National Center at CPAC

If you are attending the Conservative Political Action Conference this week at the National Harbor resort near Washington, D.C., be sure to check out the large number of National Center staff and volunteers who will be speaking and working at the 40^th annual gathering of conservative activists and luminaries.

On Friday at 11:00AM, Jeff Stier — the director of the National Center’s Risk Analysis Division — will be participating in a panel discussion that will be held in the Potomac Ballroom.  On the panel, entitled “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Plastic Water Bottles, Fracking, Genetically Modified Foods and Big Gulp Sodas,” Jeff will discuss how irrational fears and the nanny-state policies they produce are not actually making our society a better, healthier and less-risky place.  Jeff will be joined by other regulatory policy experts from other fine organizations such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Independent Women’s Forum.

Also on Friday, Project 21 member Charles Butler will be participating in the panel discussion entitled “Fatherless America: The Headwaters of Poverty, Crime and Social Dysfunction.”  This panel will be held at 3:00PM in the National Harbor 2 & 3 conference rooms.  Moderated by another Project 21 member — Niger Innis of the Congress of Racial Equality — Charles joins social policy experts such as Dr. Richard Land of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission to talk about how welfare state policies are helping to destroy the traditional family, and the black family in America in particular.

During the Saturday session, catch Horace Cooper — an adjunct fellow of the National Center and co-chairman of the National Center’s Project 21 black leadership network — on the “Emerging Issues for Conservatives, 2013” panel to be held at 1:00PM in the Chesapeake A-C conference rooms.  Joined by Peter Roff of U.S. News and World Report and Fox News Channel contributor Jim Pinkerton, Horace will talk at least in part about his recent paper “Coming to a Car Near You?  The Department of Transportation’s Creepy Black Box.”  That paper highlights the potential threat to privacy that is posed by proposed regulations to mandate that all new cars carry very methodical recording packages which may be able to track driving performance as well as where someone actually drives.

On top of all of that, National Center staff will be making regular visits to CPAC’s “Radio Row” throughout the event to interview face-to-face with the many hosts they regularly talk to over the phone.  National Center policy experts such as Free Enterprise Project director Justin Danhof and senior fellow David Hogberg, as well as Project 21 co-chairman Cherylyn Harley LeBon and member Hughey Newsome, will be conducting scheduled interviews and many special “drop-by” chats with the many media personalities from across the nation who have come to town to broadcast from CPAC.

Silly Small Businesses! Health Insurance Decisions Are For The Anointed

It’s not clear if Wendell Potter was a man of the left before he jumped ship from an insurance company to become one of ObamaCare’s biggest apologists.  If not, he’s certainly absorbed many of the left’s mannerisms since then.

At issue is the growing practice of small businesses “self-insuring” to avoid some of the costlier mandates of ObamaCare.  As Competitive Enterprise Institute’s John Berlau puts it, self-insuring “offers both smaller firms and younger employees a chance to escape the costs of subsidizing everyone else’s insurance” on the ObamaCare exchanges.  Previously it was very difficult for small firms to self-insure because with such a small number of employees paying into the insurance pool, the insurance pool would be too small to cover the costs if one or two employees became gravely ill.  But now small employers can buy “stop-loss” policies which will cover the costs above a certain amount if one employees runs up big health care costs.

Potter is incensed because this could undermine the very purpose of ObamaCare, which is forcing the the young and healthy to subsidize the sick and the old.  Potter doesn’t describe it in those terms.  Rather, like a good lefty polemicist, he pulls a sleight of hand and writes that ObamaCare is supposed “to make coverage more affordable and available to all of us, not just the young and healthy”—implying that it is supposed to make it affordable to the young and healthy.  But Potter almost slips up when he further writes that it’s “essential that the exchanges attract younger healthier people who get sick less in order to keep coverage for others affordable.”  He’s careful, though, never to say that this arrangement will mean that the young and healthy will pay more, even though they will as a recent analysis in Contingencies demonstrated.  

What’s happening here is that small businesses are trying to provide insurance to their employees by avoiding costly ObamaCare regulations.  Describing it that way, though, casts it in a positive light, so Potter trots out the lefty trope of the greedy Big Insurers vs. the people:

…insurers have turned once again to the Chamber [of Commerce], this time to wage a behind-the-scenes campaign aimed at state insurance commissioners. If they succeed, insurers will be able to sell a highly profitable insurance product to a highly targeted group of small employers — those with mostly young and healthy workers….

The key to this fight are those state insurance commissioners. Their organization, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, just wrapped up its fall meeting in Washington, where consumer advocates were pitted against lobbyists for big insurers and their old friend, the Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber has taken the lead in pressuring the NAIC to make it easy for insurers to sell stop-loss coverage to small businesses wanting to avoid many of the ACA’s consumer protections. Those protections aren’t a small matter; they would, among other things, prohibit insurers from charging people higher premiums because of their gender, age and health status. Buying stop-loss coverage would also allow employers to largely side-step any regulation at the state level….

This would be an almost irresistible deal for small employers with mostly young, healthy male workers.

First notice that Potter refers to the prohibitions on age and health rating as “consumer protections” instead of what they really are, costly regulations.  Of course, by referring to them as consumer protections he obscures the fact that they will raise the cost of premiums, especially for the young and healthy.  

Finally notice that he calls the deal “irresistible” for small employers.  Those big insurers are offering a very seductive product, and small business just can’t be trusted to do the right thing.  Potter never acknowledges that perhaps small business owners have given this considerable thought and decided it is the best way to keep their employees insured while at the same time keep their businesses running.  Of course not.  Like all good leftists, Potter wants the wise, anointed ones in government to make those decisions for small businesses:

This “has the potential to cause the collapse of the exchanges and completely circumvent the intent of Congress. The intent of Congress was to make coverage more affordable and available to all of us, not just the young and healthy.”

Yes, naturally, we are all supposed to subjugate ourselves to the intent of Congress.  The wise, noble and omniscient 535 men and women who are our moral and intellectual betters.  That the roughly 300 million other people in the nation might have their own ideas about how to best procure health insurance and would look for ways around government regulations; and that Congress would neither have enough knowledge or foresight to envision how ObamaCare might turn out despite their intentions, well, there is a book about that type of thinking and it would be so nice if members of Congress actually read it.  Heck, it would be a big improvement if Potter actually thumbed its pages.

Alas, don’t count on it.  Potter and his ilk are too busy saving small businesses from themselves.

A Message from the Queen...

…sent on the occasion of 100th Anniversary of the income tax.

"You have taxation WITH representation. How's that working out for ya?"

P.S. Yes, we know the anniversary was in February, but it takes a while for a message to cross the Atlantic.

Electronic Health Records Heading For Iceberg. HHS Says 'Full Steam Ahead!'

Last week the Dept. of Health and Human Services announced its “2013 agenda to bring down costs and improve quality of care through implementation of health information technology.”  That included “setting the goal of 50 percent of physician offices using electronic health records…and 80 percent of eligible hospitals receiving meaningful use incentive payments by the end of 2013.”

That’s the great thing about government bureaucrats:  they get to spend other people’s money on such projects, which means they don’t have to worry about whether the projects are working.  Thus far, the federal government’s push for electronic health records (EHRs) has left something to be desired.

For starters, EHRs don’t seem to be saving money as promised.  According to a New York Times article, EHRs have made it easier for physicians and hospitals to “upcode”—that is, to bill for services that are reimbursed at a higher rate, even if they aren’t entirely justified.  Hospitals “that received government incentives to adopt electronic records showed a 47 percent rise in Medicare payments at higher levels from 2006 to 2010…compared with a 32 percent rise in hospitals that have not received any government incentives,” according to the article.

On the physician side, installing EHRs costs money, and there is no guarantee that they will boost physicians’ incomes.  Indeed, they may be quite deterimental to doctors’ bottom lines.  A recent  Health Affairs article found that “the average physician would lose $43,743 over five years” after investing in EHRs.

Finally, EHRs are supposed to improve the quality for patients by helping them avoid drug interactions and unnecessary tests.  That is, if the physicians pay enough attention to the EHRs.  Politico reports on a JAMA Internal Medicine article that studied physicians’ use of EHRs at the Veterans Administration hospitals.  Politico notes that EHRs “may cause doctors the unintended side effect of information overload. The survey of primary-care practitioners from the Department of Veterans Affairs shows nearly one-third of those using the EHR system reported having missed or failed to follow up on key electronic alerts about patient test results.”

Given the lackluster results, the wise course for HHS would be to take a wait and see attitude before setting anymore EHR goals.  And you can bet that is exactly what HHS won’t do: “The goals build on the significant progress HHS and its partners have already made on expanding health information technology use.  EHR adoption has tripled since 2010, increasing to 44 percent in 2012 and computerized physician order entry has more than doubled (increased 168 percent) since 2008.”  

Photo: iStockPhoto.com

It Costs A Million To Answer The Million-Dollar Question: “Is This Fishery Sustainable?”

The Maine lobster fishery predates the founding of the United States of America.  Its scientific management regime is run by the State of Maine and paid for by tax dollars.  Still, answering the million-dollar question, “Is this fishery sustainable?” cost a cool million dollars.

The Marine Stewardship Council (MSC)’s certification program took fully five years and almost $300,000 to complete the paperwork to label just this one lobster fishery “sustainable.”  The price to keep the label for the next five years?  Another half a million to a million.

All this work was done to satisfy an uneasy public, worn down by years of “save the oceans” campaigns.  Unless lobsters carry the MSC label, Walmart won’t stock them.  Which begs the question: Lobster is so plentiful that even Walmart is stocking it in bulk?  Who’s next?  McDonald’s?

Beyond Walmart, other markets, especially in Europe, closed their doors to legally harvested lobster unless it had the MSC seal of approval.  To regain access, the lobstermen had to pay the MSC-certified certifiers. 

If this expensive and time-consuming process does not result in an increase in market share for Maine lobster, it’s probably not worth it, explained Patrice McCarron, the executive director of the Maine Lobstermen’s Association.

While the number of Maine lobstermen holding licenses has remained steady at approximately 6,700 for more than half a century, 2012 landings hit a record-breaking 63,000 short tons, over 125 million pounds, with a wholesale value of almost $350 million.

But what if landings, currently at record highs, decline and MSC revokes certification over concerns that the fishery is in trouble?  Lobsterman Jon Carter of Bar Harbor, a member of Maine’s Lobster Advisory Council, worries that such a blacklisting could leave the industry in worse shape than if it had never been certified. 

Said Carter:

The American lobster fishermen are afraid of this process.

Maine lobstermen have long maintained minimum and maximum catch sizes and generations of Maine lobstermen have cut small V-notch marks in the tails of the prolific egg-producing females, returning them to the sea to ensure a future supply of lobster.  The story of their forward-thinking conservation effort is beautifully told in Trevor Corson’s The Secret Life of Lobsters: How Fishermen and Scientists Are Unraveling the Mysteries of Our Favorite Crustacean.

Beyond stewardship, lobstermen currently benefit from water temperatures conducive to the survival of juvenile lobster.  And groundfish, believed to be major predators on juvenile lobster, have declined, a change cited as possibly responsible for the increase in lobster in the Gulf of Maine.

But as long as lows follow highs, lobster landings will decrease someday. When that happens, one can only hope that MSC doesn’t simply yank the label and close markets to hard working lobstermen.  They deserve better than that.

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Teresa Platt is the Director of the Environment and Enterprise Institute at the National Center for Public Policy Research.

Photo: iStockPhoto.com. 

You Can’t Follow a Rule You Can’t Read, Says Project 21’s LeBon

Earbuds.

That’s the latest passion of New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg.  It’s no longer that someone might be playing their music too loud and disturbing the neighbors.  Now, the mayor wants to jack into kids’ iPods to make sure what they are listening to isn’t too loud for their own private, personal enjoyment (as determined by the government).

Spending at least $250,000 in both private donations and taxpayer dollars, the “Hearing Loss Prevention Media Campaign” will reportedly convene focus groups and employ social media to target young people so that they may turn down their racket and allegedly lessen the risk of the rest of us having to deal with their deaf selves in the future.

But will kids be able to comprehend the mayor’s latest nanny-state message?

It seems that — while Bloomberg is crusading against noise, salt, trans fat in foods, soda and women who choose not to breast-feed their infants — New York City’s government-educated schoolchildren are slogging through a K-12 system that is not in the least bit preparing the overwhelming majority of them for anything very productive after they graduate.

Officials with the City University of New York system say that approximately 80 percent of city-run high school graduates essentially cannot function in CUNY schools.  These aspiring college students are being forced to take remedial classes in reading, writing and math — something the local CBS affiliate describes as “re-learn[ing]” basic skills.  Without these additional classes, it is considered doubtful that they could handle college-level coursework.

To show just how necessary these do-over classes are for Big Apple grads, aspiring CUNY freshman Nicholas Gonzalez told CBS: “If I started right away with credit classes it wasn’t going to be so well, so it’s better off starting somewhere.”

Cherylyn Harley LeBon, co-chairman of the National Center’s Project 21 black leadership network, writes frequently on this blog about Mayor Bloomberg’s nanny-state advocacy and his penchant for social engineering over social advancement and his apparent disinterest in his job’s basic duties.  She is always surprised by the state of affairs in New York City — both the poor educational quality and the ever-growing assault on personal choice.

Cherylyn, the mother of two young children, writes:

Nanny Bloomberg never ceases to amaze me with his ability to take on an increasingly parental role for all of the children — and even the adults — in New York City.

This latest initiative, against a backdrop of clear evidence that New York City schools are clearly failing children, is further evidence that the mayor of Gotham’s priorities are misplaced.

I would love to see an initiative that addresses the low literacy rate among the city-run system’s high school graduates.  It is appalling that we still have this problem in 2013.

How can New York City’s children be expected to follow all of the many rules promulgated by Hizzoner if they are unable to master even the most basic college-level courses without remedial assistance?

I encourage Mayor Bloomberg to tackle the low college preparedness rates in New York City with the same vigor and determination as he has exhibited toward limiting the consumption of soda and salt and the use of Styrofoam containers.  After all, do we really think that limiting people to 16 ounces of soda at a time is more important than our children being prepared for college?

top photo credit: iStockphoto

Congress Cancels Climate Change Hearing Based On Off-Target Weather Prediction

The monstrous snowstorm, the “Snowquester” or “Winter Storm Saturn,” predicted to hit Washington, DC on Wednesday, March 6 never happened. 

Commented Jason Samenow, the Washington Post’s Chief Meteorologist: 

This was the biggest bust in the history of the Capital Weather Gang.

He’s right.  All DC got was a bit of rain.  But, based on the faulty prediction, the government and all the schools closed.  The Metro system lost money servicing 65,000 people, one quarter of its normal weekday ridership.  Businesses lost billions in revenue and productivity. 

These losses were all based on a prediction that more snow would fall on DC than it could handle, up to 10 inches.  Yes, that’s inches, not feet.

Faulty computer models were responsible for the off-target prediction, explained Samenow:

The major mistake was to accept computer models that said the amount of moisture in the storm would make up for the warmth of the air below.

Citing the predicted snowstorm that was not to be, the House Science, Space and Technology Committee cancelled a hearing on “Policy Relevant Climate Issues in Context.” 

The hearing featured speakers on the state of the science for predicting changes in climate over decades, all based on – you guessed it – computer models. 

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Teresa Platt is the Director of the Environment and Enterprise Institute at the National Center for Public Policy Research.

Photo: Teresa Platt

Project 21’s Derryck Green on Obama’s Poor Unemployment Numbers

In the days leading up to the budget sequester deadline, President Obama — in full demagogue mode — promised that all future economic news would be tainted by the sequester’s mandatory 2.4 percent cuts in future spending that he helped to create.

What about today’s unsatisfying but better February unemployment numbers?  Did the sequester create jobs?

That’s what he likely would have said had the unemployment rate increased (despite the fact that the cuts would not really have had an impact on February at all).  It didn’t — the official rate for joblessness actually fell two-tenths of a point.

But Obama’s threat last week does play to his craven need to campaign rather than govern.  It shows that he is willing to even politicize poor performance on his own part as a means of obfuscation and to prolong the downward spiral he has created.

This lack of leadership in Washington is decried by Project 21 member Derryck Green.  A regular commentator on the monthly unemployment numbers and what it means to the average American, Derryck finds all of this a “shameless attempt to recreate America in his big-government image.”  Furthermore, he doesn’t see and end to it as Obama is now no longer feeling burdened by the need to seek voter approval for himself.

Derryck says:

Our economy is continuing to stagnate under President Barack Obama’s leadership.

According to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of unemployed Americans went down — but not by much.  The 7.7 percent figure reported for February was still far higher than what President Obama promised it would be if the American people put him in the White House.

What’s worse, the alternative U-6 measure of unemployment that includes the unemployed, underemployed and those who have given up hope and are no longer looking posted at a very high 14.3 percent.

Additionally, key demographic groups — groups that put their trust in President Obama and helped him win another term — are still suffering disproportionately.  For example, the teen unemployment rate rose to 25.1 percent.  Blacks posted a unchanged rate of 13.8 percent unemployed.  Hispanics have a slightly improved 9.6 percent unemployment rate.

Why the continued malaise? 

In February, gas prices hit a all-time high for the month with a national average of $3.79 per gallon.  The average price for a gallon of unleaded at the end of the first week in March is still a very high $3.72.

Also, the government borrowed nearly $254 billion in just the month of February — almost six times the reported amount that sequestration will cut in 2013.

At the same time, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projected tax revenue will top $2.7 trillion this year — another record.  The CBO further reported that tax receipts for the rich — those Obama demanded “to pay a little more” — will be close to a 30-year high in 2013.

This seems to directly refute the President’s reported assertion to House Speaker John Boehner that “we don’t have a spending problem.”  We sure don’t seem to have a revenue problem!

All this indicates that Obama is wholly unconcerned about the American economy.  A signal of this came in his State of the Union Address.  The speech was largely devoid of serious consideration for improving economic confidence.  But it was chock full of fantastical aspirations about creating a big-government paradise and lacked in a serious and genuine intent to create an economic environment that might put more Americans back to work.

The President appears to intend to continue spending — or, as he calls it, “investing” — more money on “green energy.”  It’s been seen time and time again, however, that the only thing green about green energy is the taxpayer dollars continually being thrown away on this currently unreliable pursuit.  There’s also the desire to give amnesty and open up a stream of entitlements to illegal aliens, increasing the minimum wage — a sure bet to increase unemployment — and increasing restrictions for law-abiding citizens to exercise their Second Amendment right to own and safely use firearms.

Despite the clear and present economic danger, Obama also made no serious mention of how he might work to reduce yearly deficits or the nation’s growing debt that is now well over $16.5 trillion.

If one needed even more proof the President is more interested in increasing spending and government growth than concerned debt, one need look no further than his inexcusable behavior regarding sequestration.   According to several sources, including veteran journalist Bob Woodward, the idea of the sequestration and support for it came directly from the White House.  Yet the President spent the week prior to the actual sequester deadline whining — blaming conservative lawmakers for impending cuts while, at the same time, employing apocalyptical scare tactics that he’s now scaling back in an attempt to intimidate Congress into removing the spending cuts altogether.

This campaigning is apparently in lieu of Obama providing the obligatory leadership that his position demands and an adversity to working with Congress to considering redirecting cuts to other budgetary items.

In an attempt at compromising and giving Obama the ability to judiciously apportion the cuts as he preferred — and to push him toward leading — Senate conservative offered a bill to give the President legislative discretion to evenly distribute the cuts in a manner that might minimize the economic pain he predicted would result.  In a move that’s not surprising to anyone, Obama refused to take the lead — thus giving more weight to the notion that he is playing a political game of charades when it comes to sequestration.

And the House also recently passed legislation to deal with sequestration and keep the government operating until the end of September.  Now, it awaits Senate action.  Will Obama call his old friend, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, to put this on the fast-track so the government avoids a end-of-month shutdown? 

Keep in mind that the President himself admitted that unemployment numbers may shift upward if the cuts happened — which obviously means that more unemployment in the months ahead should be considered directly his fault because he admitted his intent to veto any bill that removed impending cuts.

More specifically, if he already knows — as he implies — that unemployment rates will increase as a result of the sequester and he didn’t sincerely attempt to work with Congress to avoid them through cutting other areas, he played politics with the livelihood of countless Americans.

That Obama is arguing against cutting virtually any government spending that could control the ever-growing debt is a definitive indicator that the man is intent on increasing government by any disingenuous means necessary.  The man wants bigger government, and his endorsement of liberal anti-sequestration legislation in the Senate that would have added over $7 billion to the budget is evidence of that fact.

But, in all of this, Obama did find time to encourage his Justice Department to interfere in the Proposition 8 gay marriage case before the U.S. Supreme Court in an effort to influence the justices’ consideration of legalizing gay marriage in California.  His wife found the time and the money amidst all of the cuts to fly around the country to promote her child fitness and nutrition program.

Priorities?  The President is ideologically unchained.

These are yet more examples of President Obama’s shameless attempt to recreate America in his big-government image.  With no election to look forward to, he seems to be finding his stride.  

lower photo credit: iStockphoto

Congress Should Repeal Limits On New Doctor-Owned Hospitals

My op-ed on physician-owned hospitals and Obamacare appeared in the Washington Examiner today:

Congress has already repealed some undesirable parts of Obamacare, such as its meddlesome tax form requirements for small businesses (the “1099 rule”) and the unsustainable long-term care program known as the CLASS Act. Others, such as the medical device tax and maybe even the Independent Payment Advisory Board, are inching their way toward the chopping block.

Congress should next eliminate Obamacare’s crushing restrictions on physician-owned hospitals. The restrictions were the result of a campaign by the Big Hospital lobby to stamp out smaller competition. And interestingly, Obamacare has already produced new evidence that physician-owned hospitals provide better quality than traditional community hospitals.

Read more here.

Ninth District Labels U.S. Charity "Pirates"

The flag for Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a U.S.-registered charity.The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the “Ninth District,” in San Francisco labeled a U.S. charity “pirates” while, on the other side of the planet, the charity was violating the Court’s injunction requiring it to stay 500 yards from cetacean researchers.  On February 26th, a large Sea Shepherd Conservation Society vessel placed itself squarely between a Japanese research vessel and its tender during an at-sea refueling.

Footage airing on Australian TV revealed how the dangerous stunt put all hands at risk in the Antarctic’s frigid Southern Ocean.  Discovery Channel chronicles Sea Shepherd’s aggressive and illegal tactics in its reality TV series Whale Wars.

The Ninth District Court upheld the injunction, originally issued in December 2012 after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the case mid-February.  Stated the Ninth District Court: 

The Sea Shepherds are pirates. Period. No district judge could fail to grasp the clarity and firmness of our opinion. …When you ram ships; hurl glass containers of acid; drag metal-reinforced ropes in the water to damage propellers and rudders; launch smoke bombs and flares with hooks; and point high-powered lasers at other ships, you are, without a doubt, a pirate, no matter how high-minded you believe your purpose to be. …A dangerous act, if committed often enough, will inevitably lead to harm, which could easily be irreparable. …Enjoining piracy sends no message about whaling; it sends the message that we will not tolerate piracy. Refusing the injunction sends the far more troublesome message that we condone violent vigilantism by U.S. nationals in international waters.

The Court’s injunction requires Sea Shepherd to operate in a safe manner while at sea:

Sea Shepherd’s Paul Watson.Defendants Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and Paul Watson, and any party acting in concert with them (collectively “defendants”), are enjoined from physically attacking any vessel engaged by Plaintiffs the Institute of Cetacean Research … in the Southern Ocean or any person on any such vessel (collectively “plaintiffs”), or from navigating in a manner that is likely to endanger the safe navigation of any such vessel. In no event shall defendants approach plaintiffs any closer than 500 yards when defendants are navigating on the open sea. 

The Court’s 2012 injunction was issued after Sea Shepherd’s founder Paul Watson resurfaced after he skipped bail in an effort to dodge other charges filed in Germany.  The International Criminal Police Organization, Interpol, has also issued notices for Watson’s arrest.

To comply with the Court’s December injunction, Paul Watson resigned as an officer of the charity’s U.S. and Australian corporations.  He then violated the ruling, giving interviews to the press from the Sea Shepherd vessel following the February 26th incident at sea.

Paul Watson on a Fund For Animals-financed Sea Shepherd vessel.

Registered as a charity in the U.S. (EIN 93-0792021) and Australia (ACN:123 339 499, ABN:38 123 339 499), Sea Shepherd has raised money on such exploits, growing from a rag-tag band of eco-warriors underwritten by grants from Fund for Animals (now merged with the Humane Society of the United States) to a multi-national organization with its own TV show and revenue of almost $12 million in 2011 - and legal fees of $1.4 million. 

Discovery Channel hyped Sea Shepherd’s illegal actions, season after season:

Captain Paul Watson and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society return for [another] adrenaline-fueled season of WHALE WARS, one of Animal Planet’s most-talked-about, best-performing and award-winning series to date.  WHALE WARS documents the Sea Shepherds …as they wage a high-risk battle and masterful chess match to find and stop Japanese ships from hunting whales in the name of research. 

Clearly, the work of Sea Shepherd results in ratings gold for Discovery Channel but it is not in the public benefit.  Its corporations induce the commission of criminal acts.  By doing so, “it increases the burden on government and thus thwarts a well recognized charitable goal, ie., the relief of the burdens of government.”

It’s time for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to revoke Sea Shepherd’s charitable status and require payment of taxes, back to the first incident of law breaking. 

At the very minimum, Sea Shepherd Conservation Society should be required to comply with the law of the land and the sea.

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Teresa Platt is the Director of the Environment and Enterprise Institute at the National Center for Public Policy Research. 

Photos 1 and 3: Discovery Channel. Photo 2: YouTube

Polar Bears In A Changing Climate: A Philosophical Showdown At CITES

Brown, black and white bear pelts at auction.A showdown over how to protect the Earth’s polar bears is happening now at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) where the Inuit, conservationists, hunters, two Big Green groups, the governments of Alaska, Canada and Nunavut, all stand opposed to a U.S. proposal to ban trade in polar bear products. 

Such a ban would severely hurt the economies of the High North where polar bear hunting and trade, along with sealing and fishing, are intrinsic components of lives well lived. 

The Canadian government estimates the population of polar bears, a white subspecies of the common brown bear, at an abundant 25,000 to 40,000 globally.  13,000 to 15,000 of those reside in Canada. Hunters take about 600 a year, about 4 to 5% of the Canadian stock.  They use the meat and bear fat, and profit from hunting fees, tourism income and revenue earned from the sale of various artifacts, including pelts, created from the carcass.

The U.S. government says an abundant population of white bears is irrelevant.  If the climate is warmer a hundred years from now, we might have less Arctic sea ice and therefore we might have fewer white polar bears.  This makes sense since the white fur of the polar bear is camouflage, an adaptation to snowy conditions.  Over hundreds of years, we might have more brown bears than white but right now, the population of white bears is robust. 

If nature does what it does best – changes – declines or increases are natural. Even changing coat colors over generations doesn’t necessary signal the “extinction” of bears, just adaptation and evolution - change.

So citing long-term “climate change” and relying heavily on science compiled by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UNIPCC), the Department of the Interior’s Fish & Wildlife Service (USF&WS) listed the polar bear as “threatened” under the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA). USF&WS followed up by declaring part of northern Alaska critical habitat for the polar bear.  At over 200,000 square miles, an area about the size of Texas, it is the largest critical habitat ever designated. 

Bear claws.Abundant polar bears used to generate revenue

The ESA listing added another layer of U.S. federal government protection on polar bears that have been fully protected under the U.S. Marine Mammal Protection Act since 1972 and under international treaty since 1973. The bears are also managed locally by Alaska, the Canadian provinces, the government of Nunavut and the other various countries where they range.

The ESA listing also triggered a round of fundraising by animal rights corporations which hailed the “decision to try and pull polar bears back from the brink of extinction.”  The Boston Globe reported:

The polar bear is unique among species protected under the Endangered Species Act because it is the first to be designated as threatened because of global warming.

Shortly after listing the polar bear, the USF&WS listed abundant populations of seals, again citing threats from possible future changes in climate. 

Eyebrows were raised in Alaska and Canada, Nunavut, Denmark, Norway, Russia and Greenland where tens of millions of seals reside, food for 19 different sub-popultions of Arctic polar bears – abundant, healthy populations of polar bears. 

So healthy, in fact, that the Department of Environment of the Government of Nunavut, Canada increased polar bear hunting quotas almost 30% just a few years ago.

What the Inuit, scientists in Alaska and Canada are seeing is in direct conflict with what the U.S. federal government is saying.  The State of Alaska argued that the U.S. federal government:

…applied a standard so imprecise that the Service could conceivably use it to list any healthy species whose habitat is projected to be affected by climate change, without making a future ‘on-the-brink’ determination.

The USF&WS argued back that the ESA listing drew more attention to polar bears, triggering funding for its programs including patrols to limit contact with humans and a “recovery” plan for the bears.

The publicity did benefit the USF&WS budget.  Funding for its polar bear-related work increased by $3.2 million plus another $1.2 million was allocated for communications and education and “creating Service funded positions” in Alaska.

The publicity generated tens of millions more for “save the polar bear” campaigns run by “green” groups, begging the question:

If they really believe fossil fuels are causing apocalyptic climate change, why are they using synthetic (fossil fuel-based materials instead of natural fibers in the millions of polar bear plush toys they sell every year? Tsk. Tsk.

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF), one of the world’s largest transnational “conservation” corporations, uses such synthetic fiber polar bear plush toys in its fundraising.  It received almost $3 million in a partnership with CocaCola to: 

…raise awareness and funds to help create a place where polar bears and people can thrive in the Arctic.

Along with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature/Speciesl Survival Commission (IUCN/SSC) and its Polar Bear Specialist Group, WWF is opposing the U.S. proposal to ban trade in polar bear products.  It appears to understand that prosperity for Arctic communities depends on freely traded goods sustainably harvested from living natural resources. The philosophical showdown at CITES is an important discussion.

Seal pelts at a Canadia auction.Changes in Arctic sea ice mean changes in sea life

The USF&WS stands firm, arguing that declines in sea ice in the Arctic threaten polar bears.

The Arctic icecap, the North Pole, covers an area over 3 million square miles, from Greenland to northeastern Siberia.  The summer minimum of sea ice in the Arctic from 1979 to 1983 averaged 2.76 million square miles, or 51% percent of the surface of the Arctic Ocean. It then declined.  Summer Arctic ice hit a low for the satellite era (since 1979), falling to 24% of the Arctic Ocean in 2012.  We’ve seen this in the past before and about once every seven years, ships temporarily navigate the Northwest Passage in summer. 

Yes, the polar bears survived those changes.

Meanwhile, in the Southern Hemisphere at the South Pole, Antarctic winter sea ice hit a record high at 7.5 million square miles in 2012. No polar bears down there, just penguins.  USF&WS is not considering listing them. 

In a key paper (Stirling and Parkinson, 2006) used by the USF&WS, scientists stated:

We hypothesize that, if the climate continues to warm as projected by the [United Nations’] Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UNIPCC), then polar bears in all five populations… will be increasingly food-stressed, and their numbers are likely to decline eventually, probably significantly so.

Predictions of starving polar bears now seem outdated as massive phytoplankton blooms under the Arctic sea ice are kick starting the food chain, benefitting all species in the Arctic, including fish, seals, polar bears and man. 

The National Snow and Ice Data Center reports:

Arctic sea ice extent for January 2013 was well below average, largely due to extensive open water in the Barents Sea and near Svalbard [Norway].  The Arctic Oscillation also remained in a primarily negative phase. …December of 2012 saw Northern Hemisphere snow cover at a record high extent, while January 2013 is the sixth-highest snow cover extent on record since 1967.

So, after almost two decades of no global warming trend, snow is back in the Northern Hemisphere, record snow.  Will ice follow?

Brown or white, the bears are here to stay.  Seals and fish too.  Here’s hoping the Inuit, and all the communities of the High North, thrive - along with their wildlife - forever.

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Teresa Platt is the Director of the Environment and Enterprise Institute at the National Center for Public Policy Research.

Top Two Photos: Teresa Platt; Third Photo: Dion Dakins, Carino Processing Limited, Newfoundland, Canada.

For more on polar bears see this interesting report by Susan Crockford.

Jeb Bush's Original Idea Creates An Incentive For People To Come Illegally

Ex-Gov. Jeb Bush has a new book out in which he advocates a pathway to “legal residency” but not citizenship for the estimated 11 million illegal aliens presently in the U.S.  They would never be allowed to become citizens, something which Bush thinks would discourage more illegals from coming in the future.

Byron York noticed that Bush hedged a little on this in an interview on Tuesday:

“If you can craft that in law, where you can have a path to citizenship where there isn’t an incentive for people to come illegally, I’m for it,” Bush told MSNBC Tuesday morning.  “I don’t have a problem with that.  I don’t see how you do it, but I’m not smart enough to figure out every aspect of a really complex law.”

Hate to break it to Bush, but his proposal of “legal residency, but never citizenship” still provides a big incentive for future waves of illegal immigrants to come to the U.S.

First, it sends the message to prospective illegal aliens that they can come to the U.S. and eventually will be allowed to stay here permanently.  No, they won’t have all the benefits of full citizenship, but so what?  They can still come here without all the hassles of doing so legally via U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.  And, just remember, the children they have here will be full citizens.   

Furthermore, does Bush really think that granting legal residency to the 11 million illegals settles the matter?  After all they aren’t just 11 million legal residents; they are also 11 million potential voters.  Surely the Democrats and their allies like MALDEF and La Raza realize that.  If you think once they are made legal residents there won’t soon be folks advocating to give them full citizenship, I have real estate in Brooklyn for sale, really cheap!

It’s hard to believe that Bush isn’t aware of that.  Is he really that naive?  Or perhaps it is like Mickey Kaus suggests, that a “not entirely conscious urge seems to overtake Republicans, even conservatives… when they are in the midst of Hispanic Panic and would really, really, like to find a way to say ‘yes’ to amnesty.”

In the end, the message inherent in doing what Bush suggests is come here illegally and eventually we’ll make you legal.  And don’t worry about the citizenship part, because there are plenty of political players with an incentive to make sure that “legal residency, but never citizenship” is only temporary.

photo credit: iStockphoto

Project 21 Co-Chairman Defends Voter ID

A discussion purportedly about the Supreme Court case of Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder turns into a broader discussion about voter ID.  While it seems that left-wing show host Thom Hartmann and like-minded panelist Ben Cohen of The Daily Banter have prepared to wage this fight, they are still no challenge to Project 21 co-chairman Cherylyn Harley LeBon.  Cherylyn, joined by Patrick Howley of the Daily Caller, make many strong points in favor of protecting the ballots of all Americans against fraudsters who would seek to nullify legal votes.

This exchange took place on the 2/26/13 edition of “The Big Picture” on the RT (Russia Today) network.

Coming Soon: Sequester Part II

What do you think the odds are that you’d find a member of Congress who is enthusiastic about the sequester?  If you said, “Slim and None, and Slim is walking out the door,” you’d be generous.

So why, as the title suggests, do I think we’ll probably see another in the not-too-distant future?  Two reasons: 1. Congress and the President are going to have to cut spending; and 2. Sequester is the worst way to do it except for all the others.

Since 1 isn’t that controversial, let’s discuss 2.

Most politicians—Democrat and Republican—hate spending cuts because it means that their chances of getting reelected decline.  The sequester, however, does less damage to those chances than any other method.

To see what I mean, let’s first consider what would happen if politicians cut spending via what might be called the “responsible way.”  Both sides would sit down, work out a package of spending cuts and then pass it.  The problem with doing that is neither side would have anyone to blame if voters got angry at them for the spending cuts.

A sequester helps politicians avoid that problem.  With a sequester, politicians pass a set of spending cuts that occur at some point in the future unless they can come up with some other agreement.  If they don’t reach that agreement, they can blame each other for the resulting cuts.

And have they ever been doing just that!  President Obama says the sequester was congressional Republicans’ idea, while the GOP says it was his.  If you believe Bob Woodward, it was originally President Obama’s idea.  But whose idea it was is not that relevant to the question of who is responsible since congressional Republicans passed the sequester and President Obama signed it.  Clearly, both sides are responsible.

And that, sad to say, is the cynical genius of the sequester.  Both sides can say the other side is to blame.  Both sides can say they had a better plan to put in place of the sequester, but the other side just wouldn’t agree to it (something else they have been doing plenty of).  Voters will likely have a hard time sorting it out, which means they’ll have a hard time knowing which politicians to hold responsible.  Voters who can’t figure out who is at fault are less likely to blame their Representative or Senator—thus, a sequester is less politically damaging.

As long as politicians have to cut spending, they’ll reach for the method that enables them to take the least amount of responsibility.  Until someone comes up with a better method, sequester fits the bill.

Kick Voting Rights Enforcement Old School, Project 21's Cooper Says

Horace Cooper, co-chairman of the National Center’s Project 21 black leadership network, says that — from the tenor of the Supreme Court arguments — the outcome of the case of Shelby County, Alabama v. Holder is a “very close call.”  Nonetheless, Horace believes that the “preclearance standard falls” because the majority of the justices will likely rule that selective scrutiny of certain states and localities for Voting Rights Act violations can no longer pass constitutional muster.

In a discussion with Buck Sexton on “Real News” (found on Glenn Beck’s BlazeTV), Horace criticizes the current politicized enforcement of the Voting Rights Act’s Section 5 that was the issue before the Supreme Court.  He point out that “[w]hat we ought to be focused on are actual things that motivated the Voting Rights Act” such as voter intimidation and ballot destruction.

Other “Real News” commentators participating in the discussion on 2/27/13 are Will Cain, S.E. Cupp, Amy Holmes and Ben Domenech.

To read more about Project 21’s legal brief in the Shelby County case, click here.

Yesterday a Very Busy One at The National Center for Public Policy Research

Yesterday was a big day for The National Center: Two corporate shareholder meetings and oral arguments in Shelby County v. Holder before the Supreme Court, a case that we'd urged the Court to take up in an amicus brief.

Free Enterprise Project Director Justin Danhof was in Moline, IL taking the CEO of John Deere to task for defunding ALEC.

Project 21 Co-Chairman Horace Cooper attended Apple's shareholder meeting in Cupertino, CA to grill its CEO over its push for sustainability standards that undermine the free market.

Project 21 Co-Chairman Cherylyn Harley LeBon spoke with media outside the U.S. Supreme Court about why Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act should be overturned. After the high court had accepted Shelby Co., we filed a 29-page amicus making that case.

There was lots of media on our efforts yesterday, but here's a sample: Cherylyn Harley LeBon was interviewed by Reuters, Black Entertainment Television, the Examiner and photographed by Getty (all outside the Supreme Court on the Shelby Co. case); Horace Cooper was interviewed by CNBC (Apple) and Blaze TV (Shelby County case) and both MSNBC's "Hardball" and PBS's "News Hour" have contact us about possible bookings on Shelby Co. v. Holder (Horace has already been on MSNBC this topic once, this past weekend -- see one clip here); and Bloomberg and the AP were in touch regarding coverage of Justin Danhof's work vis-a-vis John Deere.

The National Center is busy every day -- literally -- but two shareholder meetings and a Supreme Court case on a single day made yesterday especially so. Kudos to the above staffers as well as Executive Director David Almasi and to Judy Kent and Jennifer Biddison of our media and internet support teams, who were kept busy all day long fielding media calls and keeping our information up-to-date on the internet.

Project 21 Members Speak Sequester

As the government hovers on the edge of sequestration budget restrictions, members of the Project 21 black leadership network are speaking out about the failure of liberal policymaking that has led us to this point.

Hughey P. Newsome:

While the Obama Administration and Republicans in Congress continue to spar over the pending sequester cuts to federal spending, there is an inevitability that nobody can escape but few seem willing to admit.

The key figures to remember are $85 billion and $845 billion.  First, $85 billion is the projected amount of cuts that the sequester will actually bring this year.  All of the doom and gloom that we are hearing will likely only result in only $85 billion in spending cuts during 2013.  Compare that to the approximately $845 billion projected federal deficit for fiscal year 2013.

Basically, the cuts translate to only a ten percent drop in just the deficit — not the accumulated debt, but the deficit.  In other words, all of this agonizing revolves around us getting tough to only ten percent of our overspending for just this year.

President Obama and other liberal politicians are acting as if such cuts are immoral and can be avoided by making the rich “pay their fair share.”  There is no evidence that a reasonable tax hike on the rich will fix our fiscal problems.  If the government takes 100 percent of what “the rich” earn each year, it will help pay down the deficit but not guarantee no further loss of tax income going forward.  This is especially true considering that “the rich” — or anyone else, for that matter — will not work just to pay taxes.

We also have to face a larger truth.  The bill passed to avoid the fiscal cliff — the same bill that allowed the middle class to avoid a tax hike — kept spending the same for two months and hiked taxes on the rich — and added to the deficit, per the scoring of the Congressional Budget Office.  We have to admit that we cannot, as a society, have as big of a government as liberals seem to want to promise without finding the will to pay for it.

We will ALL have to pay for it in the end.  “The rich” will only be able to provide so much.  Eventually, the house of cards will collapse.

The sad part is that if that house does collapse, the liberals who continually overpromised, under-delivered and exacerbated the problem will already have roads, schools and bridges named after them.

And it will then be up to the rest of us as well as our children and grandchildren to solve the problem.

Shelby Emmett:

Sequestration is a horrible idea.

What we need are actual reforms of our entire budget process — including entitlements.  More importantly, and to get this done, policymakers need to take their jobs seriously.

Politicians are supposed to be sworn to uphold the Constitution.  This, by the Constitution, means only funding programs and passing laws that are actually under the purview of the federal government.

At the end of the day, Congress should pass budgets, control war and help conduct foreign relations.  It needs to stop sticking its nose in the business — and responsibilities — of the states and the people, respectively.

The states are to blame as well.  On one side of their mouths, governors and state legislatuors demand independence and autonomy.  But they often also claim the world is going to end if there are any cuts in their federal revenue streams.

Federal spending is like a drug.  The states, the people and the politicians are addicted to it.  It is time we had an intervention.

It is time the world saw that— if the federal government was significantly reduced — our schools would still be open, police would still get paid and the sun would still come out tomorrow.

Stacy Washington:

The idea that President Obama is now claiming to be against impending sequester cuts on future spending would be laughable if the premise wasn’t so insulting to the millions of Americans who live by a budget.

Although the President may have forgotten that the sequester was his idea, Americans have not.  In fact, the President believed in the mechanism so much that, in January of 2011, he threatened to veto any legislation that restored government spending.  
Now, Americans are forced to watch as the same President Obama implies that firefighters and other first responders — those employed by state and local governments and not the feds — may lose their jobs.

It’s as if Obama doesn’t understand the most salient point of fact pertaining to the sequester: the cuts aren’t really cuts but merely reductions in spending increases.  That’s right, the cuts amount to a measly 2.4 percent of future spending.  All the agonizing is about $85 billion less being spent for this year.  It’s not enough!  That much could be cut by simply not hiring replacements for government employees after they retire.  Attrition, by the way, is a well-used technique to trim budgets in the private sector.
It should be remembered that any time a governmental entity is forced to make cuts in lieu of increasing spending through higher taxation, that entity will cut programs with a face.

Programs that people love such as parks or services that the public naturally associates with government are cut first in what’s called the “Washington Monument Strategy.”  Instead of cutting travel, meals, perks, employee bonuses, fraud, waste or small cuts across the board to level off the impact, cynical government planners will eliminate all services in one area to punish unwilling taxpayers.

When the public feels the pain and begs for a return of the status quo, so goes the strategy, the money is restored and all is right with the world.  And government is spending more again.
The real reason that Obama has flip-flopped from creating and supporting the sequester to using it to bludgeon Congress is quite simple: he wants to raise more taxes.

Even though the fiscal cliff deal won Obama a tax hike, he now wants more.  He wants to close so-called loopholes, such as ones pertaining to charitable giving and other things with names such as the “Facebook break,” “Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich” and “carried interest.”

So, it turns out that the big, scary sequester is really just another ploy to avoid cutting future spending while hiking taxes.  Were folks actually fooled into thinking this was about jobs or leadership?  Open up your wallets, folks, the President is looking for another dip.

Reporter Examines Hospitals, Falls In Love With Government-Run Health Care

Journalist Steven Brill has penned a 20,000-plus word article for TIME magazine examining the way hospitals charge for services.  The best way to describe the article is, “It’s well worth the time to read it until he starts talking about Medicare.”

Brill exposes hospitals’ use of a “chargemaster,” a computer file that lists the price for just about everything a hospital does.  The prices in the chargemaster are almost always inflated, in part as a way to negotiate the best rates from private insurers (private insurers almost never pay the chargemaster rate.).  However, they are also the prices that patients who must pay out-of-pocket get hit with.  Brill recounts the “sticker shock” and other travails these patients go through and the evasiveness that hospital administrators exhibit when pressed to explain the rationale behind the prices in the chargemaster.

So far, so good.

But while Brill has a critical view of hospital finance, his critical faculties fail him when discussing Medicare.  Indeed, his view of Medicare is so sentimental that after a while it’s not clear if you’re reading a report about Medicare or an advertisement for it.  TIME could be forgiven for sending the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services a bill.  

Here is how Brill compares Medicare to the rest of the health-care system: 

Unless you are protected by Medicare, the health care market is not a market at all. It’s a crapshoot. People fare differently according to circumstances they can neither control nor predict.

If Brill thinks Medicare isn’t a crapshoot, he should interview some of the people who were denied physical and other types therapy by Medicare.  According to Politico:

Some people were able to get that care only if it could help them get better — not if it was aimed at keeping them stable or slowing a predictable decline. That became known as the ‘improvement standard.’ The care was only for those who would improve…Millions of Americans with Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis and a host of other chronic conditions could benefit from broader access to treatments that would help maximize their quality of life. 

Those people were denied treatment until recently when the Dept. of Health and Human Services settled a lawsuit that overturns the “improvement standard.” But this is not the first time that Medicare didn’t cover a service that was vital to some beneficiaries and will probably not be the last.

Here’s how Brill further romanticizes Medicare:

Indeed, the only player in the system that seems to have to balance countervailing interests the way market players in a real market usually do is Medicare. It has to answer to Congress and the taxpayers for wasting money, and it has to answer to portions of the same groups for trying to hold on to money it shouldn’t.

Medicare answers to the taxpayers?  Or does it answer to the groups that pressure Congress on Medicare policy, such as the American Hospital Association, the Federation of American Hospitals, etc?  Actually, Brill recognizes this when he writes, “organizations representing doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, health services and HMOs, have spent $5.36 billion since 1998 on lobbying in Washington.”   So which is it?  Taxpayers or lobbyists?

Brill genuinely thinks it’s taxpayers because Medicare is so good at administering hospital claims.  Or, more accurately, it is good at monitoring the private companies that administer Medicare’s hospital claims.  The process Medicare uses is, according to Brill, “fast, accurate, customer-friendly, and impressively high-tech.”  The Medicare bureaucrats produce codes for medical procedures that are used in billing and the “codes they write are supposed to ensure that Medicare pays what it is supposed to pay and catches anything in a bill that is not supposed to be paid.” If the codes work properly, they “produce ‘edits’ whenever a bill is submitted with something awry on it—if a doctor submits two preventive-care colonoscopies for the same in the in the same year, for example.”  It all works so well that only 10% of claims are denied and only one-tenth of those are ever reversed.  

Brill acknowledges that this means that Medicare may be “funneling money out the door as fast as it can.  Some fraud is inevitable…It’s also possible that people can game the system without committing outright fraud.”  But not to worry, Brill says, because Medicare has impressive safeguards.  It makes sure the private companies that process the claims stay on the ball. Medicare monitors them “for all kinds of metrics” and they must “do a lot of data analysis and submit review plans and error-rate-reduction plans” on a quarterly basis.  It also employs “recovery audit contractors” who look for faulty billing and get paid a percentage of any claims they recover.

Gee, given such a wonderful system, you’d never know that between $17 billion and $57 billion in Medicare funds may be lost to fraud annually (Brill certainly never mentions it).  Nor would you guess that in fiscal year 2010 Medicare had about $48 billion in improper payments according to the Government Accountability Office.

It’s ironic that Brill uses colonoscopies as his example of improper billing.  Medicare is only supposed to pay for a screening colonoscopy once every 10 years for each beneficiary.  Yet a 2011 article in the Archives of Internal Medicine looking at beneficiaries who received a colonoscopy between 2001 and 2003 found that “46.2% underwent a repeated [colonscopy] in fewer than 7 years.”  The article concluded that current “Medicare regulations intending to limit reimbursement for screening colonoscopy to every 10 years would not appear to be effective.”

If you’ve followed enough liberal writing about Medicare, you know where Brill is going to go next with this.  And if you don’t, well, from here on out when you see a liberal praise Medicare’s claims processing, you’ll know that next up will be praise about Medicare’s low administrative costs.  Here’s Brill:

Moreover, the only players in the private sector who seem to operate efficiently are the private contractors working — dare I say it? — under the government’s supervision. They’re the Medicare claims processors that handle claims…for 84¢ each. With these and all other Medicare costs added together, Medicare’s total management, administrative and processing expenses are about $3.8 billion for processing more than a billion claims a year worth $550 billion. That’s an overall administrative and management cost of about two-thirds of 1% of the amount of the claims, or less than $3.80 per claim. According to its latest SEC filing, Aetna spent $6.9 billion on operating expenses (including claims processing, accounting, sales and executive management) in 2012. That’s about $30 for each of the 229 million claims Aetna processed, and it amounts to about 29% of the $23.7 billion Aetna pays out in claims.

Just guessing, but maybe part of the reason Aetna spends more on administrative costs is to prevent fraud and improper billing?

I’ll have more on Brill’s article later on.  Suffice it to say for now that if you want to show how hospital billing contributes to the problems of our health care system, you best not follow it up with a description of Medicare as a near-pristine system.

photo credit: iStockphoto 

This Absentee Landlord Neglects 600 Million Acres

How do you feel about an absentee landlord who accumulate acres and acres of productive land, then neglects it so it produces little and becomes so overgrown it’s a fire hazard to the neighbors?

Not good, right?

Well, that absentee landlord is you. 

As U.S. citizens, you now own over 600 million acres of forests—and you’re neglecting them. 

So said those testifying at a hearing organized by the House Subcommittee on Public Land and Environmental Regulation on “Forest Management: State Success versus Federal Failure.” 

State leaders, local land managers and timber experts testified on how unheatlhy and unproductive forests have been badly neglected by the federal government—you.  They compared your federal forests to the healthy and productive forests managed by the states for communal prosperity and forest health.

It’s not a pretty picture.

Absentee Landlord Chastised

The Subcommittee’s Chairman, Congressman Rob Bishop of Utah, stated:

Over the last few decades we’ve seen our National Forest System fall into complete neglect—what was once a valuable asset that deteriorated into a growing liability.  I believe our forests and public lands are long overdue for a paradigm shift. It’s time for the federal government to cease being the absentee landlord of over 600 million acres of land in this country that it controls and start leveraging those lands in a way that benefits rather than burdens the taxpayers and communities who are forced to play host to the federal estate.

Doc Hastings advised us:

[I]t’s time for the federal government to adjust how it does business, and honor its own statutory responsibilities to manage the forests, including allowing sufficient timber harvests, that benefit forested counties and their schools, as well as improve declining forest health and reduce the threat and soaring costs of catastrophic wildfire.”

States Are Succeeding At Managing Forests

State leaders, local land managers and timber experts reported on:

…the inadequacies and burdens of current federal forest management practices that have contributed to poor forest health, underfunded schools, lost jobs, and suppressed economic activities in communities near National Forests. In comparison, state managed forests can often produce hundreds of times more revenue, from just a fraction of the land base while maintaining vibrant, healthy forests to support local communities.

A County Commissioner from Washington state, Lee Grouse, urged the federal government to: 

…follow the state’s lead in order to help sustain local economies particularly in our rural communities and provide revenues for Secure Rural Schools” and noted that in 2011 the National Forests contributed “less than $1 per acre of revenue to the Federal Treasury—when potentially these forests across America could produce thousands of dollars per acre for taxpayers.”

Commissioner Grouse added: 

Last year the Forest Service budget was $2.3 billion dollars while it cut a measly 2 billion board feet of timber. Twenty years ago the Forest Service budget was roughly half of last year’s and its timber sale program produced 14 billion board feet of timber.

If you think this is just a western issue, it’s not.  Matthew Jensen, a third generation logger from Wisconsin, explained:

Timber harvests from federal lands have declined by more than 80% over the last two decades. These declines have devastated rural communities where sawmills and paper mills provided some of the only stable, year-round employment. Many mills, large and small, have been forced to close their doors resulting in the loss of thousands of family jobs, coupled with tens of thousands of indirect jobs lost, including an estimated 30% reduction in logging businesses.

Natural Resources Committee Chairman Doc Hastings noted that Washington state-managed lands support schools, universities and institutions statewide, generating an amazing 1283 times the revenue of federally-managed lands - in the same state. These well managed state forests:

…generate an average of $168 million annually. In comparison, the U.S. Forest Service is responsible for managing over 9 million acres of forest land contained within seven different national forests in the State of Washington, yet harvests just 2 percent of the new growth, yielding a four-year average of only $589,000 in revenue. 

However you measure it, that’s a pretty dismal accounting.

We are all responsible for ensuring the health and prosperity of our county’s forests, and the communities in them and near them.  Let’s hope the federal forests’ absentee landlords commit to a future filled with better choices and healthier forests.

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Teresa Platt is the Director of the Environment and Enterprise Institute at the National Center for Public Policy Research. 

Photo 1: USDA; Photo 2: iStockPhoto. Chart: House Subcommittee on Public Land and Environmental Regulation

On MSNBC, Cooper Defends Case for Reforming Voting Rights Act

After former deputy attorney general Julie Fernandes explained her ideal interpretation of the Voting Rights Act is addressing “what does the minority community want?” and how can supposed inherently disfranchised groups “have a political voice,” Project 21 co-chairman Horace Cooper called such thinking irrelevant to the proper administration of equal rights as was envisioned by the law’s authors.

Also, responding to The Nation’s Ari Berman’s charge that the case against the Act lacks popular support and is the product of a mythical “conservative-industrial complex,” Horace replied: “[I]f we left litigation only to circumstances where it was popular, most of the landmark litigation that we see and we appreciate today would never take place.”

Horace further pointed out that voter ID — something opposed by everyone else on the panel and a target of Obama Administration using the Voting Rights Act’s “preclearance” provisions — is wildly popular with the majority of Americans of pretty much every demographic.  This defies the logic put forth by the other panelists.

This discussion occurred on the 2/23/13 edition of the MSNBC program “Up with Chris Hayes.”

In the case of Shelby County, Alabama v. Eric Holder, to be argued before the Court on 2/27/13, the justices are asked to determine if the preclearance standards found in Section 5 of the law that target selective states and localities for scrutiny now — based on civil rights movement-era bad behavior — is still constitutional.