Gold is the new d$llar bill, yo, says Rep. Pitts

Apparently on the good advice of our good friend, Glenn Beck, who’s pirate-eyed obsession with gold is bizarre to say the least — gold marketeers are about the only sponsors he has left, after all, given his maniacal rants night in and night out — my home state’s own, South Carolina Rep. Mike Pitts, has introduced a bill to have gold and silver coins replace the federal dollar as legal tender in his state, a move that is soooooo 17th century.

It’s also soooooo unconstitutional since one of the listed powers of Congress, not the states, in the Constitution is to “coin,” or make, money.

No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility. — U.S. Constitution

Thus, states can’t coin money or issue it, but they can technically use gold or silver to pay debts (state debts, not issue gold and silver to residents for paying individual debts), which would be an anachronistic idea in modern times. Yet, Pitts is still, yes, 250 years after the fact, playing the stupifying states’ rights card:

But Pitts maintains that his state is better off with something he can hold in his hand and barter with as opposed to federal currency, which he described to the Scoop as “paper with ink on it.” He says he resents what he considers the federal government’s intrusions on states’ rights.

We’re still talking about states’ rights? Really?!?

Regardless, South Carolina has an unfaithful governor who seemingly using state resources to foster his extra-marital affair and then, representatives who want to send us back to the 17th century, or at the least, the mid-19th century. That’s all this state needs.

Health care: ‘Welcome to middle-class poverty’

Just because I felt like writing tonight, and really for no other reason, I scooted over to Michelle Malkin’s oh-so-learned attempts at commentary (http://michellemalkin.com/), on which I found the lead “story” to be about an 11-year-old girl, Julia Hall, who asked President Obama a health care question during a recent town hall meeting in New Hampshire. From The Boston Globe:

A girl from Malden asked President Obama a question at Tuesday’s town hall meeting in New Hampshire about the signs outside “saying mean things” about his health care proposal.

Eleven-year-old Julia Hall asked: “How do kids know what is true, and why do people want a new system that can — that help more of us?” — The Boston Globe, Aug. 11, 2009

As it turns out, Julia’s mother was an Obama supporter during the 2008 election and a donor to the campaign in Massachusetts. Malkin, however, with her sardonic, “As we always like to point out: There are no coincidences in Obama world,” seems to suggest the girl was “planted” by the Obama administration to ask the question in order to make a point it felt needed making. The girl also queried Obama about the signs outside the town hall meeting “saying mean things” about Obama’s health care plan. Obama’s reply, which Malkin fails to include in her clunky polemic, was this, from The Globe:

“Well . . . I’ve seen some of those signs,” prompting laughter. “Let me just be specific about some things that I’ve been hearing lately that we just need to dispose of here. The rumor that’s been circulating a lot lately is this idea that somehow the House of Representatives voted for “death panels” that will basically pull the plug on grandma because we’ve decided that we don’t — it’s too expensive to let her live anymore. And there are various — there are some variations on this theme.”

According to a White House transcript, Obama continued:

“It turns out that I guess this arose out of a provision in one of the House bills that allowed Medicare to reimburse people for consultations about end-of-life care, setting up living wills, the availability of hospice, et cetera. So the intention of the members of Congress was to give people more information so that they could handle issues of end-of-life care when they’re ready, on their own terms. It wasn’t forcing anybody to do anything. This is I guess where the rumor came from.”

“The irony is that actually one of the chief sponsors of this bill originally was a Republican — then House member, now senator, named Johnny Isakson from Georgia — who very sensibly thought this is something that would expand people’s options. And somehow it’s gotten spun into this idea of “death panels.” I am not in favor of that. So just I want to — (applause.) I want to clear the air here.”

“Now, in fairness, the underlying argument I think has to be addressed, and that is people’s concern that if we are reforming the health care system to make it more efficient, which I think we have to do, the concern is that somehow that will mean rationing of care, right? — that somehow some government bureaucrat out there will be saying, well, you can’t have this test or you can’t have this procedure because some bean-counter decides that this is not a good way to use our health care dollars. And this is a legitimate concern, so I just want to address this.”

“We do think that systems like Medicare are very inefficient right now, but it has nothing to do at the moment with issues of benefits. The inefficiencies all come from things like paying $177 billion to insurance companies in subsidies for something called Medicare Advantage that is not competitively bid, so insurance companies basically get a $177 billion of taxpayer money to provide services that Medicare already provides. And it’s no better — it doesn’t result in better health care for seniors. It is a giveaway of $177 billion.

“Now, think about what we could do with $177 billion over 10 years. I don’t think that’s a good use of money. I would rather spend that money on making sure that Lori can have coverage, making sure that people who don’t have health insurance get some subsidies, than I would want to be subsidizing insurance companies.

“Another way of putting this is right now insurance companies are rationing care. They are basically telling you what’s covered and what’s not. They’re telling you: We’ll cover this drug, but we won’t cover that drug; you can have this procedure, or, you can’t have that procedure. So why is it that people would prefer having insurance companies make those decisions, rather than medical experts and doctors figuring out what are good deals for care and providing that information to you as a consumer and your doctor so you can make the decisions?

“So I just want to be very clear about this. I recognize there is an underlying fear here that people somehow won’t get the care they need. You will have not only the care you need, but also the care that right now is being denied to you — only if we get health care reform. That’s what we’re fighting for.” — The Boston Globe, Aug. 11, 2009

It is, indeed, “fishy,” as Malkin states that town hall meeting participants were “bussed in” to the event, as reported by WMUR of Portsmouth, N.H. But there is no proof these folks were bussed in specifically by the Obama administration to the town hall meeting to pad the seats, as it were. Actually, it would seem very likely that the folks who would be interested in attending town hall meetings would be supporters of the president. Would I, for instance, be eager to listen to Mark Sanford, the governor of my home state of South Carolina, talk about his opposition to the bailout funds and whine about how he’s sorry for having an affair with Maria BeLen Chapur with his four kids sitting at home? I think I would rather stay right here where the walls and this computer screen are more entertaining. The same, thus, likely held true at Obama’s town hall meeting. Boston is a hop, skip and jump from New Hampshire, so it’s not unlikely that Julia and her mother were in attendance. Plus, there is no rule that I know of to require a president or elected official to randomly, as if from a hat, select one questioner over another. My point is clear at this point: Malkin’s claim, and others’ is flimsy and unquantifiable.

But, for the fun of it, let’s examine a few of the comments given in the WMUR report by folks actually protesting, or not, outside the event. Here’s a small selection:

“… And I earned my health insurance. I paid for it with my money that I work very hard for.”

“Capitalism is America”

“A little rain for health care reform? Hey, I’ll do it.”

“They didn’t fix GM. They just propped them up with our money.”

“No profits, no health care.”

On the “capitalism is America” point, a co-worker of mine wrote a good piece recently in which he detailed a few irrevocable facts, which deconstruct this claim down through history: slavery is as anti-free-market as it gets, monopolies destroy the idea of capitalism and so does deregulation.

On the “earned” health insurance argument, I would say that many, who are not in as comfortable a position as the speaker, also pay for their own health insurance and still can’t afford their medical bills. Here is the crux of the entire argument. Let’s ignore for a moment (but certainly only for a moment), the millions of folks who do not have any type of coverage. Members of, what I would call the middle class or lower middle class, may have coverage (or once did but found it too expensive), but when something arises beyond their control, the coverage they have simply is meager. We don’t have to search long and hard to find examples:

The majority of the uninsured are neither poor by official standards nor unemployed. They are accountants like Mr. Thornton, employees of small businesses, civil servants, single working mothers and those working part time or on contract.

“Now it’s hitting people who look like you and me, dress like you and me, drive nice cars and live in nice houses but can’t afford $1,000 a month for health insurance for their families,” said R. King Hillier, director of legislative relations for Harris County, which includes Houston.

Paying for health insurance is becoming a middle-class problem, and not just here. “After paying for health insurance, you take home less than minimum wage,” says a poster in New York City subways sponsored by Working Today, a nonprofit agency that offers health insurance to independent contractors in New York. “Welcome to middle-class poverty.” In Southern California, 70,000 supermarket workers have been on strike for five weeks over plans to cut their health benefits. — The New York Times, Nov. 16, 2003

So, here’s the thing: the modernized countries who have some form of universal health care all are healthier than this country of dullards who would rather die under crushing debt and medical bills than adopt policies that may help, not just a few or some or half of our citizenship, but all of our citizenship. England, which even today, is still healthier than America on the whole, has full, universal coverage and has for more than 50 years (Private insurance is used by less than 8 percent of the population  there)! As my cohort notes, Japan has no bankrupties caused by medical bills, while half of the bankruptcies in the U.S. are medically related. Some system, huh?

No one in this country knows what the final form of health care reform will look like, but I side with this commenter, who said, “A little rain for health care reform? Hey, I’ll do it.” As the saying goes, “If the system ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” But it is broken. This country’s average life expectancy and health care, money-grabbing track record prove as much. The insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies have one thing on their collective, rabbit-ass minds: money, and the health and well-being of those riddled with illness, who can’t afford treatment even with insurance, be damned. We can only hope the reckoning will come soon.

Sanford’s mushroom cloud

Note: The part below the three stars was written the following day, June 25, 2009.

In the wake of the tidbit of news South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford decided to share with the state and the rest of the country today (He was, of course, in Argentina with a woman this week rather than hiking on the Appalachian Trail, as was the “official” reason given for his vanishing act … Or, as Stephen Colbert said yesterday, that must have been one long hike!), I’ve noticed that several news outlets have used the word “bombshell” to describe the content of the recent news Sanford conference: here, here and here, for examples.

I figured why not up the ante. I think “mushroom cloud” describes the situation fairly accurately. Seriously, though. Politicians, on either side of the aisle, who cheat or generally have themselves too good of a time should not make us overtly surprised by now after Eliot Spitzer’s (D-N.Y.) brouhaha, Mark Foley’s alleged communications with a male page, the John Ensign scandal, of course, the Big Cheese himself, Mr. Clinton, and I can go on. So, Sanford can just get in the back of a line, a long line, or politicians who’s power trumped their reason, and of course, who’s libido trumped all.

Of course, I jest about the “mushroom cloud” thing, but I wonder: what would Sanford have to do to warrant reporters’ use of language describing the most deadly explosion known to man? I don’t know. Rob a bank. Report back to us from the Statehouse in a few months that he now has a kid with some this girl in Argentina. That might do the trick.

***

Heck, at this point, he should just continue on and see what else he can get himself into. He’s already destroyed any respect that South Carolina and the South was attempting to build after that long foray into slavery, the Black Codes, Jim Crow and segregation. Education is not a bright spot. Many parts of the state look like a third world. Examples: the area just outside the bonny banks of Hilton Head’s luxurious coastline (If any area in the South addresses and symbolizes the rich-poor divide, that’s surely it), Orangeburg County, Florence. And, Sanford made national headlines by taking on the state legislature about the stimulus money. The governor’s excursion also doesn’t bode well at all for his party, which, like the state, was attempting to salvage some level of respect, lick its wounds, and rebuild after a crushing defeat in the election and losing majority support in Congress.

The New York Times story from the above link provides a telling quote from a representative of the Family Research Council:

I think there is somewhat of an identity crisis in the Republican Party. Are they going to be a party that attracts values voters, and are they going to be the party that lives by those values? — Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, The Times, June 24, 2009

Good question. And the Republicans don’t really have any better of a record on that issue than the Democrats at this point, the difference being that the Democrats don’t court the religious vote so outrightly, while the Republicans do … and, unfortunately for them, the latter winds up choking down the hypocritical pill.

GOP vs. GOP

Noxious as it is, the back-and-forth between Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, other GOP leaders and Rush Limbaugh highlights at least one glaring truth: The GOP is in crisis mode, and the weaknesses continue.

Limbaugh, of course, exudes no such weakness. His fellow Republicans blasted him and other talking heads after Limbaugh’s 90-minute rant against Obama and the GOP leadership. (Consequently, in the speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference, he confused a line between the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, despite calling Obama’s plans a “bastardization of the Constitution.”)

Shortly after criticizing Limbaugh, one-by-one, GOP leaders either apologized or recanted altogether or skirted away from outright vilifying Limbaugh’s statements asserting he wanted the president’s policies, if they moved us closer to socialism, to fail:

  • Michael Steele: “My intent was not to go after Rush — I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh,” Steele told Politico in a telephone interview. “I was maybe a little bit inarticulate. … There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership.” What leadership?? He’s a talk show host. He holds no office or power. He’s not a leader, unless the definition of leadership now been reduced only to those with frantic, booming, irrational voices over the airwaves.
  • Rep. Phil Gingrey: “I regret and apologize for the fact that my comments have offended and upset my fellow conservatives—that was not my intent,” Gingrey said in a statement. “I am also sorry to see that my comments in defense of our Republican Leadership read much harsher than they actually were intended, but I recognize it is my responsibility to clarify my own comments.”
  • Rep. Eric Cantor: “Absolutely not,” Cantor said during a recent interview with George Stephanopoulos, asked if he accepts Limbaugh’s failure statement. “And I don’t — I don’t think anyone wants anything to fail right now. We have such challenges. What we need to do is we need to put forth solutions to the problems that real families are facing today.”

and in a recent press conference:

  • “Let me just say this: It is not about Rush Limbaugh. It’s not about Rahm Emanuel. It’s not about individuals right now. This is about real impact on families across this country.”
  • Gov. Mark Sanford: “I don’t want him to fail. Anybody who wants him to fail is an idiot, because it means we’re all in trouble.” and then a subsequent press release: “Asked to comment on Limbaugh’s statement, Joel Sawyer, Sanford’s Communications Director, said that ‘the governor was not referring to anyone’ in particular when he said that anyone hoping for Obama to fail is an ‘idiot.’ Rather, Sawyer said, Sanford was speaking ‘generically’ and did not know that Limbaugh had previously said he hopes that Obama will fail.”

Ok, that’s more than enough to prove the point that real GOP leaders did not unequivocally condemn Limbaugh’s statements in the first place, as they should have, and in the second, when pressed, either apologized or circumvented saying anything that could be considered harsh toward the talk show host.

Author Timothy Egan said in a March 4, 2009 New York Times column:

Smarter Republicans know he (Limbaugh) is not good for them. As the conservative writer David Frum said recently, “If you’re a talk radio host and you have five million who listen and there are 50 million who hate you, you make a nice living. If you’re a Republican party, you’re marginalized.”

Polling has found Limbaugh, a self-described prescription-drug addict who sees America from a private jet, to be nearly as unpopular as Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who damned America in the way that Limbaugh has now damned the nation’s newly elected leader. But Republicans just can’t quit him. So even poor Michael Steele, the nominal head of the Republican Party who dared to criticize him, had to grovel and crawl back to the feet of Limbaugh.

Republican strategist Ed Rollins calls this entire conflict “idiotic,” and one can’t help but agree. If Republican leaders cower to the influence of a talk show host, how we can expect them to be capable leaders in making truly tough decisions that affect the livelihood of their own constituents. They have been marginalized indeed. Rollins seems to understand that point as well, noting that the party needs new ideas, new leaders and strategies for reaching younger generations. That’s probably an understatement. Rollins was right when he said,

People who govern are the ones who will make the party relevant again, or not. All have to be long-term thinkers in addition to doing their daily tasks.

And that means that actual elected officials charged with moving us forward — not a talk show hosts who belittles someone with Parkinson’s, shows racists tendencies and confuses the two most important documents in the country;s history. Thus, Limbaugh is one of the archaic, anachronistic symbols of a Republican Party that is no more. For it to survive, it must reinvent itself, and it hasn’t as of yet.Or, as Egdan noted of Colin Powell:

When Colin Powell endorsed Obama during the campaign, Limbaugh said it was entirely because of race. After the election, Powell said the way for the party, which has been his home, to regain its footing was to say the Republican Party must stop “shouting at the world.”

Update: Sanford reconsiders South Carolina accepting stimulus money

The Associated Press reported yesterday that South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford may take the $8 billion or so of stimulus money allocated for his state, despite largely disagreeing with the Obama administration’s version of the stimulus plan.

… he says ultimately he represents the interests of the almost 5 million people of his state, and he will look over the plan and decide whether some parts would work for South Carolina. — AP

Given the state of education, Medicaid and jobless funding in South Carolina, this is certainly good news. As I stated here, Sanford’s refusal of the money would have been a cruel slight at many who are hurting in this state, not to mention the struggling agencies. Of course, the state may have gotten the money anyway since there’s a provision that says the legislature can accept the money with or without the approval of the governor.

In fact, if one takes a look at how the money will be divided, South Carolina is among the states which will received the highest percentage based on the gross state product. So, of course, Sanford probably doesn’t want to seem like a hypocrite by railing so heavily against the Obama’s package and then turning around and accepting money via a bill he didn’t agree with. Other than that, it’s not clear why Sanford would be so against taking the money, since S.C. fares quite well in getting its cut of the pie.