Barrel Strength

A few random thoughts from your correspondent regarding the passage of the bill.

No, the passage wasn’t a surprise and had been predicted by intrade.com for some time.

Yes, it is a momentous occasion for liberals who have finally achieved their long cherished goal of government controlled health care.

Yes, life continues to be sweet for Obama.  The passage of this bill will cement a legacy for him even though it was Pelosi who did most of the work, but then that has been the case for Obama all his life.

Yes, Steyn and Frum are right when he says that winning back legislative majorities is a consolation prize and unlikely to lead to rollback of this bill.  Even the Great Communicator couldn’t roll back two new cabinet-level departments, the Department of Energy and the Department of Education, implemented by Carter.  Who exactly will lead the charge in rolling back this bill as has been suggested here and here?

Yes, things could still be derailed with state challenges and contentious issues in Senate, but it is unlikely.

Yes,  reconciliation, talk of deem and pass and single party vote this will lead to a more divisive and poisoned political arena, similar to the rejection of Robert Bork’s Supreme Court nomination, which led to “Bork” becoming a verb.

What does the road ahead look like?  In the opinion of your correspondent – grim.  Even before the passage of this bill, US was facing fiscal pressure from increasing deficits that Obama has undertaken as per the chart below.

This has caused, and will continue to cause, a decline in the US rating which will lead to US devoting ever larger portion of the budget to service the debt.  Today Bloomberg reported the following.

The bond market is saying that it’s safer to lend to Warren Buffett  than Barack Obama.

Two-year notes sold by the billionaire’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. in February yield 3.5 basis points less than Treasuries of similar maturity, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Procter & Gamble Co., Johnson & Johnson and Lowe’s Cos. debt also traded at lower yields in recent weeks, a situation former Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. chief fixed-income strategist Jack Malvey calls an “exceedingly rare” event in the history of the bond market.

This event might be “exceedingly rare” now but when put in context with the graph below, it won’t be.

Neither one of the above graphs address the cost associated with this bill or Social Security.  The Social Security program is projected to be in deficit by 2016, “notably that Social Security payroll tax collections would begin to exceed benefits paid in 2016, a year shorter than had been forecasted in 2008.”  It seems the bill for the party will come due by the end of the decade, long after Obama is gone and is modeling for a place on Mt. Rushmore.

March 22, 2010

M. François Houle
Vice-recteur aux études / Vice-President Academic and Provost
Université d’Ottawa / University of Ottawa
550, rue Cumberland Street
Ottawa (ON) K1N 6N5

Dear Sir:

I have just finished reading your letter to Ann Coulter. I am sure you thought you were writing something genuinely helpful to the maintenance of public peace.

 I am just as sure Ann Coulter will weigh her words precisely, when she rips you to shreds, for the assumption you make about her intelligence, for your mistaken notion about the nature of public discourse, and for the smug condescending tone.

 Your letter certainly lends support to the notion that the modern university has become the central agency in the suppression of freedom throughout society.

 Truths must not be uttered aloud lest dreadful legal consequences ensue: that appears the substance of your warning. Have you allowed yourself to consider that political discourse may require saying unpleasant truths in public, loud and clear, about race, sex, class, nation, religion and every other category and distinction?

 Many think we are living in the age of freedom; we are in fact living in an age terrified of clear thought and plain speech. Pick a topic: Islam, male-female sex differences, the bell curve of the distribution of intelligence and its significance, the heritability of almost anything, and there you will find the academy pleading for the suppression of speech, thought, and research in the name of one cause or another. It is a vast institutional failure.

 Politically Ann Coulter is not my kind of girl, on every count, but she has guts, wit and conviction. Though she is part of the political entertainment industry, she says more truth in fifteen minutes than the academy can muster in a two-day symposium.

 Yours sincerely

 Dalwhinnie

With this heap of schadenfreude — tarted up as elegy — directed at opponents of Obamacare, David Frum may be deemed to have passed from mere spent force to fervent shill for The Usual Suspects™.

Like Obama, Frum concludes that anyone who suspects The One would negotiate in bad faith is at best a hapless child, at worst a demented hick. And this distinguishes Frum from the Pelosi set how?

In an interview on Fox with the giddy Geraldo Riveria, Rev. Al Sharpton shared the following opinion which your correspondent  agrees with.

First of all, then we have to say the American public overwhelmingly voted for socialism when they elected President Obama.  Let’s not act as though the president didn’t tell the American people – the president offered the American people health reform when he ran. He was overwhelmingly elected running on that and he has delivered what he promised.

Obama wasn’t “overwhelmingly elected” as was noted before on this blog but given Obama’s background, which didn’t deviate much as he worked his way up the political food chain, nobody should be surprised at his actions.  Was the public duped?  We will find out in November.