Maggie's Farm

No, that pick-up line never did work too well for me in picking up girls.

It probably wouldn’t have worked too well either for the San Diego sheriff pilloried by ultra-liberal Keith Olberman as Worst Person In The World for doing his duty at a fund raiser party hosted by a renowned lesbian in my Congressional district for (not a lesbian) 3-time loser Democrat candidate for Congress Francine Busby.

Local Democrat Congressional candidate Francine Busby and friends' “I’m above the law” attitude won’t work too well either.

The other night, in a residential neighborhood, a neighbor complained about the noise (including use of a loudspeaker by Busby).  The sheriff arrived, and as per procedure in logging in the visit, asked the host, Shari Barman, for her name and age.  She refused and walked away, several times.  The sheriff then held her arm.  According to the police report, Barman physically attacked him, another party-goer grabbed the sheriff’s leg, and others surrounded the sheriff and broke Barman away.  The sheriff called for help, which arrived en masse.  Some of the partiers were pepper sprayed.  Barman was arrested.  The sheriff’s department is conducting an investigation, especially due to the uproar coming from Barman and Busby.  News reports are available under “Busby” at Google.

In effect, disregarding the sheriff, walking away, and attacking him are similar to such behavior at a traffic stop, subjecting the person to arrest.  But, Francine Busby, in her fund raiser linked below, says the sheriffs violated the partiers’ civil rights. Oh yeah, we need another member of Congress with that attitude!  Should fit right in with Pelosi’s band.  (Wonder why in Rasmussen’s generic poll, Republicans are now favored over Democrats?  Or, why in Gallup’s Democrats are viewed as too liberal?)

There’s some more “velly interesting” sidelights:

- Barman had previously been arrested for assaulting a cop.  As the San Diego Union-Tribune editorial board member in this link comments about this 32-years before arrest:

…I'm not sure this is just a hostile attitude.

 

I also was surprised and disappointed at some of the coverage of the matter and the comments I've been hearing. Barman's defenders seem to concede that they interfered with the deputy's attempt to question Barman. If that is a given, well, I just don't see how they can claim to be in the right or to not have dramatically escalated the incident.

 

I hope there is video of the incident. I wonder if the reason it hasn't surfaced so far is because it is not favorable to Barman and the partygoers.

Note: A news report indicates that some partiers did use their cellphone to take pictures.  Will they surface, or were they erased?

- Barman is a fitness person, actively involved in professional tennis promotion, hardly the feeble-sounding aged woman purported by some. Almost every news article about the incident gives away her age as 60, but Barman wouldn’t give her age to the sheriff.

-  Francine Busby is using this incident to raise campaign funds by claiming to be a “Right-Wing Target.”  Oh, that’s why she failed to unseat the incumbent in 2004, and again twice failed against his elected replacement in 2006 even among the uproar when that prior incumbent, Randy Cunningham, had been exposed as terribly corrupt, even though in 2006 Democrats gained seats elsewhere. In 2008’s Democrat landslide, in this marginally moderate Republican district, Obama received 51% of the vote. The Rep incumbent congressman got 55%.  I don’t think her playing the victim card will do Busby’s chances any better in 2010.  As a commenter to the Busby-as-victim fundraising letter says, "Busby grasps for way to save career."

- I had previously covered the previous Busby campaigns in my district, and the day before her second 2006 effort, even more amused, here:

I saw Busby yesterday in the parking lot across the street from a client of mine in Cardiff, directing her get-out-the-vote troops like a general, and she is bulldog determined. The conversation among her lieutenants in the parking lot was how she needs to change her appearance, loosen her hair and get out of her multi-colored same-suit JC Penney wardrobe, as she has hidden her far-Left positions.

I don’t think even her JC Penney wardrobe will hide her leftist posture this time, either. (In 2006, for example, Busby was embarrassed by her appeal to illegal aliens to help her election.)

Busby and her hosts might better next time heed the words of San Diego Union-Tribune columnist Michael Stetz, who himself has faced police called to his house for noise complaints,

So I'm offering my own tried and true advice in hopes of avoiding a repeat of the great Cardiff controversy:

 

If you see a cop on your porch who says to ease it on the volume, you say: “Yes sir.” If he wants your date of birth, I say give him your date of birth. It's not the end of the world.

 

No exploitive fundraising appeals or verbally or physically attacking law enforcement, either, Ms. Busby.

After Disney and other highly profitable travel industry powerhouses being disrobed by exposure during the prior Congress, the travel industry is getting further at pulling the wool over our eyes and the coins from our pockets in the current Congress, to add to their bottom lines.

If you’re not already a regular reader of the Washington Examiner’s opinion pages, you should be.  That’s not just because I have a column there today, “Big Tourism Depends On K-Street PR Whiz”, but because under the editorial direction of Mark Tapscott it has blossomed into a rank of must read along with the Wall Street Journal’s opinion page.  Indeed, recently it was announced that the owner of the Washington Examiner is purchasing  the Weekly Standard.

Some background on my column:

Here is my February 2008 sum up and links to my prior 2007 posts, my prior Washington Examiner column on this, and investigative reporter Tim Carney’s important add on. This led to a major Washington Post expose, “Mickey Goes To Washington” that sank during the prior Congress the travel industry’s attempt to freeload on the taxpayer and travelers’ dime.

Making statistically valid generalizations about 1/6^th of the US economy, health care, is difficult, at best, beyond saying we spend a lot.  Even that generalization is suspect when viewed against what we get and what we can afford.  When one disaggregates, focusing on specific elements, it’s even more difficult.  There’s usually inadequate data, and erroneous or politically misleading conclusions drawn.  But, as witness the House yesterday narrowly passing a 1300-page cap-and-trade energy bill, without even reading it, to regulate and tax almost the entire US economy, facts are easily left behind in favor of political power seeking and arm-twisting payoffs to individual legislators and their contributors.

So, let’s get real.

Tom Bevan, founder-editor of daily must-read RealClearPolitics, today writes “Busting the Administrative Cost Benefit Myth,” that a government-run plan would save spending by cutting administrative costs, based on a Heritage Foundation paper that “Medicare Administrative Costs Are Higher, Not Lower, Than for Private Insurance.”  In short, because each Medicare claim is for a much higher amount than each private insurance claim, the percent of the dollar amount of total claims for mostly fixed administrative costs is lower in Medicare.  If considered, instead, on administrative cost per number of claims processed, Medicare’s admin costs are higher than in private insurance.

The former head of Medicare and Medicaid and former US assistant secretary of health recently, similarly, took on this administrative cost myth in the Wall Street Journal, asking and answering “Is Government Health Insurance Cheap?”

But the comparison between public and private plans is a false comparison. Private insurance and public benefits are not the same business. For all its warts, private insurance tries to manage care. Medicare is mostly about paying the bills presented to it….

First, private insurers must build provider networks. These networks can include high-value providers and exclude low-quality providers. Except for certain circumstances, including criminal acts, Medicare is forbidden from excluding poor quality providers. It lets in everyone who signs up. So one question to ask is, will the public plan have Medicare's indifference to quality -- or invest in the cost of a network?

Second, private insurers must negotiate rates. Medicare just fixes prices using a statutory and regulatory scheme. And anyone who imagines a public plan would be less costly than private plans must keep the following issue front and center: In the many procedure categories where Medicare's statutory price does not cover full provider costs, shortfalls are shifted to private payers who end up subsidizing the public program. So, will a public plan negotiate rates or simply use fiat as a means of gaining subsidies from private insurance?

Third, private insurers must combat fraud -- or go out of business. Indeed, these payers have every incentive to invest in antifraud personnel and strategies down to the point where return and investment are equal. But anyone who thinks that a public plan could serve as a "yardstick" for the private sector needs to consider Medicare's dismal record with regard to fraud, waste and other abuse….

Fourth, private insurers must incur the administrative cost of marketing. Medicare, of course, does not need to market. A public plan competing with other alternatives would have to market itself to the public, and this means tax dollars used to advertise against private plans. Or the public plan could "compete" by using heavily subsidized marketing channels not available to private insurers, such as Social Security mailings, welfare offices, unemployment check stuffers, and the constellation of government-funded "advocacy organizations."  

As Wikipedia describes the Eagles’ “Hotel California”:

"The song's lyrics describe the title establishment as a luxury resort where 'you can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave.'  On the surface, the song tells the tale of a weary traveler who becomes trapped in a nightmarish luxury hotel that at first appeared inviting and tempting."

When I was a boy, the populations of New York and California were about equal.  The taxpayer and sane-unfriendly policies of New York led to its decline, as people flocked to the Golden State, California’s population now more than double New York’s.  Now, the gold is severely tarnished. The supposedly “something for nothing” policies that pander to the poorer, illegal immigrants, the S.F and L.A. liberal elites, envirocrazies, and unions, all at the expense of taxpayers and business, has led to an exodus of born Americans and industry to other states.  Like New York, California is near bankrupt and its dominant power-brokers refuse to wake up.

California voters just roundly rejected the Democrat-Schwarzenegger phony fixes.  So, now, as reported from Sacramento, there’s a standoff in which the Democrats continue to peddle phony fixes.  Schwarzenegger seems to be refinding some sobriety, but as Sacramento’s top columnist narrates, the gimmicks are a joke.

"And the key thing," Schwarzenegger said, "is now to just really make sure they don't come up with one-time solutions, because even if you go and withhold your taxes, it's a one-time solution. Or if you go and move the date of paying your paychecks from June 30th to July 1st, to kick it over to the next fiscal year, that's a one-time solution. It doesn't help you in the out years."

 A smart-aleck journalist – this one, in fact – quickly reminded the governor that his budget also contains "one-time solutions," such as forcing taxpayers to speed up payments to the state.

"Absolutely correct," the governor conceded. "And what we don't want to do is add to those."

"So it's all right if you do it but not all right if they do it?" yours truly persisted.

 

Democrats rant against California Prop 13, that limits property taxes, and the 2/3rds rule in the legislature, that limits Democrat majorities.  San Diego Union-Tribune  newspaper editorial board member Chris Reed, sets them straight: California property taxes since 1980 have “gone up 84 percent faster than combined inflation and population growth;”  without the 2/3rds rule California would “see an enormous range of tax hikes -- not budget restraint or cuts -- whenever deficits emerged,” as in New York. The New York Times describes the many instances of unions, aside from using their power over the California and New York legislatures to protect their profligate benefits, using their political power to self-servingly increase the costs of “green” power.

Former NYC Mayor Rudolph Guiliani op-eds in today's New York Times that New York needs a 2/3rds rule, like California’s.

SUPERMAJORITY FOR TAX INCREASES Too often increasing taxes is the first impulse for Albany legislators. Requiring a supermajority for tax increases would provide a powerful check on those who still think we can tax and spend our way out of economic problems. A supermajority would protect already over-burdened citizens and attract businesses, improving our long-term competitiveness.

Hmmm!  A 2/3rds rule for Congress, House and Senate, wouldn’t eliminate budget battles but might slow down the fast-Barack haste to tax and spend the rest of America into California and New York’s bankruptcy.

Whoops!  The Wall Street Journal reminds me, I missed New Jersey.

The latest Washington Post-ABC News poll appears more honest in demographics and political leanings of respondents than the one with slanted political-affiliation respondents that the New York Times-CBS tried to slip past us over the weekend.  Simply, there’s justified concern over the costs of healthcare but more concern over losing the healthcare we now have or the government dictating it.  President Obama remains popular, but his policy is bad medicine.   

As this poll sums up:

A majority of Americans see government action as critical to controlling runaway health-care costs, but there is broad public anxiety about the potential impact of reform legislation and conflicting views about the types of fixes being proposed on Capitol Hill… Most respondents are "very concerned" that health-care reform would lead to higher costs, lower quality, fewer choices, a bigger deficit, diminished insurance coverage and more government bureaucracy. About six in 10 are at least somewhat worried about all of these factors, underscoring the challenges for lawmakers as they attempt to restructure the nation's $2.3 trillion health-care system.

 

Part of the reason so many are nervous about future changes is a fear they may lose what they currently have. More than eight in 10 said they are satisfied with the quality of care they now receive and relatively content with their own current expenses, and worry about future rising costs cuts across party lines and is amplified in the weak economy….

 

Beyond general backing for governmental action, a few specific provisions under consideration on Capitol Hill receive significant levels of public support, including higher taxes on households with incomes above $250,000, a limit on medical malpractice amounts and, under certain conditions, a law requiring all Americans to carry health insurance. A large majority, 70 percent, opposes a new federal tax on employer-paid health insurance benefits that exceed $17,000 a year.

 

Majority support for certain new government action, however, does not come with high hopes: Half of all Americans said they think the quality of their health care will stay about the same if the system changes, and 31 percent expect it to deteriorate.

The poll data is available here.  Here’s part of the data below: