Three Hundred Forty-One Votes!

Editor's note: Lance Burri is freakishly busy preparing for the Republican National Convention, for a family event over the weekend in Racine, and for his lovely wife's birthday (Happy birthday Mari Jo!).

Thus, today we publish from the Best of Lance Burri Collection. Regular posting will continue at Badger Blog Alliance, and at FoxPolitics.net, and will return here next week.

The following column first ran on October 26, 2007.

November 2, 2006. Election Day. All across Wisconsin, voters swarmed to the polls.

Most of them voted for Democrats. It’s well-established: 2006 was a banner year for the Democratic Party, and a disaster for Republicans. That was true nationally. It was true here in Wisconsin.

True, but not total. Once all the smoke had cleared, the dead and wounded carried from the field, prisoners exchanged and terms presented, Republicans still held the field – just barely – in one place. The State Assembly.

Not by much. The Republicans’ eleven-seat majority was reduced to five: 60-39 before the election, 52-47 after.

And what kept Republicans in that slim majority?

Three hundred and forty-one voters. Seventy-eight of them in Cambria. A hundred and eleven in Medford. And in Westby, a hundred fifty-two.

Voters, in places most of us never heard of. Standing shoulder to shoulder, blocking the pass, staring down the maddened hordes of tax-crazed liberals and declaring with defiance: you ain’t coming though here.

Not on my watch.

These are the people who kept the tide from washing Wisconsin into liberal purgatory. Who stalled the takeover, bought us time – two years’ worth – to reorganize, rally, prepare.

Three hundred forty-one! Marching to the polls, finding the name of their Republican candidate, and voting. If they’d made a different decision, joined the other side instead, pulled the other lever, marked the other box, followed the arrow wrong…

…then three more Republicans - Gene Hahn, Mary Williams, and Lee Nerison - would have lost last November. Gone home. Private citizens. Instead of a bare majority in one-third of state government, Republicans would be the minority party everywhere. Democrats would control all. The Senate. The Governor. The Assembly.

All of it.

And the Wisconsin state budget wouldn’t have been signed this morning. It would have been signed back in June.

And it would have looked…different.

The cigarette tax would have been higher than a buck. That’s for sure. The oil tax: $280 million in higher gas prices, plus an expensive and embarrassing lawsuit when Doyle tried to “prevent” the oil companies from “passing the cost on to consumers.”

The hospital tax: $420 million in higher health care costs. The real estate transfer tax: $142 million added to housing costs. Higher taxes on corporations. On garbage. On the internet. On filing taxes.

No limits on property taxes. Repeal of the Qualified Economic Offer, which gives school districts leverage while negotiating teacher contracts. An overhaul, if not outright repeal, of school spending limits.

The point being, with Democrats in full control of the government, there’s no telling how high our taxes would go.

And I haven’t even mentioned the in-state tuition for illegal aliens; collective bargaining for UW employees; mental health insurance mandates (just to start); doubling, tripling, quadrupling of Stewardship Fund land purchases with no legislative oversight, and no public right to use that land.

Nor have I mentioned the Dems’ so-called “Healthy Wisconsin,” which shrewdly combines the biggest tax increase in U.S. history – $15 billion, if we can believe the estimates – with socialistic government control of prices and profits.

Liberals thought the Taxpayer Bill of Rights was going to turn Wisconsin into an economic backwater. Huh. You want to see an economic backwater?

Well, you can’t, thanks to those 341 voters.

Amazing, isn’t it? Nearly 2.2 million people cast votes in that election. Three hundred forty-one of them prevented all that.

On the other hand, the just-signed budget keeps spending at a lower rate than personal income growth, and includes tax cuts on retirement income, for health insurance premiums, and for college tuition. Plus tax incentives for people looking to invest money here in Wisconsin.

Yeah, I know, there was pork, and there were fee increases, and I’m sure other things will come to light over the next few weeks that we won’t like. Democrats did get some things they wanted. We didn’t get as much as we wanted.

We took some casualties, and that’s a fact. We gave some ground. Life isn’t as good for us as it would’ve been, had 2006 been a victory.

But boy, it could’ve been worse. It would have been worse, if not for that slim Republican majority in one-third of Wisconsin’s government. If not for those three hundred and forty-one.

We should keep that in mind, because there’ll be another call.

And we’ll need them to answer again.

It's All About the Gravitas

I’ve got presidential politics on the brain these days, so naturally my column at FoxPolitics is about why Obama picked Joe Biden. I say he’s just following a winning formula:

It may not quite be gravitas. It doesn’t feel like gravitas – although, admittedly, I’m biased. But picking the older, vastly more experienced guy was a winner twice for George Bush and the GOP. Can you blame Barack Obama for following suit?

Read the whole thing.

In the Face of Uncertainty, Obama Chooses...

Something was bothering me about the Saddleback Presidential Candidates Forum. You know: the one-at-a-time forum in California last Saturday in which John McCain did so much better than Barack Obama that Democrats and lefties are sure McCain must have cheated?

(Side note: if that’s not a forecast of what'll happen if McCain wins in November, I don’t know what is.)

Something was bugging me, and I finally figured out what. One question Obama answered…or, well, didn't answer.

Here’s the passage (emphasis added):

WARREN: Now, let's deal with abortion; 40 million abortions since Roe v. Wade. As a pastor, I have to deal with this all of the time, all of the pain and all of the conflicts. I know this is a very complex issue. Forty million abortions, at what point does a baby get human rights, in your view?

OBAMA: Well, you know, I think that whether you're looking at it from a theological perspective or a scientific perspective, answering that question with specificity, you know, is above my pay grade.

Conservative commenters picked up on that in droves: above his pay grade. That’s a dodge, right there. An evasion. A cop-out. He just doesn’t want to answer the question, because he knows his honest opinion – if he dared express it – would make most of America slap hands to cheeks in Home Alone shock.

Still, I think the conservative reaction was a little overwrought. It smacked of petty nitpicking, and the sheer number of conservatives making the same complaint felt like groupspeak.

Maybe it was warranted. Like I said, Obama’s record on abortion is so radical that he has no choice but to hide it. He wasn’t going to answer that question, because he doesn’t believe that unborn babies – or even very recently born babies – have human rights. Either that, or he’s just hunky-dory with violating those human rights.

On the other hand – ignoring that prevailing context for a moment – what’s wrong with his answer?

Doesn’t it convey a certain humility in the face of the mysteries of life? I think it does. I think it conveys acknowledgement of human limitation. Of the limits to human knowledge and understanding. I think it speaks to there being something bigger than us. Something – someone – infinitely more qualified to answer.

We tell ourselves that we want candidates unafraid to tell us when they don’t have the answer. Well, Obama’s saying – again, ignoring the context – that he doesn’t know the answer. That he’s not qualified to know the answer.

And I think that’s a fine answer to a difficult question.

But. If that's what it was, it speaks even worse of Obama than if it was simply a dodge.

See, if you’ve considered abortion, and the human rights of babies, and when human life might actually begin; and if you’ve decided, y’know, I just don’t know; how, then, can you choose a position on the issue?

When do babies get human rights? I dunno. Can't really tell. I'm just not sure.

Can you go along with late-term abortions, then? Well, no, because late-term, you actually can tell. Those babies are actually moving around, responding to sounds, able to survive outside the womb.

Mid-term abortions? That might be a little more gray. Early term? First trimester? The first six weeks of pregnancy?

That early, there’s precious little indication that a pregnancy even exists, and zero ways to interact with the baby. We simply can’t know. Not objectively.

Of course, we can’t objectively say that the baby isn’t alive, either, or that the baby doesn’t deserve human rights.

So you’ve got a choice: treat unborn babies like human beings, even though you’re not sure they are; or treat them like disposable diapers, even though they might be human beings.

Try to give CPR to the guy who just collapsed in front of you, even though you aren't at all sure you can save him, or if he's even still alive. Or figure: nah. He's gone already, and besides: eww.

Err on the side of keeping a baby alive, or err on the side of…well, of shrugging your shoulders and ignoring whether you’re allowing the death of an innocent.

If you’re going to be wrong, which way would you prefer? Obama, it appears, has chosen the latter.

Social Security in the Liberal Mind

There's a little game I like to play: take a liberal position, assume that it's based on fact, and logic, and reasoned consideration, and then try to understand it.

Try to see their side.

I rarely play this game. The mental gymnastics required are…well, let's just call them extensive. Exhausting. They leave me feeling like I pulled a muscle in my brain. Like I got a job as a circus contortionist, except I haven't so much as touched my own toes in the last twenty years.

It's like that.

My most recent foray into the liberal thought process was prompted by this Democratic Party of Wisconsin press release, demanding that Social Security not be changed one whit.

On Social Security’s Birthday, John McCain’s Plan Would Leave 169,000 State Seniors at Risk of Poverty

Bush-McCain Privatization Plan Could Cut Guaranteed Benefits by $181K per Senior in Wisconsin

I'm using hyperbole, of course: they don't actually demand that Social Security not be changed. But: they're adamant that it's not in trouble, that there's no problem, that everything will stay all hunky-dory just as long as we can whistle a happy tune.

Oh, there I go using hyperbole again.

Well, they're using it, too. Those numbers they use, the "conclusions" they reach, are based on a great deal of conjecture and hypothesizing. They're making assumptions and using point-in-time snapshots that are great for supporting their argument, but hardly tell the whole story.

The whole story has to include: we have just over three workers per retiree today, and that ratio is going to get worse. Retirees: look at your Social Security check, and realize that in less than ten years, it'll come from the pockets of only two people.

The whole story has to include: no money is being set aside for future Social Security payments.

The whole story has to include: Social Security offers at best a really rotten return on your money; the Feds can change the terms at any time; and any money paid in becomes the property of the U.S. government – not of those who paid it.

Do today's retirees and near-retirees realize any of that? Not if they're only listening to Democrats. The government can take it all away.

Wouldn’t it be better if they couldn't? That's what reformers are trying to do. What Democrats are trying to stop.

They question is: why?

Could be they're just working the politics. Social Security is, it's been said, the "third rail of politics." Touch it and die. Plus, senior citizens vote. Thus, scare the senior citizens with shadowy hyperbole. That explains the numbers in the Democrat press release.

Could be, but let's assume not. Let's assume it's more than just politics. Here, in a nutshell, is how I think the liberal position adds up.

Wall Street and the people who make their living there are profit-grubbers: thus, they can't be trusted. Also, investment in the stock market is really risky.

Oh, no, wait: that's a contradiction. If investment really was so risky, there wouldn't be so many profit-grubbers making a living on Wall Street. There sure wouldn't be as many different investment options for the rank-and-file of American society.

But never mind. That's off topic.

Where were we? Right. See, conservatives don't trust government, but they don't see that government will always be here. Always. Republicans would let some seniors find themselves without retirement savings, after Wall Street ate their lifetime investments up. And then what?

Government. It's stable, and forever, and here. When you can't trust industry, when you can't trust yourselves, at least you've got government to fall back on.

You can count on government.

So. How'd I do? Think that captured it?

Maybe. But maybe not. Even as I was writing it, I had to censor the rebuttals that kept popping into my head.

Thing is, no matter how you slice it, Social Security is a waste of our money. Yours and mine, old and young, retired or not.

There are ways to invest safely, and get a better return. To have more socked away for retirement. To leave the money as property of those who invested it – not as property of the government, to be doled out as government sees fit.

That's better.

But liberals and Democrats can't see that. They prefer the heavy hand of government to keep them safe…even from themselves.

Government Health Care: Not the Holy Grail

New column up over at FoxPolitics.net. Here's a blurb:

The government health plan refused to cover her treatments. They ran the numbers: the cost, the potential benefit, the woman’s life. They decided it wasn’t worth paying for, and instead offered to pay for doctor-assisted suicide.

That’s the juicy, tabloid-y part of the story: that a government bureaucracy would help a patient kill herself, rather than help pay for her medication.

Just for a moment, let’s pretend: what if this were a private, for-profit insurance company instead of a government bureaucracy?

Care to imagine what the reaction to that story would be?

Indeed I do. Read the whole thing.

Free Market Won't "Fix" Health Care

Editor's note: Lance Burri has been abducted by his wife and children, who are holding him in an unknown location and demanding a "vacation" in return for his release. Until such time as Lance has made good on their demands, we will continue to publish from the Best of Lance Burri Collection.

The following column first ran on September 4, 2007.

In this corner: socialized medicine. Put the government in control, so nobody goes without.

And in this corner: the free market. Just get government out, and everything will be fine!

Defenders of the Democrats’ “Healthy Wisconsin” socialized health care “plan” like to tell us that both those statements apply: their health-care-for-all plan is free-market, and isn’t government control.

It limits health care provider profits by law to – at best – 8%, and gives control over prices to a government-appointed board. But it’s free market, and isn’t government control.

Right.

Others like to blast the free market itself because the free market hasn’t provided everyone with low-cost high-quality health care. For example, from the Racine Journal Times:

The mujahideen of free market capitalism have nothing to show for their continued insistence that the markets will fix everything.

Let’s be clear: if any defenders of free-market capitalism are saying “markets will fix everything,” they should sit down and shut up. They do not understand the free market.

The free market does not “fix” anything. It won’t “fix” health care, because as far as it’s concerned, there’s nothing to “fix.” People will either pay a certain price for health insurance, or they won’t. People will either provide the product of health insurance at a certain price, or they won’t.

Those statements don’t become any less true, just because the government starts sticking its fingers into things.

Socialism isn’t the opposite of the free market. Even in a socialist economy, the free market exists and continues to operate. Since everything is devalued under socialism, the free market responds by providing less of everything.

It’s like an ecosystem: you can introduce a new species, maybe something slow and stupid and good to eat, which will change the ecosystem – maybe for the better, maybe for the worse. But the ecosystem remains, and continues to work along the same principles – just with different inputs, and therefore different outputs.

Likewise, the free market responds to our monkeying. When we artificially toy with economic inputs, we get different outputs, but they’re still working according to the same economic laws.

That’s laws, not theories. As in: the Laws of Supply and Demand.

It’s true, health care is frighteningly expensive. Normally, when there’s demand for a product, producers will try to find a way to meet and even increase that demand. That’s why laser eye surgery costs less today than 10 years ago.

But. Laser eye surgery is optional – we choose whether or not to buy it. When you need a heart bypass, or chemotherapy, or a jagged-ended two-by-four removed from your abdomen, that’s not optional, and it’s not something a doctor can market to a wide consumer base.

And it requires a lot of highly trained specialization, and a lot of people, and equipment, and resources. It will always be expensive. No way around that.

Health care is an enormous cost. Contemplating life without protection against that cost is scary. Thus our desire to Do Something, to relieve that fear. To make sure people can access health care without wiping themselves out, financially.

That’s what the debate is really about: not providing health care, because even without insurance, one can access care. It’s about providing insurance – protection against cost.

And the free market won’t do that. It won’t “fix” that, any more than an ecosystem will provide more food, just because you need it.

Yet, the free market, left to itself, is preferable to the tinkering and kibitzing offered by pro-Socialists.

“Healthy Wisconsin” will provide insurance to everyone, that’s true. If that’s your goal, you’ll have reached it.

But while everyone will have protection against the cost of health care, everyone will also have a lot more trouble accessing that care.

Like I mentioned earlier, this “plan” artificially limits both prices and profits. We’ve seen this sort of thing before. It’s one of the reasons Medicaid patients can’t find a dentist who will treat them.

It’s like that new species we introduced into the ecosystem, thinking they’ll become a new supply of food. Over time, the new species does damage – eats too much, over-breeds, pushes other species out – which results in less available food. Not more.

“Healthy Wisconsin” will provide insurance coverage, but by artificially limiting both price and profit. Ergo, we’ll all do with less. And the kicker is: we won’t be paying less for it.

Leaving the Communist Paradise

Editor's note: Lance Burri has been abducted by his wife and children, who are holding him in an unknown location and demanding a "vacation" in return for his release. Until such time as Lance has made good on their demands, we will continue to publish from the Best of Lance Burri Collection.

The following column first ran on October 5, 2007.

I am a communist.

No use denying it. It’s the simple truth.

Oh, well, yes, I’m a capitalist at heart. I go shopping the day after Thanksgiving, every single year, just so I can smell the rampant consumerism all around me.

But there’s still no way around the fact that I live – voluntarily, happily, even enthusiastically – in a communist society. In a centrally-controlled economy, in which we all share whatever resources we have. In which a small minority of unelected “leaders” make the decisions – all the decisions – about how to distribute those resources.

I’m one of those leaders. Responsible for deciding what will be made available, and in what amounts, and who will get how much of each. Etcetera.

That’s necessary, in any real communist society. Since we generally – in theory, anyway – share everything, and since “everything” is limited, somebody’s got to make the decisions.

This has become harder as our little society has grown. Each additional person means additional activity, needs, demands.

If there were any more of us, we might not be able to do it. God knows how the Russians did.

Because conflicts do arise. Limited resources mean conflicting demands. It’s not just money and different foods and which radio station we’re listening to: it’s time. Time spent driving, time on the computer, time on the telephone. Time spent paying attention to each adorable little proletariat.

There are twenty-four hours to every day, and seven days to every week, and no amount of haranguing over our need for more will change that.

The proletariat is supposed to understand: we’re all in this together. We may be suffering from want, but at least we’re all suffering the same.

Well, not all of us. Those of us at the top, naturally, have privileges. Our needs are simply higher priority.

That’s life, Junior. Deal with it.

But still: we can see the beginnings of dissatisfaction, especially in our 15-16 year old female demographic. Sooner or later, somebody’s going over the wall. Leave our little communist paradise, hoping for greener pastures elsewhere.

Either that, or we’ll have a purge. Hey, sooner or later, dissent has to be dealt with. I expect this – either an escape or a purge – sometime in the next 3-5 years.

And then it’ll happen again, I predict, maybe two years later.

It’s not as though we want this, you understand. Like all good communist leaders, we’re committed to the well-being of The People, and want only their happiness. But…they’re not happy. Not always. And with the limited resources at our disposal…well, how do you prevent it?

How do you even understand it?

The state provides them with everything. Clothing. Food. A warm, dry place to live. We take care of them when they’re sick. We make sure they go to school. We make sure they get to the places they need to go.

But it’s never enough, is it? I guess that’s just a fact of life. Human nature. The way of the world. Not even Marx and Lenin could circumvent it. No matter how much one has, one always wants more.

So eventually they’ll leave on their own, or we’ll have to get rid of them. One at a time.

We could, I suppose, promise more. Guarantee medical care for their entire lives, for example. Not that we wouldn’t do that anyway, if needed, but let’s make it a promise. Make it a right.

We could guarantee their educations, even through University, maybe even beyond that. And not just for them, but for their children.

We could even give them direct cash payments. Regular payments, guaranteed.

Oh, right, we already do. Fine, then, bigger payments.

They’ll stick around longer then, I bet. It might not stop all the complaining. In fact, I know it won’t: since the resources for those extra perks have to come from somewhere, there will be less to go around elsewhere as a result.

And we could never renege on those promises. Doing so would ensure an exodus: everybody would head for the wall. Barbed wire, guard dogs, whatever. Once people have a taste of More, there’s no peaceful way back to Less.

Hum. Maybe better we just let them to go. Give them all they need now, but make sure they can manage on their own.

Sooner or later, it’ll just be us leaders left. Lots fewer of us to share the resources.

And then the remote really will be all mine.