It really is a “plan,” and don’t you forget it.

Never mind, as the Washington Examiner’s Conn Carroll inconveniently points out, that the document produced by the “Gang of Six” — Republican Senators Coburn, Chambliss, and Crapo, along with Democratic Senators Conrad, Warner, and Durbin — is all of five pages. If you take out the white space, it’s about 3-1/2.

Early this evening, the Associated Press’s Stephen Ohlemacher called the output of the Gang of Six a “plan” no fewer than 12 times — and his report’s headline was “Bipartisan tax plan trims mortgage deduction.” Okay, Steve, even though you (and the Gang) are obviously wrong, we get it.

A “plan” — at least one that is supposed to lead to legislation — is supposed to be “a detailed scheme, method, etc., for attaining an objective.” The roughly 1,050 words in the AP writer’s report is not that much shorter than the Gang of Six’s almost 1,600-word “plan.” Ohlemacher himself cites the document’s lack of specifics or details in some manner about a half-dozen times. Sorry, Steve: The Gang of Six document is not a “plan” in any meaningful sense of the word, and their calling it a “plan” doesn’t change that reality.

But give Ohlemacher and AP credit in one area: While the Gang of Six claims that “If CBO scored this plan, it would find net tax relief of approximately $1.5 trillion,” the wire service’s coverage reveals that taxes would instead increase by almost as much or possibly more.

Here are several paragraphs from Ohlemacher’s effort (bolds are mine). Note the class warfare hit in the final bolded item:

A new bipartisan plan to reduce government borrowing would target some of the most cherished tax breaks enjoyed by millions of families – those promoting health insurance, home ownership, charitable giving and retirement savings – in exchange for lowering overall tax rates for everyone.

Many taxpayers would face higher taxes – a total of at least $1.2 trillion over the next decade, and perhaps more.

… For its part, the Gang of Six plan punts on many of the most difficult issues, leaving it to congressional committees to fill in the details later. But supporters say it provides a framework to simplify the tax code, making it easier for businesses and individuals to comply while eliminating incentives to game the system.

… The Republican staff of the House Budget Committee issued a critique saying the revenue increase could exceed $2 trillion over the next decade, when compared with current tax policy.

“A tax increase is the wrong policy to pursue with so many Americans out of work,” said House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va.

The plan would simplify the tax code by reducing the number of tax brackets from six to three, lowering the top rate from 35 percent to somewhere between 23 percent and 29 percent. That could provide a windfall for wealthy taxpayers because the 35 percent tax bracket currently applies to taxable income above $379,150.

Geez, Steve, higher-income people (who may or may not be “wealthy”) would lose all kinds of deductions, but might still get “windfalls.” In some cases, sure, but to present it as if it’s a likelihood for most, which is definitely implied, is sheer speculation which is in my estimation backed up by little or no investigation.

The Examiner’s Carroll points to the Gang of Six document’s absurd assumption that the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body will actually “find” (that’s the document’s actual word) massive amounts of spending to cut as anticipated:

The Armed Services Committee is then charged with finding $80 billion in cuts, Homeland Security $65 billion, Agriculture $11 billion, Energy $6 billion, and Commerce $11 billion. All this budgeting from Democratically controlled committees that haven’t produced a budget in over 800 days!!!

Indeed. What a joke. Without specifics, this isn’t a plan, it’s just a bunch of nice intentions at best, or deliberate deceptions at worst, which will never materialize.

Cross-posted at NewsBusters.org.

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BizzyBlog Update: The whole idea that these guys think that the Congressional Budget Office can “score” anything based on what they’ve produced so far is absurd. Several weeks ago, CBO’s Doug Elmendorf politely informed a congressional committee that “We don’t estimate speeches.” The Gang of Six document is no better than a speech.

Link:

Monday’s feature article on Michele Bachmann in The Daily Cromney (“Stress-related condition ‘incapacitates’ Bachmann; heavy pill use alleged”) was one of the more thinly veiled Beltway hit pieces in recent memory.

There’s only one reason for this sort of thing: Mitt Romney is feeling the heat.

Anyone claiming Doug is being ridiculous doesn’t remember the following caught-redhanded event from four years ago, which I noted in my “Not This Mitt Again” column in November:

… the only evidence that anyone attempted to use Mitt Romney’s religion against him (in the 2008 election cycle) was one alleged early-December 2007 push poll in Iowa. Oddly enough, the only people who came forward to claim they had received the offensive phone calls were Romney campaign operatives, who “somehow” forgot to tell the press that they were on the candidate’s payroll.

Going to the linked item, from November 21, 2007 (it’s a sometimes shaky lefty source, but at least it quotes an identified person, which the Daily Caller’s report on Bachman never did, and Kevin Madden will have to prove that he didn’t say what he is alleged to have said):

… the Romney campaign is confirming that it referred reporters to two recipients of the calls without disclosing that the two were also on the Romney campaign payroll, TPM Election Central has learned.

In response to questions from TPM Election Central, Romney spokesman Kevin Madden confirmed that the campaign had failed to disclose this info to reporters. Madden suggested that the campaign had identified them as “supporters,” which is a far cry from being directly paid by the campaign, as the two call recipients were.

The revelation could add grist to the theory — now spreading on conservative blogs and even getting coverage by news organizations — that the Romney campaign itself is behind the calls.

Romniacs are completely capable and ethically barren enough to plant the Bachmann smear — and the Daily Caller was jounalistically barren enough to let it run. For shame.

______________________________________

UPDATE: So who do you believe, anonymous sources, or the woman’s doctor? (HT Hot Air’s Tina Korbe) —

Dear Congresswoman Bachmann –

The enclosed summary regarding your experience of migraine headaches is provided to you as per your request. You are overall in good general health.

You have a well-established diagnosis of migraine headaches with aura for which you have had an extensive evaluation by both my office and by a board certified consulting neurologist. Your evaluation has entailed detailed labwork and brain scans all of which were normal. Your migraines occur infrequently and have known trigger factors of which you are aware and know how to avoid. When you do have a migraine, you are able to control it well with as-needed sumatriptan and odansetron. It has not been necessary for you to take daily scheduled medications to manage this condition. You have not needed medical attention from me regarding your migraines with the use of the above-mentioned commonly used therapies.

Sincerely,

Brian P. Monahan, MD, MACP

So I’ll let the person who sent the following to the NewsBusters email box do the talking (bolds are mine):

With Fast and Furious the Obama Administration is effectively a state sponsor of terrorism. This is a scandal of epic proportions. It includes coverups to the highest levels of government and involves the death of federal employees. In short this is Watergate on a steroids/crack cocktail. We continue to be told the media is out for controversy. What could be more controversial?

Meanwhile, a media mogul has some of his employees in one country performing some potentially illegal acts. But THIS guy owns Fox News.

So which is getting more stories and minutes devoted to it in American news, the President or Attorney General giving guns to drug cartels to kill Americans so as to attack a Constitutional Amendment, or some phone hacking and bribes by a media branch in England?

Few things are a better sign of undeniable bias.

Amen.

___________________________________________________

UPDATE: Of course, the anti-Murdoch attacks and overweighted coverage are all about crippling and falsely discrediting fair and balanced news sources. But the following info is fun nonetheless (HT JWF) —

Political donations by News Corp., its employees and their families were evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, with President Obama the all-time leading recipient, according to a report from the Sunlight Foundation.

The transparency watchdog noted Tuesday that Democrats received 51 percent of contributions while Republicans received 49 percent, despite the firm’s highly publicized links to the GOP, such as a $1 million donation to the Republican Governors Association in August.

Other major beneficiaries mentioned at the Hill’s post: Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. Imagine that.

Facts won’t matter if they finally get their way.

_________________

Note: This column went up at Pajamas Media and was teased here at BizzyBlog on Monday.

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In an April Pajamas Media exclusive, while conceding that doing so in 2007 or 2008 would have paid off handsomely, Ira Stoll wondered whether it might still be a good time to short carbon credits. His fear was that, despite the mountain of inconvenient facts in the way, Congress will still “impose a vast new regulatory regime on energy consumption.”

It has become clear that the current Congress isn’t willing to do that. If the House were to get its way, dumb ideas like the ban on incandescent bulbs would be repealed. But the House probably won’t get its way, because Harry “coal makes us sick, oil makes us sick” Reid still runs the Senate, and Barack “Green Jobs, Clean Jobs” Obama is still President.

In the face of clear congressional opposition to going any further with regulating and taxing energy consumption, the administration has decisively shifted to a posture of “We don’t need Congress to impose our ‘green’ will on America.” Readers will see why shortly.

What’s amazing is that the scientific justification for doing so, which was never really there in the first place, has virtually evaporated. Meanwhile, the frightening economic costs of “going green” have never been clearer. All one has to do is periodically visit the web site of The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), the home of the indefatigable Dr. Benny Peiser, to see how true these assertions really are.

On the science side, here are just a few items which appeared in the week preceding the writing of this column:

• On July 9, GWPF excerpted a post by climate scientist Dr. Roy Spencer, Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, noting that the global average sea surface temperature is a tad lower than it was in 2002.
• A July 6 article reported that British scientists who study the sun, which sane people realize has the predominant impact on our planet’s temperature, are concerned that it might be “coming to the end of a ‘grand solar maximum,’” meaning that we could be heading towards colder winters, not warmer ones. What they found essentially corroborates sun-related concerns raised by American scientists that the earth “may be headed into a mini Ice Age within a decade.” What was that about the supposedly “settled science” that the earth is warming?
• On July 4, Dr. David Whitehouse of the foundation’s academic advisory council observed that even global warming true believers have been forced to admit that “there has been no global temperature increase since 1998,” but that they’re making up the most bizarre of excuses — Chinese coal dust! — to assure cultists that the earth is still fundamentally warming, but we somehow aren’t seeing it.

Even though the bogus science of global warming, which I have been referring to for several years as “globaloney” (though I don’t claim to be the first to coin the term), is on the run, its effects on citizens’ pocketbooks are being felt around the world — and politicians are beginning to feel serious electoral heat as a result. Here again from GWPF are just a few relatively recent items:

• A July 11 post on UK carbon taxation linking to the UK Daily Mail reveals that the government is establishing “minimum price guarantees, higher than the normal market price, for the electricity generated by new wind farms and nuclear power stations.” This will cost UK households as much as 1,000 British pounds (about $1,600 US) per year. President Barack “Energy bills will necessarily skyrocket” Obama will be likely be pleased to know that this is described as “send(ing) bills rocketing.”
• A related entry which links to a two-weeks-earlier Daily Mail item predicts that the heavy overpayments for “green” energy sources “could push tens of thousands of households into fuel poverty but do nothing to reduce emissions.” As a result, “30,000 to 60,000 more households will be … spending more than 10 per cent of … disposable income on heat and light.” It’s reasonable to believe that this estimate is low.
• The foundation links to a July 11 Australia Herald-Sun report on that country’s Labor Party’s “Suicide Sunday,” which describes the blowback from Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s $24.5 billion (about $26 billion US$) carbon tax announcement. Specifically, “More than 70% of voters” in a plebiscite “said they now planned to vote for the Coalition (the opposition party) at the next election while just 8.51 per cent said they would support a Labor government.”

What’s happening in Australia, along with the well-deserved opprobrium the United Nations is receiving for telling the world it will “only” need $76 trillion to enable the world to comprehensively “go green,” explains why the Obama administration is trying to do all it can to impose its green will under the radar.

Even at that, Devon Swezey, a dedicated lefty with the Breakthrough Institute, whose mission is “to modernize liberal-progressive-green politics,” predicts that “The global clean energy industry is set for a major crash.” You might think that this is good news for free-market advocates, but Swezey believes the opposite, and is more than likely working towards it. Swezey expects “a comprehensive energy innovation strategy to develop, manufacture, and deploy riskier but more promising clean energy technologies that may eventually compete with fossil energy at scale” to rise out of the ashes. Unspoken but obvious: Only the federal government can (try to) run this, and pretty much only by force. Welcome to the world of five-year plans and “comprehensive” de facto control over energy resources.

If you think facts are going to matter in Swezey’s world, think again. As Ben-Peter Terpstra wrote at American Thinker in November 2009: “[w]hen green Leftists try to shut down a democracy it isn’t because they can defend their arguments, it’s because they can’t.” Soon, it may become as dangerous to tell the truth about globaloney as certain Argentine economists have recently found telling the truth about inflation to be.

In this fearsome context, going short on carbon credits is far from a surefire winner.

From Springfield, Ill.:

Posted Jul 17, 2011 @ 06:15 PM

Christine Smith’s son, the late Spc. Jack Gallaher, died in a shooting accident four years ago while serving in the Army at Fort Lewis, Wash. But for her, he lives on in Steve Charest.

Smith, a Springfield resident, didn’t get to talk to her son before he died. Jack had never talked about whether he wanted to donate his organs, and Smith hadn’t thought about it much before then, either.

“That was something I decided. That just popped into my head. Obviously, it was a good idea,” she said. “I knew going up there that he wasn’t going to survive.”

The decision to donate Gallaher’s two kidneys and liver has resulted in a long-standing friendship with Charest, 50, and his wife, Kathy, 49, of Orting, Wash. — a relationship Kathy Charest says is typical of donors and recipients. The Charests visited Christine Smith and her family for Jack Gallaher’s 28th birthday, which they still celebrate, at a party over the weekend.

“It’s an amazing feeling, just to know that part of him lives in somebody else,” Smith said.
(more…)

In a USA Today email I received 20 minutes after Tuesday’s closing bell, I was informed that the exceptionally good day occurred because the stock markets were “buoyed by strong earnings reports by IBM, Coke and others.” A visit to the email’s linked article also partially attributed the rise to “renewed hopes that U.S. lawmakers would be able to break their stalemate and strike a deficit-reduction deal in time to avert a catastrophic government default.”

That’s strange, because the CNN Headline email I had received 20 minutes earlier struck a totally different and completely absurd pose, as seen after the jump:

(more…)

Completely correct, especially in regards to the Gang of S*cks:

Why isn’t he running for Senate?

_____________________________________________

UPDATE: In an email received just a short time ago, Boehner has held up his end of the bargain (direct link) —

WASHINGTON, DC – House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) released the following statement praising the House for passing “Cut, Cap, and Balance” legislation to stop the Washington spending binge and rein in the deficits that are hurting job growth:

“Americans are still asking, ‘where are the jobs?’ And while President Obama simply talks tough about cutting spending, House Republicans are taking action. ‘Cut, Cap, and Balance’ is exactly the kind of ‘balanced’ approach the White House has asked for – it provides President Obama with the debt limit increase he’s requested while making real spending cuts now and restraining future government spending and debt that are hurting job growth.

“House Republicans are the only ones to put forward and pass a real plan that will create a better environment for private-sector job growth by stopping Washington from spending money it doesn’t have and preventing tax hikes on families and small businesses. The White House hasn’t said what it will cut. And Senate Democrats haven’t passed a budget in more than two years. The President should abandon his veto threat, and urge Senate Democrats to quickly pass the ‘Cut, Cap, and Balance’ plan to help get our economy back to creating jobs.”

I’m not inclined to go borderline graphic, but the supposed plan being pushed by the Gang of Six is so breathtaking irresponsible and out of touch, I don’t know what else to do.

Except that I’ll lean on the estimable Doug Ross, who has assembled some reaction from around the center-right blogosphere:

The “Gang of Six” bipartisan plan to “reduce our nation’s deficits” has touched off a wide range of reactions. My personal highlights:

• The Washington Examiner‘s Conn Carroll: “Gang of six plan raises taxes by $3 trillion – they are using a CBO baseline that assumes the AMT continues as written today and that the current Bush rates expire. Last August, the CBO said those policies would amount to a $4.8 trillion tax hike. Which means the the Gang of Six plan probably raises taxes by about $3+ trillion over current rates.”

• Daniel J. Mitchell: “The entire package is based on dishonest Washington budget math. Spending increases under the plan, but the politicians claim to be cutting spending because the budget didn’t grow even faster.”

• The Foundry: “The Gang of Six promises — an unenforceable promise — that some time in the next six months Congress will enact a second law with all kinds of Christmas presents for everybody – The Gang of Six circulated a plan that has Congress enact a law now whose principal elements (1) make unspecified spending cuts and unspecified tax increases to yield a $500 billion reduction in the federal deficit, and (2) impose spending caps on discretionary spending, but not on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and welfare programs that are the main cause of out-of-control spending.”

• The American Spectator‘s Joseph Lawler : “Perhaps the reason the Gang of Six plan is politically viable is that is mostly a promise to make cuts in the future, rather than a measure to cut spending now.” Not good.

Doug’s overall reax: “This plan is outrageous. This is another hack job by Beltway insiders bent on preserving the status quo, massive deficits and, eventually, complete economic collapse.”

My overall reax: It produces a partial vacuum by action of the lips and tongue. Hence the headline.

What about “Stop Spending!” don’t they understand?

It is accurate to say that what Wynn describes in the following excerpt was correctly anticipated three years ago full transcript here):

And I’m saying it bluntly, that this administration is the greatest wet blanket to business, and progress and job creation in my lifetime. And I can prove it and I could spend the next 3 hours giving you examples of all of us in this market place that are frightened to death about all the new regulations, our healthcare costs escalate, regulations coming from left and right. A President that seems, that keeps using that word redistribution. Well, my customers and the companies that provide the vitality for the hospitality and restaurant industry, in the United States of America, they are frightened of this administration. And it makes you slow down and not invest your money.

… And those of us who have business opportunities and the capital to do it are going to sit in fear of the President. And a lot of people don’t want to say that. They’ll say, God, don’t be attacking Obama. Well, this is Obama’s deal and it’s Obama that’s responsible for this fear in America.

The guy keeps making speeches about redistribution and maybe we ought to do something to businesses that don’t invest, their holding too much money. We haven’t heard that kind of talk except from pure socialists. Everybody’s afraid of the government and there’s no need soft peddling it, it’s the truth. It is the truth. And that’s true of Democratic businessman and Republican businessman … And I’m telling you that the business community in this company is frightened to death of the weird political philosophy of the President of the United States. And until he’s gone, everybody’s going to be sitting on their thumbs.

Wynn could have substituted two words for “sitting on their thumbs” which lefties ridicule but which perfectly describe what has happened: “Going Galt.”

We’ve all strident talk of “redistribution,” punitive taxation, intense regulation, energy starvation, and the like for years. But in May or June of 2008, it became clear that a group of those led by Barack Obama holding those core beliefs had a real chance of gaining enough power to make it happen. Until May or June 2008, there was at least a ghost of a chance that Hillary Clinton and not Barack Obama would be the nominee of the Democratic Party, and that sane heads would prevail among the supposedly committed party superdelegates who in reality had a chance to change their minds at any time they liked ahead of their vote at the convention. While no angel, it could be said, based largely on her husband’s two terms, that Hillary Clinton would not be as indifferent as Obama had been towards a tanking economy and a brutal job market, and would have changed direction if things weren’t working. It has become clear that Obama won’t, even after an electoral shellacking that made 1994 look like the traditional definition of a tea party.

A significant number of businesspeople, entrepreneurs, and investors caught the May-June 2008 sea change early on, and as a result, the economy, which was barely holding on, began to seriously deteriorate. That’s when the POR (Pelosi-Obama-Reid) Economy began. In short order, in July 2008, the recession as normal people define it began

It didn’t take long for the business community as a whole to get up to speed on what it faces, and Wynn is right: Economic malaise will continue until the Obama administration’s regime of fear changes, and it’s too late for Barack Obama to change that, even if he wanted to. Because at this point, no one will believe it.

_________________________________________________

UPDATE: Here’s an irony worthy of discussion.

In the full conference call transcript, you’ll find Wynn praising another country. Guess which one –

September will be our fifth anniversary in the _______ in ______, and we love it there. We are so grateful to be part of that market and to be allowed to participate in that community. We find the political environment, the regulatory environment, the human resource environment that we’re in to be absolutely delicious. Life is quite straightforward in ________. The government is predictable. Our employees are eminently trainable. They’re anxious to please. They have a fabulous attitude, whether they’re local ______ people, __________ people, folks from the __________, they’re just wonderful and all of that’s come together to help us deliver the kind of product that we’ve always been delivering.

Here’s the complete quote:

September will be our fifth anniversary in the People’s Republic of China in Macau, and we love it there. We are so grateful to be part of that market and to be allowed to participate in that community. We find the political environment, the regulatory environment, the human resource environment that we’re in to be absolutely delicious. Life is quite straightforward in China. The government is predictable. Our employees are eminently trainable. They’re anxious to please. They have a fabulous attitude, whether they’re local Macau people, mainland Chinese people, folks from the Philippines, they’re just wonderful and all of that’s come together to help us deliver the kind of product that we’ve always been delivering.

There are obviously two ways to take this:

1. Wynn likes the predictability of a state-run Communist regime, which is obviously not a good thing.
2. The Communist regime has become sufficiently capitalist, or at least has become that way in Macau, that it has set its people and businesses free to create wealth and prosperity and is functioning at a higher level of economic freedom than the U.S. under Obama.

So which one is it?

UPDATE 2: Yes, it is unfortunate, as seen in the transcript, that Wynn still sees Harry Reid as being on his side. In that sense, he still doesn’t get it. He’s in a distinct minority in the business community.

Here are this morning’s easonally adjusted specifics from the Census Bureau (small PDF):

BUILDING PERMITS

Privately-owned housing units authorized by building permits in June were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 624,000. This is 2.5 percent (±1.3%) above the revised May rate of 609,000 and is 6.7 percent (±2.0%) above the June 2010 estimate of 585,000.

Single-family authorizations in June were at a rate of 407,000; this is 0.2 percent (±1.0%)* above the revised May figure of 406,000. Authorizations of units in buildings with five units or more were at a rate of 198,000 in June.

HOUSING STARTS

Privately-owned housing starts in June were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 629,000. This is 14.6 percent (±10.9%) above the revised May estimate of 549,000 and is 16.7 percent (±11.8%) above the June 2010 rate of 539,000.

Single-family housing starts in June were at a rate of 453,000; this is 9.4 percent (±11.1%)* above the revised May figure of 414,000. The June rate for units in buildings with five units or more was 170,000.

HOUSING COMPLETIONS

Privately-owned housing completions in June were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 535,000. This is 1.7 percent (±12.0%)* below the revised May estimate of 544,000 and is 39.3 percent (±6.6%) below the June 2010 rate of 881,000.

Single-family housing completions in June were at a rate of 436,000; this is 0.0 percent (±14.5%)* equal to the revised May rate of 436,000. The June rate for units in buildings with five units or more was 89,000.

The raw numbers for June:

• Permits — 63,100 (43,100 SF; 20,000 2+ units). Comparables for June 2010 and June 2009: 59,200 and 61,300 overall; 42,900 and 47,000 for SF.
• Starts — 62,900 (45,300 Single Family; 17,600 for 2+ units). Comparables for June 2010 and June 2009: 53,800 and 59,100 overall; 45,500 and 49,200 for SF.
• Completions — 46,900 (38,300 SF; 8,300 2+ units). Comparables for June 2010 and June 2009: 77,700 and 70,300 overall; 60,100 and 44,400 for SF.

Single-family starts and permits are flat as a pancake vs. last year and down from 2009, which was anything but a good year. These numbers should be significantly exceeding last year and be ahead of or at least even with 2009 if the industry was really making a comeback. Single-family completions are even worse, but that is probably the result of low starts and permits during the past year.

My CNN headline email claims that “Stocks open higher after strong housing report. Dow gains 103 points, Nasdaq rises 1.2% and S&P 500 adds 0.8%.” Give me a break. The results beat the steady declines which have dominated the past year or so, but there are plenty of other reasons for the stock push-up, not the least of which is that momentum in Washington seems to be running against the tax-and-spenders — for the moment.

From a Monday Investors Business Daily editorial:

In a study that’s likely the first of its kind, the Beacon Hill Institute at Suffolk University near Boston took a look at health care costs in Massachusetts and found that they have increased significantly since RomneyCare became the law:

• State health care spending has increased by $414 million in the last five years.

• Private health insurance costs have gone up by $4.3 billion.

• An additional $2.4 billion in federal money has been spent on Medicaid in the state.

• Medicare spending has risen by $1.4 billion.

Add these up and the cumulative cost of RomneyCare is nearly $8.6 billion. The promise of cost-containment has not only been broken, it’s been ripped asunder in spectacular fashion.

Clearly, what we are seeing in Massachusetts is a sobering preview. “If the federal law is modeled after the Massachusetts law,” the authors of “The High Price of Massachusetts Health Care Reform” write, “it stands to reason that Massachusetts’ experience with health care reform provides an idea of what is in store for the country under the federal law.”

The Beacon Hill Institute’s press release is here, and its full study (large PDF) is here.

Here’s a quote from the study about the Bay State’s costs and defenders’ predictable excuse:

The Division of Health Care Finance and Policy estimates that per capita spending on health care in Massachusetts is 15% higher than the rest of the nation, even when accounting for the state’s higher wages and spending on medical research and education.

… The (state’s) report mistakenly identifies market failure, not policy failure, as the driver of rising health care costs. Like most studies that identify “market failure” as the problem, the report recommends more government intervention in the health care market …

Of course. They’ll keep intervening until they control it all — a statist’s dream.

This is not how Democrats see things, of course. Governor Deval Patrick considers RomneyCare a health reform model for the nation.

For this and so many other reasons, Republican Party primary voters and caucus participants cannot possibly nominate Objectively Unfit Mitt Romney for President. If we had a principled Republican Party instead of a bunch of patrician “whatever” sideline-sitters, leaders would be pursuing a “Not This Mitt Again” effort the background, saying demanding that Romney withdraw — now.

From Daryn Kagan, who is both:

3:23 PM Saturday, June 4, 2011

“Daryn, would you have any words of advice to share with my son who is looking to get into journalism?”
So began a recent email from a woman I went to college with.

“Sure,” I replied. But why keep it to just that young man? I can share with you, as well. My advice is pretty short and simple.

Be good and be nice.

By “good,” I mean be willing to work your you-know-what off. No assignment is too small. No shift is too inconvenient. No city is too small or too far away to move to in order to get your big break. That sense of entitlement that you weren’t meant to pay your dues? You can leave that at the door. Work really hard to learn the ropes until you are an asset to have on the team. I started out in the business with tons of folks more talented and better looking than me. My secret sauce was my drive to work hard and get good.

By “nice” I mean, well, be nice. Viewers might see just one anchor or reporter on their screen, but trust me, TV news is a team sport. It takes a village to produce a good product and more selfishly to make you look good on the air. It’s the subtle way I’ve seen the most powerful and least powerful people on my team go the extra mile to help out, simply because they like me and know I show them respect.

Sure, you will see plenty of examples of the not-so-good and not-so-nice along the way. I remember the beautiful blonde up-and-coming news anchor who flung her chicken biscuit across the studio because the teleprompter operator didn’t order it correctly from the fast food stand downstairs. Never mind, that “chicken biscuit fetcher” was not in the description of that young person’s entry-level job. There was the actress the network was trying to turn into a news anchor who chewed out a make-up artist because she didn’t glue in her puppy-dog shaped hair extensions just so.

Sure, there was a time when it looked like some of those kind of people were zooming past me on the career and opportunity ladder. Stick around long enough and you’ll see that kind of behavior has some oomph, but no last. Neither of those women are in the business anymore.

“Well, neither are you,” I reminded myself. That is true. When CNN let me go after 12 years, many asked, “Why didn’t they keep you longer?” I knew the better question was, “How did I ever last so long?” After all, I outlasted seven different management changes. The answer was simple. I was good, and I was nice.

Go here for the rest of her column.