Dr. Krugman on the future of healthcare in America

Paul Krugman assured us back in 2009 that, “In Britain, the government itself runs the hospitals and employs the doctors. We’ve all heard scare stories about how that works in practice; these stories are false.”

Krugman used that claim to convince his readers to support ObamaKare and now they have it coming. Lucky them. lucky us.

“My husband died like a battery hen”. 

Ann Clwyd broke down as she spoke about the final moments of Owen Roberts, who contracted pneumonia after being admitted. They had been married nearly 50 years.

She said her husband was squashed against the side of his bed, his lips dry, and cold from a fan that had been turned on for a patient in an adjacent bay.

She painted a picture of nurses who treated her husband with “coldness, resentment, indifference and even contempt” – echoing the words of the Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt last week.

Ms Clwyd said she had had “nightmares” about what happened, adding: “I really do feel he died from people who didn’t care.”

Ms Clwyd, the Labour MP for Cynon Valley since 1984 and Tony Blair’s former human rights envoy to Iraq, said she had chosen to speak out because such treatment had become “too commonplace”.

“Nobody, nobody should have to die in conditions like I saw my husband die in,” she said during a radio interview.

Smug supporters of what’s being foisted on the US live in a fool’s paradise, confident that, just as someone else will be taxed to pay for their compassion for the poor, the favored few will continue to receive good health care. A senior member of parliament and former ambassador of England is not a shoeless homeless man in Times Square, yet her husband received the same indifferent treatment as that bum can expect. Ain’t equality grand?

England’s going bust, slashing its welfare programs – what can it do to alleviate the pain?

Give away £2 billion to poorer countries for wind beanies and polar bear rugs.

Each household will contribute £70 to schemes to tackle climate change in developing countries before March 2015, under plans championed by Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat Energy Secretary.

Conservative MPs were furious last night at the scale of the bill, which was unveiled as George Osborne prepares to announce a series of tax rises and spending cuts in today’s Autumn Statement.

Lord Lawson of Blaby, a former Chancellor, also criticised the “appalling waste of money” at a time when household budgets are already squeezed.

Senior Conservatives were also dismayed at the timing of the announcement, but Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, hailed the cash as “fantastic news”.

The disclosure is sure to provoke anger among hard-pressed families, who increasingly see foreign aid and green energy as among the lowest priorities for Government spending in the current financial climate.

Elections have consequences, II

Slouching towards Bethlehem

Obama meets with his new tax advisers Rachael Meadow and Al Sharpton at White House for counseling on how to deal with the budget and exactly how much to raise taxes on the rich.  Which is pretty rich in itself, since the Reverend Al doesn’t seem to pay any taxes at all and Miss Meadow, as an entertainer, surely has access to every tax loophole afforded to her class by her fawning friends in Washington.

Elections have consequences? Well then this serves Obama’s Wall Street backers right

Squaw no likeum white man in suit!

Elizabeth Warren to be named to Senate Banking Committee.  I can sell houses at any price and still make a living, but can the bankers who whooped and hollered Obama into the presidency make a living when there’s no living to be made? The high end market is dead – this opening shot of Obama’s war on Wall Street is a good indication that the current state of affairs will last until 2016. And maybe far longer. Oops!

Accepted offer reported

101 Brookside Drive, asking $4.995. It sold for $5.995 in 2008, hardly an example of propitious timing. I remember this as a house that needed (a lot of) work, but I may have it confused with another property. Nice bones though, as they say. And two acres next to town? Great location.

Yellow dog Democrats

Well hell, we got ‘em to vote for Bobby Byrd, didden we? You a shoo-in, Bubba

Last spring, ex-con Ernie Newton was chosen to represent Bridgeport by his Democrat peers, only to lose that distinction later this summer when a larger pool of Democrat primary voters elected Christine Ayala to the State Senate (in any town in Connecticut except Greenwich, to win the Democrat primary is to win the election). Mr. Newton was returned to the streets, Ayala will head up to Hartford if she can find a driver, but no matter: there will be no difference in the quality of representation come January, because Miss Ayala, who was arrested the day after her primary victory for a hit-and-run was yesterday arrested again. This time it was for bitch-slapping her live-in boyfriend during a fight occasioned, no doubt, by the approach of Christmas and that holiday’s aura of good will towards men. The Connecticut Post does an admirable job of depicting the behavior and demeanor of this latest product of the Democratic Machine:

While she was arraigned on her latest charges Tuesday, Ayala stood in the courtroom chewing gum as Judge Earl Richards warned her to have no further contact with her boyfriend

Last August, Ayala was charged with evading responsibility, failure to obey a traffic signal and failure to renew her vehicle’s registration after police said she fled the scene of an accident with two minors in her car. The accident came the day after she won the Democratic primary in the 128th District.

According to a police accident summary, Ayala was driving a 2007 Nissan Sentra with a 13-year-old and a 7-year-old on board when it collided with a 2002 Honda Accord driven by a 26-year-old Bridgeport woman. Police said both cars had heavy front-end damage and both were later towed away.

Police said Ayala fled the accident scene and was eventually flagged down at the corner of Brooklawn Avenue and Laurel Place by a person who had witnessed the accident and pursued her. The distance between the accident location and where Ayala stopped is about six blocks. Ayala, told police that she left the scene because a man yelled at her and she was scared.

On Election Day, Ayala easily rolled over her challenger by garnering 3,143 votes to Republican opponent Manuel Bataguas’ 372. She will now occupy the seat being vacated by her cousin Andres Ayala, who was elected to the state Senate. Ayala also is the daughter of Santa Ayala, the Democratic Registrar of Voters.

These are the candidates and the voters who Governor Malloy and the Greenwich Association of Democrats think should run our state. Only a cynic would suggest that their real goal is to assemble a stable of incompetents who will do the will of their party bosses and the unions the Democrats are beholden to.

The oldest listing in Greenwich has a contract!

Go down, Moses ….

After years in the wilderness, a journey that began in 1994*, 44 Upper Cross Road reports an executed contract. Twenty-three acres and a disposable house, asking $8.499 million, and while it hasn’t closed yet, the Promised Land is in view. How many official days on market? It’s been on and off, but active days, not counting those when a buyer could have just called up the owner and revived it, number in the thousands – probably close to 9,000.

Brother Gideon will I’m sure feel a twinge of nostalgia seeing this go because it was first listed for sale when he was just setting forth on his brilliant career and now, sniff, it will be gone, surely imparting a faint sense of mortality to the poor guy. Nothing lasts forever.

* Gideon corrects me: his memory places this disaster beginning in 1990.