Democrats: Tax The Poor, Screw The Seniors

Well, the House has just passed - pretty much along party lines - a bill that imposes regressive taxes on the poor and slashes money for the elderly to provide health care to the middle class. Wow. Just wow. I had no idea that they were also going after the seniors.

The House voted 225-204, mostly along partisan lines, to pass the legislation, which would add $50 billion to the decade-old State Children's Health Insurance Program and roll back years of Republican-driven changes to Medicare.

It would slash federal payments to private insurance companies that cover seniors under Medicare and shift money to doctors and benefits for low-income seniors.

This to provide health care to families earning $60,000 a year. You have got to be kidding. I posted about the regressive taxation that hammers the poorest Americans earlier today. If the voters voted for change in 2006, this is what they got. They may have a little change left out of each paycheck - until the next tax increase. Wow.

Highway Bridge Collapses In Minneapolis

A bridge on Interstate 35 has collapsed into the Mississippi River in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Many cars have been plunged into the water. Initial reports indicate that there are injuries - no word on fatalities yet.

Tons of concrete collapsed and there were injuries, authorities said. Survivors were being carried up the riverbank.

Some people were stranded on parts of the bridge that weren't completely submerged.

The entire span of the Interstate 35W bridge collapsed about 6:05 p.m. where the freeway crosses the river near University Avenue in Minneapolis.

Will update as more becomes available.

UPDATE: It's bad.

It was not clear how many people might be hurt or killed, but witnesses said at least 20 cars were involved.

Multiple trauma victims — some in critical condition — have been taken to Hemmpein County Medical Center.

The crumpled green wreckage of the bridge lay on the east bank of the river, and a huge section of concrete roadway lay on the west bank. Down below in the river gorge, rescue workers scrambled to help people on the roadway that now lay in the gorge. Fires burned and black smoke rose billowed the wreckage.

UPDATE: Video.

UPDATE: AP is reporting that seven people are known to be dead at this time.

MINNEAPOLIS - An interstate bridge jammed with rush-hour traffic suddenly broke into huge sections and collapsed into the Mississippi River Wednesday, pitching dozens of cars 60 feet into the water and killing at least seven people.

The eight-lane Interstate 35W bridge, a major Minneapolis artery, was in the midst of being repaired and two lanes in each direction were closed when the bridge buckled.

"There were two lanes of traffic, bumper to bumper, at the point of the collapse. Those cars did go into the river," Minneapolis Police Lt. Amelia Huffman. "At this point there is nothing to suggest that this was anything other than a structural collapse."

Sadly, I suspect that news will be updated.

Road Ends

It looks like Francis Wiley has decided to hang up his keys. The Florida man, currently awaiting sentencing in the Pasco County pokey for his felonious driving habits is swearing he will not drive again. Which is probably a good thing all around. Wiley, as I have posted before, has no arms and one leg.

Even police, who busted Wiley so many times that it's now a felony for him to drive, couldn't stop him.

But now he is at the end of the road: He is scheduled to face a judge Friday for sentencing on a new round of felony traffic and drug possession charges. Prosecutors want to put him in jail for five years, and this time, Wiley says he's turning in the keys for good.

"I'm beat. The white flag is up," said Wiley, 40, from behind thick glass in the Pasco County Jail. "You can only bang your head against the wall so long before it hurts."

Wiley lost his arms and most of his left leg in a 1980 accident when he was 13. He fell off an elevated train platform while fooling around at an abandoned switching station in New York City, and grabbed a live electrical line to break his fall. He touched metal while trying to regain his footing, and roughly 11,000 volts of electricity surged through his arms and legs.

He learned to live without limbs. He taught himself to drive. He starts the car with his toes, shifts with his knee and steers with the stump of his left arm. He turns on the lights with his teeth.

Driving, he says, is one of the few things that lets him feel free and exert his independence.

"I'm an excellent driver," Wiley said. "It is something I can do well by myself. I've been thoroughly tested by the department of motor vehicles and I passed with flying colors."

The "excellent driver" has racked up so many violations that he is facing felony charges and up to five years in prison. His license was taken away from him years ago. His "excellent" driving is probably not improved by the quantity of drugs he takes.  His attorney acknowledges that Wiley is unlikely to avoid prison this time. Despite the sob story reporting from the AP.

Cracks, Part Three

Don Surber notes - with an appropriate lever of schadenfreude - the latest poll numbers for the Democratic party led Congress. It is not, in the least, a pretty picture for the Democrats.

The survey said:

Survey shows just 3% of Americans approve of how Congress is handling the war in Iraq; 24% say the same for the President

Bush’s Iraq policy has 8 times the support the anti-Bush policy of Pelosi-Murtha-Clyburn-Reid-Byrd.

And it gets worse: 94% of Democrats polled absolutely detest, loathe and hate how the Democratic-led Congress is handling the war in Iraq.

The pollster did not provide similar numbers for Republicans or the president. You get what you pay for.

Oh, and he also heads off the inevitable leftist "defense" of those low numbers. It is NOT because Congress hasn't cut off funds for the war or failed to impeach Bush.

The numbers show otherwise:

To best show support for the troops, 42% believe Congress should fully fund the war in Iraq to maintain current troop levels, while 34% would favor attaching requirements for phased withdrawal to Iraq war funding. Just 18% said cutting all funding for the war in Iraq to bring troops home would be the best showing of Congressional support. Congress has proposed a bill continuing funding the war in Iraq, but that would require the withdrawal of the majority of troops there by Spring of 2008 – a plan favored by 49% of Americans. But nearly as many (45%) are opposed to this plan.

Got that? 42% want funding at the current level. And they know Pelosi and Reid would cut funding off tomorrow if they could get away with it.

Nice catch by Don on this one. These numbers are an outright disaster for Congress - especially the Democrats in leadership positions. It is a pretty good bet that these kinds of poll numbers explain the sudden spate of cracks that began showing up yesterday with some people appearing to break openly from Reid and Pelosi.

Modern Miracle

A man who spent the past six years in a "near-vegetative" state due to severe brain injuries is talking to his family, sitting up, eating and watching movies. The astonishing recovery is the result of an experimental treatment involving the implantation of a "brain pacemaker".

The 38-year-old man is the first person in a minimally conscious state to be treated with deep-brain stimulation, a treatment that uses a pacemaker and two electrodes to send impulses into a part of the brain regulating consciousness.

His awakening may change the way doctors think about people with severe brain injuries, who are largely unresponsive but still have some level of consciousness. These patients typically spend the rest of their lives in nursing homes, with little efforts at rehabilitation and slim chance of recovery.

"This is a group of patients that are really, in many ways, forgotten about," said Dr. Ali Rezai, director of the Cleveland Clinic's Center for Neurological Restoration.

"We have to do more research, obviously, but I think down the line it will change the way we are treating or even looking at people with severe brain injury."

Rezai and a team of specialists from the JFK Johnson Rehabilitation Institute-Center for Head Injuries in Edison, New Jersey, and the Weill Cornell Medical College in New York detailed the patient's progress in the journal Nature.

They used a device made by Medtronic Inc.. Like a heart pacemaker, the device is implanted in the chest under the skin, but electrodes deliver stimulation to precisely targeted areas deep in the brain.

Scientists are not exactly sure how the device produces the results it does but think that it may enable whatever neurological circuitry is still in place in the badly damaged brain to function. The unidentified man was badly beaten in a robbery six years ago. The assailant(s) crushed his skull and left him for dead.

Oddity

Here's an odd little item that caught my eye. One of China's cell phone providers is making a new service available to subscribers. For about a dollar a month, they will send pictures of military weapons and video clips of war movies to customer's cell phones. Like movies about the Korean War.

"I believe it will be popular since we have so many military fans in China," it quoted company official Yu Peng as saying.

"We have more than 300,000 pictures of weapons and military figures in our database along with clips of hundreds of movies, such as Battle for Berlin, Normandy Invasion and Shang Ganling, a movie about the Korean War," he added.

The PLA was founded as the military arm of the Communist Party of China. Today, it is China's military.

Customers will also be able to get military news sent straight to their handsets from the army's own newspaper, the report said.

"It's not just about making money," Yu said. "By doing it, we are celebrating the PLA's 80th anniversary and, in the process, providing more healthy content through mobile phones."

Make of it what you will.

Yo, Ho, Ho And A Reefer Of Fish

A new report just released in Britain by a hitherto obscure group of activists claims that pirate fish have been seizing fishing vessels and forcing themselves onto the market in Britain to be eaten. It's pirate fish fish laundering on a grand scale.

Illegal "pirate" fish is ending up on Britain's dinner plates as part of a sophisticated laundering operation which threatens the future of global stocks, a report claims.

The fish is caught off West Africa then mixed up with legal catch before entering the European marketplace through "soft" ports of convenience, such as Las Palmas on Gran Canaria……

…….The process of "laundering" the fish into the EU marketplace makes tracing IUU fish "virtually impossible", the EJF acknowledges.

It says it witnessed vessels off Guinea fishing without licences, and "transshipping", whereby fishing boats transfer their catch at sea, unusually under the cover of night, to specialised transport vessels, or "reefers", to bypass regulations.

Vessels dodge identification by "flag-hopping", using flags of convenience from Panama, Belize, even land-locked Mongolia, it said, changing name and flag several times in a season.

At the Spanish port of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands, "an infamous port of convenience" with just five port inspectors, illegal fishing fleets can unload their catch "with little or no scrutiny as to its origin or legality prior to being laundered into the EU marketplace."

We knew piracy was on the rise again, but we never expected to hear about a modern day Blackfin the pirate.

Justice Is Served

Serbian authorities have finally woken up to the potential dangers of the Animal Uprising™. They have finally done the right thing and jailed the real miscreant responsible for a violent crime. That's right, they threw the bull in jail.

A one and a half ton bull has been locked up in a Serbian prison farm so that his owner, serving time for a stabbing, could look after him.

Authorities decided that the only way to save four-year old Micko from the slaughterhouse was to put him in the farm at Novi Sad District Prison to join his owner Hamdija Djuric. Djuric was jailed on July 21 for stabbing a man, according to a local news agency.

The authorities are not quite willing to admit they made a mistake, however. Djuric was framed by the bull, of course. Now, if the humans can just shiv the bull in a yard rumble, justice will finally be served. Medium rare, with sautéed mushrooms.

Words Have Meaning

frat·ri·cide
Pronunciation: 'fra-tr&-"sId
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle French, from Latin fratricida, from fratr- frater brother + -cida killing
1 : one that murders or kills his or her own brother or sister or an individual (as a countryman) having a relationship like that of a brother or sister
2 : the act of a fratricide —frat·ri·cid·al /"fra-tr&-'sId-&l/ adjective

Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of Law, © 1996 Merriam-Webster, Inc.

Representative Henry Waxman has officially jumped the shark. The title of his inquisition witchhunt committee hearing today, per the website:

The Tillman Fratricide: What the Leadership of the Defense Department Knew

Perhaps it would be a really good idea for Reprehensible Representative Waxman to familiarize himself with another definition:

libel
Function: transitive verb
Inflected Forms: -beled also -belled; -bel·ing also -bel·ling
1 : to make or publish a libel against : to hurt the reputation of by libel <respondent's complaint alleged that he had been libeled by statements in a full-page advertisement —New York Times Company v. Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 (1964)>
2 : to proceed against in law by filing a libel (as against a ship or goods) <several French ships were libeled in Boston —J. K. Owens>

It is beyond belief that a sitting Congressman would have the extremely poor judgment to openly libel American troops. Murtha set a simply lovely precedent with this kind of maliciousness.

UPDATE: AP reporter Erica Werner could also use a dictionary. She also used the word fratricide in her hatchet job.

Rumsfeld said he didn't recall discussing the Tillman issue with the White House until the fratricide became public.

To Heck With Our Enemies, Let’s Invade Our Allies

Barack Obama, in what can only be described as insanity, has just made a speech warning that he would invade Pakistan if he felt that government was not doing enough to curb terrorists. Harshly critical or the Iraq war, he proposes invading an ally.

WASHINGTON - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Wednesday that he would possibly send troops into Pakistan to hunt down terrorists, an attempt to show strength when his chief rival has described his foreign policy skills as naive.

The Illinois senator warned Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf that he must do more to shut down terrorist operations in his country and evict foreign fighters under an Obama presidency, or Pakistan will risk a U.S. troop invasion and losing hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military aid.

"Let me make this clear," Obama said in a speech prepared for delivery at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. "There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an al-Qaida leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will."

The excerpts were provided by the Obama campaign in advance of the speech.

Obama's speech comes the week after his rivalry with New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton erupted into a public fight over their diplomatic intentions.

Obama said he would be willing to meet leaders of rogue states like Cuba, North Korea and Iran without conditions, an idea that Clinton criticized as irresponsible and naive. Obama responded by using the same words to describe Clinton's vote to authorize the Iraq war and called her "Bush-Cheney lite."

Let's see in a week or so we have had Obama say that stopping genocide was no reason to stay in Iraq, that he would personally meet with heads of rogue states and that he would invade a nuclear-armed ally. I think we may just have witnessed the implosion of Obamania. The darling of many of the nutrootz is willing to ignite a regional war against an ally. Good lord.

UPDATE: Some pithy comments from some others: Just One Minute, Redstate, Sister Toldjah, Texas Rainmaker, The Strata-Sphere, Jammie Wearing Fool, Clayton Cramer, Wizbang, Captain's Quarters, QandO, Michelle Malkin,

Great White Red Herring

British authorities are stridently denying that the videos and still pictures showing a shark circling around just off a popular British beach show a great white shark. It is the start of the holiday season in Britain and the tourist areas cannot afford to have people afraid of the water. Does any of this sound vaguely familiar? Welcome to Amity.

The scare started after a tourist took pictures of a menacing-looking fin jutting from the water last week, 200 yards (metres) from the beach near the popular Cornish resort of St. Ives.

"Jaws 2" headlined the mass-market Sun tabloid Monday, publishing photos and a video of the alleged great white shark's fin and claiming Tuesday there might even be two.

But experts have lined up to insist that, while a great white cannot be ruled out, the sighting is far more likely to be a basking shark, quite common in British waters and entirely harmless to humans.

"Having now seen the pictures in the paper I can confidently say the most recent sighting is simply a basking shark," Richard Peirce, chairman of the Shark Trust, told the Independent daily.

The Cornish coastguard said the claims were "utter rubbish" and would not help tourist trade already hit by record rainfall.

"The poor tourist industry this year is having a really hard time. The last thing we need is scaremongering over some footage," said Marc Thomas of Falmouth Coastguard.

The Sun was unrepentant, quoting a "bombshell" confirmation by "leading Aussie shark watcher Dave 'Sharkman' Baxter" that the beast was definitely a great white, adding: "Her mate will be close by."

The British government has not helped matters with their proposed slogan* to boost tourism, we suspect: "Be a chum, go swimming." The Sun, meanwhile has even more photos today.

A HERO fled the sea in terror amid the Jaws panic engulfing Britain — after saving two girl cousins from a shark.

Frantic Joe Miller, 26, plunged into the waves to help the pair to safety after a dreaded fin passed within yards of them off a South Devon beach.

He then scrambled for his own life. Student Hannah Miller, 23, told yesterday how she and sister Freya, 20, thought Joe was JOKING as he screamed at them to get out of the water.

* Yes, we made that up. But just to beat the bureaucrats to the punch.

* Yes, we made that up. But just to beat the bureaucrats to the punch.

Taxing The Poor

Robert Robb, writing in the Arizona Republic, points out the many absurdities of the massive expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) being proposed by Congressional Democrats. It will expand the program - already distorted by many states to cover people it was never intended for - well up into the middle class. And it is funded on the backs of the poorest citizens.

No one opposes reauthorization for its intended purpose. The Bush administration has proposed reauthorization for this targeted population with an extra $5 billion in funding over the next five years, over the current base of $25 billion.

The problem is that SCHIP has expanded beyond its original scope, as so often happens with federal programs. In the early years, many states couldn't use all their SCHIP money, so the feds permitted excess funds to be used by other states to extend coverage to children beyond 200 percent of the poverty level and even adults.

In Arizona, the SCHIP plan is called KidsCare. A Government Accountability Office study found, however, that 56 percent of the people enrolled in "KidsCare" were actually adults.

Fifteen states now provide SCHIP coverage for children above 200 percent of the federal poverty level, and 14 states cover adults.

Congressional Democrats propose not only to fund these existing expanded programs but provide enough funding for other states to substantially expand eligibility, as well. In all, Democrats are proposing to more than double SCHIP funding, allowing universal coverage up to 300 percent of the federal poverty level, as Gov. Janet Napolitano has proposed for Arizona.

That would provide coverage up to a family income of about $60,000 a year. Since the median family income in the United States is just over $46,000, this reaches well into the middle class…..

…..To pay for the SCHIP expansion, Democrats are proposing to raise tobacco taxes by up to 61 cents a pack.

Tobacco taxes are highly regressive. So, basically, Democrats are proposing to tax the poor to pay for the health care of the middle class.

Tobacco taxes are also highly uncertain. Health-care advocates like them because the evidence is that they do reduce consumption. However, states and the federal government have already loaded up various programs, many involving health care and children, on their backs. The odds are very strong that tobacco taxes will not produce the revenues being obligated.

Robb is quite correct. The lower a person's income, the more a tobacco tax will bite. It is one of the most regressive of taxes. It will, inevitably, also cause falling tax revenues, leaving a vast, unfunded mandate. That many states are already misusing the original intent of SCHIP is not a good reason to expand it so other can also misuse it. Placing the tax burden for that expansion squarely on those least able to afford it is just plain wrong.

Facing Up To An Aging America

Robert Samuelson has a column up today over at Real Clear Politics that should, rightfully, scare the socks off any thinking American. He points out a really, really inconvenient truth: the Baby boomers could very well bankrupt America in the next couple of decades as they retire. This subject has, of course, long been avoided by politicians in both parties as well as by most Washington think tanks. Samuelson suggests that it is time for that to change. Before it is too late.

The aging of America is not just a population change or, as a budget problem, an accounting exercise. It involves a profound transformation of the nature of government: Commitments to the older population are slowly overwhelming other public goals; the national government is becoming mainly an income-transfer mechanism from younger workers to older retirees.

Consider the outlook. From 2005 to 2030, the 65-and-over population will nearly double to 71 million; its share of the population will rise to 20 percent from 12 percent. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — programs that serve older people — already exceed 40 percent of the $2.7 trillion federal budget. By 2030, their share could hit 75 percent of the present budget, projects the Congressional Budget Office.

The 2030 projections are daunting. To keep federal spending stable as a share of the economy would mean eliminating all defense spending and most other domestic programs (for research, homeland security, the environment, etc.). To balance the budget with existing programs at their present economic shares would require, depending on assumptions, tax increases of 30 percent to 50 percent — or budget deficits could quadruple. A final possibility: Cut retirement benefits by increasing eligibility ages, being less generous to wealthier retirees or trimming all payments.

Samuelson has a modest suggestion. Have a neutral foundation or individual fund a small book. Have six think tanks, three liberal, three conservative, contribute competing ideas on how to manage this looming demographic disaster. It's a terrific idea, logical and smart. Therefore, it will never happen. Which is a real problem. Because right now you have the left proposing enormous increases in government despite the looming boomer bust that is only a few years down the road. Discussions of current plans should be looking at the future consequences, too. They are not. Everyone is ignoring this problem.

Assurances

L Gordon Crovitz, is not exactly a household name, but he is the publisher of the Wall Street Journal. In today's Opinion Journal, he assures subscribers and readers that the purchase of Dow Jones by News Corp will not change the standards of the WSJ.

In 1889, Dow and Jones launched the Journal to revolutionize markets by spreading authoritative information beyond insiders to individual investors. In the first issue, they made a pledge that stands today. "The fundamental principles in carrying out our news business are these: To get the news, to publish it instantly, whether bull or bear. No operator controls or can control our news. We are proud of the confidence reposed in our work. We mean to make it better. And we mean to have the news always honest, intelligent and unprejudiced."…….

…..Any buyer of Dow Jones knows that the foundation of value is the trust of readers in the brands and the journalism. Indeed, the first topic discussed by News Corp. Chairman and Chief Executive Rupert Murdoch with the Bancroft family in their negotiations was the importance of accurate and independent journalism. Mr. Murdoch told the Bancrofts that "any interference–or even hint of interference–would break the trust that exists between the paper and its readers, something I am unwilling to countenance. Apart from breaching the public's trust, it would simply be bad business."

The Wall Street Journal is an anomaly in today's media - the readership of both the print and online versions is growing, not shrinking. Rupert Murdoch would be insane to tamper with that. Murdoch is much more likely to change other publications to try to match the success of the WSJ. There is also an editorial in the Opinion Journal today about the sale of Dow Jones.

The Journal has had to adapt many times over the years to changing technology and reading habits. In the past five years alone, we have redesigned the U.S. Journal twice and the foreign editions once, while adding a Saturday paper and investing in online publishing. To the extent that News Corp. can provide capital for further innovation, the Journal's future as a business should be enhanced. And make no mistake: Business success is vital to editorial independence, precisely because it provides the resources to report and comment in ways that might offend advertisers or governments.

We also believe the reverse is true: Editorial independence enhances the prospects for business success. The more credible a publication is, especially one that specializes in financial and economic reporting, the more readers and advertisers it is likely to have. We like to think our readers buy the Journal because of the credibility built over a century, and we believe this is the heart of the "value proposition" that Mr. Murdoch is willing to pay $5 billion to purchase. No sane businessman pays a premium of 67% over the market price for an asset he intends to ruin.

There are nonetheless critics, especially in the journalism world, who claim this is precisely what Mr. Murdoch will proceed to do. And they have certainly had a merry time bashing him and the Journal these past few months. Some of these voices, however, are commercial or ideological competitors who have their own interest in undermining the Journal's credibility.

Both the New York Times and the Financial Times have been especially aggressive in assailing the potential News Corp. purchase of the Journal. These also happen to be the two publications that Mr. Murdoch has explicitly said he might invest more to compete against. Readers can judge if the tears these papers and their writers claim to shed for the Journal's future are real, or of the crocodile variety.

Yeah, there will be a lot of crocodile tears, wailing and gnashing of teeth over this. But with the financial resources of News Corp behind an actually successful newspaper, those crocodile tears from competitors may well turn to real tears as their papers lose more and more ground to the WSJ.