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Insufficiently coercive GOP health plan

Posted Nov 5, 2009 by Tom Jackson

Updated Nov 5, 2009 at 05:32 PM

Gus Bilirakis on House Republicans’ non-radical health-care proposal, as scored by the Congressional Budget Office:

U.S. Rep. Gus M. Bilirakis (R-Palm Harbor), representing Florida’s 9th Congressional District, today issued the following statement after the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office confirmed that the Republican health care plan will lower premiums by up to 10 percent and reduce the deficit by $68 billion over 10 years without raising taxes or cutting Medicare for seniors:

“The Republican plan lowers health care costs and expands access to quality care without raising taxes, cutting Medicare, killing jobs, or putting federal bureaucrats between patients and their doctors.

“The trillion dollar Democratic plan raises taxes on individuals and small businesses, raids Medicare to pay for a government takeover of health care, and gives the federal government more power over personal health care decisions. The Republican plan clearly is the preferable approach, especially since it is the only one taxpayers can afford. 

“The GOP plan establishes programs to help people with pre-existing conditions obtain coverage through high-risk insurance pools, prevents insurers from unjustly cancelling policies because people get sick and need costly care, and prohibits insurers from instituting annual or lifetime spending caps for people with high health care costs.

“These consumer protections, coupled with common sense ideas like medical liability reform, strengthening association health plans, and allowing people to purchase health insurance across state lines will make health care more affordable without breaking the bank.”

NOTE: Read the full letter from the CBO here (PDF). Read a summary of the GOP health care plan here (PDF).

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GBW smells an AARP rat

Posted Nov 5, 2009 by Tom Jackson

Updated Nov 5, 2009 at 05:25 PM

Ginny Brown-Waite weighs in on the announcement of an endorsement that was no secret three months ago, during the height of the August town hall furor.

U.S. Congresswoman Ginny Brown-Waite (R-Brooksville) was disappointed to learn of AARP’s decision to endorse the Democrats’ $1.3 trillion health care bill:

“There was a time when AARP represented the interests of retired people—this endorsement proves that those days are long gone.  The Democrats’ health care bill cuts $400 billion dollars from Medicare—the very program that AARP’s members paid for and rely on.

“AARP is running a great risk by endorsing a bill that does not clearly determine which health plans will be allowed under this legislation.  This bill leaves it up to Washington bureaucrats to make that determination once the bill is passed and signed into law. 

“AARP’s members deserve to know the true reasons behind their endorsement of this bill.  If they are not standing up for the interests of seniors, then whose interests are they standing up for?”

 

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Read the bill?

Posted Nov 5, 2009 by Tom Jackson

Updated Nov 5, 2009 at 09:21 AM

With the echoes of August ringing in her ears, U.S. Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite is making available copies of Nancy Pelosi’s 2,000-page paperweight for her District 5 constituents to marvel over ahead of Saturday’s presumed vote in the House of Representatives.  The details from Brown-Waite’s office follow:

Washington D.C. – U.S. Congresswoman Ginny Brown-Waite encourages her constituents to stay up-to-date on the health care debate in Washington by providing some local libraries with the full text of the 1,990 page bill.  If the library in your area does not have a copy of the bill, links to the bill and related documents are posted on her website:

“Speaker Pelosi may have felt it was okay to write her health care bill without the input of the American people, but that’s not the way I operate,” Brown-Waite said. “My constituents deserve the opportunity to read this health care bill right along side their Member of Congress.

“To aid in this effort, my office will provide some local libraries around the 5th district with copies of the Democrats’ 1,990 page bill.  My constituents can also find the latest bill text, news articles, summaries and reports on my website: brown-waite.house.gov/healthcarereform.”

Brew plenty of strong coffee.

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Gov. Crist’s loopy history

Posted Nov 4, 2009 by Tom Jackson

Updated Nov 4, 2009 at 11:28 PM

From the “You can fool some of the people all of the time” file, courtesy of the Associated Press:

TALLAHASSEE - Gov. Charlie Crist is saying he did not endorse the $787 billion federal stimulus bill, a statement that might confuse some voters.  [Confuse is putting it mildly; irritate, astonish, infuriate, flabbergast, now those are more appropriate terms—Ed.]

Crist appeared with President Barack Obama in February to support the bill, asked Florida members of Congress to vote for it and previously told The Associated Press that he would have voted for it if he had been in the Senate.

But when the Republican governor talked about the bill Wednesday on CNN, he said he didn’t endorse it. Crist told CNN he understood that the bill was going to pass and wanted to use it for the benefit of Florida.

Crist has tried to distance himself from Obama and the stimulus bill since entering the 2010 Senate race in the spring.

Whatever other fine qualities Gov. Crist still wields—and they are becoming increasingly difficult to locate—this is absolutely delusional.

Is anybody, even Crist’s staunch ally Mike Fasano, drinking this Kool-Ade?

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Rising fever of warmism alarmism

Posted Nov 4, 2009 by Tom Jackson

Updated Nov 4, 2009 at 04:55 PM

Global warmism alarmism is much with us as the planet lurches toward an even larger and more pressing worry: the global emissions summit scheduled next month in Copenhagen.

The Obama administration’s handwringing reached a fever pitch Wednesday when chief climate negotiator – who knew? – Todd Stern climbed Capitol Hill to put the latest worst face on the calamitous condition of Mother Earth, infected as it is with the virus of evil human activity.

Comes this from the Wall Street Journal (note the appropriately explosive salvo from Bay area Rep. Gus Bilirakis):

With a big global summit on climate change just weeks away, the top U.S. negotiator in talks aimed at forging a treaty urged Congress Wednesday to move as quickly as possible to enact caps on U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions, warning of “catastrophic” consequences if the world doesn’t stabilize such emissions.

Todd Stern, who was testifying before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, said the Obama administration intends to seek the “strongest possible” agreement to curb emissions at a United Nations conference in Copenhagen next month, but added that any deal would have to be “consistent with the science and mindful of the necessity to be practical and pragmatic.”

He complained that some poor countries “prefer to focus more on citing chapter and verse for dubious interpretations” of past climate agreements “designed to prove that they have no responsibility to take action … than on thinking through pragmatic ways to find common ground and start solving the problem.”

Mr. Stern encountered tough questioning from Republicans, some of whom challenged the idea that the earth is warming. Others expressed fear that the administration will commit the U.S. to an economically ruinous schedule of emissions reductions.

“The longer we wait, the worse it gets,” Mr. Stern told the panel. “At some point, people are going to recognize there’s too much carbon in the atmosphere.”

There is a word for this, and that word—increasingly expressed by climate scientists—is: nonsense.  Earth temperatures have been flat for a decade even as atmospheric carbon has surged.

Mr. Stern was testifying a day after Senate Republicans largely boycotted a meeting of a Senate panel weighing a proposal to cut U.S. emissions roughly 20 percent beneath 2005 levels by 2020. The Republicans complained that the bill’s potential impact on the economy had not been sufficiently vetted by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Echoing similar concerns, Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R, Palm Harbor), told Mr. Stern, “The last thing we need coming out of Copenhagen is an energy tax.” Mr. Bilirakis said he feared the Obama administration will commit the U.S. to a deal that “will severely disadvantage American business and shift jobs abroad” to countries such as China and India that don’t cap emissions.

Mr. Stern spent much of his testimony trying to persuade lawmakers that those countries are willing to do more to cut their emissions than they let on.

Yes. Just like Iran’s mad mullahs are willing to do more to limit their production of nuclear-weapons-grade uranium than they let on.  Or are they ... ?

He noted that China’s current five-year plan calls for reducing the energy intensity of its economy by 20 percent by 2010, and that its government has implemented increasingly stringent automobile emissions standards.

Democrats on the panel largely expressed support for Mr. Stern, though Eni Faleomavaega – a Democratic delegate who represents American Samoa – complained about what he said was a shortage of specifics from the administration on how much money the U.S. should spend each year to help developing countries reduce their emissions and adapt to the effects of climate change.

“There’s been a lot of rhetoric but no real substantive commitment,” Mr. Faleomavaega said. China has suggested that rich nations contribute the equivalent of one percent of their gross domestic product – a figure that Mr. Stern has said is “untethered from reality” and would mean $140 billion in the case of the U.S.

Just what Americans need: Another massive mandate to be funded with more debt. more taxes or more of both, extracted in pursuit of a goal that is essentially irrelevant (a potential fraction of a degree change over a century).  Stick to your guns, Gus.  Tuesday’s election results suggest reinforcements less prone to warmism panic are on their way.

 

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What’s an ‘emolument,’ anyway?

Posted Nov 2, 2009 by Tom Jackson

Updated Nov 2, 2009 at 10:18 PM

It is a source of fascination and amusement that many of the same folks who embrace the notion of a “living, breathing, evolving” U.S. Constitution, and who are quite on board with unelected judges discovering “penumbras” that support their ideas of social justice can at the same time be dismissive when confronted with the plain language of the document if it inconveniences their particular point of view.

Consider the backlash that met the observation of some old original-intent fuddy-duddies – among them Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite (R-Brooksville) – that President Obama must clear a constitutional hurdle before he can accept the Nobel Peace Prize he “won” last month.

The plain language of the Constitution is found within Article 1, Section 9, which gives Congress specific instructions regarding one facet of its relationship with the rest of the federal government.  Known as the “emoluments clause,” it provides thusly: “No person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince or foreign state.”

Let us stipulate that the details leave constitutional scholars oddly conflicted about the correct course of action. The committee that awards the Nobel Peace prize is appointed by the Norwegian legislature, but is officially independent from it.  On the other hand, the prize is awarded in the presence of – and, some authorities say, on behalf of – the Norwegian king.  That sounds at least like the makings of two constitutional difficulties.

Not that all murkiness has been set aside.  However, over at the Volokh Conspiracy, researcher David Kopel, digging into Brown-Waite’s objection (joined by Florida’s Cliff Stearns and Texas’ Ron Paul), has unearthed this statutory clarification:

When [Theodore] Roosevelt won the Peace Prize, there was apparently no controlling statute. Today there is: 5 USC § 7342 (titled “Receipt and disposition of foreign gifts and decorations”) sets out the conditions under which foreign gifts can be accepted without a separate action of Congress. The statute applies to an “employee,” which includes “the President and the Vice President.”

A “foreign government” includes “any agent or representative of any such [foreign] unit or such organization, while acting as such.” Since the Nobel Peace Prize committee is, as the Representatives note, appointed by the Norwegian Storting (the legislature), it would seem to be within the scope of the statute.

A “gift” is “a tangible or intangible present (other than a decoration).” A “decoration” includes a “medal, badge, insignia, emblem, or award.”

By the statute, Congress explicitly consents to employee receipt of gifts of “minimal value,” which is “means a retail value in the United States at the time of acceptance of $100 or less.” The statute authorizes the Administrator of General Services to make regulations to adjust “minimal value” to reflect changes in the Consumer Price Index, beginning in 1981, and reflecting CPI changes in the previous three years. Roughly speaking, $100 in 1978 is about $327 today.

A Peace Prize laureate receives a diploma, a 196-gram gold medal, and a large check (10 million Swedish crowns in 2007). The spot price of gold is $33 a gram, so the medal and the check obviously do not qualify for the “minimal value” exception. The diploma, as a piece of paper, could, although not if it were delivered with an expensive frame.

In the statute, Congress also formally “consents” to an employee receiving and keeping “a decoration tendered in recognition of active field service in time of combat operations or awarded for other outstanding or unusually meritorious performance, subject to the approval of the employing agency of such employee.”  The diploma and the medal both fit within the definition of “decoration.”  As President, Obama is the head of his own “employing agency,” and therefore can approve his receipt of the medal and the diploma.

The check is not a “decoration” and is of much more than “minimal value.” Employees may not accept gifts of more than minimal value. However, there are various exceptions, and the relevant one is that a gift may be accepted “when it appears that to refuse the gift would likely cause offense or embarrassment or otherwise adversely affect the foreign relations of the United States, except that– (i) a tangible gift of more than minimal value is deemed to have been accepted on behalf of the United States and, upon acceptance, shall become the property of the United States.”

It would seem to be within the foreign policy discretion of President Obama to determine that refusing the Nobel check could cause offense, embarrassment, or an adverse effect on foreign relations.

Or not.  Depending upon the oratorical skills of the public official declining the offer.

Anyway, back to the earlier complaint, that Brown-Waite, Stearns and Paul have cited an “obscure” portion of the Constitution.  As if claiming obscurity is an argument.  If it is, then let us do away with the infield fly rule, which eight of 10 fans at any Tampa Bay Rays game can’t accurately explain.  But don’t come crying to me when routine popups with no outs and the bases loaded turn into triple plays.

But that’s the way it works these days.  Don’t like a rule, claim it’s obscure, or archaic, or the Founders couldn’t possibly have anticipated the nuanced 21st Century – and besides, they weren’t divinely inspired anyway or what’s up with that three-fifths of a person clause, hmmmm?  Do anything but concede that the Constitution says what it says – How ’bout that obscure, archaic 10th Amendment? – and that for the sake of sacred consistency, we should be loathe to stray from its plain, obvious words.  We appreciate Brown-Waite’s efforts on sticking up for all the document’s words and phrases.

Now, our concession to murkiness above notwithstanding, it takes an alarming amount of wriggling to escape the obvious hook: that by dint of its composition, the awards committee is inextricably linked to Norway’s legislature.

In calls even less apparent than this one, it would be incumbent upon the recipient to affirm, graciously, both the spirit and the letter of the Constitution, by formally seeking the Congress’ approval.

Of course, it’s easy to see the problem with that: Days, if not weeks, of floor debate in both houses over President Obama’s fitness for the prize – nominations for which closed 10 days after he was inaugurated – and what motivated the committee to violate the clear language of Alfred Nobel’s bequest, that the prize must be awarded for work done “during the preceding year.”

But Nobel was a man of the 19th Century, witlessly burdened by the obscure, archaic notions of achievement who could not possibly have anticipated the awesomeness of Barack Obama and besides, even Nobel’s closest friends don’t say he was divinely inspired and, well, oh, never mind.

Before we conclude, however, we must note at least one fallacy in Brown-Waite’s thinking.  She suggests that President Obama would receive something of value even if he donates the prize money – about $1.4 million – to charity: about a $500,000 tax deduction.  If only the IRS code were so simple. In fact, the deduction would come only after he had declared the $1.4 million as ordinary income, leaving him a $900,000 hit on which to pony up.

Luckily, he has noted tax avoidance expert Tim Geithner next door at Treasury.  Or perhaps the next, newest convert to the consumption-based Fair Tax is already sitting in the Oval Office.  So it’s all good.

 

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Naked power grab

Posted Oct 29, 2009 by Tom Jackson

Updated Oct 29, 2009 at 02:07 PM

Battling back even as U.S. House Democratic leaders congratulated themselves for crafting a brand new doorstop masquerading as a health care “reform” package, U.S. Rep. Gus M. Bilirakis (R-Palm Harbor) joined the chorus decrying the plan as a naked government takeover:

“Instead of working to produce health care reform that would control rising costs and provide greater access to insurance for those who lack it, the Democrat’s today emerged from behind closed doors to repackage the same heavy-handed, big government approach they have proposed since day one. Their plan will slash Medicare for seniors, raise taxes and lead to fewer choices and more costly premiums while reducing the quality of care we all receive.

“We should move away from more government bureaucracy and instead build upon our current system while preserving the quality of care and keeping individuals in charge of their own health care decisions. Congress should be working on sensible answers that will lower costs and increase access to insurance such as tort reform, cleaning up fraud, strengthening insurance so it is portable and can be purchased across state lines, and expanding access to care through community health centers.”

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On sheriff, straightening the record

Posted Oct 28, 2009 by Tom Jackson

Updated Oct 28, 2009 at 03:09 PM

Here at The Jax Files, we hate to leave loose ends dangling, even if those straggling ends result from, or are engendered by, our endeavors on behalf of the column that appears in the Pasco Tribune.

To wit: Our piece on the resignation of Pasco sheriff’s deputy Jeffrey Bousquet (“An abrupt but appropriate departure for sergeant,” Sept. 18) raised a strenuous and pointed objection from an anonymous commenter, BrooksvilleBob.

The column noted a variety of justifications for Sheriff Bob White’s decision to accept Sgt. Bousquet’s resignation immediately, declining his offer of two week’s notice. Whereupon BrooksvilleBob filed his objection.

Now, despite the nature of their cross-pollination, it is the custom of The Jax Files not to get into arguments with readers of the Pasco Tribune column – thank heaven for readers, after all – especially readers who decline to own their opinions, except behind virtual masks.

That said, BrooksvilleBob’s complaint (did we mention it was anonymous?) fulfilled a requirement – important if true – that affixed us with an obligation of investigation.  Here is the essence of that charge:

Sgt. Bousquet had submitted, in addition to a retirement letter, paperwork necessary for him to “buy back” his military time. You see … in addition to being a stellar law enforcement officer Sgt. Bousquet provided service to his country in the military. Sgt. Bousquet, like other military veterans, is entitled to purchase his time in the military to be included in his Florida State Retirement. By his acceptance of Sgt. Bousquet’s two week notice quicker than the actual two weeks, White stopped that process from occurring. To make this even more simple so even Jackson can grasp it’s [sic] importance – White screwed Bousquet out of his full retirement.

Again, important if true.

Bousquet had worked 22 1/4 years for the Pasco Sheriff’s Office; the ability to claim the 2 years, 10 months he served in the military would have pushed him to 25 years—the threshold for full retirement benefits from FRS.  If BrooksvilleBob’s indictment is accurate, well, the constituents of any public official should consider with extreme prejudice decisions that injure an employee’s attempt to access his full array of legal benefits.  The question becomes whether White acted as BrooksvilleBob claims.

The short answer is: No.  The longer answer is: Absolutely, unequivocally no.  It’s not even close.

It’s all in the guidebook detailing provisions of the Florida Retirement Services, of which the Pasco Sheriff’s Office is a member.  BrooksvilleBob is partly right: FRS allows military veterans to “buy back” their time in the nation’s uniform to apply toward retirement in some cases.  The details can be found here.

FRS is extremely precise about this. Qualifying veterans are those who served at the time of World War II, the Korean conflict, Vietnam (ending in 1975) and, from 1990-1992, America’s adventure in the Persian Gulf.

Specifically omitted from the mix are those military veterans whose service fell into the relatively peaceful gap spanning 1976 and 1989. Specifically, Bousquet served his country in the U.S. Army from Aug. 11, 1983 until June 9, 1986.

On this point alone, BrooksvilleBob’s assertion fails to muster up.

But there’s more.  To qualify for the military time buy-back option, an employee covered by FRS must have been hired by Jan. 1, 1987.  Alas, Bousquet’s hiring date was June 1, 1987 – six months past the deadline.

If you’re keeping score at home, that’s strike two.

Finally comes this from Gail Page, head of human resources for the sheriff’s office: “It wouldn’t have mattered how the sheriff treated Sgt. Bousquet’s resignation,” Page says. “If he had been eligible for the buy-back, whether [White] accepted [Bousquet’s] resignation immediately or not would not have stopped the process.”

The disposition of the matter – a simple episode of pushing paper, Page says—would have been entirely between the former employee and Florida Retirement Services.  The sheriff’s office would have had no influence, one way or the other.

And that, sports fans, is strike three.

To recap: There exists not even a whiff of evidence to support BrooksvilleBob’s charge, which turns out to have been equal parts shrill, empty and – applying the rubric described above – utterly unimportant.

The Jax Files is pleased to set the record straight.

 

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About that business wih the family tree

Posted Oct 21, 2009 by Tom Jackson

Updated Oct 21, 2009 at 04:01 PM

It turns out the so-called missing link, the single ancestor from which humans and the great apes are supposed to have diverged, has yet to be found.

Not that you would know if you’d caught May’s TV “documentary” based on the book, “The Link: Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor.”  Experts denounced the claim at the time, and further research has confirmed their opinion.  As the Associated Press reports:

NEW YORK - Remember Ida, the fossil discovery announced last May with its own book and TV documentary? A publicity blitz called it “the link” that would reveal the earliest evolutionary roots of monkeys, apes and humans.

Experts protested that Ida wasn’t even a close relative. And now a new analysis supports their reaction.

In fact, Ida is as far removed from the monkey-ape-human ancestry as a primate could be, says Erik Seiffert of Stony Brook University in New York.

Turns out Ida is more closely related to the branch of the primate tree that includes lemurs.  Read the rest of the claim-shattering story here.

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Totally worth the read

Posted Oct 21, 2009 by Tom Jackson

Updated Oct 21, 2009 at 09:49 AM

Despite the all caterwauling and finger-pointing from the left, it wasn’t Wall Street deregulation or sneaky derivatives dealers that precipitated the global financial meltdown.  Hoover Institute research fellow Peter Schweizer places the responsibility precisely where it belongs in his new book, “Architects of Ruin.”  It is an intensely investigated work that confirms most of the worst suspicions conservatives and Republicans—many of whom stood on the floors of both houses of Congress yelling, “Stop!”—had about the mortgage steamroller to hell.

Power Line has a revelatory summary from Schweizer himself here.

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‘Not reform ... stupidity’

Posted Oct 12, 2009 by Tom Jackson

Updated Oct 12, 2009 at 09:33 PM

Democratic complaints about the insurance industry’s independent audit of the Baucus health “reform” bill has been predictably synchornized, if tissue-thin.

A brief but scorching take-down of Democrats’ criticisms is available here from the fellows at Powerlineblog.com.

Key to the nonsense:

[I]n the current version of the Baucus bill, there is no requirement to buy health insurance at all until after 2013, and by 2017 the penalty for failing to buy health insurance still amounts to only about 15% of the cost of the insurance. Now, think about it: if you know that you don’t have to buy health insurance when you are young and healthy, but if you should get sick, or just get older, you can apply for health insurance at any time and it will be illegal for the insurance company to turn you down, what would you do? Obviously, you would defer buying insurance unless and until you get sick. This means that the pool of those who are insured will be lower quality, and the cost therefore higher for everyone who buys insurance. It is as though you could wait until you die, and then your heirs can buy life insurance on you.

This isn’t reform, it is stupidity.

It actually would be very easy to make health insurance cheaper. All we have to do is allow insurance companies to compete nationally instead of state-by-state and eliminate all mandates that limit consumer choice. It has been estimated that these simple reforms—which are not part of any of the Democrats’ “reform” bills, for obvious reasons—would reduce health care costs by one-quarter to one-third. Instead of such common-sense reforms, the Dems are proposing Rube Goldberg measures that will make health care more expensive. Instead of eliminating mandates, their measures, including the Baucus bill, increase them—in effect making cheaper health insurance illegal.

Once more: this isn’t reform, it is stupidity.

 

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Trolling for ghoulies

Posted Oct 12, 2009 by Tom Jackson

Updated Oct 12, 2009 at 03:13 PM

I know it’s feeling more like summer’s dog days than the middle of October, and, on any given morning, we’re more likely to wake up to gourd mush than frost on our pumpkins.

Nonetheless, Halloween is lurking just beyond the hazy horizon, and with its approach comes my annual search for Pasco’s most dedicated neighborhood haunters.  You know the type: Folks who turn front yards into graveyards, who surrender their garages to things that go bump in the night, whose idea of the perfect tree ornament is an apparition, a specter, a will-o’-the-wisp, and who never tire of the witch who smashed into the tree gag.

If this describes you, or someone on your block who would just kill for the publicity, crook a gnarly finger my way.  Conjure up a visit; cast a spell over this member of the media by telephone at (813) 259-7068 or by e-mail at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).  Help us find the children of the night, and celebrate the music they make.
 

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Tales from where health care is a ‘fundamental right’

Posted Oct 8, 2009 by Tom Jackson

Updated Oct 8, 2009 at 04:47 PM

Just so you know the inevitable trajectory (and tragedy) of a fulfillment of the fundamental right to health care claimed in the post below, here’s a collection of socialized medicine nightmares from Great Britain, where they practice the theory of fundamental rights (from the ever-reliable James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal’s “Best of the Web Today”):

The hits just keep on coming. “A jobsworth ambulance boss refused to allow his staff to enter six inches of water to treat a man with a broken back—because it breached heath [sic] and safety,” reports London’s Daily Mail:

[Bystanders] were stunned when a paramedic arrived and refused his pleading staff to enter the water—because they weren’t trained to deal with water rescues.

They had to slide a spinal board under him themselves and carry him to ambulancemen, who were stood [sic] on the bank just 6 feet away.

One onlooker said: “The paramedic wouldn’t treat him.

“Two colleagues arrived in an ambulance but he stood in their way and told them, ‘I’m incident commander—you aren’t getting into the water.”

The good thing about this is we learned a new word: Jobsworth is a Britishism that means someone who goes by the book in order to be unhelpful.

Then there is this report from the Sun:

This crippled plumber horribly broke his arm TEN months ago and is still waiting for surgery to repair it.

Torron Eeles busted his left humerus bone leaving it grotesquely out of shape when he fell down stairs.

Today he slammed the NHS for “unacceptable” delays—claiming they have cancelled FOUR separate operations.

His arm hangs limply by his side meaning Torron cannot work for a living and now faces the prospect of losing his home.

The story includes a photo of Eeles’s grotesquely twisted arm. Suffice it to say that his humerus is not humorous.

The Daily Mail reports that “thousands of NHS patients with previously untreatable rheumatoid arthritis could be denied a new ‘smart’ drug to ease their agony because it is too expensive. ... The drug has been licensed throughout Europe, but the cost has led the Government’s rationing body to issue a preliminary rejection of its use by NHS patients in England.”

The Courier of Dundee, Scotland, reports that Ninewells Hospital has become something of a menagerie:

Bats were seen on the general medical Ward 6 on September 4, and on the surgical Ward 9 five days later.

The shocking revelation is contained in a breakdown of incidents of pests over the last year in Tayside hospitals obtained under Freedom of Information legislation.

It shows that between October last year and this September pest controllers were called to NHS Tayside hospital premises on 462 occasions to deal with rats, mice, seagulls, dead birds and even a dead rabbit.

The majority of incidents involved insects including, ants, flies, cockroaches, wasps, silverfish, beetles and even hornets.

Now for the good news. According to former Enron adviser Paul Krugman, “In Britain, the government itself runs the hospitals and employs the doctors. We’ve all heard scare stories about how that works in practice; these stories are false.”

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Kerry: Kill economy, save planet

Posted Oct 7, 2009 by Tom Jackson

Updated Oct 7, 2009 at 03:41 PM

From James Taranto’s “Best of the Web Today,” a chillingly on-the-button assessment of Sen. John Kerry’s enthusiasm for emission controls:

John Kerry, the former junior senator from Massachusetts who by the way served in Vietnam, is leading the effort in the Senate to pass Cap’n Trade, a measure to combat so-called global warming by imposing massive taxes on energy. Blogger Dan Calabrese notes a revealing Kerry quote from last week:

“Let me emphasize something very strongly as we begin this discussion. The United States has already this year alone achieved a 6% reduction in emissions simply because of the downturn in the economy, so we are effectively saying we need to go another 14%.”

Wow. To accomplish Kerry’s environmental goals, all we need to do is shrink the economy even more and keep it shrunken—in other words, for the recession to turn into a permanent depression. If you think that’s a good idea, call your senator and urge him to vote “yes” on Cap’n Trade!

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Gus shoots ... he scores!

Posted Oct 7, 2009 by Tom Jackson

Updated Oct 7, 2009 at 03:16 PM

For the record, from the communications staff of U.S. Rep. Gus Bilirakis:

WASHINGTON (7 October) - U.S. Rep. Gus M. Bilirakis (R-Fla.), Ranking Member of the Homeland Security Committee’s Subcommittee on Management, Investigations, and Oversight, today issued the following statement after the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) decided to halt a $1 million grant it awarded to ACORN in New Orleans as part of FEMA’s Fire Prevention and Safety Grants program:

“ACORN has demonstrated it is not worthy of the public’s trust, and I am pleased that FEMA has agreed with me and others in Congress who believe we should not be funding this corrupt enterprise.

“Taxpayer’s money should not be going to an organization which has engaged in unlawful behavior. ACORN employees were recently caught on tape encouraging prostitution, tax fraud, and human trafficking. This is not the type of activity that should be rewarded with scarce homeland security resources.”

Bilirakis has a right to crow a little bit.  As his office points out:

On September 17, Bilirakis sent a letter to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) asking the agency to repeal a nearly $1 million grant it awarded to ACORN earlier [in the] month.

 

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