Calling Obama "President" is Racist!

"The word was conceived of by a group of wealthy white men who needed a way to put themselves above and apart from a black man. To render him inferior and unequal and to diminish his accomplishments." - Melissa Harris-Perry, MSNBC

Of course you know the word she's talking about right? Is it "nigger"? No, it's ObamaCare! That's right, ObamaCare is the newest code word for nigger. Now that Martin Bashir is gone from the MSNBC airwaves, Melissa Harris-Perry has taken on the mantle of pointing out that the only reason for disliking the Obama administration's policies is racism. It can't possibly be anything else in the mind of these collectivists, because Obama is perfect in every way and has done so much to help blacks including...something. What that something is I have no idea and neither do they.

As I mentioned in a previous post, even Tavis Smiley admits "...the data is going to indicate, sadly, that when the Obama administration is over black people will have lost ground in every single leading economic indicator on that regard the president ought to be held responsible..." The Congressional Black Caucus admits "if Bill Clinton had been in the White House and had failed to address this problem, we probably would be marching on the White House." But those that dare challenge the success of Obama and his signature program are racists if they are not either Democrats or liberal progressives.

Why? Because the racist card has worked for them for almost 50 years. It keeps blacks voting for the Democratic Party at a 90% rate and above. Furthermore, it keeps black organizations in line such that they rarely complain about the failure of the Democratic Party to effectively address problems in the black community. At least not openly that is.

The list of code words or phrases for nigger has gotten quite long during the Obama administration. I've included a partial list here; skinny, IRS, bully or thug, angry, Chicago, Constitution, food stamp and PGA Tour. The list is expected to grow at an exponential rate as his signature program crumbles and his income inequality agenda fails to get implemented, but at least it has a possible limit according to Assistant House Democratic Leader, Congressional Black Caucus member and former CBC Chairman Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-SC).

"The entire English language was created by slaveowners [sic] as a means of oppression. You can’t just say that one word is a racist code word or another. The whole language, every single word, letter and apostrophe in it is racist. It’s a fact. If you speak English, you’re a racist."

Ironically, Mr. Clyburn said that quote in ENGLISH! Someone should inform Mr. Clyburn that English wasn't created in 18th century America, but was a fusion of dialects collectively termed Old English and who's origins trace back to the mid-5th century. But the knowledge of this fact wouldn't fit his meme so I'm sure he'd either ignore it or find some way to be intellectually dishonest about it.

So, because English is a racist language there will be no end to the coded words that really mean nigger. I expect when all is said and done, calling Barack Obama "President" will be a dog-whistle for evoking a racist Pavlovian response from teabaggers. Sorry, did I say teabaggers? I meant white racists because as everyone knows, the Tea Party is racist.

ObamaCare, Fantasy versus Reality

"What we have in California, then, is a proof of concept. Yes, Obamacare is workable — in fact, done right, it works just fine." - Paul Krugman, New York Times, Nov. 25 2013

Krugman is of course wrong, but then again when has that ever stopped him from declaring something a success. It was recently reported that over 1 million California's received letters cancelling their health insurance. To call it a success, Mr. Krugman says that "...more than 10,000 applications are being completed per day." That's nice but those are applications, not enrollments and there is a huge difference. What matters is being enrolled. You don't get health insurance coverage just for applying!

In any case, even if we assume that everyone that had their health insurance cancelled in California was able to both apply and enroll at the rate provided by Mr. Krugman (very unlikely) it would take 100 days to replace the coverage lost because of Obamacare. Since enrollment started on October 1st and enrollment must be completed by December 23rd for January 1st coverage, that only leaves 84 days by my calculation. Some people are just going to be left without coverage. That's hardly successful in my book, but then again these are very optimistic progressive metrics, not real metrics.

Ironically, Mr. Krugman mentions among the successes in Obamacare the state of Massachusetts. I say ironically, because the official title of the legislation is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Yet health insurance is more expensive in Massachusetts than almost anywhere else in the country (except in some cases Alaska)! So much for affordable health insurance.

Tragically, the debacle that is Obamacare was predicted in excruciating detail by Professor Richard Allen Epstein in a debate with Dr. Judith M. Feder during the inaugural New York University Law Forum debate who's topic was "The Debate over Health Care Reform." As of the writing of this post there have been only 4,655 views of this debate via YouTube, which is equally tragic because Professor Epstein's detailed analysis of the Obamacare legislation is both impressive and amazingly prescience. Over the course of an hour, Professor Epstein utterly distroys almost every assumption and prediction of the Obamacare supporters with both reasoned logic and detailed critical analysis. The scary part of his analysis is not what he got right already, but the predictions about legislation that have yet to be implemented.

So, while Paul Krugman may call California a proof of concept. Proof of an unworkable concept is hardly conforting.

Future Healthcare.gov and the Affordable Care Act

"If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there'd be a shortage of sand." ― Milton Friedman

The failures of the Healthcare.gov website were easier to predict than Alex Rodriguez using performance enhancing drugs. After 3 weeks of system failures, the Democratic apologists are out in full force. They have a unified message and they are sticking to it. It has four parts:

1. Admit that the initial release of Healthcare.gov has its problems.
2. Insist the problems will get fixed so there's nothing to worry about.
3. Justify #2 by saying that several of the state exchanges work "just fine" and that fact will translate to the federal health insurance system working fine as well.
4. These technical problems have nothing to do with the law. The Affordable Care Act is still a good law.

All of these excuses mask the real problem. In my opinion, the federal government has never successfully implemented and maintained an effective and efficient social program in the history of this Republic. Not one. There are and were dramatic flaws with every social problem ever implemented by the federal government. So much so that the three major ones - Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are all functionally insolvent.

I don't want to get bogged down in a discussion of those three programs, but I do need to provide some context. As the Trustees of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds report says, "Neither Medicare nor Social Security can sustain projected long-run programs in full under currently scheduled financing." In addition, there is no actual money in the trust funds for those programs. As noted during the Clinton administration 13 years ago in 2000 in the FY 2000 Budget, Analytical Perspectives p. 337:

"These balances are available to finance future benefit payments and other trust fund expenditures — but only in a bookkeeping sense. These funds are not set up to be pension funds, like the funds of private pension plans. They do not consist of real economic assets that can be drawn down in the future to fund benefits. Instead, they are claims on the Treasury that, when redeemed, will have to be financed by raising taxes, borrowing from the public, or reducing benefits or other expenditures. (emphasis added)"

Medicaid doesn't even have a trust fund and has always been functionally insolvent, requiring greater and greater government borrowing to finance its expenditures each year. This is a major reason why the states don't want to expand their Medicaid rolls, because they know after 2019 they will be on the hook. Despite what Paul Krugman says, that additional cost would not be "trivial."

Other failed government social programs include Affirmative Action, Welfare, TANF, Unemployment Insurance and the war on drugs. Sure, they are popular. But an anti-poverty program of giving away $100,000 to every U.S. citizen with at least a high school degree would be an overwhelmingly popular program as well. That doesn't mean it would work.

And therein lays the problem. Because it doesn't matter if the Healthcare.gov or the Affordable Care Act ever works. They are subject to be judged by their intentions rather than their results as are all liberal programs. Eventually, the perception of these programs doing good obscures the reality of their failure.

As I said in a previous post, modern liberalism isn't just a set of political ideals; it's a religion as powerful as Christianity, Judaism and Islam. The faithful will always believe that their programs work until they don't. When they don't they will blame the infidels, in this case conservative Republicans. In fact, in the coming weeks, watch for the blame game to start. Despite the tiny $93 million cost for this software project (in government terms) Democrats will blame a lack of funding and Republican obstruction. By the way, it's rare that a software development project's projected size is accurate. It's likely twice that and maybe more given the errors.

Also, look for this meme: if only we had gone to single payer by expanding Medicare this wouldn't have been a problem. This is of course the ultimate goal of ObamaCare; Total government control of the health care and health insurance industries.