Conservative muckraker James O’Keefe’s team at Project Veritas released their latest video on Sunday, and whatever you think of O’Keefe, it’s worth watching. Why? Because Ohio’s Medicaid bureaucracy was targeted, and the results are not pretty.

Imagine two guys walk into a county office inquiring about Medicaid coverage. Now imagine they explain to staff their concerns over getting government handouts while dealing drugs, driving an $800,000 car, and whoring out their underage sister. It’s a little painful to watch, but makes an incredibly powerful point when peppered with out-of-control Medicaid spending figures from the Dispatch.

As Hot Air and The Blaze have noted, O’Keefe’s tactics remain somewhat creepy. His emulation of leftists’ personal attacks causes very real grief for the individuals caught on tape – not to mention obvious questions about editing. That said, if your response to a drug dealer looking for public funds isn’t to laugh in their face and call a supervisor, you’re doing something wrong.

I’ve contacted county officials in Columbus, Marion, and London for their responses. If the video’s targets promptly reported the Veritas guys to their supervisors and/or local police, good news: sometimes, government works! If not, this is another arrow to the heart of Progressive arguments that can be boiled down to “MORE.”

The video follows, with uncut footage of the Columbus sting at the end of the 10-minute piece.

As for the entirely predictable response from Media Matters, Talking Points Memo, et al, of course O’Keefe is going to exaggerate the importance of his footage. That hardly invalidates his criticism, if the Franklin County, Marion County, and Madison County Departments of Job and Family Services advised the Project Veritas scammers and did nothing to prevent them from acquiring Medicaid funds. Of course, leftist outlets will shriek desperately about O’Keefe’s political agenda if doing so serves their own!

Follow me on Twitter: @jasonahart

Cross-posted at that hero and Third Base Politics.

Sarah Palin’s reportedly ignorant belief that Obamacare cuts cost by way of a “death panel” of bureaucrats passing down coverage decrees is nearly as notorious as Palin herself. Mind you, Palin was being ridiculed for this long before The Krugman, a bearded novelty act who does a traveling show for The New York Times, sung the praises of government-rationed care in an ABC appearance:

Here’s the infamous paragraph from Palin’s 08/07/2009 Facebook post:

The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their “level of productivity in society,” whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

Palin was responding, in part, to a statement by Rep. Michelle Bachmann, another crazed right-wing nut. If you have a memory or possess the power of Google, it’s not hard to recall the dinosaur media’s response. Smarmy leftists at The New York Times and MSNBC ranted and raved about lies and incited mobs, while slightly-better-hinged commentators settled for dismissing Palin’s thoughts as partisan nonsense.

Conservative pundits continue working to inform the public that Obamacare – sorry, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act – relies exclusively on rationed care for the only cost savings that aren’t fabrications. As George Will details in a Washington Post op-ed, death panels by any other name are still terrible policy:

The point of PPACA is cost containment. This supposedly depends on the Independent Payment Advisory Board. The IPAB, which is a perfect expression of the progressive mind, is to be composed of 15 presidential appointees empowered to reduce Medicare spending – which is 13 percent of federal spending – to certain stipulated targets. IPAB is to do this by making “proposals” or “recommendations” to limit costs by limiting reimbursements to doctors. This, inevitably, will limit available treatments – and access to care when physicians leave the Medicare system.

Will’s closing line is brilliant:

The essence of progressivism, and of the administrative state that is progressivism’s project, is this doctrine: Modern society is too complex for popular sovereignty, so government of, by and for supposedly disinterested experts must not perish from the earth.

So, Ohioans – have you signed a petition supporting the Health Care Freedom Amendment yet?

Follow me on Twitter: @jasonahart

Cross-posted at that hero and Third Base Politics.

If you’ve not read about the recent McKinsey & Company study investigating the likelihood of businesses dropping employee health coverage due to Obamacare, The Weekly Standard has all the gory details.

The study finds that, “Overall, 30 percent of employers will definitely or probably stop offering ESI [employer-sponsored insurance] in the years after 2014… Among employers with a high awareness of reform, this proportion increases to more than 50 percent.”

You didn’t actually believe President Obama when he promised you could keep your current coverage, did you? This particular mandate, of course, isn’t mandatory for government medicine’s loudest proponents, as summarized fiendishly by Karl Rove’s minions at Crossroads GPS -

Cato Institute writer Michael F. Cannon opines about one of Obamacare’s central cost-saving schemes, and why it’s destined for failure:

Inefficient providers have effectively killed nearly every pilot program that previous administrations promised would make Medicare more efficient. Suppliers of wheelchairs and other medical equipment have blocked efforts to reduce the inflated prices Medicare pays them. The industry has killed or sabotaged at least four federal agencies dedicated to researching which medical treatments don’t work.

Cutting costs is sort of a big deal, with unfunded Medicare obligations already totaling $24.8 trillion before Obamacare’s shady accounting and expanded entitlements kick in. Another Obamacare stick, Comparative Effectiveness Research, might reduce the cost of health care… while gravely damaging its effectiveness:

CER can be beneficial if used solely to inform doctors and patients to guide decision-making. However, the new law lays the groundwork for bureaucrats to use CER in Medicare to make coverage decisions and otherwise compel physicians to treat patients not according to what is best for the individual but according to what the evidence shows is best in most cases.

Back at The Weekly Standard, numbers from a Rasmussen poll of likely voters don’t look good for fans of socialized medicine.

By a margin of more than 2 to 1 (48 to 20 percent), likely voters think Obamacare would reduce, rather than improve, the quality of health care. By a margin of more than 3 to 1 (53 to 15 percent), they think it would raise, rather than lower, health costs. By a margin of 4 to 1 (56 to 14 percent), they think it would raise, rather than lower, deficits.

To paraphrase Nancy Pelosi’s immortal words: the more that we find out what’s in Obamacare, the more appalled we are that you passed it.

Bigger, more expensive, more intrusive government is not the answer to big government’s past and current failures in the health care industry. As responses to Paul Ryan’s budget remind us, Washington leftists have no connection to fiscal reality, no interest in personal freedom, and certainly no concern for the will of the voters.

Have you signed a petition supporting the Health Care Freedom Amendment yet?

Follow me on Twitter: @jasonahart

Cross-posted from that hero.

Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan, as intelligent and forthright as Sherrod Brown is ignorant and dishonest, has a plan for the biggest issues concerning Ohio voters. Ryan’s ongoing video series explaining his budget plan manages the rare feat of being both sharp and blunt:

Naturally, although Sherrod Brown has no plan of his own he’s happy to repeat his all-purpose demagogic response:

In the twenty-first century, we cannot afford to take from the poor to give to the rich.

Sherrod Brown’s response to every problem – unemployment, entitlement spending, gas prices, you name it – is bigger government and higher taxes. Have you passed your deficit-reduction suggestions along to Harry Reid, Senator? Maybe your sage advice could break your party’s years-long case of budget writer’s block!

Watch Paul Ryan explain the GOP budget, and look for a reply from Sherrod Brown that’s not lazy, naked class warfare. When that reply never comes, ask yourself: does Sherrod share my priorities?

It’s hard to imagine a conclusion other than this: Ohio needs a senator much more like Paul Ryan, and much less like Sherrod Brown. November 2012 will be here sooner than you think!

Follow me on Twitter: @jasonahart

Cross-posted from that hero.

Proving once again my amateur partisan hack status, I’m only now getting to a Sherrod Brown “news” item from mid-March. Early this year Senator Brown’s staff posted a survey on the web for Ohioans to tell Sherrod their priorities. Though a web form is an unscientific thing, I doubt Team Brown loved the results:

“Federal Deficit” isn’t a worry Sherrod Brown wants voters to have going into the 2012 election cycle. “Protecting Medicare and Social Security” is a winner for Brown, but only if the GOP is totally inept. Same goes for “Affordable Health Care.”

Visit the Issues section of Senator Brown’s website, and you’ll notice there’s no issue page for the deficit or the budget. Make of that what you will. Here’s a highlight from the generically titled “The Economy” issue page:

Ohio’s middle class will benefit from economic policies that promote our state’s clean energy manufacturers and push our nation to implement fair trade policies.  Ohio’s families and small businesses will benefit from health insurance reform that reduces costs for family budgets and improves the sustainability of our national economy.

Green energy boondoggles, trade protectionism, and the government-first fiscal madness of Obamacare. Great. Here are some of Senator Brown’s employment initiatives:

In June 2009, the increase in the federal minimum wage to $7.25 took effect, representing a major step in the right direction for Ohio families.

Yes, a higher federal minimum wage means more pay… for the low-income folks who can find work in an economy where politicians determine the price of labor. But that’s not all!

We must do a better job of providing training and retraining to Ohio workers and matching those workers to jobs that need to be filled. The federal government needs to be fully engaged in this effort, and I am working to strengthen Workforce Investment Act programs that help workers prepare for and obtain good-paying jobs in our state.

I’m sure a 48th federal job training program would be as effective as the existing 47. Sherrod also knows how helpful unions are at creating jobs:

While this legislation has stalled in the Senate, I am working with my colleagues on developing strong labor law reform that ensures employers and workers have a safe, predictable environment to ensure free choice in forming a union.

If legislating “free choice in forming a union” by killing secret-ballot union elections passes for “Jobs” policy in Sherrod Brown’s mind, I shudder to think of his approach to the survey respondents’ other priorities!

Follow me on Twitter: @jasonahart

Cross-posted from that hero.