Imagine a better legislature

While others play the personality game of who succeeds Bill Ritter, let’s talk policy. Imagine Colorado making itself so attractive to employers that we lead all 50 states in creating new jobs, instead of lagging in 20th place as we did in the decade past (our second-worst showing since 1890). Imagine Colorado becoming a mecca for affordable health care by letting insurers from across the country compete on price and quality in our state marketplace. Imagine forging out as the nation’s futuristic energy leader, the state that builds safe nuclear plants for clean electricity powering homes, businesses, and vehicles. Imagine our schools putting kids’ best interests ahead of union demands with the most charter-friendly policies in America, slashing red tape to empower learning performance. Imagine our university system paying students a 25% dividend on their time and tuition by innovating the three-year college degree.

Imagine a legislature so tough-minded that it would solicit private investors for Colorado’s transportation infrastructure, Indiana-style; clean up the PERA retirement system’s governance to exclude self-serving insiders; impeach the state’s chief justice for rewriting our constitution; and launch an all-out investigation of radical Islam’s influence here.

And imagine a state government so honest that it no longer grabs a 15-month, zero-interest loan from your paycheck in the form of tax withholding. Rather you keep your own money for your own use until the revenue deadline in April each year.

Such imagineering, as the Disney people call it, is great for mind expansion. But don’t expect any of these visions to be realized in legislation when the Colorado General Assembly convenes this week. Majority Democrats, led by House Speaker Terrance Carroll and Senate President Brandon Shaffer, envision our future differently – and for now, citizens have put them in charge.

For now. The ruling party’s legislative work from January to May is their final exam. In November the voters will file a report card on every House member and half the Senate. Some of us hope all the Democrats flunk. To hasten that, Republicans should use the 2010 session to prove that “out of power” does not mean out of ideas.

Snow may be scarce in the mountains, but at the Capitol a blizzard of bills is flying. During these 120 days nearly a thousand proposals will surface. Some will tackle the budget deficit. Others will push hot buttons, from legal pot to illegal aliens. We’ll hear about such bedroom questions as the gun in the nightstand or who shares a pillow. So will they also find time to debate the big-picture policy issues?

Ten are imagined on my list above. GOP legislators, outnumbered in both chambers, can’t pass these good ideas into law. They can't even get many of them to a floor vote where Dems are put on record. But they can certainly propose them as bills, publicize and advocate for them, laying down a marker for the upcoming campaign.

Rep. Spencer Swalm (R-Centennial) is doing just that with his proposal to end mandatory withholding of state income tax, a transparency move to highlight the ever-growing cost of government. “When a taxpayer has to sit down and write a check,” says Swalm, “it wonderfully focuses the mind.”

Businesses, for that matter, shouldn’t pay income tax at all – since they merely pass it along to consumers or squeeze it out of employee payrolls. Spurring an employment boom by axing that tax was one of my recommendations to gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis in a column last month. His legislative allies should call the Dems’ bluff on job creation with a bill.

By helping Coloradans imagine a better legislature in 2010, Republicans can help themselves back to the majority in 2011. “Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it,” sang that old political balladeer, Goethe.

Old movies and unwelcome history

The moment the Japanese Empire bombed Pearl Harbor, the vast majority of Americans were committed heart and soul to winning the world war that the sneak attack abruptly brought our nation into. But as welcome as the ultimate victory was, World War II’s conclusion was, like most wars, a mixed blessing. For while the Nazis, fascists and warlords were thoroughly defeated, one of our principal allies, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (deceased, 1991) was in command of central Europe and portions of the Far East. No less pleased at the outcome as the western allies–the United States, Great Britain and France–the USSR nevertheless was a regime no less hateful than the ones defeated in war. In Europe, a divided continent entailed further divisions within defeated countries, specifically, Germany and Austria. In both countries, four zones of occupation were established at the Potsdam Conference, not only for these countries but for their capital cities, Berlin and Vienna. The division of Germany epitomized the tragic results of the "good war," as it came to be called, with crises in 1948 and 1961 that threatened another world war, and the remarkably peaceful outcome of 1989 with the fall of the Berlin Wall, erected in 1961. Austria was more fortunate, as the four-power occupation of the country and its capital ended with its official neutrality, agreed to at a summit conference in 1955.

But, of course, this was not the case in the immediate aftermath of the war, as painfully the true nature of our Soviet allies became clear. It was bad enough that Soviet troops remained from the Baltic republics to Bulgaria. But even those persons in Russia and its satellites who managed to flee ahead of those troops to the western democracies were relentlessly pursued by Soviet authorities.

Operation Keelhaul was the wrenching obligation of Western powers to deal with the Soviet refugee "problem." Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the heroic Russian writer who took on the Communist colossus and ultimately won, denounced even the estimable Winston Churchill for consenting to this massive human tragedy. Because the operation mocked everything the victorious allies fought (and prosecuted German and Japanese leaders) for, it was given little publicity.

But movie makers in those days took note. "The Red Danube," an MGM production of 1949, (shown on TCM) zeroed in on the grisly work of Soviet repatriation with telling effect. Despite the British occupation forces’ determination to carry out their orders to deliver thousands of unhappy and unwilling refugees from Soviet tyranny to their horrible and undeserved fate, the truth obtrudes itself.

Here is a useful plot summary from IMDb (Internet Movie Database):

"Shortly after the end of World War II, British Colonel Michael 'Hooky' Nicobar (Walter Pidgeon) is assigned to a unit in the British Zone of Vienna. His duty is to aid the Soviet authorities to repatriate citizens of the Soviet Union, many of whom prefer not to return to their home country. Billeted in the convent run by Mother Auxilia (Ethel Barrymore), Nicobar, and his military aides Major John 'Twingo' McPhimister (Peter Lawford) and Audrey Quail (Angela Lansbury), become involved in the plight of a young ballerina (Janet Leigh) who is trying to avoid being returned to Moscow. Nicobar's sense of duty is tested as he sees first hand the plight of the people he is helping return to the Soviet Union; his lack of religious faith is also shaken by his contact with the Mother Superior."

I read several of these plot summaries, all of which equivocated in some way on the momentous issues involved. To say that "many" of the Soviet citizens "prefer[red] not to return to their home country" is a huge understatement. All were actively hostile to the idea, for it does not take a genius to figure out that a regime that deprives you of your liberty is to be avoided at all costs. Other summaries called the movie "propaganda" and "heavy handed." That’s how things appear to those who are either ignorant of political realities or wilfully blind for the sake of avoiding conflict.

But the summaries indicate that there are several threads in this movie. Front and center is the painful dilemma of the officers of a good regime being ordered to deliver unwilling people to an evil one. The film "humanizes" this weighty issue with a young officer’s passion for a beautiful victim of the massive roundup. (The officer’s aide is also in love with him.) So our hearts tug for the young couple’s fight to avoid her repatriation and hurt badly when events conspire against them.

Col. Nicobar’s sense of duty, reinforced at all levels of the British command, is not hard to admire, but our awareness of the evils it brings about forces us to stop and think. As determined as he is to carry out his orders, a combination of the true facts of the repatriation and his being prodded by the mother superior, produce a far different outcome. Looking back at the event, today’s reviewers reflect the influence of postwar revisionism that refuses to acknowledge that the Cold War was rooted in Soviet tyranny, and of "political correctness" that all too incorrectly seeks to banish religious issues from public discussion.

The good-hearted and honest colonel has difficulty reconciling the existence of massive evil in the world with the promise of love and peace that is the Christian message. He is not one to change his mind easily for, as John Adams long ago observed, "facts are stubborn things." Not only Nazi atrocities but, as he is painfully learning, Soviet atrocities shake the world, leaving men like him with the unending duty of opposing them by force. Religious sentiment, he believes, is no better than rank superstition in the face of these great evils.

Gently, but firmly, the mother superior reminds him, by her persistence in fighting for Maria’s release and even publicizing the whole repatriation issue with the Pope, as well as by her pointed observation that God did not do these wicked deeds but man, Nicobar sees a new and more compelling duty to risk his position and his sustenance by refusing to carry out any further cooperation with the Soviets’ nefarious project. The denouement will bring delight to every lover of liberty and freedom of conscience.

Momentous issues at mid century gave many people a sense of moral clarity than has seldom been seen since. We can be grateful to old Hollywood (and Turner Classic Movies) that it made films worthy of the best characters that humanity has put forth. May it plague the consciences of those who will not see the truth that is right in front of them.

Do tell: Who pushed Ritter out?

Kid-glove treatment by the Denver Post on Gov. Bill Ritter's decision not to run again, makes me miss the Rocky Mountain News as never before. And it increases my gratitude for the feisty skepticism still alive and well in talk radio and the blogosphere. In three days of coverage on the Ritter story by the Post, Monday night to Wednesday morning, online and in print, I haven't seen a single mention of the Governor's ethical and legal exposure over close aide Stephanie Villafuerte changing her story on the 2006 campaign controversy over leniency to illegal aliens.

Doubly odd since the Post itself, with suddenly-invisible reporter Karen Crummy in the lead, doggedly drove this issue and forced Villafuerte to pull her nomination for US Attorney. Triply odd since reputable news organizations such as Examiner.com have reported on the growing talk of possible impropriety in her personal relationship with Ritter.

The Post, last man standing among Denver's major daily papers, owes the public extra vigilance in that role. Instead, for some reason, it has morphed from watchdog to lapdog in this latest chapter of the Ritter melodrama.

Thankfully, Peter Boyles of KHOW in the morning has stayed on the Villafuerte angle. Dan Caplis & Craig Silverman, KHOW in the afternoon, have a different but equally probing take, speculating there was a Ken Salazar / Barack Obama coup to force the vulnerable Ritter out and hand the nomination to Salazar. Jon Caldara observed in an email this morning that sometimes "family priority" is code for a straying spouse trying to make things right. But not a hint in the Colorado's print journal of record, the Post, on any of these plausible and relevant possibilities.

Did Bill Ritter really jump by his own volition, as a sympathetic Lynn Bartels piece in today's Post has it? Or was he pushed -- by powerful Democrats here and in Washington, or by looming revelations of scandal? A truly free and independent press needs to be asking those questions.

"Don't wet on my leg and call it rain," LBJ used to say when someone tried to gull him in obvious fashion. (Actually he said it in more earthy terms.) Politicians try to do that all the time, of course, to each other and to us. They can't help themselves. That's where the First Amendment and the watchdog media come in. If there's no entity left in Colorado to do that with ink and paper in l'affaire Ritter, at least we're fortunate that some in the new and alternative media are staying in the hunt.

Health care the capitalist way: Part 3

In an arrogant display on Christmas Eve morning, the U.S. Senate gave the American people a big, dark piece of coal when it passed a massive health care package that simply does not address the primary problem with our system: skyrocketing costs. According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, premiums would rise by as much as $2,000 for a family policy. The government’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services assert a 5.1 percent increase in healthcare-to-GDP spending (to 21.1 percent, currently 16 percent) with reform compared to a 4.8 percent increase by doing nothing. And for those under 30, premiums could rise by 50 or 60 percent, according to Robert Zirkelbach of America’s Health Insurance Plans.

Congress should just scrap their big-government healthcare schemes and instead adopt the “Capitalist Manifesto for Healthcare Reform,” several specific, free-market fixes for healthcare. Previously in the series, I proposed several cost-cutting initiatives: increasing competition for individual consumers and permitting it across state lines, decreasing pharmeceutical regulation and permitting the importation of prescription drugs.

Now, in the final installment, we will examine lowering costs by freeing up medical malpractice, the regulatory system and Medicare and Medicaid, all critical reform components.

Reforming Medical Malpractice: If you’re a doctor, you better have malpractice insurance. Otherwise, you’re taking a huge risk. No matter what happens, even if a doctor does her job right and everything turns out well, you’re in danger of a class action lawsuit, known as “tort.”

According to Dr. Russell Turk, “[A] September survey of more than 5,000 obstetricians/gynecologists conducted by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists' (ACOG) [found that] in Florida, the state with the highest premiums, ob/gyns pay an average of $195,000 annually…The ACOG survey found that 63 percent of ob/gyns report making changes to their practice due to the fear of liability claims or litigation. In addition, 8 percent said they had stopped practicing obstetrics altogether.”

Doctors across the country are in such risk of getting hit with a massive lawsuit that their costs in malpractice insurance are astronomical. I agree with Dr. Turk when he says, “I fully support the idea of doctors being penalized and disciplined when they have been negligent. But you can do everything right and still get sued for a poor outcome.” As he notes, this also affects how doctors practice medicine, like what risks they’re willing to take to save lives.

Medical malpractice concerns also encourage greater use of defensive medicine, meaning doctors conduct tests they wouldn’t otherwise do to prevent lawsuits. In fact, defensive medicine costs the system an estimated $70 billion a year. Doctors should neither be prevented from doing what is necessary to serve their patients, nor forced into doing what is unnecessary and costly, just to protect themselves.

Tort reform, therefore, is absolutely essential for doctors, which will in turn pass on lower costs to consumers and insurance companies. It is imperative that punitive awards for medical malpractice be capped. In addition, those things for which one can go to court to seek damages should be reexamined and limited somewhat to prevent the application of inappropriate pressure on doctors from doing what may really be necessary to serve the needs of their patients.

However, the reforms that are necessary to lower costs and doctors’ concerns cannot all be undertaken at the federal level, due to federalism. Therefore, there are actions that must be taken at the federal and state levels, and the feds should perhaps consider providing incentives to states to do their part. It is imperative that, as part of a comprehensive healthcare reform package, both levels of government begin taking steps to reform the oppressive tort laws that are strangling the nation’s medical practitioners and pushing costs up.

Don’t Hate; Deregulate: I know what you’re thinking. Deregulation…isn’t that what got us into financial crisis in the first place? In fact, as economist Walter Williams points out, “In the banking and finance industries [from which the crisis stems], regulatory spending between 1980 and 2007 almost tripled, rising from $725 million to $2.07 billion.”

Economist Jeffrey Friedman noted, “The financial crisis was caused by the complex, constantly growing web of regulations designed to constrain and redirect modern capitalism. This complexity made investors, bankers and perhaps regulators themselves ignorant of regulations previously promulgated across decades and in different ‘fields’ of regulation.”

Deregulation was not the real cause of the financial crisis; regulation was. Furthermore, the healthcare and financial sectors are entirely different in nature, and the fact of the matter is, healthcare is one of the most heavily regulated industries in the country. According to Duke University’s Chris Conover, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute, the net cost of health regulation is $169 billion a year, after subtracting beneficial regulatory costs. As with any industry, in order to pay for the dictates of the government, institutions of health are forced to raise costs, which extends to consumers in the form of higher prices—a whopping $1,500 per household in this case.

Bear in mind that the regulations I’m talking about are not your essential safety regulations, but $169 billion in excessive, burdensome regulations, like the tort system, FDA regulations like those addressed in Column #2 and regulation of health facilities.

In fact, Conover’s research has shown that while roughly 18,000 Americans die from lack of health insurance, 22,000 die due to health services regulation, and seven million uninsured owe their state to excessive regulation. Cutting back on those unnecessary and cumbersome, but targeted and non-essential requirements/restrictions at both the federal and state levels would free up the market and enable health providers to lower costs.

Fixing Medicare and Medicaid: Medicare and Medicaid are the two most prominent government-run healthcare programs currently on the books. Medicare provides medical insurance for the elderly, and Medicaid is a massive federal-state partnership affording healthcare to the poor and indigent. While both of these programs are well-intentioned, they are financially unsustainable and require updates for application in a 21st century world.

Medicaid is a drain on federal and state budgets. To help control costs, states should be given near-absolute flexibility in determining how Medicaid is to be doled out—not more money. In fact, how Medicaid funding is given to the states encourages fraud and waste. And both Medicaid and Medicare reimburse doctors at as much as 30 percent below the normal rate—meaning costs are distributed to others. Fraud, abuse, waste and inefficiency need to be identified and cut from both of these programs. Fund distribution methods must be altered, and we must reexamine who is allowed to benefit from them, particularly from Medicare.

We need to start taming the Medicare leviathan, which has $89.3 trillion in unfunded liabilities. The layman’s solution to Medicare lies in allowing qualified individuals to opt out of the program if they so choose; slapping a grandfather clause on the 2003 Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit, meaning that those who are not currently on the program will not receive expansionist Part D benefits; and making Medicare means-tested, meaning that folks like Bill Gates would be ineligible for benefits.

Whether or not a person qualifies for Medicare benefits should rely on several factors, principally income level but perhaps also including yearly expenses, savings and the number of dependents. The switch to a means-tested structure should pertain solely to those who are currently under the age of 50 or 55; that way, all who are already anticipating on entering the Medicare program soon will be able to. The program will slowly work its way down, and the increased cost burden it shifts to the private healthcare industry will shrink as a result.

By taking these three critical steps toward reforming what we've got right now and thereby expanding freedom in the marketplace, we will undoubtedly be able to pull the brakes on skyrocketing healthcare costs as our system speeds on its way to the cliff of no return.

01/03/2010: Mike Littwin

7:30PM Guest: Mike Littwin