We See The Problem. Where Is The Solution?

The other week, men and women across California opened up their mailboxes to find a letter from Anthem Blue Cross. The news inside was jaw-dropping. Anthem was alerting almost a million of its customers that it would be raising premiums by an average of 25 percent, with about a quarter of folks likely to see their rates go up by anywhere from 35 to 39 percent.

That was Obama's opening salvo in his weekly address on 20 February 2010.  Unfortunately, he followed that disturbing statistic with a blatant mis-statement:

The bottom line is that the status quo is good for the insurance industry and bad for America. Over the past year, as families and small business owners have struggled to pay soaring health care costs, and as millions of Americans lost their coverage, the five largest insurers made record profits of over $12 billion.

Consider, however, the financial results health insurance companies report:

• Healthcare as a sector enjoyed a profitability of around 11 percent of revenue.
• Health care plans overall earned a profit last year of around 3.4 percent of their revenues.  
• Health care plans rank #86th in terms of profitability.
• UnitedHealthcare, one of the largest insurance companies, in 2009 reported a profit margin of 4.39 percent.

At the same time, drug manufacturers enjoyed a profit margin of around 18 percent.  Bristol-Myers Squibb reported a 2009 profit margin of 56.42 percent.

These are the numbers that make up the "status quo" in health care costs in this country.  Health insurance companies are, as a group, less profitable than most utility companies, with gas and electricity utility companies enjoying profit margins of  6.9 percent and 6.6 percent, respectively).

The status quo is decidedly not good for insurance companies.  A 3.4 percent profit margin is just barely above the current prime interest rate of 3.25 percent as published in the Wall Street Journal (rate is as of 17 February 2010); a health insurance company could do just as well investing in bonds and securities and not sell insurance at all.   Health insurance profit margins are roughly in line with long term inflation rates in this country.  Those "record profits" insurance companies enjoy today do nothing more than ensure that tomorrow's bills will be paid.

Moreover, the status quo is what the Patient Protection And Affordable Care Act reinforces.  The Congressional Budget Office estimates that non-group insurance premiums in 2016 would be 10 to 13 percent higher under the Act than under current law.   Among large group insurance plans, the Act's impact on premiums is negligible:

By CBO and JCT’s estimate, the average premium per policy in the small group market would be in the vicinity of $7,800 for single policies and $19,200 for family policies under the proposal, compared with about $7,800 and $19,300 under current law. In the large group market, average premiums would be roughly $7,300 for single policies and $20,100 for family policies under the proposal, compared with about $7,400 and $20,300 under current law.

If Obama were indeed interested in reforming and strengthening health insurance markets in this country, and improving insurance coverage among Americans, he would not defend the bloated legislation Congress has produced on this subject.  If Obama were indeed interested in improving health insurance in this country, he would demand the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act be scrapped in its entirety, and encourage Congress to assemble a bill that does more than institutionalize the status quo he finds so outrageous.

If Obama truly wished the problem solved, he would propose a true solution.  So far, this he has not done.

Climategate: "Scientists" Abandoning Science

One of the first great statements of the need to protect the environment is Chief Seattle's 1855 letter to President Franklin Pierce, a letter which echoes his environmentally conscious 1854 speech before Isaac Ingalls Stevens, then Governor of the Washington Territory.  The letter is poetic in its depiction of the connection between Man and nature:

We know the sap which courses through the trees as we know the blood that courses through our veins. We are part of the earth and it is part of us. The perfumed flowers are our sisters. The bear, the deer, the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the dew in the meadow, the body heat of the pony, and man all belong to the same family.

The letter is also, alas, a lie.  There is no evidence Si'ahl--Chief Seattle--ever wrote such a letter, or even said what is ascribed to him in the 1854 speech. 

"No evidence" seems to be a recurring theme among those who proclaim great concern for "the environment", as the recent release of emails obtained by a hacker from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) strongly suggests.  Just as there is a seeming wide gulf between the historical reality of Si'ahl and the mythology of the environmentally prescient Chief Seattle, there is a wide--and growing--gulf between the dire predictions of the global warming "alarmists" ensconced in the CRU and the actual empirical data.  So dramatic is the disparity between the published CRU findings and their source data that one journalist, James Delingpole of the Daily Telegraph, has somewhat portentiously (and perhaps prematurely) proclaimed the growing scandal "the final nail in the coffin of 'Anthropogenic Global Warming'?"   The "science" that has inspired the nations of the earth to gather first in Kyoto, now in Copenhagen, and soon in Mexico City, all for the sake of reversing 'Anthropogenic Global Warming', is as much of an airy piece of chicanery as the words of their philosophical forebear Chief Seattle.

Some might argue that it matters not if the scientists at the CRU were perhaps overly aggressive in their statistical manipulations....errr..."analyses" of climate and temperature data.  Given that the world over we see glaciers receding and ice caps melting, it is perfectly obvious that something is changing in our environment--and a changing climate can greatly impact our own quality of life, even our viability as a species.  If the problem is real, what does it matter if some well-meaning scientists "exaggerated"?

The answer is found first in Jerry Clark's concluding paragraph of his 1985 debunking of the Chief Seattle myth:

Does it really make any difference today whether the oration in question actually originated with Chief Seattle in 1855 or with Dr. Smith in 1887?  Of course it matters, because this memorable statement loses its moral force and validity if it is the literary creation of a frontier physician rather than the thinking of an articulate and wise Indian leader.  Noble thoughts based on a lie lose their nobility.  The dubious and murky origins of Chief Seattle's alleged "Unanswered Challenge" renders it useless as supporting evidence.  The historical record suggests that the compliant and passive individual named Seattle is not recognizable in the image of the defiant and angry man whose words reverberate in our time.

No matter how noble the intentions of Dr Mann and the researchers at East Anglia's CRU, the nobility of their purpose disappears in the mendacity of their method.  Their zeal and insistence to put forward their climate hypotheses as the only viable explanations for what we see in the world around us is the behavior of religious fanatics, not objective scientists; they have replaced the skeptical scientist's persistent question of "why" with the fundamentalist's fervent proclamation of "because."  That is their great error, their great sin, and, ultimately their great downfall.

Science is more clearly defined by what is unknown rather than what is known.  Even a lay person may see the world around him changing, but it is the scientist who ponders that change, who seeks the underlying cause or causes of that change.  It is the scientist who ever asks "why" and never presumes the answers to be final--and when a scientist excludes all hypotheses but his own from consideration, he ceases to be a scientist.

Moreover, because even the lay person can see the changing world around us, not only is it not necessary to manipulate and misrepresent data, it is not helpful.  If the changing world threatens humanity's existence, then accurate information and proper scientific inquiry are what humanity needs most, not the arrogant zealousness of a benighted few.  In matters of climate, as in all matters, the truth is what matters, not who proclaims that truth.

And in matters of climate, there is one truth that resonates today as it did in 1963, when President John F. Kennedy gave his commencement address to the graduating class of American University:

So, let us not be blind to our differences - - but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.

Unlike Si'ahl, Kennedy actually did say those words.

Can We Afford This War?

Glenn Thrush on Politico reports this interesting bit of discourse by Nancy Pelosi:

PAY-FOR WAR. Pelosi was far more fiscally conservative when it came to Afghanistan, expressing sympathy with congressional liberals, including Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey (D-Wis.), who thinks war funding should be subject to Blue Doggish “pay-for” rules.

"I think we have to look at that war with a green eyeshade on," Pelosi (D-Calif.) told the lefty bloggers, according to HuffPo’s Ryan Grim. "There is unrest in our caucus about: Can we afford this war?"

Pelosi qualified her remarks by noting that cost is not the top concern. "I think the American people believe that if it's something that's in our national security interest," she said, the investment is worth it.

But it still has to be paid for, she said. "Everything else has to be paid for. It must be fiscally sound. We have to hold it to the same standard, as well."

"Can we afford this war?" is a seemingly prudent question, but only if one ignores the nature of war--a focused and rapid expenditure of national treasure and human life.  War is a costly and bloody undertaking in the best of circumstances.  For that reason, a prudent man will never choose to wage war, all things being equal; for that reason, war will invariably choose the prudent man.

Yet such a choice is necessary before one can address the question of "can we afford this war?"  Consider for a moment how the typical determination of affordability is made:  If one is buying a house or a car, one determines affordability on the basis of current income--one can (or cannot) absorb the monthly payment of the loan that facilitates the purchase.  If one is selecting a restaurant, one determines affordability on the basis of how much cash one has on hand (or how much room is left on a credit card).  In every instance, the question of affordability is contingent on the question of desirability--we must want the house, or the car, or the meal, or the war, before the question of affordability can have any relevance.  The antecedent to "can we afford this war?" is "do we desire this war?"

Thus it is that warfare, particularly in the modern era, is a distinctly non-economic affair, for what rational person would answer affirmatively the question "do we desire this war"?  Yet that is exactly what Nancy Pelosi has done by implication, merely by speculating on "can we afford this war?" regarding Afghanistan.  For Pelosi to be concerned about whether the war can be "afforded" necessitates Pelosi desiring the war;  Pelosi, it seems, wants a war.

Thus it also is that the question is, invariably, the wrong question.  War is never desirable.  It may at times, be necessary, but no more than that.  The merits of war rest on war's necessity, not on war's "affordability."

The proper question, the question Pelosi ignores in her desire for war, is "do we need this war?"  The question has already been advanced by President Obama himself, when he deemed Afghanistan a "war of necessity."  The true debate over Afghanistan is not a debate over cost, but a debate over how (and if) war in Afghanistan advances America's security and national interests.  The true debate is over how much of a necessity the war in Afghanistan actually is.

Perversely, if Pelosi's Democrats have as their best argument that America can "afford" the war, they have already answered that question of the war's necessity:  not very.

Health Care Tax Unconstitutional

Senator Max Baucus unveiled his "compromise" health care plan today. One of the signature elements is mandatory purchase of health insurance by all Americans:

Just as auto coverage is now mandatory in most states, Baucus would a require that all Americans get health insurance once the system is overhauled. Penalties for failing to get insurance would start at $750 a year for individuals and $1,500 for families. Households making more than three times the federal poverty level - about $66,000 for a family of four - would face the maximum fines. For families, it would be $3,800, and for individuals, $950.

Baucus needs to be flogged, flayed, drawn, and quartered for this insanity.

First, let us demolish the straw man comparison to automobile insurance.  The mandatory coverage for drivers is liability coverage.  Drivers must have insurance coverage to pay for damages they cause in an accident.  Nowhere in the 50 states is there a law mandating drivers or car owners have insurance to cover repairs to their own vehicles.  The only time such coverage is imposed on a vehicle owner is when a lien holder demands.  Auto liability coverage is hardly a parallel for health care insurance.

Requiring all people to purchase health insurance or pay a fine, moreover, is an unconstitutional health care capitation tax.  It is a tax because it is a levy imposed by the United States.  Worse, it is a direct tax imposed only on a subset of American citizens (those without health insurance), and thus is explicitly proscribed by the Constitution.

The power to tax is found in the first clause of Article 1 Section 8 of the Constitution:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

Article I Section 9 of the Constitution limits the power of taxation through the following restriction:

No capitation, or other direct, Tax shall be laid, unless in Proportion to the Census or Enumeration herein before directed to be taken.

The Sixteenth Amendment clarifies this language to explicitly allow taxes upon income:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

The penalty tax, being imposed arbitrarily on a discrete class of taxpayers--those persons not subscribed to a health insurance plan--is absolutely not uniformly imposed tax, nor is it imposed in proportion to a census or enumeration (indeed, the conditional nature of the tax precludes the possibilities of uniformity or proportionality).  It is not assessed with regard to income, and thus does not qualify as an income tax, and so is not excluded from the proportionality requirement via the Sixteenth Amendment.

The Supreme Court Case POLLOCK v. FARMERS' LOAN & TRUST CO (157 U.S. 429) states the matter quite explicitly:

Nothing can be clearer than that what the constitution intended to guard against was the exercise by the general government of the power of directly taxing persons and property within any state through a majority made up from the other states.

The health care penalty tax is unconscionable and unconstitutional, and needs to be eliminated from public debate on health care immediately.

Afghanistan: Never America's War

There is but one reason for the United States to have military forces in Afghanistan:  to confront and eliminate the capacity of terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda to find safe haven from which to attack the United States itself.  That was the thrust and practical consequence of the five-point ultimatum President George W. Bush delivered to the Taliban in his 20 September 2001 address to a joint session of Congress:

By aiding and abetting murder, the Taliban regime is committing murder. And tonight the United States of America makes the following demands on the Taliban:
-- Deliver to United States authorities all of the leaders of Al Qaeda who hide in your land.
-- Release all foreign nationals, including American citizens you have unjustly imprisoned.
-- Protect foreign journalists, diplomats and aid workers in your country.
-- Close immediately and permanently every terrorist training camp in Afghanistan. And hand over every terrorist and every person and their support structure to appropriate authorities.
-- Give the United States full access to terrorist training camps, so we can make sure they are no longer operating.
These demands are not open to negotiation or discussion.

Indeed, the United States was never significantly troubled by the presence of the Taliban per se; it never granted formal recognition to the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan declared by the Taliban after taking Kabul in 1996, but had little cause to eject them from Kabul.  But for Al Qaeda, the United States would have no quarrel with the Taliban.

This is not idle supposition.  Al Qaeda moved itself to the forefront of American counter-terrorist thinking with the embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam in 1998, and again with the attack on the USS Cole in 2000.  Even before the 9/11 attacks, the United States was preparing to confront Al Qaeda militarily, in Afghanistan and elsewhere, with a National Security Presidential Directive having been prepared and awaiting President George W. Bush's signature just days before 9/11:

The document, a formal National Security Presidential Directive, amounted to a “game plan to remove al-Qaida from the face of the earth,” one of the sources told NBC News’ Jim Miklaszewski.

The plan dealt with all aspects of a war against al-Qaida, ranging from diplomatic initiatives to military operations in Afghanistan, the sources said on condition of anonymity.

America's strategic adversary is without any doubt Al Qaeda and not the Taliban.  Even if the Taliban were to take aggressive action now to eject Al Qaeda leaders from Afghani territory, Al Qaeda would still have places in which to gather resources, train, and plot future actions.  Somalia, the world's other unequivocally failed state, has become increasingly receptive to an Al Qaeda presence within its borders:

Osama bin Laden has been urging Al-Qaeda followers to open up shop in Somalia for years, but there was always doubt about whether that call would resonate in a largely secular nation with a historic wariness of Arab interference. No longer. After January's attacks by Ethiopia--which were backed by U.S. air power and aimed to reduce the threat of terrorism--an increasingly international Islamist presence has flourished in the country, drawn by the chaos of postinvasion Somalia and the chance to strike back at the U.S. and its ally Ethiopia. In Mogadishu, Somali Prime Minister Ali Mohammed Gedi told TIME that an alliance has formed among Somali nationalist rebels, remnants of the overthrown Islamic government, and rebels from the Ethiopian border region. U.S. officials accuse Eritrea, which has fought several wars against Ethiopia, of lending troops to the insurgency. Other observers say hundreds of foreign jihadists are arriving in Somalia. Transitional federal government President Yusuf Abdullah has accused Iran and Pakistan of funding the rebels, while others in Mogadishu point to Libya, Egypt and disgruntled elements within the Somali diaspora.

It is vital to remember that, before the Taliban conquered Kabul in 1996, Al Qaeda's headquarters was in Sudan, and that Osama bin Laden made common cause with the Taliban only after being expelled from Sudan in 1996:

A decade later, when Sudan kicked Bin Laden out of the country and he had nowhere to go, he turned to Tora Bora for sanctuary. He flew a chartered jet to Jalalabad in May 1996 and lived for a time in the nearby caves. Later that year, he moved his headquarters to Kandahar, the Taliban regime's spiritual capital in southern Afghanistan, but maintained a family and a house in Jalalabad.

It is also vital to note that some within the Sudanese government appear in recent years to be rather in favor of bin Laden returning to Sudan, having practically invited his Al Qaeda operatives to resume their prior activities in that country:

The document requests all government agencies to allow “foreign Jihadis who came to Sudan with Osama Bin Laden in 1994 to resume their political activities in Sudan given the circumstances surrounding foreign intervention in Darfur to support armed forces and the people of Sudan to fight Zionist enemies”.

The decision outlines certain steps to be taken to allow Al-Qaeda to operate in Sudan such as unfreezing their bank accounts and returning all properties confiscated in 1996.

In all fairness, it must be noted that the official Sudanese posture has been one of cooperation with the United States against global terrorism, as that same article highlights the assistance Sudan has given the United States against Al Qaeda:

The Los Angeles Times revealed last month that Sudan has secretly worked with the CIA to spy on the insurgency in Iraq, an example of how the U.S. has continued to cooperate with the Sudanese regime even while condemning its suspected role in the killing of tens of thousands of civilians in Darfur.

The U.S.-Sudan relationship goes beyond Iraq. Sudan has helped the United States track the turmoil in Somalia. Sudanese intelligence service has helped the US to attack the Islamic Courts positions in Somalia and to locate Al Qaeda suspects hiding there.

Sudan might be a future haven for Al Qaeda, but hardly a safe haven.

Yet the presence of Al Qaeda supporters within Somalia and Sudan are sufficient to demonstrate that defeating the Taliban militarily in Afghanistan will not defeat Al Qaeda at all.  Al Qaeda has other places of refuge besides the hills of Tora Bora, other desolate lands in which to organize and train terrorists.

The Taliban before Al Qaeda was not America's concern.  The Taliban after Al Qaeda should not be America's concern--and therefore the Taliban should not now be America's concern.  The Taliban is one of many competing insurgent forces seeking dominion over Afghanistan, and is more ethnic than religious in nature.  The Taliban leadership are entirely Pashtuns, and the motivation to reestablish Pashtun dominance in the region cannot be overlooked in their continuing influence within Afghanistan; indeed, their expansion into Pakistan arguably has less to do with religious fanaticism and more to do with a long-standing ethnic conflict between Pakistani Pashtuns and the Punjabi-dominated Pakistani Army:

The Pakistani army is composed mostly of Punjabis. The Taliban is entirely Pashtun. For centuries, Pashtuns living in the mountainous borderlands of Pakistan and Afghanistan have fought to keep out invading Punjabi plainsmen. So sending Punjabi soldiers into Pashtun territory to fight jihadists pushes the country ever closer to an ethnically defined civil war, strengthening Pashtun sentiment for an independent "Pashtunistan" that would embrace 41 million people in big chunks of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

 Thus it becomes clear that America's war against the Taliban is very much an accidental war--a war of coincidence only.  Perversely, America's war against the Taliban is the very essence of what President Obama described as a "dumb war":

That’s what I’m opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.

The words then Illinois State Senator Obama used to describe Iraq apply even more forcefully to Afghanistan.  Afghanistan is not merely a dumb war, it is a dumb war that was never America's war in the first place.  Afghanistan is the accidental battlefield between the United States and Al Qaeda, and no more than that.  This realization, and the realization that the true adversary in Afghanistan remain Al Qaeda, points the way to a plausible strategy in Afghanistan:  separate Al Qaeda from their Taliban patrons, strive to qwell the ethnic tensions between Afghani Pashtuns and Pakistani Punjabis, give voice and credence to the very real ethnic (and non-Islamic) tensions in that part of the world. 

Afghanistan was never America's war.  The Taliban was never America's adversary.  America's adversary is and remains Al Qaeda, and the transnational terrorism movements it foments and supports.  Drive Al Qaeda from Afghanistan and let the ethnic peoples of that region resolve their ethnic differences--by words and peaceful parley, preferably, but by force of arms if that is their will.  Target Al Qaeda, and leave Afghanistan alone.