An 1840 Massachusetts Legislature Committee Prediction on a Government-Controlled Education System

In 1840, Horace Mann was pushing the state of Massachusetts to establish a government-run education system after the model of the state-run schools of Prussia and France.  A legislative committee upon evaluating this proposal made three predictions:

• It would destroy America's republican principles.
• It would be a tool to increase government power.
• It would spread propaganda and diminish the influence of parents on their children.

All of these predictions have come true.  The committee appears to have failed to anticipate how broadly incompetent a government-controlled education system would be, however.

Creating a Republican Senate

As a libertarian, albeit one often in disagreement with the defense policy of the Libertarian Party, I am well aware that the best check on the growth of the federal government has been to have a Republican President and a Congress with one house in the control of each party.  In the upcoming election, the House of Representatives will remain solidly Republican.  My prediction that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan will replace Obama and Biden because the American people would finally get over the celebrity status of Obama and see him and Biden as the empty socialist suits they are is finally clearly happening.  In ordinary times, it might be best that the Democrats retain a narrow control of the Senate, but this is not an ordinary time.

It is absolutely essential that ObamaCare, really the ObamaUncaringTax, be repealed.  It is also very important to repeal the Dodd-Frank Too-Big-to-Fail Crony Mercantilism Act.  It is essential to reform and control the EPA and finally kill the myth of catastrophic man-made global warming.  We must free business to develop our huge oil and gas deposits and to make use of our rich supply of coal.  We must end the waste of taxpayer dollars fed into uneconomic green energy companies with no viable markets and the electricity mandates for green energy that are driving up our electric bills and making our electricity supply unreliable.  We also need to push back the government employee unions, the abuses of the Obama National Labor Relations Board (NRLB), and try to provide national Right to Work legislation.  We need the opportunity to replace one or more of the five Supreme Court Justices who so falsely read the Constitution that they could vote to uphold ObamaCare.  To accomplish this critical mission, we have to have a Republican Senate for the next two years.

According to the present Rasmussen Reports on the state of the Senate contests in the November 2012 election, the situation is:

Held by Republicans, not up for re-election, 37
Safe Republicans, up for election, 6
Leaning Republican, 4
Toss-ups, 5
Leaning Democrat, 6
Safe Democrat, 12
Held by Democrats, not up for re-election, 30

If all of the safe and leaning Senate races go as Rasmussen predicts, then the Republicans will have 47 seats and the Democrats will have 48 seats in the Senate.  Consequently, the Republicans have to win 3 of the 5 toss-up seats for there to be a 50-50 split of the Senate, with tie votes to be decided by Paul Ryan.  Of course, it would be much better for the Republicans to win at least four of the five toss-up races.  These toss-up races are:

Massachusetts, Scott Brown (R) v. Elizabeth Warren (D)

Montana, Denny Rehberg (R) v. Jon Tester (D)

Ohio, Josh Mandel (R) v. Sherrod Brown (D)

Virginia, George Allen (R) v. Tim Kaine (D)

Wisconsin, Tommy Thompson (R) v. Tammy Baldwin (D)

Scott Brown (R) and Elizabeth Warren (D) have generally been running a very close race for the Massachusetts Senate seat for a long time.  She is an ultra-socialist who likes to say to small business owners that they did not create and build their businesses, the government and maybe the community did.  She is mad to redistribute as much income as she can.  Of course, she is determined to keep Americans from developing the new riches in oil and gas deposits that fracking has opened up.  She is also aligned with Obama in determination to kill the coal industry.  If she wins, she will be developed as a likely 2016 presidential candidate.  So, though Scott Brown is a moderate Republican who is often a friend of big government, she is a much greater danger as a friend of huge government.  This is an election contest which the Republicans can win.  Please support Scott Brown with a strategic contribution.

The Montana Senate seat race has incumbent Jon Tester (D) against Denny Rehberg (R), with the momentum in Rehberg's favor.  Rehberg is a rancher and small businessman who has long served as Montana's soul member of the House of Representatives.  In the 2011 Club for Growth Ratings of the financial responsibility of House members, Rehberg's rating was a rather low one for Republicans at 58%.  However, almost no Democrats scored more than 20% and not one came close to getting a 58% rating.  In the Club for Growth Senate Ratings, Jon Tester had a 17% score.  Denny Rehberg would be a decided upgrade and he is needed badly to repeal ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank, and to reset the EPA and the NRLB.  A donation to his campaign would be a wise and strategic investment in America.

The Ohio Senate race features Josh Mandel (R)  running against incumbent Sherrod Brown (D), who is commonly called the most socialist Senator, now that Obama is no longer the most socialist Senator.  Supporting Josh Mandel has the effect of also adding to ads and get out the vote efforts that will help push Romney over the top in this critical swing state.  Josh is all about good government.  Please read his bio, which is a hard-nosed description of what he has done as Treasurer of the state of Ohio and when he was in the Ohio House.  This is not a fluff politician.  He won his election as Treasurer as the biggest vote-getter in the state, winning 80 of 88 counties in Ohio.  Standard and Poor rated his $4 billion government investment fund with its highest rating.  His General Obligation bond fund has Fitch's highest rating.  He expanded the Ohio liquidity portfolio by $2.3 billion since he took office.  Josh is pro-free enterprise and a strong supporter of the Constitution.  He has the strongest possible endorsement from the Club for Growth.  Josh Mandel will be a super good Senator.  In comparison, Sherrod Brown had a 2011 Senate Club for Growth rating of 0%.  Donating to the campaign of Josh Mandel is a super strategic investment in good government!

In Virginia, George Allen (R) is pitted against Tim Kaine (D), a former spend-thrift governor who left the finances of the state of Virginia in disarray.  Virginia is a swing state, so supporting Allen will tend to also support Romney.  George Allen is not the strongest Republican candidate, but the election is starting to swing in his direction.  The people of the state of Virginia are beginning to wake up to the sad state of the Obama economy, though their very highly populated northern Virginia Washington suburbs have benefited greatly from the mindless federal government spending under Obama.  They are beginning to also learn that the Defense sequestration of budgeted funds to run DoD and the armed forces looming to take effect in January is going to shatter defense contractors and leave DoD employees without pay for about two months.  Government spending reductions by all other government agencies are being spread out over a period of time to minimize the impact of the upcoming spending reductions, but DoD has been told by Obama that it has to continue spending its allocations of funding at the originally specified rate and take all of the hit in January on the sequestration.  In other words, DoD is to take a nose-dive over the cliff onto the rocks below at Obama's command.  Since deployed armed forces cannot be stood down, this means that incredibly drastic cuts in money going out to contractors and to civilian DoD employees has to occur.  This will shatter the economies of Northern Virginia, Norfolk, Virginia Beach, and Hampton Roads.  In addition, Obama has ordered the defense contractors, who are required by law to notify employees 60 days prior to termination, to ignore the law.  The termination notices are due the week before the election.  The government has promised to pay the fines that the companies will be subjected to for ignoring the law.  This is completely lawless behavior by Obama to help his re-election chances.  Tim Kaine is very supportive of Obama in this dastardly and destructive plan.  George Allen, for all his limitations, will be much the better Senator and he is critically needed to repeal ObamaCare and the other accumulated mischief of the Democrats over the four years from 2007 through 2010 when they controlled both houses of Congress.  Again, please make a strategic donation to George Allen.

The Wisconsin Senate race features Tommy Thompson (R) against Tammy Baldwin (D).  Tommy Thompson was a former Wisconsin governor and cut income and property taxes and eliminated the inheritance tax.  Tammy Baldwin is a Madison liberal who serves in the House of Representatives.  Her Club for Growth rating in 2011 was a miserable 9%.  Giving Tammy Baldwin one of the contested Senate seats would be an unmitigated disaster.  Making a donation to Tommy Thompson is another strategic investment toward turning the ship of state enough to avoid an imminent crash upon the socialist rocks.

Despite my materials analysis laboratory small business being in the fourth year of greatly reduced company earnings due to the never-ending Great Socialist Recession, I have just made donations to each of the Republican Senate candidates above in these toss-up races.  I hope that the recent rise in the polls of Romney and the rise of a number of these Republican candidates in their states, will result in the combination of Senate control with a Republican President needed to undo most of the damage done by a Democrat Congress for four years, followed by a Democrat Senate with four years of a Democrat President.  May the healing begin.

The Massachusetts Wind Power Rip-Off

David Tuerck, chairman and professor of economics, and Jonathan Haughton, professor of economics, both at Suffolk University, have written up the story of Cape Wind Associates, which plans to build 130 wind turbines in Nantucket Sound at a cost of about $2 billion.  Cape Wind has claimed it would produce renewable energy at a savings to electricity users in New England of $25 million per year.  National Grid, which provides 40% of Massachusetts' residential power, has just bought half of the output of Cape Wind's Nantucket Sound facility at a cost of $0.21/KWhr, with a 3.5% increase each year.  Under the Massachusetts Renewable Portfolio Standard program, the state allows an extra charge of $0.06/KWhr for renewable energy generated electricity which must be paid by the user.  The conventional source electricity cost to National Grid is only $0.09/KWhr, so the normal renewable energy cost is $0.15/KWhr.  The Cape Wind cost doubles the normal additional charge for renewable energy.

Not only is there no savings of $25 million per year, but ratepayers will now have an additional charge of $82 million per year thanks to the pressure on the electric power suppliers to use more renewable energy.  If it actually were the case that it was important to use renewable energy, Canadian suppliers are happy to provide hydroelectric and wind power electricity at a cost of $0.15/KWhr, not the $0.21 of Cape Wind.  What is more, the Federal Energy Information Administration does not believe the real cost of conventional electricity will rise in the next decade, so these inflated alternative energy costs will likely remain inflated for at least that long.

Many states now have programs mandating the increased use of renewable energy for electricity generation and pass the increased costs to electricity users.  Many companies are eager to provide this uneconomic service to take advantage of the higher rates they are allowed by the states and which the citizens are forced to pay.  It is a heyday for alternative energy special interests to make money hand over foot to provide unneeded electricity.  Or to be more precise, it should be unneeded.  When the states refuse to allow the generation of electricity by conventional means, electricity users are simply forced to pay the outrageously high rates to line the pockets of uncompetitive company investors and probably their bought political hacks.  This is an abuse of power.

A Republican Senator from Massachusetts? Wow!!!

In the Special Election to fill the Senate seat in Massachusetts vacated by Senator Kennedy's death on 19 January, Republican Scott Brown leads Democrat Martha Coakley in a poll taken on Saturday by 48% to 47%.

Here are some key reasons:

• 66% of Republicans who plan to vote are very excited about voting in the Special Election, but only 48% of the Democrats who plan to vote are very excited.
• Independents view Brown favorably as opposed to unfavorably with a 70% to 16% split.  In the election with Coakley, 63% favor Brown over 31% who favor Coakley.  But clearly large numbers of those who plan to vote for Coakley nonetheless view Brown favorably, dampening their enthusiasm for Coakley.
• 59% of Massachusetts independents oppose Obamacare, while only 27% support it.
• Obama won Massachusetts by a margin of 26%, but voters who plan to vote in the Special Election only gave him a 16% margin.
• Many Massachusetts voters plan to vote for the party out of power.
• The 20% of voters who dislike both major parties plan to give Brown a lead of 74% to 21%.
• Among all likely voters, Brown is viewed favorably by 57% and negatively by 25%.  The 32% difference compares to Republican Bob McDonnell's favorability difference of 20%, yet he won in Virginia with a 17% margin.
• Surprisingly, given that registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by a 3 to 1 ratio, about half of the state's voters are independents.
• Democrat Gov. Deval Patrick is not popular and faces a tough re-election campaign in 2010, despite winning easily in 2006.
  

If Scott Brown should become the first Republican Massachusetts Senator since Edward Brooke, who served 2 terms from 1967 through 1978, he has vowed to vote against Obamacare, which will break the Democrat 60-vote filibuster-proof block.  This has Democrats very worried and talking about finding a way to delay his taking his Senate seat, if he should win the election.  The election fight may not be over, however, since Coakley, the state attorney general, has more money and more organizational support, as in labor unions!

Scott Brown is not exactly either a great libertarian or a great conservative, but he is from Taxachusetts, so what can you expect.  At least he will break that Democrat 60-vote filibuster-proof block in the Senate and he may be able to stop Obamacare.  These are such important causes, that you should seriously consider donating his campaign money, as I have.

Decreasing Number of Doctors with Increasing Health Care Demand

From 2003 to 2006, the number of doctors in the U.S. grew at a rate of 0.8% per year. That is an increase of 25,700 doctors per year. Meanwhile, the U.S. population grew at a rate of 1% per year. Patients are increasing at rates faster than doctors.

The Obama/Democrat Congress health care reform effort intends to increase the demand still further for doctors by inducing people without health insurance now to acquire it and use it. They also envision a major increase in such services as preventive care, which they claim will reduce overall medical expenses and therefore the use of doctor time. Medical studies show that preventive care actually costs more and uses more doctor time, however. In addition, the mandated insurance plans will require expanded coverage for many medical services, increasing still further the need for doctors and other medical service providers' services. Despite the inevitable increase in doctor and medical service provider services generally, Obama and henchmen claim that medical costs will come down. Hogwash. Obama and his anti-reality gang of socialist thugs cannot control the effects of supply and demand. They can take actions to increase demand and to decrease the supply with respect to doctors, however.

The U.S. already has only 2.4 doctors per 1,000 population. The median in the OECD nations is 3.1 doctors per 1,000. The Association of American Medical Colleges found that enrollment in medical schools has decreased steadily since 1980. With current health care demand, they found that there would be a 159,000 doctor shortage by 2025. This shortage is already the result of the very unpleasant environment in which doctors have to work with skyrocketing malpractice insurance costs, less than adequate Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates, and arbitrary second-guessing of physician decisions by government bureaucrats for Medicare, Medicaid, and other government health programs.

The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission says that the number of elderly Medicare patients who had trouble getting a primary care doctor to take them increased from 11% to 17% from 2004 to 2007. ObamaCare will greatly increase the present aggravations of having to deal with government as it gradually takes over the half of the industry it does not yet control.

Investor's Business Daily (IBD) polled 1,376 doctors to see what they thought of ObamaCare. 65% said they opposed it, while 33% supported it. Asked if seniors would get lower quality care under ObamaCare, 65% of the doctors polled agreed and 28% disagreed. Asked if ObamaCare was passed, would they consider leaving their practices or taking early retirement, 45% said they would and 5% gave no answer. This means 360,000 doctors will consider quitting or Going Galt!

Who can blame them? They will be saddled with more paperwork, which is almost no one's favorite pastime. In order to try to fulfill its promises of more affordable health care, the government will put more pressure on doctors to reduce their fees and to spend less time with patients, thereby reducing doctor rewards both in remuneration and in personal satisfaction with a job well-done. With more patients per hour, more mistakes will be made and the number of litigious patients will increase, both leading to still higher malpractice insurance rates. Doctors will be underpaid and more weary even than now. What a life!

Massachusetts began the ObamaCare experiment in 2006. So have Hawaii, Tennessee, and Maine done similar experiments. In all of these cases, expenses increased faster than the national norm and doctor shortages became worse. Services had to be cut back. That is, rationing always resulted.

The Massachusetts Medical Society just released a study that found that insurance premiums are rising at a rate 22% faster than the U.S. as a whole. The doctor shortage is worsening due to the poor practice environment in the state. Primary care specialties (family and internal medicine) are in short supply for the 4th year in a row. The fraction of primary care practices closed to new patients is the highest ever recorded. Doctors in the dermatology, neurology, urology, vascular surgery, obstetrics-gynecology, family and internal medicine are in short supply. Recruitment and retention of doctors is very difficult, especially in primary care and in community hospitals.

Overall health spending, rather than complying with Obama's wishes, is higher than in the U.S. on average and growing faster, according to the Urban Institute. Apparently, Obama's wishes and claims carry less weight than does the law of supply and demand. The IBD survey found that this reality was well-understood by many doctors. 71% of them said they did not believe that "the government can cover 47 million more people and that it will cost less money and the quality of care will be better." It just is not understood by Obama and the Democrat Congress who are determined to use the force of government to force us all into their medical care hell.

Some may say that the American Medical Association (AMA) is backing ObamaCare, so the doctors must be backing it. The AMA only represents 18% of doctors and it is losing those who are members in large numbers because of its backing.

Great Britain's National Health Service (NHS) has a severe shortage of doctors. One-third of primary care trusts are flying in general practitioners from other countries to help them with their overloads. They actually fly in doctors from Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, and Switzerland, according to the British Daily Mail. Many of their resident doctors are already immigrants trained in other countries, in even much larger numbers than is the case in the U.S. or Canada, whose nationalized health care system is not as old as is Britain's. The overworked British doctors refuse to see patients at night or on weekends.

Canadian doctors can fairly readily emigrate to the U.S. and have done so in large numbers. What else is to be expected as a response to rigid work rules and income limits in Canada? The law of supply and demand always works, no matter what some people may wish and choose to impose through the use of government force.

Above all else, above the shortages, the increased costs, and the rationing of medical care that results with government controls, I worry most about the quality of the people who will choose to become doctors under this new regime. The most dedicated to their profession, the most independent-minded, the most creative, the most moral young people will Go Galt on the profession of medicine by refusing ever to become doctors in the first place. Only those who are easily brainwashed with the Obama duty to serve mantra will enter the field of medicine. The advancement and the quality of medical care will suffer horribly as a result during the lifetime of our children and grandchildren.

Many good doctors today will Go Galt and many a prospective good doctor will Go Galt by choosing a profession less enslaved by government. All good professionals are looking to enjoy their profession. They have the ability to excel in many professions, so why not choose one they will enjoy? My own daughter, Kate, worked in hospitals while earning her dual undergraduate degrees in Biotechnology and Biomedical Science with a 4.0 GPA while taking one-third more credits than she needed to graduate in four years. She decided she did not like the way medical care was already practiced and decided not to go to medical school. If medical practice were free of the harm already done by heavy-handed governmental regulations, I believe the profession would have had great appeal for her. As it is, she made the right decision to Go Galt on the medical practice profession and she made it without my input.

Cannon: Massachusetts' Obama-like reforms increase health costs, wait times

Michael F. Cannon, of the Cato Institute, wrote an interesting article on the effects on health care of the Massachusetts reform of health care in 2006. He notes that:

• 29% of Massachusetts' voters believe the reform lowered the quality of care, while 10% believe it improved care.
• 27% believe reform made health care less affordable, while 21% believe it made it more affordable.
• 37% believe the reforms are a failure, while 26% believe they were a success.

But what on Earth do Massachusetts voters know anyway? They voted overwhelmingly for Dukakis, Gore, Kerry, and Obama. They also sent Teddy Kennedy to the Senate for 8 terms or 46 years, though he did not finish his last term in office. But, this health care reform was initially very popular in Massachusetts and it does have all the essential features of the Obama - Pelosi - Reid health care reform plans. The Massachusetts plan is already unpopular even in a state much committed to socialism and despite the fact that many of its faults are hidden as yet from many of the people.

Massachusetts did reduce the number of uninsured by two-thirds, or 432,000 people. The cost is at least $2.1 billion in 2009, or an average cost per 4-person family of about $20,000, which is well above the average cost of $13,000 of an employer-sponsored family policy. But, the average Massachusetts voter does not know how bad costs are because many of the costs are well-hidden from him.

As with the Obama - Democrat plans:

• Every person is required to pay for health insurance.
• Approved health insurance plans must accept already ill individuals.
• Approved plans must also cover prescription drugs, preventive care, diabetes self-management, drug-abuse treatment, early intervention for autism, hospice care, hormone replacement therapy, non-in-vitro fertility services, orthotics, prosthetics, telemedicine, testicular cancer, lay midwives, nurses, nurse practitioners, and pediatric specialists. The national plan will evolve in this direction due to lobbyist power also.
  
• 70 addition requirements for plans are under consideration in the legislature.
• Price controls to prevent insurers from basing premiums on the health of the individual.

So, what are the observed effects?

• Premiums are growing 21 to 46% faster than the national average, whose rapid growth rate is supposed to be a great part of the reason for a Massachusetts or Obama health plan.
• The young and healthy have to pay much more to cover the costs of those already sick and joining their plan.
• Low cost plans are no longer available.
• Plans with more extensive benefits than those required by Massachusetts are disappearing because the sick want to be in such very comprehensive plans. The costs for such plans are going up particularly quickly, so insurers will not offer them.
• In 2004, Boston already had the nation's longest waiting times for medical care of all metropolitan areas. The waits in Boston have since increased to 7 weeks, while the average wait in other metropolitan areas has shortened to 3 weeks.
• Taxes have been raised on hospitals, tobacco, insurers, employers, and coverage of legal immigrants has been reduced to eliminate the 20% of that cost charged to the state.
• The high costs caused a legislative commission to recommend a single-payer system such as Canada's and evidence-based purchasing strategies to ration care not only for Medicare patients, but now for everyone.
  

Many of the costs are not borne by the state. The individual mandate to own insurance has put about 60% of the increased costs on the individual's back. The federal government, or the federal taxpayer, pays about 20% of the costs, and the taxpayers of Massachusetts pay about 20% of the costs. In other words, the struggle that Massachusetts is having to pay the costs is due to only about 20% of the costs. Non-Massachusetts taxpayers are paying about 20% of the costs minus that amount paid by Massachusetts taxpayers as federal taxes. So, one way or another, Massachusetts taxpayers are paying more than 80% of the costs.

The Boston Globe badly misrepresented the cost to Massachusetts taxpayers as only about $88 million per year or about 19 times less than the real cost, despite taxpayers outside Massachusetts paying a very large tip on the tab. The New York Times did a more accurate job of estimating the costs: it was only a factor of 3 too low!

In Massachusetts, it is very clear that if you liked your health insurance plan, you were not allowed to keep it. Obama's promise does not apply in Obama-mad Massachusetts and for the same reasons, it will not apply in the entire U.S. soon after the Obama plan becomes law. We had better see to it that it does not become law.