flashpoint

And I’m sure Mark Sanford hearts Michael Jackson.

As the media has been rightfully fawning over the increasingly bizarre Mark Sanford story over the last couple of weeks they have ignored one tawdry story about the extramarital lusts of another politician who once aspired for our country’s highest office.  That man is, of course, John Edwards.  You might recall that he is the far left fave who confessed to cheating on his cancer stricken wife.  “What could get worse than that mere fact?” you might ask.  Well, according to one former aide…

Former Edwards aide Andrew Young says the ex-senator and his former mistress, Rielle Hunter, once made a sex tape, according to someone who has seen Young’s book proposal.

TMI! But that isn’t necessarily the “worse” part.

According to our source, Hunter confided to Young that she and Edwards talked about getting married should the candidate’s cancer-stricken wife, Elizabeth, pass away, even discussing what music they’d play at their wedding.

That is disgusting.  Simply cheating on his wife wasn’t enough.  He actually pined for her demise so that he could then marry his lover.  And what a strong foundation that marriage would be built upon!

Granted, this is a story being pushed by a former aide who wants to make some money on a book deal, but the story is definitely believable.

I attended Parker Griffith’s town hall meeting on health care tonight at the Space and Rocket Center.  If that meeting is any indication of how people feel elsewhere then I’ll tell you right now - the safest thing any politician can do is stay away from the issue.  Everyone is EXTREMELY passionate and, often, quite irrational.

I’d estimate the attendance at roughly 200 people.  There was a good cross section of the political spectrum there.  I sat with Dale Jackson and Joel from Right on Huntsville.  Dale Twittered the Q&A real time.  Saw some other conservative folks I recognized as well.  Also saw Moocat (who had a video camera, so we’ll wait for that product) and Countrycat from Left in Alabama as well as a few other so-called “progressives.”  Based on applause through the evening I would guess the crowd was 60% against government health care and 40% for.

Griffith started things off with some brief comments.  If the U.S. adopted a single payer system, which Griffith opposes, he said it would be based on a Medicare type system.  In other words, it would suck.  Griffith went on to point out that problems with our health care system impact the global competitiveness of our businesses.  He concluded by saying that we have 6% of the world’s population, but we’re #1 in many categories (military, health research and development, etc.).  The unstated question seemed to be, “Why aren’t we #1 in health care?”

I thought the first question pretty much set the tone for the evening.  Paraphrasing: “What in the Constitution makes you think the government has a right to establish universal health care?”  Loud applause from the crowd.  Things are looking up.  I had anticipated a room full of crazy lefties demanding that we go talk to Castro about how to set up a world class health care system.  Griffith’s response was not great.  He could have cited the parts of the Constitution that he feels give the government that authority, but instead he tried to call the questioner, a senior citizen, a hypocrite.  He asked the man if he used Medicare.  You could hear the “Gotcha!” in his voice.  But the man blew a hole in that by responding that he did not and he pressed Griffith further.  Griffith finally said that we have a “government by the people” and if they countenance politicians passing any particular type of health “reform” by continuing to vote for them then that is just fine.  He ended by saying, “I appreciate your point, but I think we’re past that.”

At this point the “questions” devolved into rambling mini speeches with no underlying question.  It was ridiculous.  The big government types complained about how medications are cheaper in Columbia, Europe, etc.  One lady seriously complained that health insurance companies are too numerous and policies too varied.  Poor dumb consumers can’t possibly be expected to figure all that out, therefore we need a single payer system so that she can be relieved of that burdensome decision.  Kind of makes you wonder how she is able to find car insurance considering the broad array of providers and levels of coverage.  Maybe Uncle Sam should take care of that decision for her too.  And has she seen the spice shelves at the grocery store?  Very overwhelming.  Other people had similar comments yearning for some medical utopia.

And then the real fun started!  A man got up and was nervously talking about the Glass-Stegall Act and lack of regulatory oversight that contributed to financial collapse.  Just when I was starting to wonder what the hell this guy was doing there I heard him say something about Drs. Perez and Brady.  My ears perked up.  And then he “went there” as the kids used to say.  He suggested it was a lack of regulatory oversight that allowed Griffith to keep the findings of their peer review quiet.  Mentioned that the peer review could be found on theattackmachine.com - I was just relieved he didn’t cite this little ‘ol blog!  At this point I’m about to fall out of my seat due to laughter and the guy kicks it up a notch.  He said that the lack of regulatory oversight in that case amounted to an “unadulterated rape.”  Yes, that is a direct quote.  Good times.  Griffith understandably shrugged that questioner off and moved along.

More useless, rambling speeches with no direct question.  Waste of time.  A guy does ask a good question about tort reform.  The guy led off his tort question by thanking Griffith for his “no” vote on the cap and trade bill and the stimulus.  Huge applause.  Griffith tells the old saw about the trial lawyer being in the examination room with the doctor and the patient.  Said that no tort reform issues have been discussed, but he does recognize the problem of defensive medicine.  No real, concrete answer to the question, though.

More people wasting minutes from their lives with inane comments.  A few were decent.  I tried to ask an actual policy question, not some Casey Kasem Request and Dedication, to no avail.  I was hoping to ask about his thoughts on how to deal with the embedded costs of health care our companies face which hurt us competitively in the international market.  What proposals are being discussed in Congress to decouple health care from employment?  I’ve long believed that the government’s encouragement of employer provided health care via tax incentives is bad policy.  It hides the true cost of health care from the ultimate consumers.  It stifles a vibrant labor market because it discourages employees from taking risks to start new business ventures or even switch companies.  Something needs to be done.  But, I had to leave early to keep a commitment to my wife and kids to take them out for dinner so I didn’t get to ask my question.

The key take away is that this is a tough issue to address.  I honestly don’t see how Congress can touch it with substantive legislation without having significant bloodshed at the ballot box in 2010.

Update: Here’s the Huntsville Times article on the event.  The article mentions a couple of bills Griffith said he would introduce:

Griffith plans to offer two bills in the coming weeks. One would require congressmen to use the public option for their own health care, if such a measure is made into law. The second would require any health care legislation be submitted to all members of Congress a week before it can be voted on, to avoid last-minute deals.

The first bill is very good in its intent.  It has a snowball’s chance of passage and would likely be undermined even if it did, but I like the attempt.  The second is indicitative of how screwed up our country is.  Those who represent us routinely do not read the legislation they vote on.  How could they?  Individually the bills are often enormous and complex and collectively the sheer volume is overwhelming.  They just vote the way their aides and the lobbyists tell them too.  Our government already does too much, leaving them unable to “read the bill.”  The last thing we need to do is give them more responsibilities - like the entire health care system.

There is much to be said about various aspects of Parker Griffith’s voting record, and much more will be said.

For example, the House has cast 477 votes so far this year. Nancy Pelosi’s side won every single vote.

Out of 477 votes, not once did Parker Griffith vote against Nancy Peloisi when she both needed him and when it would have made a difference.

The “Griffith voted for the Cap & Trade Energy Tax Increase, before he voted against it” voting sequence is a good example.

Historically, Griffith’s tie-breaking vote in the Alabama Senate that empowered the socialist wing of the Alabama Democrat Party to control the Alabama Senate (as opposed to siding with the conservative, bi-partisan coalition that needed Griffith’s vote to govern) is a good example of what America can expect should Griffith become entrenched in Congress.

If any event, the vote to empower House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, Charles Rangel, etc., rendered all other votes insignificant because, to date, that one vote has determined the outcome of all subsequent votes.

If conservatives are going to stop the Socialist Democrats from undermining the foundational principles that have made America the greatest nation in history, we have to do it in the U.S. House of Representitives. Conservatives must unseat enough Democrats to recapture the House so that a bulwark can be erected in the House to protect our liberties and the free enterprise system.

If we fail, America fails, because what the socialist Democrats are doing just does not work. It never has and it never will.

Mo Brooks

Much has been made - and I’m sure much more will be made - of Parker Griffith’s (AL-05) allegiance to the Democrat Party.  You’ll no doubt hear many ads leading up to the midterm elections about how he voted with his party X% of the time.  I like to present the facts here, so I did the same analysis of Griffith’s votes that I did a couple of times for Bud Cramer’s voting record (here and here).

Note: My source is the Washington Post’s Congress Votes database.

The number you’ll see and hear about is 87%.  That is the percentage of his votes that followed the party line.  But, he also voted with the GOP 58% of the time.  How can that be?  Well, it turns out that the GOP and Democrats agreed on 46% of the votes.  I consider that 46% to be useless.  More on that shortly.

While the 87% figure is somewhat misleading because it includes mutually agreeable votes it is the best metric we have for gauging his overall independence relative to his colleagues.  As it turns out he is pretty darn independent.  Out of 435 members only 37 have voted with their own party less than Griffith.  Just by using the page size as a guide it looks like over half of all representatives (from both parties) vote with their party at least 95% of the time.  It is also of interest that only one member votes less with his own party than Bobby Bright (AL-02).  Bright only voted with the Democrats on 73.5% of the votes.  Geez, almost makes you think Griffith and Bright are vulnerable members of a liberal party who hail from from conservative districts.

As I mentioned above, I prefer to toss out votes in which both parties took the same position.  That leaves 249 votes to work with.  This is where the rubber hits the road, so to speak.  Of this subset, Griffith took the Democrat position on 77% of the votes.  For those of you waiting for Obama to pay your mortgage that means he voted with the Republicans 23% of the time.

That 77% number is interesting when compared to Cramer’s voting record.  Using the same voting analysis methodology, Cramer also voted with his party in the 70-80% range until 1994 when Wayne Parker nearly beat him.  After the 1994 election and the Republican takeover Cramer shifted noticeably, voting with the Democrats only about 60% of the time steadily until 2007, which is when the Democrats took control of the House.  After that he reverted back to over 80% with the Democrats.  Griffith seems to be charting the exact same course that Cramer did.  That formula kept Cramer in office for nine terms.  It remains to be seen if it will work as well for Griffith.

About a year from now, Shelby County citizens will be able to text and send pictures and video to 911 via cell phones. Pretty neat stuff.

Historical sidenote: The first 911 system was installed in Haleyville in Winston County in 1968.

WHNT has this “exclusive” story:

The election for North Alabama’s congressional seat is still more than a year away. But one of the biggest names in Madison County politics is now throwing his hat in the ring.

Madison County commissioner Mo Brooks announced his intentions to run for Congress Tuesday. After meeting with top Republicans in Washington last week, Brooks decided to make his long-rumored candidacy for the 5th district congressional seat official.

Of course regular readers here knew this over a week ago.

The long-time commissioner is well-known for his outspoken views on fiscal conservatism and immigration reform, and hopes that message will resonate with voters next year. Democratic congressman Parker Griffith just won the seat last November, but Brooks says the freshman Democrat is already a first-term flop. Brooks says Griffith’s support of current house speaker Nancy Pelosi has put thousands of North Alabama jobs in jeopardy due to her support of missile defense cuts.

“Once Mr. Griffith cast his vote for Nancy Pelosi, none of his other votes have had any significance,” said Brooks. “Her policies are not good for the 5th congressional district with ballistic missile defense cuts, with threats to NASA, with threats to our local economy in so many ways. We’ve got to unseat Nancy Pelosi.”

Midterms are often hard on the new president’s party and the fact that the Democrats seem hell bent on turning us into North Cuba will fuel a backlash in my opinion.  That will put Griffith, who narrowly won in 2008 and won’t have Obama at the top of the ticket in 2010, in a very tough situation.  But Griffith “ain’t no dummy” and has been voting smartly thus far - opposing the stimulus disaster and the cap and trade bill that is (hopefully) destined to die in the Senate.  He’ll have a couple of key tests in the future - card check and health care come to mind - so he still has time to slip up.

I personally don’t like the “he voted for Pelosi” attack.  It can be an element of the attack, but it is not a sufficient foundation in my opinion.  Nancy Pelosi’s name will not be on the ballot in North Alabama (lucky for her!).  You need to give people a reason to vote for you and hopefully a reason to vote against your opponent.  Griffith hasn’t give opponents much ammunition on the latter (other than the aforementioned Pelosi vote and probably some missile defense funding cuts).  As such the only avenue of attack is to go after his party since his comrades are the ones causing mischief.  I’m just leery of how well that attack will stick.

From Alabama Appleseed:

Arise Citizens’ Policy Project &
Alabama Appleseed Center for Law & Justice
invite you to attend:
TOWN HALL MEETING
HEALTHCARE REFORM
with
U.S. CONGRESSMAN
PARKER GRIFFITH
Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 5:30 - 6:30 PM
Davidson Center 3D Digital Theater
U.S. Space and Rocket Center
1 Tranquility Base, Huntsville, AL 35805
- Free of Charge -

For those of you not familiar with Alabama Arise and Alabama Appleseed, well, lets just say they probably aren’t going to be backing any market based reforms.

Can you smell their agenda?

We encourage everyone to attend, particularly if you have experienced difficulty with the current healthcare system such as:
•Being uninsured • Health insurance too costly • Insurance claims denied
•Inadequate coverage • Delaying costly medical care • Trouble finding doctors

In other words they only want you there if you think the health care system sucks.  If you have good insurance and have had good (relatively speaking) experiences with the health care system then you should stay away! They want to portray the most warped view of the system as possible so that Griffith walks away thinking that his constituents are performing self amputations getting their meds from the local veterinarian.

Congressman Griffith hasn’t issued a strong statement about where he stands on health care reform.  He’s been casting safe votes thus far and I’m sure he has his finger in the air to see which way the wind is blowing on this issue.  Don’t let him get buffaloed by a bunch of single payer advocates who want to turn us into Canada.

According to the Huntsville Times many Stone Manor residents have moved out and the public housing dependents have started to roll in.

Congratulations to the new tenants who have become the only public housing residents in the state of Alabama with a pool all their own.  Bless their hearts.  I’m sure it will be a great motivator for making the residents strive for self sufficiency.  The HHA is even kind enough to staff it full time with not one, but two lifeguards at a weekly cost of $1,300.  Fortunately the HHA is saying, although their word isn’t exactly worth all that much, that the pool will only be open to Stone Manor residents and their guests.  I had originally heard the pool would be open to all HHA residents, but the “and their guests” clause does open a bit of a window where anyone and everyone could easily claim to be a guest of a resident.

I’m curious to see how the pool thing plays out.  Lifeguards are cheap right now.  It’s summer and kids are out of school and home for college and a $10 per hour job lounging by the pool doesn’t sound too bad.  Will the pool close when school starts back up and $10 per hour lifeguards are scarce?  Let’s say the HHA maintains the lifeguards for now (I still can’t get over the fact that public housing residents - freeloaders - are getting a free pool) what happens when lean budget times arrive?  I’m sure $1,300 per week for lifeguards will be an attractive expense to cut.

The HHA took care of some tenants they kicked out.  Many got checks averaging around $10,000 to cover expenses.  Not bad at all.  But amazingly those who qualified for public housing, but chose not to suffer the indignity of being on the public housing rolls, got nothing.  The absurdity of that blows my mind.  The HHA would be more than willing to subsidize their housing costs indefinitely while claiming to put them on a path to self sufficiency, but was unwilling to make a one time payment to help keep them self sufficient!

This is our government in action.  Giving a swimming pool to freeloaders while stiffing individuals who exhibit gritty independence and self reliance.

From our frosty northern neighbor (emphasis mine):

A critically-ill premature-born baby from Hamilton [Canada] is all alone in a Buffalo, N.Y., hospital after she was turned away for treatment at local facility and transferred across the border without her parents, who don’t have passports.

Ava Stinson was born Thursday at St. Joseph’s Hospital, 14 weeks premature.

A provincewide search for an open neonatal intensive care unit bed came up empty, leaving no choice but to send the two pound, four ounce baby to Buffalo.

No beds?  How could this happen?!  Canada’s health care system is the sterling example we should be following, right?

As it turns out this situation is not without precedent.

In addition to the cardiac and I.C.U. patients that Canada must send south to get proper care, women with high-risk pregnancies and sick babies are also being sent to the U.S. The Globe & Mail reports the following:

More than 100 Canadian women with high-risk pregnancies have been sent to United States hospitals over the past year.

Why? Because the bureaucrats who run the Canadian system failed to allocate enough beds:

The problem is due to bed closings that took place almost a decade ago, the absence of a national birthing initiative and too few staff.

And even when there is a bed, there’s a shortage of neonatologists:

When extra NICU beds were added in Victoria, it took about a year before they were operational due to the difficulty in recruiting a neonatologist.

Right now our health care system is Canada’s relief valve.  Their government made the decision to make certain specialized care available below the needs of its citizens.  So when people encounter severe medical problems and the Canadian system fails them they turn to the U.S.  What happens when Obama effectively forces us into a similar situation by creating a tax subsidized money loser health plan that will choke the life out of our pseudo-private health care system?  Where will our premies go when there aren’t enough beds?

I wish I could write more now because it (”it” being the broader health care situation) really is a complex dilemma.  At its core the discussion has a few fundamental questions:

• Should health care be considered a “right” (of sorts) not unlike K-12 education is viewed by many?
• Like all goods and services, the supply of health care is finite.  Who determines how it is rationed?

After that the rest is just details.  Really, really big details.  But at least answering those fundamental questions frames the solution approach.

From the New York Times:

One of the largest mass layoffs in recent Alabama history is to occur on Wednesday, and Montgomery itself is decreeing it, economic crisis or not.

The government is shutting down every last legal electronic bingo parlor across the land, under an antivice plan promoted by Bob Riley that as recently as a few months ago was widely perceived as far-fetched. But the result will be thousands of people thrown out of work.

Make sure you read the article as it might change what you’re thinking right now.