In case you missed it, there was just a huge election in Iraq. 61% turn out is a nearly impossible feat in the US, where the recent Illinois primary saw a whopping 72% of the electorate stay home. It wouldn’t surprise me if the Iraqi elections where more honest as well.

We now have a functioning democracy in the heart of the Middle East. This is a phenomenon that will slowly, but surely eat away at the regimes like Saudi Arabia (already moderating) and Iran (in the process of another ‘revolution’).

Bush was right.

Mission Accomplished, Indeed

RONALD REAGAN liked to say that there was no limit to what a man could accomplish if he didn’t mind who got the credit. The transformation of Iraq from a hellish tyranny into a functioning democracy will be recorded as a signal accomplishment of George W. Bush’s presidency, and he probably doesn’t mind in the least that the Obama administration would like to take the credit.

This week’s parliamentary elections in Iraq brought 12 million voters to the polls - a remarkable 62 percent turnout, notwithstanding a wave of Election Day bombings that killed 38 people.

“Iraqis are not afraid of bombs anymore,’’ a middle-aged voter named Maliq Bedawi told a New York Times reporter as they stood amid the rubble of a Baghdad apartment building destroyed by a Katyusha rocket. If anything, the jihadists’ violence only intensified the refusal of ordinary Iraqis to be intimidated. “Everyone went’’ to vote, Bedawi said. “Even people who didn’t want to vote before, they went after this rocket.’’

As with Quinn here in Illinois, Public Employee Unions are so soaked in their 25 year run at bloated pay, pensions, and perks that they can’t and/or won’t even consider cuts in any part of their compensation. As with my MESSA post below - where the disgusting teacher’s unions are cutting younger staff so older staff can keep the 38 massages in their “Roll-Royce Health Plans” - the unions in Boston are disemboweling ultra-left unions stooge Deval Patrick because he’s trying to tell unions that even his stooge-dom can’t forestall economic reality.

Patrick gets unions huffing and puffing

LABOR LEADERS are in a lather. So deep runs their indignation that Governor Patrick canceled an appearance at a recent AFL-CIO conference because attendees were ready to snub their invited guest and join police officers protesting outside while he spoke.

Patrick should be “one and done,’’ Thomas Nee, president of the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association, thundered at that protest, urging union members to render the Democratic incumbent a single-term governor.

“I understand all the things that are going on in the world of economics, but you can’t go rewriting collective bargaining agreements and history,’’ Nee told me.

State AFL-CIO president Robert Haynes, another labor blunderbuss, recently blasted Patrick and the Legislature for their treatment of public employees. “This current economic crisis has been taken out on the back of public-sector workers here in the Commonwealth,’’ Big Bad Bob declared to WBZ-TV’s Jon Keller.

Why, even the usually lower key David Holway, president of the National Association of Government Employees, has chimed in, telling the Globe that his police members “feel like they’re whipping boys and girls.’’

This is the perfect time for Republicans to put a new plank in their platform - the complete de-unionization of all public workforces. These pikers have bankrupted entire states and municipalities. Make them the “whipping boys and girls” they deserve to be.

Very few organizations do as good a job exposing Union Greed as the folks at Education Action Group and MEA Exposed.

I make no apologies for my harsh rhetoric against Teacher Union Greed. These greedy liars deserve every ounce of ridicule and derision, as they stand at the door and keep poor children out of good schools so that they, and their oily administrative enablers, can suck down untold and undeserved pension and perks.

Here is simply one more example of their avarice.

MESSA under fire in Fox 17 report

Crush the Unions, people. The degree to which they force their greed down the throat of the taxpayer should disgust you. You should revolt. That crap at the end of the segment about how “stressful” it is to be a teacher made me retch.

These are the people that drove Michigan’s economy into a ditch. Make them pay for their whole premium and see how fast they clamor for HSAs.

Misogyny

One reason I’m not overly worried about being overtaken by Islam, India, or the Chinese is that they just don’t get that you can’t succeed with half your culture tied behind your back. I’m no fan of 60s/70s style “woman’s lib,” but at least we aren’t bone stupid.

Nothing like aborting yourself out of existence.

Asia ‘missing’ 96 million women: UN

NEW DELHI (AFP) – Asia is “missing” about 96 million women — the vast majority in China and India — who died from discriminatory health care and neglect or who were never born at all, the UN estimated on Monday.

Female infanticide and sex-selective abortion have caused a severe gender imbalance in Asia, and the problem is worsening despite rapid economic growth in the region, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) report said.

“The old mindset with its preference for male children has now combined with modern medical technology” that makes it easier to predict and abort unborn girls, said Anuradha Rajivan, the report’s lead author.

“It is not just female infanticide but sex-selective abortion of unborn girls that cause so-called ‘missing’ females,” she said, contrasting the issue with recent improvements in female life expectancy and education.

The UNDP report found that East Asia had the world’s highest male-female sex ratio at birth, with 119 boys born for every 100 girls.

This far exceeded the global world average of 107 boys for every 100 girls.

“Females cannot take survival for granted,” it said.

“Sex-selective abortion, infanticide, and death from health and nutritional neglect in Asia have left 96 million missing women… and the numbers seem to be increasing in absolute terms.”

You have to give the Muslims credit for being monotheistic (i.e. NON-’humanist’) enough not to abort their women. Now if they only stopped treating them like chattel…
____

BTW, you may consider this post to be more politically incorrect than most of the other balanced stuff here on EW, but I “calls them as I sees them.” Western culture is so over-the-top superior in this instance, that it needs to be said.

How about you all get with the program?

The Wall Street Journal started writing Op-Eds in the 80s that started to make the point that Environmentalism, as practiced by the intransigent ideologues of the left, looked more like a religion than a science (or even a political movement).

Now, with the faked science behind anthropic global warming collapsing, the environmentalists are calling for their first “High Priest.” It’s delicious to see this actually happen.

Wanted: an eco prophet
People are drifting into a lethal slumber on climate change. More of the same won’t wake them up

It’s an exceptionally inconvenient truth. Only one American in three believes that human beings are responsible for climate change: a polling result 10% down on where opinion rested the year before. Worse, the number of Americans who believe that climate change is a hoax or a scientific conspiracy – not doubting, just damned blank certain – has doubled since 2008. Add in those who assert that the changes, if any, are of “no significant concern”, and you’ve got 30% of the US denying, scoffing and just walking on by.

Are the issues clearer, the people more committed, here in Britain? Call for the latest evidence from Ipsos Mori – and find that the proportion of UK adults who believe that global warming is “definitely” a reality has plummeted from 44% to 31% in the last 12 months. Figures like these, on both sides of the Atlantic, are getting more sceptical week by week. The real change of electoral climate is that fewer and fewer voters pay any heed to scientists and politicians.

…

None of it has a ring of renewed confidence. And the plain fact is that we surely need a prophet, not yet another committee. We need one passionate, persuasive scientist who can connect and convince – not because he preaches apocalypse in gory detail, but in simple, overwhelming terms. We need to be taught to believe by a true believer in a world where belief is the fatal, missing ingredient.

Indeed, we need a False Prophet, so that government can become more powerful and corrupt energy companies and investment banks can make a false profit.

No, but his 1986 Tax Reform did make it worse.

I was reading a letter to the editor in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal, and the subject matter hit me like a lightning bolt. Ronald Reagan, patron saint of all things conservative, made the health care crisis worse. Here’s how.

A History of Medical Tax Incentives

All this changed in 1986 when Ronald Reagan orchestrated bipartisan tax reform. Individual medical expenses were no longer deductible until they reached 7.5% of gross income. Voila, individual incentives were virtually eliminated. In 1985, individual out-of-pocket expenses were still 22% of the total health-care market. After tax reform everyone was incentivized to move all medical expenses to health insurance. Out of pocket expenditures plunged and today are less than 10% of the market.

Ronald Reagan knew that his tax reform was not perfect. Individual interest payments were no longer tax deductible, but the home mortgage interest deduction remained. Personal tax deductibility of medical expenses was curtailed, but employer health insurance was still a tax-free benefit.

President Reagan was relying on future Congresses to fix these problems after the economic benefits of his tax reforms were manifested. Sadly, this never happened.

While one can say that it is generally a good idea to take “social engineering” out of the tax code, the fact is that maybe some social engineering isn’t a bad idea. The individual deductibility of not only EVERY DIME of health care expenditure, but also of any and all health insurance premiums, is one simple fix that would immediately start alleviating medical cost inflation.

Reagan was wrong, and plummeting of out of pocket expenses is proof of this. We do not insure our cars for flat tire’s, oil changes, and tune-ups. We also have hefty deductibles for scratches and dents.

First dollar coverage for health expenses is horrible policy for nations, states, and individuals. It’s that simple. Let us ration our own care.

Is there anything ‘My Man Mitch’ doesn’t do right? Isn’t it uncanny that he does them first?

This article in the WSJ highlight another effort from the “Green Police” to enact carbon caps through the back door.

Carbon Caps Through the Backdoor

Copenhagen was a flop. Congress’s cap-and-trade bill is stalled. The EPA has delayed its climate rules. If you think this means American business is escaping the threat of carbon restraints, think again.

Most of the climate debate focuses on Washington. This misses a more clever and committed force—environmental groups that impose their agenda on companies via pressure, legal threat and sympathetic regulators. A textbook example has been quietly unfolding in the insurance sector. The question is whether governors will stand by to let green activists effectively regulate their businesses.

Since the beginning of the climate debate, environmental lobbies such as Ceres (a coalition of activists and investors that pressures companies to go green) have expressed particular interest in insurers. Rather than nitpick every company to adopt climate-change policies, these organizations realized it would be more efficient to target a gatekeeper. Everybody needs insurance. If insurers could be bludgeoned into requiring policyholders adopt carbon-mitigation practices as a requirement for insurance, the activists would have imposed their will widely and quickly.

…

Yet under the direction of members such as Wisconsin Insurance Commissioner Sean Dilweg and Pennsylvania Commissioner Joel Ario—both climate crusaders—the task force turned itself into a national climate regulator. In particular, in unveiled its “Climate Risk Disclosure Survey,” a document insurers must complete and make public. This survey was not put forward for legislative approval, but rather presented as something state commissioners must issue unilaterally.

…

When I called the industry association CEO Chuck Chamness to ask him about this fight, he expressed the general frustration: “We are a good, green industry. What we don’t believe is that our industry should be made into an environmental traffic cop. If there is a need to change business behavior, go directly to the industry in question and regulate it. Don’t use us as leverage.”

Some states have already caught on to this end run around governors and legislatures. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels was the first to object, directing his insurance department to refrain from administering the survey. Officials in Mississippi and Missouri have followed suit; Rhode Island says the survey won’t be mandatory.

Let’s hope this continues through November.

Is right here…

Remember to come back an browse while you listen.

If you listen to the entire podcast, you come to a point where both John McCarron and Mike Condrun (the other guests) challenge me by saying “Single Payer isn’t even on the table.”

Who are they kidding?

The New Tammany Hall

Private sector unions have a natural adversary in the owners of the companies with whom they negotiate. But public sector unions have no such natural counterweight. They are a classic case of “client politics,” where an interest group’s concentrated efforts to secure rewards impose diffused costs on the mass of unorganized taxpayers. Also unlike private sector unions, those in the public sector can achieve influence on both sides of the bargaining table by making campaign contributions and organizing get-out-the-vote drives to elect politicians who then control the negotiations over their pay, benefits, and work rules. The result is a nefarious cycle: Politicians agree to generous government worker contracts; those workers then pay higher union dues a portion of which are funneled back into those same politicians’ campaign war chests. It is a cycle that has driven California and New York to the edge of bankruptcy.

…

Consider what happened in Washington State. After helping Democrats win full control of the legislature in 2002, the state affiliate of the Association of Federal, State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and other unions persuaded lawmakers to lift the collective bargaining restrictions. Within three years the number of union members had doubled. With more state employees paying dues, the amount of union dollars flowing into the coffers of Democrats running in state elections also doubled. A prime beneficiary of such union generosity was Christine Gregoire, who became governor in 2004 after one of the closest elections in the state’s history. (AFSCME gave $250,000 to the state Democratic party to help pay for the recount that handed her the election by 129 votes). Once in office, Gregoire negotiated contracts with the unions that resulted in double-digit salary increases, some exceeding 25 percent, for thousands of state employees. In 2007, J. Vander Stoep, an adviser to Republican Dino Rossi, Gregoire’s 2004 opponent, prophetically remarked that the unions’ arrangement with the Democrats was “a perfect machine to generate millions of dollars for her reelection. .  .  . They are building something that conceivably can never be undone–at taxpayer expense.” In their 2008 rematch, Rossi lost again to Gregoire, this time by 194,614 votes.

If you think about it, everything the left accuses the Republican/corporate axis of doing, is exactly what they do with trial lawyers and public employee unions. Everything about the cycle described in bold is corrupt to the core.

If the right does the same with corporations, they certainly aren’t doing a very good job of it.