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Remember the NJ gubernatorial election on 11/3/09
Hello from Right Principles Welcome to the first October edition of Principled Resistance. In this edition you will find an opinion from Adrienne on employer-driven health care solutions. She is well versed in matters of health care and raises some very interesting points. You'll also find a review of government housing policies looking back into the early 20th century. We'll visit a Bushism as well and examine its usability today. Finally, enjoy the second part of the three-part series: RINO. If you missed the first part, follow the link to familiarize yourself and then dig into the second part. Be forewarned, we have made an effort to detail the evolution in great detail. It'll take a while to absorb. We are very excited to have as part of the newsletter the announcement of our fall Wounded Warrior Project fundraiser in Connecticut on the 8th of November. We invite you to contact any of the founders to reserve your spot and recognize the project's achievements. The evening will also include candidate appearances. See you there... In case you've been hiding under a rock in the desert or just returned from an extended absence in the Brazilian rainforest, Chicago will not host the 2016 Olympic Summer Games.
EMPLOYER-DRIVEN SOLUTIONS TO HEALTH CARE COST by Adrienne Bertuzzi A key issue overlooked in the health care debate is that employers are the primary providers of health care coverage in the US, providing approximately 60% of medical coverage (remainder is through Medicare, Medicaid and individual insurance). Employers are motivated to achieve an effective health care program because: - They are profit making entities responsible to their shareholders, so they have a vested interest in containing spiraling health care costs. - They must provide an attractive, comprehensive package in order to attract, retain and motivate employees as health care benefits are a fundamental and highly valued piece of any compensation and benefit program. - Employers want to improve the health of their employee population in order to contain costs, reduce absenteeism and increase productivity. Indeed, employers have been the primary engines of evolution in health care design over the past 20 years in the face of continuing health care cost inflation due to an aging population, advances in medical technology and unhealthy lifestyles. They have consistently worked with sophisticated consulting firms as well as insurance carriers, who employ actuaries, underwriters, doctors, nurses, pharmacists and others, to continually evolve plans from indemnity to managed care plans (HMO, PPO, POS, etc.) to the latest innovation, consumer driven health plans. In doing so, they have increasingly: - Made employees more aware of, and accountable for, their health care choices and own personal health situation. (Consumer driven health plans have taken this to a new level). - Provided checks on large cost health care choices that employees make. - Made doctors and hospitals accountable for providing the best quality health care at the lowest price. - Made insurance companies more transparent and competitive in cost structure (holding insurance company margins down to 5-6% on average, and to as low as 1-2% for small HMOs). They have achieved these and many more objectives through increasingly complex plan design whose hundreds of features are beyond the scope of this document. Suffice it to say that health care plan innovation is dynamic and ever changing to reflect the employer objectives of managing cost, improving health and engaging employees. We should leave health care in the hands of employers. They have the track record of driving innovation in health care design. They will continue their efforts as they have the best objectives in mind and the motivation to lead innovation.
If you missed part I, click here RINO II by Publius Valerius The Conservative Resurgence Republican capitulation to New Deal domestic polices during the 1950s and early 1960s was total. After all, the mainstream New Deal consensus agreed with literary critic Lionel Trilling who echoed the thoughts of many politicians and intellectuals when, writing in 1950 he noted "in the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition.... It is the plain fact there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in general circulation" but only "irritable mental gestures which seem to resemble ideas." The historian Richard Hofstadter agreed with Trilling, portraying Conservatives as cranky, angry reactionaries who were people, as the Washington Post put it, who “complain about the twentieth century” and irrationally sought to repeal it. Such types were not to be taken seriously. Faced with this reality, the Republican Party was firmly under the control of go-along-to-get-along Republican In Name Only (RINOs - or as Eisenhower called it “Modern Republicanism) who ushered in a golden era of bi-partisanship. In basic agreement that Isolationism was a dangerous foreign policy, both Republicans and Democrats recognized the Cold War required a vigilant and active policy to contain the danger of Communist Imperialism. Democrat Cold Warriors such as Truman, John Stennis and John F. Kennedy were often even more anti-Communist than were many Republicans. Both Parties agreed that Statist intervention in both economic and social policy was the key to a stable and prosperous society. “Moderate” Republicans coalesced around not only Eisenhower, but around those RINOs who provided the intellectual basis of his polices. These were found, not surprisingly, in the Eastern Establishment located in NYC and Washington DC and they were led by Nelson Rockefeller. The Rockefellers were the financial and social scions of the Eastern Establishment. They were not only ultra-rich, with mega-fortunes tied up in Standard Oil (long ago re-named “ESSO” and later “EXXON” in a clever but dishonest public relations attempt to put some distance between the company and the Robber Baron reputation it acquired when it was known as “Standard Oil”) and in the powerful international bank, Chase Manhattan. Moderate “Rockefeller Republicans” supported ALL the statist policies that grew up in the shade of the New Deal and WW II including expanding social welfare programs, Federal Civil Rights legislation, high rates of taxation and public works (especially highway and other infrastructure) spending. The only difference between Rockefeller Republicans and their so-called rivals in the Democrat Party was that the RINOs maintained they, as people with stronger business backgrounds, would be able to administer statist government more efficiently than Democrats. They had no problem keeping “good” New Deal measures – as long as they were run “efficiently”. RINOs pretended to have more respect for States Rights and private enterprise than Democrats, but recognized that the New Deal – and all the statist meddling it represented – was to be PERMANENT. Combined with the rejection of isolationism, which was required by the demands of the Cold War containment of Communism, RINOs insisted that this was the KEY to the electoral success that was denied them during their years in the wilderness under FDR and Truman. But the sacrifice made for the Eisenhower era was high because it caused the Republican Party to basically make itself a virtually irrelevant afterthought to Democrat/Liberal ideology. In the name of getting elected, the RINOs became “Democrat Light”, which was a confection that usually resulted in minority status given that the voters could get the undiluted version by pulling the lever for their Democrat opponents. Disgusted with the complete abandonment of any type of Conservative agenda worth the name, something of an intellectual rebellion broke out in various precincts on the Right. In 1955 William F. Buckley launched a small but influential periodical called National Review. Rebelling against the idea that Conservative thought was an irrelevant anachronism, Buckley shed the Old Right’s addiction to isolationism and embraced the concept that the cause of freedom and a stable world order depended on a militarily powerful United States capable of intervening in the Cold War in order to respond to Soviet aggression. Read the rest here:  RINO II
Why The Economy Doesn't Need More Government by Randy Dunnigan On Tuesday famed investor Wilbur Ross, who helped revive the U.S. steel industry, called for another slug of government money to stimulate the economy. Speaking on CNBC, he said we need an even "more dramatic" public-sector spending to get the consumer going again. I am sure Ross means well, but his comments are typical of big executives who are accustomed to shuffling numbers about as they restructure companies and reorder industries. Most business leaders such as Ross lack an underlying philosophical grounding and fail to distinguish between the corporate sector, where all actions are voluntary, and the government, which forces human beings to follow. This difference has mattered several times in the past. For instance, government programs during the Great Depression caused significant unemployment in the South by driving wages higher. It also created a climate where private investors stopped trying to create wealth on their own and waited for government work. Even more important is the case of Japan, which has attempted to spend its way out of crisis for the past 20 years -- only to suffer massive capital flight, economic stagnation and deflation. Part of the underlying problem comes from the observation by Milton Friedman that people have a sense of "permanent income." They inherently know what they "should" earn. When the government comes and gives them money, they instinctively know it's not real and don't spend it. Instead they treat it as a windfall and save it. The interesting thing about the economic expansion of the last 30 years is that it was, in fact, much more supported by government actions than most realize. But it was one so misrepresented by the media and economists that few people saw the hand of the state. The hidden Keynesian trend began in 1934 with the passage of the National Housing Act, which insured mortgages and extended loan terms from five years to 30-years. In 1938 Fannie Mae was created to buy these loans from banks, helping to ensure "liquidity." This situation chugged along happily for about three decades, during which time most banks held the mortgages on their own balance sheets. (It was great if you were white and lived in the suburbs, but that's another argument completely.) The government's endorsement of housing as an economic panacea was based on the Keynesian principle of stimulating aggregate demand. After WWI, there was too little demand for all the excess capacity at the countries farms and factories. Determined not to permit the same deflationary trend that bloomed into the Great Depression, policymakers pushed housing. They especially liked the fact it encouraged consumption of a slew of new items such as automobiles and refrigerators. This housing crusade rose to a new level in 1970 when Freddie Mac was created as a competitor to Fannie Mae. Both government-sponsored enterprises were then charged with buying mortgages and structuring them into bonds. This power of this new system was first seen in 1982. At that time, the big banks were imploding because they had foolishly lent vast sums to Latin American countries that were going broke after decades of their own runaway Keynesian spending. If it hadn't been for Fannie and Freddie, America would have suffered a severe housing crisis in the early 1980s. The same was true again a decade later, when the S&L crisis burned giant holes in bank balance sheets. Both times, the GSEs more than filled the void left by the traditional lenders, replacing all of their lost origination and then some. Home prices barely had a hiccup the whole way through. Wall Street analysts, who have the same degree of intellectual depth as Wilbur Ross, looked at this remarkable stability and concluded mortgages are safe because "houses never lose value." Shopping centers and offices maybe, but never residential real estate. Read the rest here: No More
MOE - MissOverEstimated by Tom Blom - 11/1/09: Pre Election NJ Tea Party In Morristown, NJ (Washington Headquarters) - 11/8/09: Right Principles / Wounded Warrior Foundation Fundraiser (Shelton, CT) One of the more famous Bushisms left in the ether from our previous president is without a doubt the term “misunderestimated.” Newspapers disagree on the original use of the term, so it shall suffice to know that it was used early in W’s Presidency [1,2]. It can be said without much debate that many people in fact did mistakenly underestimated Mr. Bush and we can rest assured that arguments for good and bad will continue for many years. More interestingly, it is almost eerie to see how the antonym of the well-known “misunderestimated” can be easily used to describe our current president: misoverestimated. President Obama came into the White House with the aura of a highly intelligent individual with premium academic achievements. The opposite of that dumb Bush – so we were told. It is in this sense that we have come to experience some missteps a high school class president would likely avoid. In March Obama took time out of his busy presidential schedule to stop by The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. He took the occasion to tell America that Air Force One is “cool.” This after the CEOs of the nation were told that executive jets were simply too much luxury. They are excessive and unnecessary. The auto chiefs in particular even took hybrids for their second tin-cup trip to Washington [3]. On the other side of the Mississippi David Letterman must’ve felt left out in the cold since it took King Obama until just a couple of weeks ago to grace The Late Show with a visit. Lucky for Letterman that Obama could not leave this occasion without stepping into it again. The big debate in America these days is obviously health care reform. It hasn’t been an easy road to travel for either the President or members of Congress. America is apparently just too dumb to understand that Obama magic will heal all that ails anyone. Even Joe Wilson was reduced to an uncouth hick from South Carolina though many people find more substance in his outburst than in the stories our President tells. Obama revealed in the interview on The Late Show that employers are the ones picking up most of the health care cost increases 31 minutes and 30 seconds into the show [4]. If that is the case, where do all these letters telling him of misery in all corners of America come from? While comfortably seated beside Dave, the President did not mention again any of the alternative bills waiting in Congress that aim to reform health care from a different angle; bipartisanship failed to make it into the building. The Presidential stance is simply and purely dishonest. He also told us that it’ll take another year for the employment situation to improve (24:58). Just in time for the 2010 elections. By then we’ll possibly have lost unique American qualities of life if ACES and AAHCA become law in their present forms. We have to be vigilant until the 2010 election cycle is over. We have to continue to educate ourselves on the monster bills passing through Capitol Hill. America deserves better than to be turned into a society that fits a mold. America needs to remain as a unique city on that hill. More you say… President Obama, when speaking about members of the military losing their lives in combat zones said this to Letterman: “I’ve gotta write a letter.” Not: “I take great pride, care and humility when I personally draft letters to the families of the fallen in acknowledgment of their sacrifice.” A small sentence that does more than any telepromptered speech in front of the Congressional joint session could ever do to show priorities. Read the rest here: MOE