I need your assistance. Please review the list below the fold and comment on anything you know to be true or false. I received it from someone I trust, who is a lawyer (strange but true), that is reading the health care bill page by page. It’s a list of changes the health care bill will make through the first 500 pages, which is what my friend has gotten through so far. What I really like about it is that the points are very concise and give specific page numbers in the bill for references. I have spot checked a few and they appear to be accurate. Anything that is iffy or questionable, let’s debate it and try to come to some sort of conclusion.

I know there are some very informative things out there, like the ongoing IBD series on this bill, but I haven’t come across anything like this that you could print out on a few pages and take with you to, say, a townhall meeting to confront your representative or senator with during the August recess. There is no spin here, it’s not “I heard on the radio today …” or anything like that; it’s a simple list of facts with references straight to the bill itself. If this list is accurate it would be a very good tool to forward to your friends and family. Forward it with a copy of the bill so any doubters can check for themselves. Even if some things are inaccurate, we can identify them here, remove them, and we can still create something really good. If this bill is going to sit around during the August recess, this is the sort of information we need to try and circulate so people can be informed. We just don’t want any MISinformation out there. The only real defense of this bill right now is that it’s not really that bad and the critics are just fear-mongers spreading lies, so let’s not give any ammunition to that claim.

This strikes me as the type of thing this site was meant for. If somebody knows the location of something better than this that’s already done (again: portable, short and to the point but very informative, not You Tube videos or long essays) then share it. The more the merrier.

If you need a copy of the bill to review, you can view or download one here in pdf format. Now here’s the list:

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The general logic behind the cap & trade system (explained at great length in my previous post) is that we need x (green energy) but are using y (fossil fuels) because it is currently impossible to gain the same benefits from x at the same efficiency & price as y. Therefore, the free market has failed because it is not developing ways to use x fast enough. To correct this, an environment is artificially created where using y gets increasingly more expensive, forcing people to find ways to make x cheaper and more efficient than y. There may be some short term pain, but in the end it will be worth it because x will be available sooner than it otherwise would have been and we would have ended up using x anyway.

My question: if this really works, why don’t we apply cap & trade logic to other areas of the market? Surely it will usher in all sorts of incredible technology ahead of time, right? For example, take a recent article discussing graphene sheet. This stuff is going to be the greatest. It’s the “thinnest material in the universe as well as the strongest ever measured” yet is still “flexible like plastic” and can be “rolled up like a scroll”. Future applications “include touch screens, solar cells, energy storage devices, cell phones and high-speed computer chips”. Unfortunately, scientists say that graphene sheets replacing silicon in computer chips is “a long way off…far beyond the horizon” because “silicon is a multi-billion dollar industry that has been perfecting silicon processing for 40 years.” But wait a minute! Why not enact a silicon cap & trade program as a type of shortcut to reaching this new technology? In cap & trade terms, the market has failed. Computer companies and the general public are too stupid to do this quickly enough on their own, so shouldn’t the government step in and deliver a market correction to lead things in the right direction? Maybe Big Silicon is even disrupting the market by stifling research to avoid loosing its stranglehold? If we artificially increase the price of silicon so eventually it’s too expensive to build computers with, won’t that force early development of graphene technology?

Sure, there is a chance that might work, but how likely is it? Should we destroy the U.S. computer industry to find out? Businesses have already been working feverishly to develop this technology and they are doing it based on nothing more than free market incentives. In other words, they know they will make a lot of money if they can successfully develop this technology, so do we think that the government is somehow going to make them work smarter or harder? In fact, according to this article there have already been breakthroughs in this field that have come faster than expected and the government had nothing to do with that other than the Pentagon handing out some money. Does anyone seriously think that if we enacted a silicon cap & trade say, 5 years ago, that those breakthroughs would have come quicker? If so, remember that with such a system computers would become more expensive and it would open the door for foreign competition to utterly dominate the market unless protectionist tarriffs are passed. But then the consumers lose because everything becomes more expensive, they can’t afford to buy as many computers, business profits go down, and then there isn’t as much money to invest in researching the new technology anyway. Does that make sense? If so, then let’s just cap & trade every single market area where we want technological advances. There may be a possibility that we’ll run out of elements to use because, for example, graphene sheet is made from carbon, so if carbon and silicon are both taxed then it could be problematic to come up with new, cheaper technologies. However, if you can swallow the fantasy that cap & trade can work in the first place, it’s probably not a leap for you to believe that we’ll just discover or invent new elements to use with all those new technologies.

When I think about cap & trade, I am reminded of an initiation prank that was played on new Soldiers in my unit during motor pool maintenance. A sergeant would tell a Soldier to get emissions samples from a vehicle and hand them a plastic shopping bag. The Soldier then went and put the bag on the exhaust pipe of a vehicle for a while until it was “good and full of exhaust” as instructed by the sergeant. Once they had an acceptable sample in the shopping bag, they would be ordered to report to someone like the battalion motor sergeant. The unsuspecting private then presented the plastic bag to the motor sergeant, at which point he said in disgust, “What the hell is this? Your platoon sergeant knows damn well I need at least 5 bags of exhaust samples. Get back out there and get some more!” With cap & trade, I envision federal employees from some new government agency or arm of the EPA, standing on the roof of a business with a plastic bag, supposedly catching their emission samples. Then they will deliver the bag to their boss who will peek inside and say, “Woah, that’s a lot of carbon! Go back and deliver this tax bill to that business.” The only problem is that the joke will be on the U.S. economy, not the government employees.

The Cap & Trade bill (also known as Waxman-Markey) recently passed the House and is on its way to the Senate. If it succeeds there, it will most certainly be signed into law by Obama as this is one of his top priorities. This bill will, at the very least, make life more expensive here in the U.S. If fully implemented the way it’s supposed to be, it will probably break our economy. I would like to use my own industry, metals, to demonstrate this.

U.S. Industry is Already on Life Support

I work for a metals distributor. We buy material from mills, stock them in our warehouse and resell them. As with many other American industries, our metals industry has taken a beating from imports from foreign countries like China. That wasn’t the case 20 years ago because China was making crap, but the quality of their products has improved a lot and people will gladly buy it now because it is so much cheaper. This is especially true for commodity items like stainless steel pipe and hot rolled carbon. If we get a quote from a Chinese mill and a quote from a Domestic or European mill, the Chinese mill will be lower about 9.5 times out of 10. There have been a few rare occurrences in this down economy where a domestic/Euro mill has had one particular item that they really needed to move and had a fire sale, beating the Chinese price. In general, though, the difference between buying Chinese & buying domestic is like the difference between shopping at Wal-Mart and shopping at Saks: you’re not going to brag about what you bought, but it will get the job done and it’s a whole lot cheaper.

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Saul Alinsky, author of Rules for Radicals , instructed to “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” That’s exactly what Obama and the Democrats are doing right now, and if the Recent Politico.com article is to be believed, they’ve been planning this since October of last year. It wasn’t long after Obama won the election that he stirred the hornets’ nest up by invoking Limbaugh’s name for pretty much no reason at all. Proponents of the Fairness Doctrine say that is the exact reason why people like Limbaugh need their free speech regulated by the government, because they needlessly agitate people, but I guess it’s okay for Obama. His entire premise is that Republicans need to stop listening to Limbaugh because that’s why they lost the election. Instead they need to engage in bipartisanship, which means to do everything Obama wants them to and not raise a lot of fuss. That is, of course, ridiculous. The Republicans do not sit around and wait to hear Limbaugh’s show and then go out and make policy. Furthermore, they have most certainly not been listening to him for several years anyway, as Limbaugh has been quick to point out. And finally, Limbaugh certainly did not have much impact on the outcome of the election. To put things in perspective, he is an AM radio talk show host, plain and simple. He is an entertainer. He gets behind a mic and voices his opinion and takes calls. How can he possibly be bothering Obama right now and why does Obama need to go out of his way to start verbal fisticuffs with him as one of his first official actions in office? There are plenty of other radio hosts and bloggers out there that have been hammering Obama, so why the fixation on Rush?

The answer is because it’s a diversionary tactic, nothing more. We are seeing Obama’s skill as a community organizer in action, because this is how he operates. Rush Limbaugh is easily the most recognizable lightning rod of conservative talk radio controversy. By making Limbaugh an issue, he knows that two groups will emerge and start to fight it out: Limbaugh’s fans and Limbaugh’s haters. To make things worse, many media outlets are seizing on this story because of the Britney Spears-like sensationalism about it so it is getting a lot of coverage. Meanwhile, Obama and the Democrats continue to try and shovel his crap agenda through Congress as quickly as possible.

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Rearden heard Bertram Scudder, outside the group, say to a girl who made some sound of indignation, “Don’t let him disturb you. You know, money is the root of all evil – and he’s the typical product of money.”

“So you think money is the root of all evil?” said Francisco. “Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?

“When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears nor all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor – your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money. Is this what you consider evil?

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God bless the tireless journalists at the AP. Taking a break from their endless, but vital, Palin-bashing, they’ve now discovered that those tax breaks we’ve heard so much about really aren’t that big of a deal to about 84% of the population. You can read about it here:

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jye2lJN2jj4Bi5rooDwdJhZ4bsPAD94DFVF00

My favorite part of the article is the quote from this guy:
“I don’t think it’s going to work in this instance,” said Ryan Anderson, 31, a Democrat from Bloomington, Minn., who thinks tax reductions would have little impact on most families’ budgets. “That’s kind of like shooting a BB gun at a freight train.”

“Ehh, tax breaks, shmacks breaks. Who really cares?” said Harry Johnson, if that is his real name, from Minnesota, who apparently doesn’t understand that if the government takes less money from you that you have more money to use in your family budgeting. “What I want to know is will the Vikings be able to win the NFC North this year? Oh and I want socialized medicine, too.” Wow. What a difference a week makes. I thought the number one issue the past few months was how the Republicans had spent 8 years hooking up their evil, rich CEO friends and that now they would be made to pay their fair share of taxes again while the middle class would be swimming in money. Suddenly, the AP has discovered that’s not at all the case. I mean, people still want their tax breaks, but only after we’ve taken care of a few minor issues first. Namely we’d like the economy to be improved, more jobs created, the budget deficit reduced, all financial institutions stabilized, troops removed from Iraq, problems of poor people dealt with, health care nationalized, the environment protected, and offshore drilling for oil allowed. Then, and only then, will 84% of this nation accept any sort of tax cut.

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I’ve heard a lot lately about vicious, right-wing rage popping up since election night. I suppose the idea is that conservatives (i.e. bitter white people) are so racist and such sore losers that they are foaming at the mouth angry to the point of insanity. I even had someone tell me about how right-wingers were rioting in California after the election, but it turns out it was actually some members of the gay community who were rioting because they didn’t like the outcome of a democratic vote on gay marriage. Of course, it could have been only conservative gay people that were rioting, I’m not sure. Anyway, for all this supposed right-wing rage, conservatives aren’t doing much more than continuing to oppose Obama through dissenting opinions and simply commenting on what he is doing.

There have been numerous pleas from the left saying, “Can’t we all just get along?” and that we all need to unite behind Obama, “embrace” him, and follow him so we can heal as a nation and boldly march toward the future. Well that’s a load of crap. I opposed Obama’s ideologies and politics on Nov. 3rd and I still oppose them. He has to prove me wrong; prove that he is not really a Marxist and he really is some kind of new and different politician. He’s made a lot of speeches, a lot of promises, and now he’s got to deliver. It’s always been my thinking that he’s promised too much, too quickly to too many people and he can’t make everyone happy that he said he would. The aforementioned gay marriage ban riots are a great example. The majority of the gay community has expected that Obama will fully support them in their political agenda. Blacks and hispanics both think the same thing about their own interests. However, the interesting thing is that blacks and hispanics both voted for the gay marriage ban overwhelmingly, so it wasn’t simply a case of the Mormon Church pumping money into Cali and riling up all the gullible, white Christians. Now how can Obama make both gay people and people who don’t want gays to marry happy? You can ask the same question of the large number of Jewish people that voted for Obama and the large number of Jew-haters that have been supporters of his. Now that he’s President, he has to get off of the fence and make decisions; no more voting “present”.

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Before we have the battle for the future of our country, the GOP is going to have a battle for its soul. The GOP has been using conservatives who were upset with the Democrats for some time now, especially in the South. The thing is, though, the party is not run by real conservatives. It is full of moderates, half-liberals, and people cutting deals with Democrats. Unfortunately, if you are a conservative the GOP is the only game in town because you have even less in common with the Dems.

Really it may already be too late for the Republicans. They had a golden opportunity starting in ’94 when they stormed into Congress and again when Bush W. first got elected and they controlled both houses. However, they threw all of that away with out of control spending and ballooning the debt. Then, of course, we have the abomination shamnesty bill from last year that Bush was going to sign, we have Bush putting two Border Patrol agents in jail for shooting a drug dealer, and let’s not forget the bailout. Bush is probably going to sign another economic stimulus plan before he leaves office that is going to do nothing but spend more money that our government doesn’t have. A lot of people are now wondering what the hell the difference is between the two parties, and rightfully so.

Right now I can’t tell. I got mailers last summer from the GOP saying how they understand what they did was wrong and they are going to stick to conservative principles. Then came the immigration bill, McCain’s campaign, and the bailout. Obviously they didn’t learn anything. They might actually figure it out now that they’ve been pounded hard, but I don’t know. Seeing how McCain’s campaign is trying to smear Sarah Palin is truly detestable. All of these senators that lost and are in close races voted for the bailout, ignoring pleas from their constituents in a 20 to 1 ratio to vote against it. Quite frankly they deserve what happens to them. Unfortunately Lindsay Graham won with a huge percentage of the vote, so I’m very afraid that he feels like he has been doing the right thing and we may see him as the 2012 candidate for President.

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I hate to be such a downer, but let me announce this now: the election is officially over and Obama, who has never even been a contributing member of the economy, has won. I don’t like it, but McCain just lost his last chance to break away from Obama. One difference between the two is supposed to be that McCain is going to clean up Washington by cutting down on the pork while Obama is going to add another $1 trillion in entitlement spending to our already out of control deficit. So this economy issue came to a head last week and McCain suspended his campaign to go back to Washington and fix things. The maverick was gonna go straighten everything out. After leaving everyone in suspsense for a couple of days, he stepped up to bat in the first debate last Friday to make a statement on the issue. Instead of ridiculing the bailout plan and defending the taxpayer, he just mumbled something about how we have to work together to find a good solution. He tried to avoid the question of whether he was going to vote for it or not, but when pressed he just mumbled, “Surebut hey…we’ve gotta work together.” Obama must have been silently giving praise to Allah after hearing that incomprehensibly lame answer. Strike one for McCain.

He had another chance to come out against the bailout on Monday. People across the country are bombarding their senators and congressmen voicing opposition to the bailout while the Dems were whining that they needed to pass this bill right away and the Republicans were “blocking” it. Why not say hell yeah, that’s right! We will not vote for anything that screws the taxpayer and dependson the government to fix a problem that it caused in the first place! If you want it so badly and it’s so wonderful, you vote for it since you’re the majority party and useless Bush has already said he will sign it. Nope. Instead, McCain once again mumbled a statement about how he really hoped the bill passed. It didn’t. It was voted down in the house. So McCain suspended his campaign and went back to Washington….to do what, exactly? To push the conservative House Republicans down the stairs while they are standing on conservative principals? To mimick what Barack Obama is saying? And then he still can’t lead his own party to pass it and just goes back to campaigning? He looked like a fool. Strike two.

That brings us to today and the “new and improved” bailout plan. You know; the one that has multiplied from 3 pages to 451 like it’s a gremlin that Paulson & the Dems accidentaly spilled water on (though it was obviously not an accident). During the first debate, McCain hung his hat on his strong passion for fighting pork and earmarks in legislation. He also voiced a strong opposition to any bailout becoming a “Christmas Tree” loaded down with a little something for everyone to ensure passage. I believed him because he seemed to be speaking from the heart. He seemed like he was really pissed off about the whole process and would really do something about it. Today he called the new bill an improvement over the first one and stressed that the gears of our economy will grind to a halt if it does not. He also voted for it earlier this evening, as did Obama. Now let me draw your attention to Sec. 503 of the Super X-Treme Awesome Pt. 2 Wall Street Bailout:

“Excise Tax Exemption for Wooden Practice Arrows Used by Children. Current law imposes an excise tax of 39 cents, adjusted for inflation, on the first sale by the manufacturer, producer, or importer of any shaft of a type used to produce certain types of arrows. This proposal would exempt from the excise tax any shaft consisting of all natural wood with no laminations or artificial means to enhance the spine of the shaft used in the manufacture of an arrow that measures 5/16 of an inch or less and is unsuited for use with a bow with a peak draw weight of 30 pounds or more. The proposal is effective for shafts first sold after the date of enactment. The estimated cost of the proposal is $2 million over ten years.”

Now if that’s not an ornament on the tree, I don’t know what is.

I don’t consider myself a political genius, but it seems to me that McCain has completely missed the clue train here. How hard would it have been to take this wooden arrow provision and just beat that thing to death? Come out and call shenanigans on this whole bill, pointing out some of the other choice pieces of pork along the way. Point out that while the country is in crisis, Congress still can’t help itself from adding financial BS into any piece of legislation that gets created. Point out that the House Republicans were right, and that he (McCain) will stand with them and urge all his other colleagues, Republican and Democrat, to do the same until they can pass a clean bill with no pork an earmarks in it. That is the sort of thing I would expect McCain to say based upon what he said he believes in, but he didn’t say it. He could have used this to stand out from Obama, but instead has been right in line along with him the whole way. He could have pointed out the string of Democrats that have their fingerprints all over this economic crisis, but instead just blamed Wall Street and the markets….kinda like Obama. To paraphrase Dick Morris, McCain goes down without even taking a swing. Strike three.