An important health care reform question

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Jim Cooper: Talking right and voting wrong.

Jim Cooper, Tennessee's 5th District Congressman, spoke before The Senate Budget Committee Hearing on Bipartisan Process Proposals for Long-Term Fiscal Stability yesterday. He told the Committee, "I believe that the greatest threat to our nation’s economic security is our long-term fiscal imbalance. At the end of the 2008 fiscal year, the Treasury Department’s 'Financial Report of the United States Government' reported the present value of our unfunded liabilities at $56 trillion, or almost four times the GDP of America."

He went on to say, "In my opinion, we have fiscal cancer, and it is metastasizing so quickly that, all too soon, no surgery, chemotherapy, or radiation will be enough to save us."

This testimony was given to Congress less than 72 hours after he voted for the House's health care reform bill which will greatly expand the deficit and create a major new entitlement. The problem with Jim Cooper is that he talks right and votes wrong. I have heard Jim Cooper speak many times. I heard him speak specifically on the budget and deficit issues and I have heard him speak as part of a panel on health care. He makes a great presentation. There is no doubt he has a vast knowledge of the issues and knows a lot of facts. He has insights and an understanding of the problems. I am always impressed. Every time I hear him speak I think, "that Jim Cooper is a smart man." After having been impressed by some of his presentations, I may have even said, "Jim Cooper is my kind of Democrat." Unfortunately, I have been proven wrong again and again.

With Jim Cooper, I sort of feel like Charlie Brown. Lucy keeps making Charlie think that she will hold the ball so he can kick it and she always pulls it away at the last minute. In Feburary, Cooper voted for the economic stimulas bill after having given all the reason why it was a bad bill and leading everyone to think he was going to vote against it. I even commended him in this blog for his vote and then the next day found out he did not vote the way he had said he would (link). Jim Cooper defines the issues and talks conservative. I keep thinking he will vote the right way this time but he never does. I have been fooled one too many times. From now on, I am going to expect Jim Cooper to pull the ball at the last minute.

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Veterans Day

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The Berlin Wall: Twenty Years Later

November 9, 2009, The Independent Institute

The fall of the Berlin Wall, twenty years ago today, was not inevitable. Nor was the collapse of the Soviet Union. The failure of central economic planning does not explain those remarkable events because if it did, communist policies would not still govern the everyday lives of millions in Cuba, North Korea, Laos, and Cambodia. (China and Vietnam have at least introduced aspects of markets, with notable success.)

The liberation of Central and Eastern Europe in 1989--and related events two years later in the Soviet Union--could not have happened without one essential ingredient: people choosing freedom. "History did not make them; they made history," writes Independent Institute Senior Fellow Alvaro Vargas Llosa.

The mantra of "inevitability" masks the heroism of ordinary people and a handful of leaders who defied reactionary hardliners, often at great personal risk. It also plays down the distorted view that many intellectuals had held about the Soviet Union and its Eastern bloc allies before the collapse of the wall. Writes Vargas Llosa: "If much of the world's intelligentsia thought that socialism's triumph was unstoppable before it was stopped, their peers today conveniently dismiss the importance of those events as 'predictable' in order to concentrate the mind on the true enemy--capitalism."

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Berlin Wall Anniversary: Remembering the Victims of Communism

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The Berlin Wall: The Real History of the Fall

Monday November 9, 2009, The Wisdom of Dave

Twenty years ago the Berlin Wall came down. As a young adult I remember watching the coverage as the first opening at the Brandenburg Gate in the wall that had long separated the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic was about to come down.

As the crowds cheered and young men and women climbed on top of the wall and their elders who had seen the wall grow up between the German people since World War II, waited with mixed joy and anxiety as the moment came that the wall should open for the first time. (link)

Comment: This is a great post from a fellow bogger.

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Obama skips Berlin Wall event.

Obama Draws Criticism for Sitting Out Berlin Wall Anniversary

Fox News, Oct. 9, 2009

President Obama squeezed in a trip to Copenhagen last month to lobby, unsuccessfully, for Chicago to host the 2016 Summer Olympics. He plans to travel to Oslo next month to accept the Nobel Peace Prize, an award that even Obama has said he does not deserve. And this coming week, he sets out on a weeklong tour of Asia.

But the president does not plan to travel to Germany to attend the 20th anniversary celebration Monday of the fall of the Berlin Wall, drawing heated criticism from those who say he's ignoring a shining triumph of American-inspired democracy. (link)

Comment: His absence speaks volumes. It is an outrage that he skipped this celebration. We know a JFK or Ronald Reagan would have been there and I cannot even imagine Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton skipping this celebration of the event that ended the cold war. My dislike of Barack Obama just went up several notches.

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'Rise and Fall of the Berlin Wall' on The History Channel

It sprung up overnight in August, 1961--a makeshift blockade separating repressive, Soviet-controlled East Berlin from the Allied-run democracy to the west. Soon the barrier encircled all of West Berlin, sealing its two million citizens off from the rest of the world. As escape attempts escalated, deadlier obstacles were added. Eventually, a 97-mile barrier, virtually impenetrable, snaked along the border between East and West Berlin. And 28 years later, it came down as unexpectedly as it went up. Observe the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall (November 9, 2009) with a dramatic look at how a line of railway cars and barbed wire evolved into the massively fortified fortress that came to symbolize the Cold War. Computer-generated imagery, re-enactments, archival footage, and expert commentary provide political and historical context while helping to illustrate how construction progressed over time--and how it was suddenly demolished by civilians in 1989.

Rating: TVPG

Running Time: 120 minutes

Comment: I watched this exhilarating and moving documentary last night and highly recommend it. Learn the story of those who died trying to escape from eastern Germany and those who succeeded. By tunneling, by hot air balloon, and super light aircraft they escaped as the Communist government of East Germany build a more and more elaborate wall to keep people from fleeing. This program will be shown again Friday, November 13 08:00 AM and Friday, November 13 02:00 PM. Don't miss it.

Many on the left still admire Communism. Many romanticize the Communist era and see Communist as advocates of social justice and they ignore the horror that was totalitarian Communism. Many young people may know very little about the era and what was at stake in the battle between freedom and Communism. This program needs to be seen by those who are too young to remember and those who may forget what the cold war was all about.

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