Lucid and Lickety-Split Links (072309, Morning)

Lucid Links:

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Sprott Asset Management (PDF) via Doug Ross: “We are now in the early stages of a depression.”

If we are, we can blame the progenitors of the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy, now known as the POR Recession/”Repression” As Normal People Define It. This graph at Doug’s place tracks the beginning of meaningful declines in world industrial output almost exactly to June 2008, when the Terrible Triumvirate put their efforts to take down the economy into overdrive:

The POR Economy has apparently done to the world what it has done to us.

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WSJ on BHO and the CBO:

(CBO Director) Douglas Elmendorf …. last week told Congress that you can’t “save” money on health care by having government insure everyone.

For that bit of truth-telling, he was first excoriated by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Then he was summoned, er, invited to the White House for an extraordinary and inappropriate meeting Monday with President Obama and a phalanx of economic and health-care advisers.

As Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the Republican who ran CBO from 2003 to 2005, put it, “The only appearance could be that they’re leaning on him. CBO was created for Congress, for independent analysis. The White House did him [Elmendorf] a terrible disservice.”

“Nice job and career you have there, Doug. It would be such a terrible shame if anything were to happen to it.”

If Bush 43 had attempted this gambit (of course, he never would have), it would have made front-page headlines and would have led the evening news almost everywhere.

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USA Today has a disgraceful whitewash of the RomneyCare situation in Massachusetts that must be read with no sharp objects in the vicinity.

Here’s the jaw-dropping opening:

The state that pioneered health care for all is about to take another leap into the unknown: paying for it.

Three years after mandating that residents get health insurance and requiring employers, insurers and taxpayers to chip in, Massachusetts has yet to control soaring costs that are eating up half its budget. So it’s considering an equally radical idea: changing the way doctors and hospitals are paid to reward results.

If you can imagine it, it actually goes downhill from there.

Here’s the brilliant idea for changing how providers are paid:

…. the payment commission …. last week recommended a system in which health care providers would be paid a set amount for each patient.

This is draconian rationing, pure and simple.

Here’s the full report from the Massachusetts Special Commission on the Health Care Payment System (got bureaucracy, guys? Here’s the federal version).

This is not a new idea. It’s called “capitated reimbursement.” When HMOs have tried this, they have been cast as the epitome of all evil. But when the government comes along and proposes the very same thing, with heavier bureaucracy and more than likely fewer appeal rights included, reporters like USAT’s Richard Wolf magically portray it in a favorable light.

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Lickey-Split Links:

• Now THIS, unlike the bogus global warming/globaloney hockey stick (busted almost six years ago) is a really scary hockey stick (HT the Belmont Club).
• Ford’s recovery continues.
• In sharp contrast to Ford, GM’s announcement the previous day only dealt with unit sales; there is not a single dollar sign in its report. I believe this foreshadows Fannie Mae/Freddie Maclike non-transparency — or worse.
• From Babula: “Honduran authorities have seized computers found in the Presidential Palace belonging to deposed president Mel Zelaya. Taking a page right out of the leftist dictator’s handbook, these computers, according to the news report, contained the official and certified results of the illegal constitutional referendum Zelaya wanted to conduct that never took place.” Zelaya had his plans to rig the election fully in place. The Obama administration is, as far as I can tell, still on Zeleya’s side.
• Allah at Hot Air — “Consider this (Obama’s expressed fear that failure to pass a health care bill would “destroy my presidency”) a complete vindication of DeMint’s point, which Obama pretended to take such offense at, that if the GOP defeats ObamaCare ‘it will be his Waterloo, it will break him…’ Evidently The One couldn’t agree more ….” If it comes to pass, it couldn’t happen to a more deserving guy.