Medicare is going broke

image credit: nextavenue.org

Betsy McCaughey has been one of the most informed critics of healthcare policy ever since Obamacare reared its ugly head. Her latest column at American Spectator sounds the alarm over Medicare Part A and the Democrat candidates’ promises of Medicare For All (titled "Democrats To Seniors: Drop Dead”):

Medicare is going broke,
and the Dems’ presidential candidates couldn’t care less

Baby boomers beware. If you’re in your 50s or 60s and you’re counting on Medicare to pay your future hospital bills, you’re in for a shock. Medicare Part A — the fund that pays hospitals and nursing homes — is running out of money. A mere seven years from now, it will no longer have enough to pay your providers’ bills in full. 

The Medicare Trustees sounded the alarm in June, urging Congress to act “as soon as possible” to protect people “already dependent” on the program.

Good advice, but don’t expect most politicians to take it. The Democrats running for president are in fantasy land, proposing to expand Medicare to millions of younger people or even to the entire population through “Medicare for All.” Never mind Medicare’s insolvency. That’s like a family that can’t pay its mortgage out shopping for a mega-mansion.

. . .

Currently, Trump is using his only option. He’s reducing benefit costs. Any other remedy would require Congress’ cooperation, which is unlikely.

Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and other backers of Medicare for All are making big promises with no way to pay. 

Read the rest here.

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Protect your rights against those claiming a crisis

Our First Amendment rights are at risk because of corruption in Big Tech, and our Second Amendment rights are at risk because progressives are using crises and tragedy to go for the guns. Prof. William Jacobson puts both risks in perspective at Legal Insurrection:

Every time I think the media-Democrat frenzy could not get any more frenzied, it gets more frenzied.

How seamlessly they have transitioned from almost three years of Russia-collusion-mania to the current frenzy claiming that anyone and everyone who supports Donald Trump is a white supremacist.

Trump supporters now, according the narrative, are both Putin-puppet traitors AND Hitler-wannabees. It’s all so dishonest by design; the leaders of this charge don’t actually believe it, they cynically manipulate their media and social media power to drive their supporters, many of whom do believe it, into hating political opponents as an ideology. MSNBC is ground zero for this manipulative denigration of half the population.

If it only were dishonest, it would be bad enough. But it’s worse because it now has become a hunt to find heretics for public shaming. This is not new, but now it is legitimized as an anti-Trump strategy by the Resistance. Congressman Joaquin Castro naming names in his community, including retirees and homemakers, is a symptom of a culture of total political war on the left. Other symptoms include the attempt to deplatform non-liberal voices from the internet and airwaves, led by well-funded groups like Media Matters.

More here. And the Action Alert from my previous blog on proposed red flag legislation is here.

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Action Alert: red flag legislation

Image credit: medium.com

Cleveland Tea Party rarely comments on issues such as abortion or gun control. But in the wake of the two shootings in El Paso and Dayton, Sen. Lindsay Graham has proposed legislation that begins the march toward gun control and confiscation.  However, yesterday's report in The Hill references his proposed legislation that “would create a federal grant program” – a bill that expands, rather than shrinks the federal government; a core Tea Party value is constitutionally limited government.

The bill introduces subjective “criteria” concerning the so-called “red flags.” Radius at Sparta Report has the definition:

A red flag law-also known as a gun violence restraining order-essentially allows a judge to order police to confiscate an individual’s weapons if that person is deemed a threat to themselves or others.

Sparta Report goes onto to explain why he thinks red flag laws are a bad idea and don't work. 

So here’s part of The Hill’s report:

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said on Monday that he will introduce bipartisan legislation encouraging states to create "red flag" laws and that President Trump is "very supportive" of the idea. 

Graham, in a statement, said he has reached a deal with Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) on a bill that would start a federal grant program to help and encourage states to create " 'red flag' protection order" laws, which are meant to make it easier for law enforcement to identify mentally ill people who should be banned from purchasing guns.

“These grants will be given to law enforcement so they can hire and consult with mental health professionals to better determine which cases need to be acted upon. This grant program also requires robust due process and judicial review. It does allow for quick action," Graham said in the statement. 

The full report is here. 

So the bill is a "’red flag' protection order” to facilitate “law enforcement so they can hire and consult with mental health professionals.” What could go wrong?  How about the mental health professionals who published The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President. None has examined President Trump in person, and any one of them could “identify mentally ill people who should be banned from purchasing guns.” People such as President Trump or members of his family? Or anyone else with whom they disagree.

According to Katie Pavlich at Townhall, Sen. Graham stated that President Trump "seemed supportive." Any wiggle room there?

The Action Alert: call or email any of these offices if you have concerns about the red flag legislation or any other bill leading to expanding the federal government in general, and gun control in particular.

Sen. Lindsay Graham’s phone DC Office: (202) 224-5972

Sen. Lindsay Graham’s email page is here 

White House switchboard Comments #: 202-456-1111

White House email page is here

UPDATE: Add Gov. Mike DeWine and Sen. Rob Portman to the list.

Gov. Mike DeWine: (614) 644-4357 or by email here

Sen. Rob Portman:  202-224-3353 or by email here

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Mark Steyn is back on Tucker Carlson

photo credit: SteynOnline

Fox News has been moving slowly left, and the shift is more in evidence on the weekend programming (see, e.g., here). But the last time I commented on this subject, I noted with dismay the sudden disappearance of Mark Steyn as a twice-weekly guest on Tucker Carlson’s prime-time show. I am pleased to say that in this instance, my concern was misplaced. Mr. Steyn was on an unannounced summer break and he returns to his Monday/Thursday appearances with Tucker this week, starting this evening. Good news.

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Twitter: a virus of the mind?

Glenn Reynolds, a/k/a Mr. Instapundit, has a think-piece on the Spectator; his subject is about one of the Big Tech giants, in this case Twitter. Here’s a sample:

Twitter . . . is tightly coupled. The ‘retweet’, ‘comment’, and ‘like’ buttons are immediate. A retweet sends a posting, no matter how angry or misinformed, to all the retweeter’s followers, who can then do the same to their followers, and so on, in a runaway chain reaction. Unlike blogs, little to no thought is required, and in practice very few people even follow the link (if there is one) to ‘read the whole thing’. According to a study by computer scientists at Columbia University and the French National Institute, 59 percent of people who share a link on social media don’t read the underlying story. . . .

. . .

You can reject Twitter’s toxicity by leaving the platform, as I did in the fall of 2018. But . . . this doesn’t really solve the problem: ‘Absent large-scale collective action by the political/media class to reject the platform, simply logging off Twitter is merely a personal defensive mechanism — a sometimes necessary mental-health break that all too often correlates with diminished influence in the national political debate.’ With Twitter, you can participate and be driven crazy – or you can stay sane, and lose influence. That’s a bad trade-off.

. . .

Rather than focusing on the content of what individuals post on social media, regulators might better focus on breaking up these behemoths, policing anticompetitive collusion among them, and in general ensuring that their powers are not abused. This approach, rooted in antitrust law, would raise no First Amendment or free speech problems, and would address many of the most significant complaints about social media.

As Mr. Instapundit is wont to say, read the whole thing – here.

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The brainwashed generations

image credit: theguardian.com

About ten years ago, Lloyd Marcus stood up as one of the original Tea Party Patriots. These days, he is a frequent contributor to the American Thinker blog. His most recent column will be of interest to anyone who is trying to find ways to communicate with younger generations of Americans who have essentially come through an educational system corrupted with anti-American propaganda. He starts off:

Here is an excerpt from an email from a misinformed white millennial:

Mr Marcus, as a black man, if you don't agree in part with Mr. Kaepernick, I feel bad for you. I am white, and feel that the issues facing the black community in the US from the police, legal elements, property, education are skewed, and need to be rectified. I am concerned that someone with your pulpit isn't out there helping out.

I usually receive emails from progressives who call me an Uncle Tom stupid n***** for loving my country and not viewing myself as a victim. This well-intentioned young emailer is infected with anti-Americanism via public education and casual contact with Democrats, Hollywood, social media, and fake news media. He is a prime candidate for recruitment into a terrorist hate group like Antifa.

Everything he thinks he knows is wrong. For example: Blacks are not persecuted by police. Research data confirms that police are the greatest defenders of black lives. A Harvard study said there is zero evidence of police racial bias. The greatest threat to black lives are black criminals.

My young emailer believes education is skewed against blacks. The opposite is true. K-8 white students are outrageously taught they were born racist and should feel guilty for their “white privilege.” The fact that blacks drop out of school in epidemic numbers has nothing to do with white America. It has everything to do with fatherless households and an abandonment of biblical morality.

Because millennials have a different news feed than us older folks, my young emailer is probably clueless about numerous important cultural and political issues. I suspect he does not know San Francisco is so overrun with homeless people leaving piles of human excrement on the streets that maps are provided to help tourists avoid them. Dangerous diseases are resurfacing.

Marcus covers a lot more ground. You can read the rest here.

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The Fight of Our Lives: documentary

From the documentary’s website: The Fight of Our Lives –- Defeating the Ideological War Against the West examines the internal and external threats facing the West. The cast of distinguished scholars and experts trace the emergence of anti-Western ideas and movements, and their subsequent penetration into Western academia, politics, and society.

We bought the DVD and watched it at home. About 66 minutes. Among those interviewed are Niall Ferguson, Ayan Hirsi Ali, Victor Davis Hanson, Melanie Phillips, and many more; most readers will recognize quite a few of the commentators.

From Cynthia Cai’s The Epoch Times interview with the producer of the documentary, Gloria Greenfield:

Another scholar who contributed to the film commentary was Bruce Thornton, an American classicist at California State University Fresno and research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution.

“[Thornton’s] understanding of what he refers to in the film as the ‘therapeutic age,’ where feelings are the most important and there’s been a rejection … of taking any responsibility for their actions—I thought that was a very important notion that needed to be addressed in the film,” said Greenfield.

. . .

“Soon after the film came out, I received an email from a professor in Paris, who was so grateful for the film and told me that he was using it in his classrooms,” said Greenfield.

So, do you know any teachers or professors or colleagues who would be interested in organizing a screening or showing it in a local classroom? Check out the website here for lots more information. It's also listed at Amazon. 

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