Maggie's Farm

Pity us San Diegans.  It’s really hard to get too worked up about anything when you live in paradise.  Especially when today’s Tea Party was held at perhaps the most crowded, impossible to park at site in our area, the beautiful Mission Bay Park, magnet for picnicking and water-frolicking families and friends.  Mile long lines to exit I5, then a two-lane access road of bumper-to-bumper traffic hemmed in by the largest congregation of monster RV’s who must have arrived at dawn to hog 5+ parking spaces apiece.

The several hundred who showed up for the Tea Party at 11 AM had to hike in a mile or two, if not giving up.  I persevered, finding a spot on the other side of Fiesta Island, enjoying the long walk in the balmy, sea breeze sun, counting thongs, and watching the ski boaters.

Fellow walkers.

I finally arrived. For the drivers crawling along, this roadside bunch received honks and cheers from thousands of traffic-clogged drivers.  No road rage here, just Obama-irked.

Here’s a photo of the crowd as I approached.

My Catskills humor, whoever picked this spot has less judgment than the President, drew chuckles from the crowd of laid-back San Diegans.  Better received than the droning on of the featured speakers, an organizer telling me no local notables invited. Would have had to commandeer a Marine chopper and rapelled in, anyway.

Appreciated being given a free pocket-size, indexed  Constitution, on the front: “…its only keepers, the people” quote from George Washington, and more good Founders’ quotes inside the covers.

These Don’t Tread On Me T-shirts sold out at only $10 each.  As many Don’t Tread On Me flags waving as Stars-n-Stripes.

So, that’s what the Tea in Tea Party stands for.

Friendly people wherever I stopped.

I didn’t see anyone passing contact lists or such.  A nice event, but some work needed to build an activist movement.  But, in San Diego’s paradise, we’re just Lotusized.

Now, I’m on to the juiciest, meatiest rack of ribs, and some delectable Belgian beer. Happy 4^th.

BTW, here's some other Tea Parties, courtesy of Instapundit Glenn Reynolds.

To our independence we owe that our first among firsts President, George Washington, labored to keep a poorly supplied army in the field.  George Washington had at his back a Jew, Haym Solomon, largely responsible for obtaining crucial funding. (See below)  Now we have as President a man of another stripe, whose commitment to our security and the lives of our fighting men and women is summed up as WTF!  That seems his attitude toward others’ as well, say Israel for example, or to be made an example of his pusillanimity.

Jules Crittendon and Herschel Smith bring us, sadly, up to date.

First Crittendon:

Bob Woodward on the ground at Camp Leatherneck reported this morning in an article ridiculously headlined, Preventing Another Iraq/US Says Key to Success in Afghanistan: Economic, Not Military, that the Obama admin considers it a “new era.” 

 

The headline is not Woodward’s fault, except to the extent he buried and obfuscated his lede. He reports after the jump that National Security Advisor James L. Jones briefed commanders on the ground that there won’t be more troops, that requests for more troops will prompt a “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” response in the Oval Office.

 

That’s your lede, Bob. There’s your hed, Washington Post copy desk. Obama to Troops: “WTF?” 

 

…

 

…Jones knew when he took the job it would involve smiling through a lot of shit sandwiches. Shit sandwiches like telling other Marines, going into combat, “Sorry boys, you don’t get what you need. Not because we can’t give it to you. But because President Nancypants won’t give it to you. Doesn’t like the way war looks on him and he’ll go all Whiskey Tango Foxtrot if you try to foist it on him. So suck it up.”

 

…

 

Too bad. It’s something American troops have dealt with before and will most earnestly endeavor to deal with now. Maybe they can pull it off. The United States military, after all, has proven remarkably resourceful, resilient and adaptive not just in these wars but in all the wars it has fought. It would be helpful this time, going into this difficult task, if the Commander in Chief’s attitude toward the expertise of the men who will to the heavy lifting was something other than “What the fuck?”

 

Now Smith concludes:

So we now know that the current administration sees Operation Enduring Freedom as the WTF? war.  We know that the National Security Advisor doesn’t have the fortitude to whisper the hard things in the ear of the President.  We know that the President doesn’t really want to deploy more troops to Afghanistan, and we also know that the Colonels want more troops to cover their area of operations.

 

This sets the stage for the coming phase of the campaign.  We have seen this before in Iraq: hasty turnover to the ISF and more difficult counterinsurgency than had previously been planned.  The dissimilarity is a President who was willing to send the necessary forces to get the job done.

 

Now, Wikipedia on Haym Solomon:

Solomon negotiated the sale of a majority of the war aid from France and Holland, selling bills of exchange to American merchants. Solomon also personally supported various members of the Continental Congress during their stay in Philadelphia, including James Madison and James Wilson. Acting as the patriot he was, he requested below market interest rates, and he never asked for repayment.^[4]…

 

In 1975 the United States Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp honoring Haym Saloman for his contributions to the cause of the American Revolution. This stamp, like others in the "Contributors to the Cause" series, was printed on the front and the back. On the glue side of the stamp, the following words were printed in pale, green ink:

 

"Financial Hero—Businessman and broker Haym Solomon was responsible for raising most of the money needed to finance the American Revolution and later to save the new nation from collapse." The Congressional Record of March 25, 1975 reads, "When Morris was appointed Superintendent of Finance, he turned to Solomon for help in raising the money needed to carry on the war and later to save the emerging nation from financial collapse. Solomon advanced direct loans to the government and also gave generously of his own resources to pay the salaries of government officials and army officers. With frequent entries of 'I sent for Haym Solomon,' Morris' diary for the years 1781–84 records some 75 transactions between the two men."

 

Haym Solomon died unpaid back and broke.

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."