Note from Paulie: some people have complained about the reposting of Libertarian Party blog posts knocking other reporting off the front page. This has become more of an issue as the pace at LP.org has picked up since Donny Ferguson has taken over from Andrew Davis. At the same time, other people have asked me to keep posting the LP blogs so that there will be a fairly well-visited place for the public to comment on them, since comments are no longer allowed on the LP blog itself. As a possible compromise, I am trying out the “digest” idea of posting several of the LP.org blog entries in one IPR post. Please let me know if this is a good idea or not in the comments.

posted by Donny Ferguson on Feb 10, 2009

Betsy McCaughey of Bloomberg reports on a little-known provision in Obama’s $1.1 trillion package of welfare transfers and expanded government, a new federal bureaucracy in Washington, D.C. that tracks your health information and can order your doctor to stop treating you:

The bill’s health rules will affect “every individual in the United States” (445, 454, 479). Your medical treatments will be tracked electronically by a federal system. Having electronic medical records at your fingertips, easily transferred to a hospital, is beneficial. It will help avoid duplicate tests and errors.

But the bill goes further. One new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, will monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective. The goal is to reduce costs and “guide” your doctor’s decisions (442, 446). These provisions in the stimulus bill are virtually identical to what Daschle prescribed in his 2008 book, “Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis.” According to Daschle, doctors have to give up autonomy and “learn to operate less like solo practitioners.“…

…The Federal Council is modeled after a U.K. board discussed in Daschle’s book. This board approves or rejects treatments using a formula that divides the cost of the treatment by the number of years the patient is likely to benefit. Treatments for younger patients are more often approved than treatments for diseases that affect the elderly, such as osteoporosis.

In 2006, a U.K. health board decreed that elderly patients with macular degeneration had to wait until they went blind in one eye before they could get a costly new drug to save the other eye.

Others reporting on this: Capital Freedom, WizBang.

Obama proposes $9.7 TRILLION in new spending…and rising

posted by Donny Ferguson on Feb 10, 2009

Bloomberg financial news reports Monday the current price tag for the array of bailout, welfare transfers and new spending is reaching an astronomical $9.7 trillion. $700 billion of that is the first Troubled Asset Relief Program pushed by the previous Republican White House.

That’s enough to pay off 90 percent of all the mortgages in the United States, and much of the spending touted as “economic recovery” is actually long-proposed Democrat plans to expand the welfare state. It is the equivalent of two-thirds of all the goods and services produced in the United States last year.

Russell Roberts on the failed history of “stimulus packages”

posted by Donny Ferguson on Feb 10, 2009

When Barack Obama pointed last night to the stimulus packages passed by the Japanese during their 1990s recession, I had to guffaw because they simply didn’t work. Trillions of dollars were spent on explosive government growth that did little to nothing to spur economic recovery, though it did sink the nation into crippling debt.

Russell Roberts, writing for Cafe Hayek, lays out the Japanese experiment. Click on the link to read it for yourself, the take-home lesson is this:

“In the end, say economists, it was not public works but an expensive cleanup of the debt-ridden banking system, combined with growing exports to China and the United States, that brought a close to Japan’s Lost Decade. This has led many to conclude that spending did little more than sink Japan deeply into debt, leaving an enormous tax burden for future generations…

“…Economists tend to divide into two camps on the question of Japan’s infrastructure spending: those, many of them Americans like Mr. Geithner, who think it did not go far enough; and those, many of them Japanese, who think it was a colossal waste.

“Among ordinary Japanese, the spending is widely disparaged for having turned the nation into a public-works-based welfare state and making regional economies dependent on Tokyo for jobs.”

Last night’s press conference showed the futility of putting economic recovery into the hands of a man who has never created a job, but dedicated his entire life to fattening government.

Obama gives bailout details, market plunges 382 points

posted by Donny Ferguson on Feb 10, 2009

From The Washington Post:

Stock markets fell sharply today as the Obama administration detailed its plans for a rescue of the financial system and a long-awaited fiscal stimulus package passed in the Senate.

The blue chip Dow Jones industrial plummeted following a speech by Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner in which he detailed the administration’s plan to commit up to $1.5 trillion in public and private funds.

That stock plunge follows news his stimulus plan contains provisions taking health car decisions out of the hands of doctors and putting them under a “National Coordinator of Health Information Technology.” That news follows reports from Boomberg Financial the total cost of government bailouts and spending will top $9.7 trillion. And that news follows reports from the Congressional Budget Office that his plan would not only take effect long after the recession has already ended, but it would actually cause long-term damage to the economy.

Obama tried to patch the damage, evident in plummeting poll numbers for the package, with a press conference last night in which he pointed to stimulus packages passed by the Japanese during their recessions of the 1990s. Not only do most economists agree those didn’t work (after all, if it worked why did they have to pass multiple bills over the course of a decade?) but they actually crippled Japan with crushing debt.

And Obama’s town hall meetings are beginning to look more like “The Price Is Right,” with one woman asking the president to give her a free car, bathroom and kitchen. Dire and basic needs indeed, but working Americans can’t afford to buy everyone a Honda and remodeled home.

No word as to whether he made her guess the prices of canned good so she could putt closer to the hole. Look for future Obama events to be packed with Americans hoping to get “free” stuff.