Mike Leavitt, former Governor of Utah and HHS Secretary Under George W. Bush, is heading up planning for Mitt Romney's transition effort should Romney win.

It turns out he's a big supporter of ObamaCare and has been fighting to have states implement the "exchanges" which are the mechanism the federal government will use to regulate personal insurance once the law is fully in force.

Ben Domenech, who has been a guest poster here and who does health care policy work for a living lays out some the "highlights" of Leavitt's support for the law.

LeavittÂ’s status as one of the few Republicans supporting Obamacare implementation has been a matter of significant concern for those on the right, as he and his consultancy represent the most prominent figures in the party urging states to bow to WashingtonÂ’s wishes in this regard. I wrote about his work here, but here are a few examples:

Last year he spoke to the National Governors Association, urging “the governors not defend their ‘partisan flags’ over the interests of their states.”

A month later, Leavitt wrote: “I’m surprised that many states are waiting for the political stars to align and produce repeal or a major revision. Some are doing little of substance, hoping that the federal government will relax the calendar. Both approaches are a mistake. Smart states will proceed to develop exchanges based on a strategy of self-determination and the benefits that come from enhancing insurance offerings within their states.”

It’s little surprise Leavitt and his staff decried the conservatives arguing against implementation. “In recent weeks health insurance exchanges have become the target of those who oppose Obamacare. This is very unfortunate as exchanges make sense for a number of reasons and exchanges should not be used as a scapegoat to defeat Obamacare… Regardless of your opinion of Obamacare, exchanges just make sense.”

They suggested that “Resistance to exchange establishment also seems to come from a general aversion to change.” They scoffed at the policy wonks: “When you work at a think-tank, it’s really easy to come up with these really high-risk plans.”

There's a lot more at the link.

Consider this, Leavitt is to the left on ObamaCare of Mr. RINO Chris Christie.

When I heard about Leavitt I just thought he was in it to make a buck for his consulting firm but really opposed ObamaCare like every other Republican in the country. That's simply not the case.

Mike Leavitt, the former secretary of HHS under President George W. Bush and current Romney adviser, said the federal government's historic $15 trillion debt will drive “hard” changes in healthcare system to reduce its costs. Those changes, including moving across healthcare from a fee-for-service model to outcomes based payment, may be facilitated by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Romney has repeatedly urged repeal and replacement of the law.

The law “gives the secretary authority to do certain things that are clearly aimed at trying to move us in this direction,” he said in a brief interview after addressing a Washington gathering of the Cancer Action Network. “A lot of it will depend on how aggressively the secretary chooses to use the authorities in the law to move us in that direction.”

So Leavitt's concern about ObamaCare was that Kathleen Sebilius might not be aggressive enough in using the power given to her by ObamaCare? Was that your first reaction or the reaction of any conservative/Republican you know?

Romney's camp says don't worry, only Mitt makes decisions and he's on board with repeal.

Romney says the right things about ObamaCare (usually) but his actions on healthcare reform, including picking a transition director who is thought to be a leading candidate to be his Chief of Staff often are at odds with his words.

I was torn about whether or not to post this but I think it's important enough. I was on a self-imposed hiatus from posting about Mitt for most of the primary season. I'm happy to help by hitting the MFM, Obama and The Democrats but saying something nice about Mitt is usually a bridge too far for me. Since he's "our" guy though, I wasn't looking for reasons to hit him.

I'm not trying to re-litigate the primaries. Mitt won and we have to make the best of that. But I seem to remember the deal was if we nominate Mitt we would have to hold his feet to the fire. Well, this is one of those times. If we don't do it now because we have to beat Obama, we'll never do it. There will always be a reason to cut him some slack. We either are serious about keeping him on the straight and narrow or not.

Personnel is often policy, especially when it's the guy staffing the whole administration.

I think this is worth taking Mitt on over. If not now, when?

You can say, "well, we need a conservative Congress to keep Romney in line". That's true put it's hard to keep several hundred legislators in line all the time. It's easier to keep one guy in check, especially now when we have the power.

Added: Just to be perfectly clear- I'm not saying don't work for Mitt or to not vote for him if you live in a swing state. I'm saying we need to keep him on a short leash and make it uncomfortable for him when he strays too far.

Can you imagine in 2008 if Obama named as his transition director someone who supported the Bush Tax cuts? No you can't. Why should we accept this?

Posted by: DrewM at 06:23 AM | Comments (347)
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Now my rebuttal.

Show me the indicator in early vote/absentee totals that turnout will approach 2008.

Total absentees for 08: >633,000
Total absentees for 10: >230,000
Total absentees for 12: 183,000. This includes all those bused-about early voters that were "storming the polls" for two solid weeks.

Of that total, 33,000, or just around 16%, were from Madison and Milwaukee. Identical to 2010. 84% of absentee/early in person votes reported thus far are from the rest of the state.

Total absentees from both cities hit about 35k after the statewide total # was estimated midday Friday, but no indicator theirs weren't matched by more conservative parts.

I fully expect Dane to turn out heavily to get rid of Walker. But even in Madison, total early votes: 16k. Total in 2008: 32k.

Meanwhile Republican areas are matching Dane County's intensity. Waukesha and Brookfield are reporting massive turnout, with early vote totals far, far exceeding 2010. So while they may hope for increased turnout in Milwaukee and Madison, Republicans are responding by amping up their own. The evidence is right there in my comparison of Brookfield's early votes with Milwaukee's. A city a fraction the size of the other shouldn't be turning in votes at four times the rate if the bigger city is really going to have massive turnout.

Few are buying the line of "just match 08" because it requires the Republicans to just give up and drop their numbers combined with massive turnout in Milwaukee city that has not shown up in the early indicators.

We will know in one more day how things shake out, but for now PPP's ditty about matching 08 turnout models to defeat Walker looks big on promise and short on verifiable results.

Posted by: CAC at 05:21 AM | Comments (155)
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Happy Monday. First, some things to put on your calendar:

Today, the Supreme Court is expected to issue one or more opinions in cases heard this term. It's a little early for either the Obamacare decision or the U.S. v. Arizona decision, but anything's possible.

Tomorrow, Wisconsin voters will vote in tomorrow's rather important recall election.

In the news . . .

DOOOOOOM. Japan stocks are at a 28-year low.

Obama is running through his campaign playbook at record speed. Apparently, having decided that the Bain attack flopped (or worse, actually hurt the President), the campaign is now focusing on Romney's record as governor of Massachusetts. From an ad the President's team plans to run in nine states:

The ad includes a clip from 2002 of then-gubernatorial candidate Romney saying, "I speak the language of business. I know how jobs are created."

The narrator in the ad then says that as governor, Romney had "one of the worst economic records in the country."

Dear Obama Team, please engage us on the economy. Make this easy.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:54 AM | Comments (221)
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SilverGTP here with an OT post. Last Saturday night was the DFW Moron Meetup and we had a great time meeting in person. Thanks to Allen for setting it up!

Photo below the fold... more...

Posted by: Gang of Gaming Morons! at 01:35 AM | Comments (42)
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Full poll from PPP now online here.
Only Walker-Barrett was tested, none of the others. Full results later tonight for PPP. Their last poll for DailyKos had Walker up 5, 50-45, and their last non-sponsored poll had Walker behind by 3 (Registered Voters), so take it for what you want. Both sides are engaged and that has helped Barrett without taking away Walker's consistent 50% take (consistent with their last two DK releases).

As for Angus Reid, giving Walker a 6 point lead amongst registered voters, those results are right here.

Both polls taken post-debate.
Turnout is incredibly important and there is still time to volunteer to help in that.

Two more days.
Recapping
PPP 50-47 WALKER
Rupe/Reason 50-42 WALKER
ANGUS/REID 53-47 WALKER
WPR/STNORB 50-45 WALKER
MARQUETTE 52-45 WALKER
RASMUSSEN 50-45 WALKER
WAA 54-42 WALKER
Two D internals/sponsored have Walker at 49-49
Walker is still clearing 50% in the averages despite tightening.

Possibility of a new Rasmussen poll tomorrow, but let's see if Scott bothered.

Interesting cross tab from PPP is the regional breakdown. They divided the state up by area code and found Barrett on par in Milwaukee with 10, up a bit in Greater Madison, and Walker up sizably in Greater Milwaukee. NW Wisconsin, while painted red, has the more blue counties of Eau Claire and the northern mining communities to balance it out, but that too goes to Walker.

PPP is stressing a higher Democratic turnout than now could give Barrett the upset.

MILWAUKEE
WAUKESHA
OZAUKEE
WASHINGTON

Watch these four all during our coverage election night. If Barrett's margin in Milwaukee exceeds Walker's in Waukesha, Barrett has a really good shot at unseating Walker. If not, Walker likely survives. Waukesha-Milwaukee difference mattered for Prosser in 2011 and helped Walker in 2010 to a larger lead.

But keep those four in mind.

Posted by: CAC at 07:59 PM | Comments (69)
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And we're off to a bright new shiny non-pre-owned week...

How Fast Can You Read?

Well Staples has a online test that measures your reading speed.

Since I utterly failed phonics in elementary school I was forced to learn to read almost entirely through word pattern recognition. So it took me a lot longer to master reading but on the plus side since then I've always been a fast reader and can even read upside-down text as well. That said I still think phonics is the way to go for most students learning English.

And here's my score - I read a bit more leisurely than usual since I had a feeling there would be a test afterwards:

Posted by: Maetenloch at 05:25 PM | Comments (545)
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This is not going to be one of those threads with no content. Just check out all the great content below the fold: more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 03:48 PM | Comments (228)
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Good afternoon Morons and Moronettes! SilverGTP here; its been a busy week and we have a load of content, so put on your reading hat and enjoy.

This week's topics include an E3 announce rumor, Minecraft-themed wedding, bad news hits Diablo 3, Doom 3 BFG edition details, games that benefit from adding a Portal gun, and EVE Online.

Starting this week I will be writing about my experience as an EVE noob in nullsec space. Zakn and his corp buddies have been training me so I've enjoyed a huge advantage. It's almost like having cheat codes. more...

Posted by: Gang of Gaming Morons! at 09:41 AM | Comments (198)
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"Here we go again," Judge Milan Smith starts in his epic broadside (PDF) against the Ninth Circuit's anti-prosperity, bureaucracy-boosting environmental decisions. The Bush 43 appointee has had enough:

I cannot conclude my dissent without considering the impact of the majorityÂ’s decision in this case, and others like it, which, in my view, flout our precedents and undermine the rule of law. . . .

By rendering the Forest Service impotent to meaningfully address low impact mining, the majority effectively shuts down the entire suction dredge mining industry in the states within our jurisdiction. . . . As a result, a number of people will lose their jobs and the businesses that have invested in the equipment used in the relevant mining activities will lose much of their value. In 2008, California issued about 3,500 permits for such mining, and 18 percent of those miners received “a significant portion of income” from the dredging. See Justin Scheck, California Sifts Gold Claims, The Wall Street Journal, April 29, 2012. The gold mining operation in this case, the New 49ers, organizes recreational weekend gold-mining excursions. The majority’s opinion effectively forces these people to await the lengthy and costly ESA consultation process if they wish to pursue their mining activities, or simply ignore the process, at their peril.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time our court has broken from decades of precedent and created burdensome, entangling environmental regulations out of the vapors. In one of the most extreme recent examples, our court held that timber companies must obtain Environmental Protection Agency permits for stormwater runoff that flows from primary logging roads into systems of ditches, culverts, and channels. Nw. Envtl. Def. Ctr. v. Brown, 640 F.3d 1063 (9th Cir. 2011). In the nearly four decades since the Clean Water Act was enacted, no court or government agency had ever imposed such a requirement. Indeed, the EPA promulgated regulations that explicitly exempted logging from this arduous permitting requirement. Yet our court decided to disregard the regulation and require the permits.

The result? The imminent decimation of what remains of the Northwest timber industry.

He goes on to note a Ninth Circuit decision that killed the San Joaquin Valley by foreclosing irrigation:

Farmers, too, have suffered, and will continue to suffer, from the impact of similarly extreme environmental decisions. The Central Valley Project Improvement Act, Pub. L. No. 102-575, 106 Stat. 4600 (1992), requires that 800,000 acre feet of water in California’s Central Valley Project be designated for “the primary purpose of implementing the fish, wildlife, and habitat restoration purposes and measures[.]” In San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority v. United States, 672 F.3d 676 (9th Cir. 2012), the majority inexplicably read this requirement to mean that water counts toward that yield only if it “predominantly contributes to one of the primary purpose programs.” Id. at 697. This interpretation has absolutely no basis in the statutory text. The practical impact of this decision is that there will be less, perhaps far less, water for irrigation in the San Joaquin Valley’s $20 billion crop industry. The region’s farms and communities, and the thousands of people employed there, already have suffered because of the lack of water, with approximately 250,000 acres of farmland now lying fallow, and unemployment ranging between 20 percent and 40 percent.

Judge Smith concludes:

No legislature or regulatory agency would enact sweeping rules that create such economic chaos, shutter entire industries, and cause thousands of people to lose their jobs. That is because the legislative and executive branches are directly accountable to the people through elections, and its members know they would be removed swiftly from office were they to enact such rules. In contrast, in order to preserve the vitally important principle of judicial independence, we are not politically accountable. However, because of our lack of public accountability, our job is constitutionally confined to interpreting laws, not creating them out of whole cloth. Unfortunately, I believe the record is clear that our court has strayed with lamentable frequency from its constitutionally limited role (as illustrated supra) when it comes to construing environmental law. When we do so, I fear that we undermine public support for the independence of the judiciary, and cause many to despair of the promise of the rule of law.

Excellent. I chopped out most of the legal portion of his analysis, so if you're interested, his dissent starts on page 40 of the PDF.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 09:23 AM | Comments (187)
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Good morning, 'rons and 'ettes, it's time once again for the Sunday Morning AoSHQ Book Thread. (applause)Hooray!(/applause)

Here in Oregon, you cannot legally purchase certain hair-cutting instruments unless you are certified by the state, that is, unless you obtain a beautician's license. Let me repeat that in case you missed it: without a beautician's license, you cannot buy hair clippers in Oregon. I am not making this up. I had this on my mind earlier this week when I started reading The Law by Frederic Bastiat (even though the link is to Amazon, it's available for free all over teh interwebs). It's one of those books that I've always wanted to read, but have never gotten around to, at least until now. The Law is a truly masterful exposition of the nature of law, the boundaries of law, how it should be used, and what happens when it is misused. All conservatives should read this book. All liberals should read this book, too, for that matter. They might learn something. Of course, I can think of more than a few conservatives who might learn something by reading it, too. When George Bush famously said "when people are hurting, government has got to move", didn't you just cringe? I mean, great googly moogly, the man was supposed to be this evil, right-wing fanatic. Only he sounded just like FDR.

This book will make you sad. This book will make you mad. Bastiat says that the only thing law can reasonably hope to do is prevent, by the threat of force, injustice of one person to another. And that's it. It can't promote anything, it can't reward this or that group, it can't make better people, and any attempts to do so will only create more injustice than they purport to remedy. The way we do legislation these days is so completely removed from what the law should be, even in conservative policy. Here in the 21st century, we are so far removed from the ideal set forth by Bastiat in this book, I just can't imagine what the road back to fiscal and legislative sanity is going to look like.

Incidentally, Bastiat says that the country that best exemplifies the proper use of law is the United States of America (he wrote this in 1850), although he goes on to say the U.S. does have two black marks against it, namely slavery and tariffs. Given that the collection of tariffs was the original constitutional means for the federal government to raise operational funding, I wonder what he would consider a reasonable, i.e. just, alternative?
more...

Posted by: Open Blogger at 07:10 AM | Comments (168)
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