The Great Water Heist
By Jim Jordan
In this well-intended document, protecting clean water is and should be a big priority. The Constitution of Pennsylvania specifies that people have a right to clean water. No one of sound mind can argue against protecting water, as it should be a priority of every citizen, and this process must be carried out within all other laws of Pennsylvania.
The USDA Forest Service defines a riparian buffer as:
Streams, rivers, lakes, and bays and their adjacent side channels, floodplain, and wetlands. In specific cases, the riparian buffer may also include a portion of the hillslope that directly serves as streamside habitats for wildlife.
To a homeowner with a stream running through his property, ordinances on riparian buffers may present a costly situation from something as simple as mowing weeds. Cutting weeds on a bank could reduce a stream’s filtration characteristics and allow poisons to leach into the waterways. This means that those weeds will need to be replaced, of course under township supervision and with an engineer’s report, thus assuming there are no fines, mowing the wrong weeds could result in hundreds or even thousands of dollars to the homeowner.
This is not a hypothetical situation – if you live in Chester County, your municipality has enacted legislation “protecting” riparian buffers on private property. Every municipality must create a comprehensive plan to outline growth controls as mandated by Chester County via a document called Landscapes. This utopian guide sets priorities which municipalities are instructed to enact through their Planning Commissions. Specifics included in Landscapes are items such as “creating affordable housing” and strict regulations around riparian buffers.
Having created a Riparian Buffer ordinance for my municipality I have uncovered many of the legalities of water legislation at the local, state and federal levels. In the quest to “do something”, mandates coming from the county level are little more than feel-good ordinances that put unreasonable restrictions on landowners. Riparian ordinances often end up creating ever larger buffers, so large that a homeowner’s property becomes untouchable, and at the same time not addressing the primary sources of water pollution: agriculture, industry, and waste treatment.
Despite their failings, Planning Commissions are typically representative of and reactive to the will of the people, and if not they are easily replaced. Unfortunately, there is now Federal legislation, introduced on April 2, 2009 by U.S. Senator Russ Feingold allegedly intended to restore protections for waterways throughout the country. Feingold’s Clean Water Restoration Act (CWRA) would ensure protections for rivers, streams and wetlands, which were long protected under the Clean Water Act (CWA), but are now in jeopardy of losing protections as a result of two recent Supreme Court cases.
Specifically, legislation S. 787, fundamentally changes the definition of “water” under control of the federal government:
The term ‘waters of the United States’ means all waters subject to the ebb and flow of the tide, the territorial seas, and all interstate and intrastate waters and their tributaries, including lakes, rivers, streams (including intermittent streams), mudflats, sandflats, wetlands, sloughs, prairie potholes, wet meadows, playa lakes, natural ponds, and all impoundments of the foregoing, to the fullest extent that these waters, or activities affecting these waters, are subject to the legislative power of Congress under the Constitution.
No longer is there a requirement for the waters to be navigable, and includes a vast component of “activities affecting these waters”. This essentially grants vast new control of land, via all waterways and riparian buffers, to the Federal government. Ominously, the entire text of S787 has no mention whatsoever of “just compensation”, meaning that the Federal government will be able to dismantle use of land without the consequence of paying for it. This is perhaps the greatest heist ever conceived by government, turning over perhaps our most precious asset to the special interests controlling Washington DC.
We are already burdened by state and local ordinances, often passed with little or no awareness by those affected. The proposed CWRA adds a Federal component to this already tricky area. It is a matter of our inherent right through the Pennsylvania Constitution, yet that document is constrained by the other rights it specifies and laws it establishes. As we continually and typically see from our Federal government, they are not so constrained. We ignore this legislation at our own peril.
Where Does The U.S. Rank In Heath Care?
Higher than you might think, and higher than the oft-quoted WHO study portrays. The following links are essential reading to understand why Canadian and French healthcare systems are touted as heroic yet the wealthiest from all around the world seek out America for their treatment.
In brief:
Those who cite the WHO rankings typically present them as an objective measure of the relative performance of national health care systems. They are not. The WHO rankings depend crucially on a number of underlying assumptions— some of them logically incoherent, some characterized by substantial uncertainty, and some rooted in ideological beliefs and values that not everyone shares.
The analysts behind the WHO rankings express the hope that their framework “will lay the basis for a shift from ideological discourse on health policy to a more empirical one.” Yet the WHO rankings themselves have a strong ideological component. They include factors that are arguably unrelated to actual health performance, some of which could even improve in response to worse health performance. Even setting those concerns aside, the rankings are still highly sensitive to both measurement error and assumptions about the relative importance of the components. And finally, the WHO rankings reflect implicit value judgments and lifestyle preferences that differ among individuals and across countries.
Original Cato policy paper on the WHO World Health Report 2000:
The Health Care Solution We Need to be Talking About
By Rep. Curt Schroder
I have recently attended two health care forums, both dominated by concerns over “ObamaCare” and the damage to our healthcare system should the government ever take control. When the discussion turned to what is really needed to improve our health care and reign in costs that increase premiums, there was a common theme at both events: the need to reform medical malpractice.
Medical malpractice law suits have had a devastating impact on the practice of medicine in Pennsylvania. Thanks to jury verdicts, expensive settlements to avoid trials, and increasing premiums for malpractice insurance, high risk specialists are in short supply across the state. Medical students educated in Pennsylvania schools leave to practice in other states with more reasonable liability systems. Obstetric units at hospitals have closed all across our region, and trauma care has suffered.
The expensive malpractice premiums paid by our doctors add to their overhead and the cost of their services. The fear of being sued causes doctors to practice “defensive medicine”, ordering more tests and procedures than might be necessary out of fear of being second-guessed by a trial lawyer should something go wrong. This drives up the utilization of medical services and virtually everyone is in agreement that such utilization is a major cost driver in our health care system.
Earlier in this decade, we in Pennsylvania had the opportunity to address and resolve this issue. Instead, legislative leaders literally snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. The high water mark of medical malpractice reform came with House passage of my amendment which was a complete package of medical malpractice solutions. My amendment allowed for a system to limit, or cap, so called non-economic damages (”pain and suffering”), reformed “joint and several” liability to prevent those with deep pockets but no liability from being sued, kept our county doctors out of the lottery-like Philadelphia court system as well as providing reforms to the way in which malpractice awards were paid out. It had all of the necessary ingredients to solve the problem once and for all.
What happened? The bill went to the Senate where it was eviscerated. When it came back to the House it was so watered down that it was no longer recognizable as the bold effort contained in the amendment. The only meaningful provision to survive was the limitation on “venue” to keep suburban doctors out of the Philadelphia court system.
Later we made a second attempt at capping malpractice damages. This took the form of a constitutional amendment. When it became obvious that House leadership was going to allow this effort to die, I took the extraordinary step of filing and bringing a discharge petition to the floor. This was a direct challenge to my own House Republican Leadership as I was bound and determined to bring caps on damages to a vote. I did get the discharge resolution to the floor but we fell about 7 votes short of the numbers needed to pass it.
The current debate on health care makes it clear to me that we need to revive this effort to bring limits and common sense to our malpractice system and litigation in general. Yet it seems no one in Washington is championing this reform that would help lower healthcare costs. It is time the President and Congress drop their single-payer, public option, government controlled, nationalized healthcare fantasies and take the steps necessary to reform our current system while maintaining the best aspects of our health care.
Medical malpractice reform is a good place to start. Providing competition among insurers by allowing the purchasing of insurance across state lines would also help. Greater transparency in pricing for services would allow the consumer to make informed health care decisions. Expanding the use of consumer driven healthcare through Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) will allow individuals to make cost/benefit decisions for their own healthcare as opposed to rationing by federal bureaucrats.
There are plenty of good ideas to reform our healthcare and promote affordability and access for everyone without government control. Once we defeat “ObamaCare” perhaps these good ideas will be taken seriously.
Curt Schroder is in his eighth term representing the 155th District of Pennsylvania. He is currently running for US Congress in the 6th District of Pennsylvania. More information can be found at www.vote4curt.com
Remembering September 11, 2001
By JOTUS
Reprinted from http://janeoftheunitedstates.blogspot.com/
September 3, 2009
Every year around this time I survey my eleventh grade students to see what they remember about September 11, 2001. Naturally, every year students remember less because every year they are younger and further removed from the terrible events of that day. This editorial is for them and for the generations after them, so that they never forget.
I remember September 11. There were big puffy clouds in the Pennsylvania skies that day and temperatures were in the high 70s. New Yorkers enjoyed the same pleasant skies, as did residents of Washington, DC that day. The day started routinely enough with FoxNews on the TV as I readied myself for another habitual eight period journey of shaping young minds in my high school English classroom.
I remember the urgency in my principal’s voice as he came over the PA system during second period with the shocking news that terror had come to our shores in the form of commercial jetliners hijacked by people we would later determine to be radical Islamists seeking the death and destruction of innocent and unassuming Americans in New York City, and Washington, DC and fatefully, western Pennsylvania. My country was under attack.
I remember the tears on the faces of my fellow teachers and the chaos and confusion even among the network anchors on TV as they scrambled to piece together the magnitude of this terroristic sucker punch to our nation’s financial and legislative capitols respectively. I remember watching on TV with utter dismay and disbelief that our borders had been so unsuspectingly breached – violated by an enemy we had ignored or dismissed until that fateful morning when 2,993 Americans never returned home to their families. What did they do to provoke such wrath, such fury?
I remember images of desperate people dangling from the sky-scraping windows of the World Trade Center, ironically escaping the Towers’ collapse by desperately jumping to their certain deaths below as panicked New Yorkers in the streets ran for their very lives to escape the devastation and bedlam of a city under siege. I remember President George W. Bush bowing his head in humble prayer to ask for the Almighty’s intercessory power in the face of such terror, and I remember fervently joining him in desperate petition.
I remember the dust cloud that blurred the New York City skyline for weeks after 9/11, and the gaping hole in lower Manhattan where the Towers once loomed as the hub of our economic stasis, proud beacons of our capitalistic mores and financial stability engendered only from the convergence of toil and opportunity that is uniquely American. I remember pointedly watching Howard Lutnick, CEO of Cantor-Fitzgerald, weep uncontrollably as he explained to a journalist that simply because he took his daughter to her first day of kindergarten, he was the sole survivor of his 658 person company occupying five of the top floors of One World Trade Center.
I remember that as my shock and sadness subsided along with the powdery grime in lower Manhattan, my anger raged like a furious inferno. Jihad had rattled my patriotic cage. I wanted retribution, justice for the unforeseen kick in our homeland’s groin.
Eight years have quieted my rage somewhat, but time won’t ever erase the scars of America’s wounds. And as our nation marks another 9/11 anniversary eight years later, I still remember so that generations to come won’t ever forget.
Healthcare Reform: It’s the Fine Print That Will Kill You
By Greta Scriboni
Under Obama’s proposed health care plan, the government, not the individual or the insurance industry, will take over the role of defining our health care benefits. House Bill 3200, Section 123 defines a Health Care Advisory Committee of 27 persons, 18 directly appointed and 9 indirectly appointed by Obama. This committee will define the structure of our benefit plans, and believe it or not, only one of these 27 individuals needs to be a physician or health care professional! Our healthcare benefit plans will be defined by special interests, hand-picked by a President who is on record declaring his desire to develop a single-payor system within a ten or twenty year period. We have already seen the beginnings of a movement toward social engineering via proposed “sin-taxes” on sugary drinks, tobacco, and alcohol. What’s next? A tax on sleeping fewer than 8 hours a night, not riding your bike 5 miles a day, or eating pizza on Friday?
The Obama administration believes every individual is entitled to health care, and as of this writing approximately, 43% of Americans believe it is time to act on healthcare.* But is health care a basic human right, or is it a privilege and personal responsibility? And if it is a “right,” how much health care comes with this entitlement? Does the right to health care include all care possible to cure a condition, or only the care that is needed for pain relief? If you spend your life overeating, not exercising, and smoking, are you afforded the same care as a person who has eaten in moderation, exercised daily, and practiced healthy habits? Oh, what a tangled web we weave when we give up our individual liberties and responsibilities for the siren’s song of “health care for all.”
Are the American people really ready to take the lazy road to government-controlled health care versus maintaining personal responsibility to work, manage, and pay for our lifestyles, including financially managing the cost of our own health care decisions? We are not so unfeeling as to say that children, the disabled, and the elderly should not be cared for. But this can and should be accomplished without abandoning the free-market system.
Americans who are willing to be shepherded by big government are sure to be outraged when the seemingly caring shepherd throws off its cloak and bears the wolf’s teeth of higher taxes, increased wait times, and rationing to accommodate 45 million new patients. For those who say it is worth it to provide health care for all, I say, please step to the back of the health care line. And oh, on the way, I look forward to seeing you at the 6:15 A.M. aerobics class every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
*Rasmussen poll
Of Mice, Men, and Universal Health Insurance
“The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men / Gang aft agley” -Robert Burns
On my son’s summer reading list this year was John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, a tragic novella set during the Great Depression. It is a story of George Milton and Lennie Small, migrant ranch workers dreaming of owning their own property and living ‘off the fatta the lan.’ Their dreams are ultimately doomed when the mentally disabled Lennie unwittingly kills the boss’ daughter-in-law.
Of Mice and Men pulls its name from the Burns poem, describing how no plan is fool-proof. Lennie Small was described as a man of immense strength, but with the mental capabilities of a child. Lennie was a likable character, with all the innocence and kindness of a child – despite the forgetfulness and lack of understanding that go with it. George Milton was a smart man, caring for and protecting Lennie in hopes that they would both ultimately leave their troubles and live in paradise. George, too, was a likable character, and realized in the end that he should have foreseen the tragic ending to their tale. It struck me as an important lesson for us all in the dangers of being naïve when one should not be.
I was reminded of our current debate over universal health insurance. The proposition that all Americans should have health insurance is as likable as Lennie Small; it is innocent and kind to wish the very best coverage for all Americans all the time. But it is ultimately naïve to think that a single-payer, government-controlled health insurance plan is better than even our current health care system. A taxpayer-funded mandate that we all pay for everyone else’s health care means that we all have a stake in everyone else’s health – making everything from your eating habits to your exercise plans part of the government’s domain.
As even proponents of the ‘government option’ admit, items such as the exemption threshold for private insurance options may be arbitrarily reduced or removed. This means that your access to private plans can be effectively eliminated at the whim of the government, so ultimately it could be government bureaucrats making decisions on your health – and your life. Expecting that such a thing will not happen is as foolish as the characters in Of Mice and Men not foreseeing what should have been obvious.
Demanding your neighbor pay for your health insurance hints at an even bigger underlying problem; namely, that people expect their government to provide things which could and should be earned themselves. Our founding fathers did not write for ‘life, liberty, and single-payer health insurance,’ nor did they risk their lives and fortunes to expect their neighbors to pay for it. To the contrary, they fought for their right to self-determination and independence, which in the face of recent political events seems revolutionary 200 years after the fact.
It is time for us all to grow up, and to realize that the naïve belief that government can benevolently bring everything to everyone will ultimately destroy our liberty and self-determination. Nowhere could this be more obvious than in the current health insurance bill, and our need to stop it could not be more urgent. George ended his tale and his dreams with a bullet to the back of Lenny’s head. We need to keep fighting so that our ending is not so tragic.
All Insurance Should Be An Individual Decision
By Jim Jordan
Conditioning people to a specific mindset is a major accomplishment of any movement in this country. Those who advocate that health care is something that should be provided by someone else, not purchased by the consumer, seem to have had success in pushing their views. As an employer, to remain competitive in the marketplace, I must offer a health care package to my employees. This, like all things, comes at a price, but we continue even with such costs of doing business.
Lately, I’ve been hearing that affordable health care for everyone in America is a right. One woman at a town hall meeting said it was a “right under the UN” – the United Nations. One has to wonder where she would get such an idea. I cannot understand why, in the greatest capitalist country in the world, these people do not apply free market principles to health insurance.
Why is it that people have such grand expectations from health insurance when other types of insurance policies aren’t designed to cover everything, every time? When you need an oil change in your car, do you call your auto insurance company? When you get a flat tire, do you call your auto insurance company? Some companies like AAA offer such a service, but it is usually purchased outside of your main insurer. When your timing belt breaks on your car, do you call your insurance company? Again, there are companies out there that offer aftermarket mechanical warranties, but these are not features of auto insurance policies. Should insurance cost the same for a Ferrari and a Prius? This would be laughable.
People choose different homeowners policies, based on their own needs and comfort levels. Most people in Pennsylvania don’t have earthquake insurance, because we don’t have earthquakes. Be certain, though, that if an earthquake hit our area, many people would expect someone else to pick up the tab to rebuild their home because they did not get adequate coverage. I choose to have earthquake insurance but offset it with a high deductible, which is the market’s way of assuring affordability of coverage.
We must also take into account that people have different standards of living. Some live lifestyles that afford them great health throughout their lives. Others don’t place that much emphasis on healthy living – which, for the time being, is a right as an American. Health insurance policies and premiums should reflect these choices just like your home or auto policies.
Turning our health care into a single-payer system, hence making costs “equal” for everyone, is a fantasy that defies basic principles of economics, and it will end in failure. If you disagree, just try asking your insurance agent to cover your next oil change or flat tire, and get back to me.
