September 2012

There is a certain points in which government regulation is bad, and this is one of those:

The U.S. has fallen behind much of the Western world when it comes to phone, cable and Internet service. Americans actually pay much more for inferior service compared to their global counterparts.

In his new book, The Fine Print: How Big Companies Use 'Plain English' to Rob You Blind, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter David Cay Johnston highlights these astounding facts:

• Americans pay four times as much as the French for an Internet triple-play package—phone, cable TV and Internet—at an average of $160 per month versus $38 per month.
• The French get global free calling and worldwide live television. Their Internet is also 10 times faster at downloading information and 20 times faster uploading it.
• America has gone from #1 in Internet speed (when we invented it) to 29th in the world and falling.
• Bulgaria is among the countries with faster Internet service.
• Americans pay 38 times as much as the Japanese for Internet data.

Since the mid-1970's when Ma Bell was cited as holding a monopoly over phone service, Americans have been told more competition would lower their phone bill. But the promise of lower prices has actually led to higher prices, says Johnston.

Johnston goes on to lay out the very reasons why we are so bad off:

The telecos got the rules changed while we weren't watching," says Johnston in the accompanying interview. Basically, the phone and cable companies lobbied Washington to change laws and regulations to favor their business over their customers.

And remember the so-called "Information Superhighway"?

Have you been to the emergency room lately? Waits are long. Why? Because they have become the doctor's office for the uninsured. Well Mitt Romney thinks that is actually a good idea:

Downplaying the need for the government to ensure that every person has health insurance, Mitt Romney on Sunday suggested that emergency room care suffices as a substitute for the uninsured.

"Well, we do provide care for people who don't have insurance," he said in an interview with Scott Pelley of CBS's "60 Minutes" that aired Sunday night. "If someone has a heart attack, they don't sit in their apartment and die. We pick them up in an ambulance, and take them to the hospital, and give them care. And different states have different ways of providing for that care."

The problem with this approach is the lack of preventive care. People can't go for regular check-ups, so things like blood pressure and cholesterol get out of control. When they finally reach the boiling point, people go to the ER with a full blown heart attack, and now what would have been a cheap visit turns into a very expensive one.

Now this brings us to the second problem - costs. One of the biggest contributors to rising healthcare costs is the uninsured. Hospitals are businesses. Businesses exist to make money. When uninsured people come into the ER and can't pay, the hospital is left with costs. Remember, they still have to pay doctors, technicians, laboratories, specialists, etc. Do the hospitals just eat these costs? No, they absorb them into their overall operational costs, which means higher bills for the insured. Sure you might not really see this, but the insurance companies do and now they need to recoup those costs by increasing your premiums.

It's really bad for Mitt Romney when even John Boehner won't defend him:

Even as he joked "I just hope I survive," House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) declined to defend Mitt Romney's now-infamous 47 percent remarks Thursday, and insisted the Republican ticket can still win.

Boehner wouldn't be joking like that if a little part of him isn't saying that they may lose the House this fall.

Here's something Republicans need to seriously consider. Romney has had one of the most gaffed filled campaigns in modern history. How will his presidency be? If it's the same thing, then come 2016, the Republicans may end up being a long-time minority. In other words, Mitt Romney risks hurting the GOP for years to come.

Are you Republicans ready to take that gamble? Think about that when you go in to vote this year.

Glenn Reynolds, aka Instapundit, has seriously lost it:

WHY BARACK OBAMA SHOULD RESIGN. Just for the record, this is what it looked like for a man who made a film that made the Obama Administration uncomfortable:

Here’s the key bit: “Just after midnight Saturday morning, authorities descended on the Cerritos home of the man believed to be the filmmaker behind the anti-Muslim movie that has sparked protests and rioting in the Muslim world.”

Glenn Reynolds is a "law professor". You would think that a "law professor" would realize certain things, like you don't omit facts! For example, they were taking the filmmaker in to question him if rather he violated the terms of his probation. Reynolds makes no mention of that. He totally omits the actual reason/motive for this questioning. Talk about irresponsible. If I were Reynold's boss, I would seriously question rather he has the ability to teach the law faithfully.

And it doesn't stop there. Reynolds adds in this part "from a reader":

MORE STILL: Reader Jack Moss writes: “Probation is not a law enforcement function, it’s under the court. If his probation officer wanted to question him about the use of a computer, that broke his probation fine. But that wouldn’t include questions about making an anti-Islamic movie. It’s irrelevant. That means that the FBI showed up outside their jurisdiction for a reason given by their superiors. The question then is who ordered them there.”