There should be a law that requires bills to have 15-30 days for public / representative / senator review before they are allowed to come to vote. This whole “write a 1200 page bill, vote the next day..rush rush rush” farcical comedy needs to end.  

Because the “Most Ethical Congress Ever” is at it again:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) will not give the public a week to review the final text of a health-care reform bill before it is voted on later this year.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.-Nev.) has also declined to commit to giving the public a week to read and consider the final health-care bill.

At her press briefing on Thursday, Pelosi was asked whether the health-care bill would be handled differently than the stimulus bill, which came up in February. The 1,071-page final text of that bill was posted on the House Appropriations Committee’s Web site late on a Thursday night and then voted on the next day.

“When the stimulus bill came out earlier this year, members and citizens had less than two days to review the final version that came out of the conference committee before it was voted on,” CNSNews.com asked Pelosi on Thursday. “Will you commit to giving Americans at least a week to review the full conference version of the health care bill before it is voted on? And also will you commit to submitting the final version to the CBO [Congressional Budget Office] so that they can report the cost to the public?”

Pelosi would not commit to giving the public a week to review the bill, and did not respond to the question of having the CBO report on the cost of the final bill.

“Well, we will abide by the regular order. You heard the question,” she said. “It was about having the health care bill out there a week in advance. We will have the regular order in terms of the appropriate amount of time, 48 hours in advance for amendments before you file the bill, another day before you can take up the bill.

Congresscritters, including Nancy and Harry, probably won’t read this bill, either, so, why should they let anyone else read it before passed? On the bright side, you’ll have plenty of time to read it in detail as you sit in the doctors office for 9 hours waiting for a flu shot.

But, I can at least get on the phone and jam the Capitol Switchboard and demand to know why the heck I (and my Congresscritters) can’t see the text of the bill. 

The same Congress that (deservedly) bashed Bernard Madoff over the head for his Ponzi scheme voted Friday for a similiar scheme multiplied by billions.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Waxman-Markey (aka cap-and-trade, aka global warming) would likely be the biggest tax in American history — and it will be signed by a president who promised not to raise taxes on those who make less than $250,000. Uh huh.

But it’s not a tax, you say.  Yes it is — and if you don’t believe me, here’s what Warren Buffet had to say:

“I think if you get into the way it was written, it’s a huge tax and there’s no sense calling it anything else. I mean, it is a tax. So it — and it’s a fairly regressive tax.”

The Congressional Budget Office says that the climate legislation would cost the average household only $175 a year by 2020, but the Heritage Foundation says the CBO isn’t taking many things into account. Besides that, 2020 is when the caps begin to really tighten. Get a load of this:

When the Heritage Foundation did its analysis of Waxman-Markey, it broadly compared the economy with and without the carbon tax. Under this more comprehensive scenario, it found Waxman-Markey would cost the economy $161 billion in 2020, which is $1,870 for a family of four. As the bill’s restrictions kick in, that number rises to $6,800 for a family of four by 2035.

And who benefits?  Well, the National Mining Association came out with a map showing, state by state, how many millions of dollars in costs will be imposed on each state ANNUALLY under the bill.   Ten states (including California come out ahead.  The rest, not so much, especially Texas.

Selling off America’s future so select members of Congress and the special interest groups that they’re attached to like ticks can profit today is a crime.   And let’s not forget former members of Congress — I’m looking at you Al Gore, who stands to become the first “carbon billionaire” through his partnership in the venture capital firm of Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers and the UK-based investment firm of Generation Investment Management.  These scam artists in Congress need to be put out of business now — and quite a few of them should be rooming with Bernie Madoff.

You can’t engage in diplomacy with an enemy who simply will not be negotiated with.  And Iran falls into that category:

The [Iranian] government appeared to fall back on a familiar playbook: trying to rouse Iranians through populist appeals against outside interference and dark accusations of foreign conspiracy. Mr. Rezai’s aides said the authorities did not even bother to conduct the limited recount they had agreed to. Mr. Ahmadinejad stepped out of the shadows to lash out at President Obama, who said Tuesday that he was “appalled and outraged” by the crackdown on protesters.

On Thursday, Mr. Ahmadinejad said: “We expected the British and European countries to make those kinds of comments. But we were not expecting Mr. Obama, who has talked about change, to fall in the same trap and follow the same path that Bush did.”

All Obama did was express his opinion on the treatment of protestors, and even that was too much for Ahmadinejad. And comparing him to Bush — oooooohhhh, burn.

And you know you got our President mad when he disinvites you from the July 4th weenie roast.  Not that any of them had RSVP’d anyway.  What a meaningless gesture at this point.

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who had authorized diplomatic posts earlier this month to invite Iranians to their Independence Day parties, sent out a cable rescinding the invitations.

“Unfortunately, circumstances have changed, and participation by Iranian diplomats would not be appropriate in light of the unjust actions that the president and I have condemned,” she said. Embassies that had already invited Iranian diplomats were instructed to disinvite them.

After all, this is a regime that has been in a declared war with America for more than three decades, and has killed hundreds of Americans and others, as well as untold Iraqis, Israelis, Lebanese and others. It is also actively seeking the means to commit genocide and has repeatedly made that more than clear. So let’s see: That kind of behavior rates an invitation to one of our most significant national holiday celebrations, to be rescinded not for the wanton murder of hundreds of Americans, but only when the Iranians begin killing their own in a way that cannot be easily ignored.

This simply shows that the Obama crowd is far too naive to be in charge of the really important decisions. No amount of mustard, ketchup and relish, or strongly worded letters from the UN, will change the fact that the Iranians (like the North Koreans, Hezbollah and Hamas) simply do not wish to engage in diplomacy with the Western world.

On the way back from vacation this past weekend, my minivan broke down. It’s a ‘97 Mercury Villager with 254,000 miles on it. (Yeah, I drive - a lot.) As I limped it into an auto mechanic, I heard the news that the “cash for clunkers” program has passed the House and Senate and that the President is expected to sign it any time now.

(Details of the bill — new car purchasers who trade in a vehicle that gets 18 mpg or less for a new vehicle that achieves at least 22 mpg will receive a $3,500 voucher, or $4,500 if the mileage of the new vehicle is 10 mpg higher than the previous vehicle. SUV, pickup truck and minivan buyers are eligible for a $3,500 voucher if their vehicle gets at least 2 mpg higher than their trade-in and $4,500 if the vehicle gets 5 mpg more than their older model.)

The bill is supposed to get inefficient, older vehicles off the road, and also jump start auto sales, though not all analysts think so. Some estimate that only 70,000 to 200,000 more vehicles will be sold because of the bill. Why? Well, I’m a perfect example.

Like a lot of legislation, the economics don’t make a lot of sense in the real world. If you’re driving an eligible car (as I am), then chances are that you can’t afford a new vehicle right now - even if you can subtract as much as $4,500 from the price. I know I couldn’t — or more accurately, I wouldn’t. Getting into debt in this economy doesn’t make sense. All for a fairly limited amount of gas savings (my minivan, for some reason, gets 22 mpg, though the manufacturer says it’s only supposed to get 17). So I trade it in for a car I have to go into debt to buy, to save a buck or two when I fill up. Doesn’t make sense.

More often than not, it makes more sense to just buy a used car. Or in my case, shell out $660 in repair costs.

Which is why I think this bill isn’t really going to create a lot of car sales.

I’ve been hearing a lot lately that we need to switch to some sort of government-run or government-managed health care system because private health care costs too much.  But you don’t see much on how much government health care costs.  As it turns out, we taxpayers pay more per patient for government health care than we pay for private health care.

And not only does government health care cost roughly 34% more per patient than private sector health care, but the gap in cost between government and private health care is actually growing.  According to Jeffrey Anderson of the Pacific Research Institute:

A new study I’ve completed, published by the Pacific Research Institute, takes all health-care spending in the United States and subtracts the costs of the two flagship government-run programs, Medicare and Medicaid. It then takes that remaining spending and compares its cost increases over time with Medicare’s cost increases over time.

The results are clear: Since 1970 — even without the prescription drug benefit — Medicare’s costs have risen 34% more, per patient, than the combined costs of all health care in America apart from Medicare and Medicaid, the vast majority of which is purchased through the private sector.

Since 1970, the per-patient costs of all health care apart from Medicare and Medicaid have risen from $364 to $7,119, while Medicare’s per-patient costs have risen from $368 to $9,634. Medicare’s costs have risen $2,511 more per patient.

So, we supposed to save money on health care by paying more in taxes for government-run health care than we pay now for private health care.  And we’ll have the government managing and rationing when, where and how much when it comes to the treatment we get.

Quite a bargain there, eh?