† There's No Such Thing As Free Healthcare: Orthopedic surgeon Eric Novack, chairman of the U.S. Health Care Freedom Coalition and Arizonans for Health Care Freedom, points to the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS) as the future of ObamaCare in this Washington Times op-ed:

 

The basics of AHCCCS are simple. State government contracts with private companies to offer managed health care to eligible Arizonans. In Maricopa County, home to Phoenix and about 60 percent of the state's residents, four companies offer medical services (though certain mental health and long-term care services are carved out from this). When an applicant is accepted into AHCCCS, he or she chooses a plan, or is simply assigned a plan if no choice is made.

 

With the patients thus divvied up, Arizona's Medicaid insurers contract separately with all types of providers, from hospitals to doctors, therapists to nursing homes and medical equipment suppliers. If this sounds familiar, it's because this arrangement is the very basis of Obamacare's "health insurance exchanges." It's also huge business for big insurance titans like United HealthCare and Aetna, to name just a couple of companies.

 

These private companies win multimillion dollar contracts by placing bids with AHCCCS workers, an arrangement that leaves the insurers beholden to the government officials who hand them business - not the Arizonans who are their customers. … [W]hile enrollees can "act with their feet," in reality they can do little more than shuttle between four similar plans offering virtually the same benefits. …

 

Obamacare supporters and their big insurance backers borrowed much from Arizona's Medicaid system. Sadly, mandating that Americans join a plan, in an AHCCCS-style exchange, takes a fine concept - private management of our critical health care safety net - and perverts it into something else - a fiscally disastrous alliance between unaccountable government bureaucrats and major private corporations.

 

† There’s Many A Slip ‘Twixt The Cup And Lip: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) famously predicted that once Americans find out what’s in the Obamacare bill, they would like it. Now that polls and the first of several state ballot initiatives are proving otherwise, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) insists that Americans still don’t know what’s in the bill otherwise they would like it. Unfortunately, amongst the people who persist in not liking the bill are the sorts of committed Dems who would brave 102^o heat to vote in a primary election, reports The Washington Times:

 

[I]n the vote that energized the GOP, 71 percent of Missouri voters supported a proposition on Tuesday that states that no rule or law can compel a person or business to participate in any health care system and prohibits laws that level penalties against people who do not buy health care insurance. …

 

[S]ome political analysts say that the Missouri measure's decisive margin of victory was impressive despite the high Republican turnout and indicates strong grass-roots distrust of the health care law.

 

"With the exception of some deep-blue [Democratic] states, I think [the Missouri measure] could pass pretty much anywhere in the country right now," said Michael D. Tanner of the Cato Institute, a libertarian Washington-based think tank.

 

''The polls all show that this bill has not gotten any more popular with age. This is still pretty much a mess."

 

Mr. Tanner estimated at least 40,000 Democratic voters also supported the referendum.

 

"And these are not just run-of-the-mill Democrats, these are the party base that turned out for a primary," he said. "If you lose about one out of every eight members of your base on an issue like this, it's pretty unpopular."

 

Declares The Washington Times: It's now fact: The public hates Obamacare

 

For their part, it’s beginning to dawn on ObamaCare supporters that if millions of Americans prefer to be fined for not buying government-mandated insurance – or even to go to prison for refusing to pay the fine – it will be next to impossible to implement the healthcare “reform” law.

 

† Toyota President’s Congressional Testimony Canned, Panned: Koua Fong Lee, 32, of St. Paul, MN, who spent nearly 2½ years in prison for a fatal Toyota crash walked was released pending a new trial ordered by Ramsey County District Judge Joanne Smith and county attorney Susan Gaertner said she would not bring new charges against him, reports The Associated Press:

 

Lee was convicted of charges including criminal vehicular homicide in the 2006 crash. He was exiting a freeway ramp in St. Paul when his 1996 Camry plowed into the back of an Oldsmobile stopped at a red light.

 

Lee's car was traveling somewhere between 70 and 90 mph. He insisted at trial that he was trying to brake before the collision, but was convicted. Smith, who presided over that trial, sentenced him to the maximum eight years.

 

His case received a new look after Toyota acknowledged sudden acceleration trouble in newer-model Toyotas, even though Lee's Camry hadn't been recalled.

 

Over four days of testimony this week, Lee's attorneys didn't prove his car had a sudden acceleration problem. But they argued evidence backed up Lee's account he was trying to brake. They also argued his defense attorney did a poor job. And they called a parade of witnesses who testified they had sudden acceleration experiences in Toyotas similar to Lee's.

 

Smith said if that testimony from the other Toyota drivers had been introduced at his trial, it would "more likely than not, or probably, or even almost certainly" have resulted in a different verdict for Lee.

 

Smith also said Lee's limited English was a factor in her conclusion, as well as the work of his defense attorney, who suggested to the jury that Lee might have stepped on the accelerator. …

 

Prosecutors had opposed a new trial, saying there was no compelling new evidence. But after Smith ruled Thursday, Gaertner said the ineffective counsel was a compelling reason not to try the case again.

 

† Don’t Know Much About History, Don’t Know Much Foreign Policy: Leaders of the Gulf Oil States fear a nuclear Iran but the 2010 Arab Public Opinion Poll, which surveyed 3,976 respondents from Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, finds that the Arab street cheer the prospect, reports The Washington Times:

 

57 percent of respondents not only believe that Iran's nuclear program aims to build a bomb but also view that goal positively - nearly double the 29 percent who thought so in 2009. The percentage of those who view an Iranian nuclear bomb negatively fell by more than half, from 46 percent to 21 percent.

 

The survey, conducted by University of Maryland professor Shibley Telhami in conjunction with the polling firm Zogby International, also found rapidly diminishing support among Arabs for President Obama, who has made an outreach to the Muslim world a key focus of his foreign policy [his favorable ratings sank from 45 percent to 20 percent from the 2009 survey to this year’s while his unfavorables soared from 23 percent to 62 percent]. Those findings have been reflected in other recent polls.

 

But the Arab Public Opinion Poll's findings on Iran stand in marked contrast to the stances of most Sunni Arab leaders, who fear the regional implications of an Iranian bomb.

 

One foreign policy analyst dismissed the survey results because the people in these countries are powerless and what they tell a pollster is inconsequential. Except, of course, to the extent that they convert their opinions into action by joining terrorist organizations to wage jihad against Western targets.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (third item, Is This Any Way To Run A Transition?): Gen. David Petraeus, the recently appointed commander of NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan, issued updated rules of engagement battle that continues Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s curtailing aerial bombing and heavy artillery when “innocent” civilians could be harmed, but permit troops to defend themselves – sorta:

 

We must continue - indeed, redouble - our efforts to reduce the loss of innocent civilian life to an absolute minimum. … We must employ all assets to ensure our troopers' safety, keeping in mind the importance of protecting the Afghan people as we do. … We must continue to demonstrate our resolve to the enemy. We will do so through our relentless pursuit of the Taliban and others who mean Afghanistan harm, through our compassion for the Afghan people, and through the example we provide to our Afghan partners.

 

The Washington Times reports that “[t]he new directive implied that some lower-level commanders had misinterpreted Gen. McChrystal's guidance and made rules in their areas more restrictive than needed (“Subordinate commanders are not authorized to further restrict this guidance without my approval.”)

 

But lower-level commanders will be forced to interpret this “guidance” very circumspectly because they send a very mixed message. Note that Petraeus calls for a redoubling of efforts not to harm “innocent” Afghans and equates relentless pursuit of the enemy with compassion for the Afghan people. No career officer will risk his advancement - or a criminal trial – by accidentally killing a civilian in the heat of battle. No battle will ever get that hot.

 

Meanwhile, the Taliban issued its own ROE: Fighters should avoid killing civilians, but if they are working for coalition forces or the Afghan government then they are "supporters of the infidels" and can be killed.

 

Guess which side will kill more Afghan civilians. Guess which side will lose more of its own troops. Guess which side is winning this war. (Here’s a big hint on answering this last question: The Pentagon is feverishly issuing orders to prevent the men and women who are risking their lives in battle from finding out what a SNAFU war this has become. Could be they’re afraid Afghanistan will be another Vietnam, when the troops on the ground decide what the ROE will be?)

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (eighth item, We Fight Them Over There So We Don’t Have To Fight Them Over Here?): The government charged 14 people in MN, CA and AL with funneling money and jihadis from the U.S. to the terrorist group al-Shabab in Somalia, reports The Associated Press:

 

Most of the people charged are U.S. citizens. Some supported the terrorist organization from the United States and others traveled to Somalia to join up with al-Shabab.

 

Al-Shabab is a Somali insurgent faction embracing a radical form of Islam similar to the harsh, conservative brand practiced by Afghanistan's Taliban regime. Its fighters, numbering several thousand strong, are battling Somalia's weakened government and have been branded a terrorist group with ties to al-Qaida by the U.S. and other Western countries.

 

One of two indictments issued in Minnesota alleges that two Somali women and others went door-to-door in Minneapolis, Rochester, Minn. and elsewhere in the U.S. and Canada to raise funds for al-Shabab's operations in Somalia. The indictment says the women raised the money under false pretenses, claiming it would go to the poor and needy, and used phony names for recipients to conceal that the money was going to al-Shabab.

 

The indictment alleges that the women, Amina Farah Ali and Hawo Mohamed Hassan, also raised money by making direct appeals to people in teleconferences "in which they and other speakers encouraged financial contributions to support violent jihad in Somalia." …

 

Ali is accused of sending $8,608 to al-Shabab on 12 different occasions between Sept. 17 2008 through July 5, 2009.

 

Also on Thursday, a newly released State Department annual report on worldwide terrorism noted with concern that al-Qaida, particularly in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, appeared to be attracting growing numbers of radicalized Americans to its cause. …

 

National security officials are concerned that Somali-Americans who have trained and fought as jihadis could return to the U.S. to commit acts of terror.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (fourth item Employers Hiring Forged Documented Aliens Are Lawbreakers In Other Ways, Too): In the ongoing Agriprocessors saga, Sholom Rubashkin’s attorneys filed a motion asking for a new trial on the bank fraud charges for which he was to 27 years in prison, reports The National Law Journal:

 

The Rubashkin defense team's motion is based on new documents that were produced through a Freedom of Information Act request. The attorneys, who include Nat Lewin of Washington's Lewin & Lewin, said Reade, who took the bench in 2002, participated in the planning of the May 2008 immigration raid at Agriprocessors meatpacking plant.

 

The defense lawyers said Reade failed to disclose the depth of her interaction in the law enforcement planning of the raid, which ended in the arrest of nearly 400 undocumented workers. Federal prosecutors brought immigration-related charges against Rubashkin. Those charges, however, were later dropped after a jury convicted Rubashkin in November 2009. …

 

"The government's own memoranda show that more than six months before the raid, Judge Linda Reade began a series of meetings in which she collaborated with the law-enforcement team that prosecuted the case against Sholom Rubashkin," Lewin, lead appellate counsel for Rubashkin, said in a statement. "Without disclosing to defense counsel her meetings with the U.S. attorney and the support she expressed for the raid, she presided at Mr. Rubashkin's trial, and then immediately had him imprisoned, and sentenced him to two years more in prison than the prosecution requested."

 

In a conference call with reporters Thursday, Lewin said Rubashkin's defense team is considering filing a formal judicial misconduct complaint against Reade for failing to recuse herself from the case and for failing to disclose allegedly improper ex parte discussions between her and prosecutors in the case.

 

Lewin said the defense team is considering filing a formal judicial misconduct complaint against Reade.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (seventh item, The Part About “Illegal” Liberals Don’t Understand): Bush and Obama administrations extended the Congressionally mandated May 2008 deadline for states to switch to secure driver's licenses to make it harder for terrorists to obtain drivers’ licenses or other state-issued ID cards. The new deadline is May 2011, but some fear that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is not committed to the Real ID program, reports The Washington Times:

 

Ten states have certified that they are complying with the law, and another 17 are on target to comply by the end of the year, according to state and federal officials. Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia have not certified their compliance.

 

A big concern is "how this gets paid for. … It's an unfunded mandate," said David Quam, director of federal relations for the National Governors Association], noting that many states are "heading into their worst fiscal year ever." A Homeland Security grant program to help states meet the costs provides "not nearly enough money," he added.

 

Other concerns revolve around the use of federal databases to check Social Security numbers and a system for electronically verifying birth certificates.

 

"Every governor supports a more secure system [of driver's licensing]," Mr. Quam said. "The question is, how do you do that in a way that's workable, flexible and affordable?" …

 

One possibility is that Ms. Napolitano could extend the deadline again. Another is that the department could issue a new rule on implementation that addresses state concerns. Both of those possibilities are anathema to the law's backers.

 

"I am concerned that a new rule-making effort will interrupt progress under way," said Mr. Zimmer, who as a legislative aide to House Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner, Wisconsin Republican, helped write the original legislation.

 

"There is a considerable risk that the existing rules will be relaxed to make it easier for certain states to be deemed in compliance," he added.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, Only The Little People Pay Taxes): NV’s Public Employees' Benefit Program Board voted to slash roughly $81 million in subsidized services for 70,000 of the state’s public employees, retirees and their dependents, reports The Associated Press:

 

That's about two-thirds of a $111 million shortfall faced by the program for the two-year budget cycle that begins July 1.

 

The remaining $30 million will be made up in higher premiums paid by workers and retirees. The board will tackle those options when it meets next month.

 

Meanwhile, despite the fact that roughly 400 Milwaukee teachers are facing layoffs because of a budget crisis, the Milwaukee Teachers' Education Association is suing the school board to restore coverage for Viagra and similar erectile dysfunction treatments in its health insurance plans, reports The Associated Press:

 

The filing is the latest in a two-year legal campaign in which the union has argued, so far unsuccessfully, that the board's policy of excluding erectile dysfunction drugs discriminates against male employees. The union says Viagra, Cialis, Levitra and others are necessary treatment for "an exclusively gender-related condition."

 

But lawyers for the school board say the drugs were excluded in 2005 to save money, and there is no discrimination because they are used primarily for recreational sex and not out of medical necessity. …

 

At least one lawmaker questioned why the union is fighting for Viagra while teachers are losing their jobs. A consultant for the school board has estimated that reinstating the drug benefit would cost $786,000 per year - the cost to keep perhaps a dozen first-year teachers employed.

 

No doubt it will be a comfort to those young, unemployed teachers that their former colleagues can get it up.

 

† Updates To Previous Posts (last item, Never Mind Marxism. Will An Obama Administration Be Totalitarian?): The U.S. District Court in OH threw out a lawsuit by Samuel Wurzelbacher (AKA Joe The Plumber) claiming that Department of Job and Family Services Director Helen Jones-Kelley and two other state officials violated his constitutional rights by illegally accessing his personal information. Jones-Kelley and one official resigned; the other one was fired.