as to whether the military’s commitment to innovation may be endangered by political pandering — especially in the face of the announcements earlier this year that 3,000 sailors nationwide, approximately one out of every one hundred people in the force overall, will be forced to leave the Navy. The creation of a so-called “Great Green Fleet,” a series of improvements designed to make the military more “eco-friendly,” seems a contradiction in the face of increased Department of Defense cuts (a possible trillion dollars over the next ten years).
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While the president’s October announcement of a plan to expedite Congress’s reduction of required payments on student loans from 15 percent of annual discretionary income to 10 percent might prove useful to reelection efforts, the long-term utility of such a measure remains a question.
With college enrollment tripling in the last ten years, default rates through the roof, and graduate debt levels mounting, it is little wonder that the president is attempting to diffuse the “higher education bubble.”
Indeed, the recent “Occupy Wall Street” movements are a testament to these rising costs to diminishing payoffs. High on protestors’ lists of demands is forgiveness of college loans. And while the motivations of the “occupiers” may lack substance, it’s becoming harder and harder to ignore the millions of recent and not-so-recent graduates struggling to hoist themselves out of debt despite low-paying (and increasingly non-existent) jobs.
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The recent “occupation” of Wall Street has shed light on what is becoming an unfortunate phenomenon in American society; the purposeless protest, the destructive demonstration, movements that serve only to draw attention to an issue without proposing any real degree of reform.
We saw it when unions occupied the Wisconsin capitol building, during the 2001 and 2003 Free Trade Area of the Americas protests in Canada and Miami, the G-20 protest in Montreal in October 2000 and the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle in 1999. Disaffected individuals are turning to increasingly violent, disruptive and thoroughly useless means of effecting change (presumably their goal).
Some seem aware of their lack of direction and, not surprisingly, seem to embrace it. Reuters quotes Jeremy Moss, a 41 Bronx native and mental health counselor who lived in Seattle during the WTO riots and feels the Wall Street protests are different, admitting,
“There’s a lot of naive idealism happening, what’s wrong with that?”
As Bill Buckley would say, “Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality the cost becomes prohibitive”. Naïve idealism is fine, but it has no business blocking traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge.
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As the president’s new tax plan looms on the horizon, the fallout from the notion of a minimum tax rate for millionaires has begun. While Democrats begin to use words like “equality” and “fairness” in taxation, Republicans have begun referring to the plan as “class warfare” as the plan proposes $1.5 trillion in tax hikes.
Spurred by billionaire Warren Buffett’s claims in an August New York Times article that government “coddles” billionaires, (the plan is called the “Buffett Rule”) Obama’s proposal seeks to increase taxes from the “low” rates to which Buffet alludes:
Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.
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Though Rahm Emanuel’s 100 days in office are hardly a basis for comprehensive judgement, the mayor’s support of a new ordinance passed by City Council is disconcerting to investors, community developers and all those who have an interest the the health of Chicago’s real estate market.
The ordinance, passed in July, allows the definition of a property’s owner to be broadened to include a “mortgagee” “assignee” and “agent” according to the Wall Street Journal.
The intention behind the law is sincere; in an effort to clean up countless abandoned and dilapidated housing units, the city is attempting to make those responsible pay. But the city’s definition of “those responsible” extends far beyond the property owner; anyone with even a remote financial connection with property responsible for upkeep costs.
It doesn’t matter if the property is foreclosed or if the title hasn’t changed hands; banks, mortgage agents and anyone else economically linked to the property can be made to pay upkeep costs under the ordinance.
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While England may be in flames, and Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal and Ireland stand on the precipice of default, there can be no question of the US’s grave (and worsening) economic state. And if the rest of the world can tell us one thing, it’s that economic laxity is merely a symptom of a larger syndrome.
The US’s own bloated bureaucracy, out of control spending and reliance of Keynesian theory has begun to manifest itself in the S&P’s recent credit downgrade, rising unemployment numbers (as the percentage of Americans working hits a 28-year low) and plunging stock values.
The answer does not lie in more government spending and deficits, as the president seems to believe, but rather incentives for production. As The Heartland Institute’s Peter Ferrara, author of America’s Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb, observes in The American Spectator:
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