Obama's campaign themes for 2012 - By Wynton Hall

I thought this was a good analysis, so I posted in in full from newsbusters.org: 

So far, we’ve seen President Obama’s reelection team telegraph five central campaign “themes.”  None of them has anything to do with his record as president, and all of them are nonstarters that are easily refuted by the facts:

1. Mitt Romney is “too rich” to be president. Mitt Romney’s net worth is almost identical ($250 million) to the Democratic Party’s 2004 nominee, John Kerry ($240 million). If Democrats had no problem with a rich guy running for president in 2004, why now?

2. President Obama killed Osama bin Laden: Romney might not have. The Navy SEALS, not Barack Obama, killed Osama bin Laden.  To suggest otherwise is an insult to their bravery and valor. Besides, does any serious person honestly believe that any president--of either party--would not have pulled the trigger when informed that Osama bin Laden was in the cross-hairs? Really?

3. Young people will vote for President Obama again because he is “cooler” than Romney, as is evidenced by his appearances on Jimmy Fallon. College-age voters are over "cool." They want jobs and can’t find them.  One out of every two college graduates will soon hit the Obama economy’s wall of reality and join the growing ranks of the unemployed.  Romney may not be “cool,” but he looks like that family friend mom and dad said to go see because his successful company is hiring. Put simply, Romney may not be the “iPod President,” but he sure looks like the “Paycheck President.” And that’s very cool.

4. President Obama is fighting those evil meany Republicans and their “War on Women.” The Obama economy has been a disaster for female employment. Nine out of ten jobs lost under Obama belonged to women. Female voters are over the “hope and change.” They have kids to feed and family budgets to balance.  They want to work and earn higher wages. Obama has failed to produce either.

5. President Obama grew up poor and therefore has more compassion and willingness to maintain the social safety net. President Obama’s parents were professors, hardly a destitute upbringing (the Washington Post says Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro, Obama’s mother, made what would today be a $123,000 salary—a figure that would place her in the top six percent of all individual income earners).  Romney’s millions of dollars in private charity donations more than demonstrate that he cares deeply about those in need.  In 2010, Romney donated 14 percent of his income to charity. Vice President Joe Biden? An embarrassing 1.4 percent. In fact, it was only recently that President Obama upped his charitable giving.  Before running for president, the Obamas gave just 6.1 percent to charity.  They've since upped their charitable giving to match Romney’s 14 percent. 

Bottom line: if Obama wants to win reelection, his campaign team has some serious work to do. The five themes they’ve telegraphed thus far are easily refuted by the facts.

Cohabitation - Fail

Regarding this article on cohabitation in the New York Times, Vox Day is exactly right:

"My thinking is that cohabitation presents an intrinsically false model for marriage because it represents the reverse of the structural power relationship within modern marriage. In a cohabitating relationship, the man usually holds the structural upper hand and the woman's behavior is relatively submissive because she knows he can end it at any time without any significant cost to himself.

Once the marriage takes place, the power balance shifts heavily towards the women thanks to the current divorce laws and her behavior tends to change significantly whether she realizes it or not. Even if she is a genuinely committed wife who is totally unwilling to abuse, or even take advantage of, her legally superior position, she is much less likely to be operating with a mindset of pleasing her husband in order to persuade him to continue the relationship because she no longer needs to be concerned about the possibility of the relationship being easily ended without substantial cost.

This is why couples who cohabitate successfully cannot reasonably assume that the comfortable living arrangements they have made will survive the structural shock to the relationship that takes place after marriage. In fact, the more comfortably the couple cohabitates pre-marriage, the more likely it is that they will have serious problems once the legal aspects of that relationship change with the wedding.

One can certainly make a reasonable case for cohabitation as a substitute for marriage, but the evidence suggests that it is unwise to consider cohabitation a precursor to it."

Keeping Social Security out of Wall Street's hands - The Nation hyperventilates again

The Nation Magazine's latest email has a hard time with the facts. Even the title misrepresents the situation. The Nation doesn't want to keep Social Security out of Wall Street's hands, they want to keep it out of the hands of you and me. They are against choice.

Also, it is worth noting that even if some of Social Security was privatized, there is no requirement that the money be invested in "Wall Street." People could invest anywhere.

The Nation says that with privatization the "returns would not be guaranteed, as they are now." This is a bit of rhetorical slight-of-hand, since presently there is no return at all. The Social Security Trust Fund is the receptacle for all Social Security monies the government receives. Upon receipt, the government issues payment to the various payees, and whatever is left over is transferred to the general fund by means of a bond sale, bonds that only the government can buy and sell. These special bonds are issued to the trust fund, and the cash is moved to the general fund.

Yes, these bonds pay interest, which comes, of course, from the general fund. Are you catching the shell game going on here? There is no cash in the Trust Fund, only special interest-bearing bonds. That interest is paid with deficit spending by the government, spending facilitated by the cash received by selling those bonds to the Trust Fund!

The Social Security Trust Fund is not an asset, is is a liability that will have to be paid back.

The Nation deems it a "successful program." What? How many times has Congress had to "save" the system? How many times have we read news reports about how Social Security will run out of money in 2030, 2015, 2040, or whenever? This is success?

And couple that with the fact that "running out of money" is predicated on the assumption that there are actual assets in the Trust Fund, and we have to conclude that Social Security is bankrupt NOW.

We Must Keep Social Security Out Of Wall Street’s Hands Recent plans discussed on Capitol Hill include privatizing Social Security. In 1935, Social Security was established as a way to create a financial safety net for retirees but these recent proposed changes could turn retirement security into a Wall Street gamble. With private accounts tied to the Stock Market, returns would not be guaranteed, as they are now. Seniors’ savings could disappear over night and take years to rebuild after a market decline. There’s also the risk of outliving your investments—something that can never happen with Social Security. > Act now to protect your Social Security benefits. Join us in the fight to save your retirement income. Turning this successful program over to the for-profit sector would cost roughly $5 trillion—a cost that would come out of taxpayers’ pockets. Unlike private investments, the cost of administering Social Security is less than 1.5% of the benefits paid. Yet there are those in Washington who want to dismantle it. The National Committee believes that Social Security is a critical safety net meant to protect everyone and it should not become a windfall for Wall Street. Social Security is the foundation of a secure retirement. It’s designed to protect against poverty in old age and it’s one of the most successful programs in U.S. history. Privatization is NOT a plan to save Social Security; it’s a plan to kill it. We need your support now! Add your voice to the National Committee’s by joining its efforts to protect these crucial benefits. The National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare is not affiliated with any political party or branch of government.

Revival coming

To my pastor:

As I listen to the Spirit, it seems to me that He is saying some very specific things. I write this in the hope that He is saying some of the same things to you. Of course, I may be wrong about what I discern, so please test what I have to say.

I am feeling optimistic. Expectant. I feel my faith growing. I feel like we are nearing a tipping point, or maybe a place of historical note, perhaps like when the Old Testament characters would build an altar at the place where they met God. It makes me think, maybe we are about to meet God. Perhaps He is preparing for a Visitation. Perhaps He is about to pour out His Spirit upon us.

As I’ve prayed over these last few months I am drawn to certain themes time after time. God, let Your name be glorified. God, let us take hold Your promises. God, increase our faith. Open the heavens. Fill us with Your Holy Spirit. Bring revival to this valley, to our church, to our families.

I have been reading about a little-known revival that happened in rural Arkansas in the mid 1940s. It started with only a couple of people praying and worshiping, and grew to the point where nearly every soul in the county was saved. It seems like revivals often start with just a handful of people who are willing to cry out for God’s presence.It spurred me to begin praying for this very thing. For Him to move in our midst. Healing, salvation, anointing, power. An increase of His love in us, His compassion and mercy. That His word would be deeply rooted in us and bear fruit. These are the things that my prayers are obsessed with. 

One reason I am writing this to you now is because of an answer to prayer. I have been praying for the release of the Holy Spirit in my wife, who for many years has felt marginalized and relatively valueless in the Church. Last week I was praying for her to receive revelation about her place in the Church, for healing and health, but most of all, for her to filled with faith and confidence, that she would be able to freely worship without being preoccupied by distraction. She has the gift of discernment, but when the Spirit reveals negative spiritual forces, this tends to divert her from worshiping.

Today I saw the first fruits of an answer to that prayer. I have never seen my wife stand in front of a crowd and speak, let alone speak with such clarity and conviction. To me, this means that other prayers are going to be answered. That’s what I mean by faith growing in me. If one prayer is answered, why not two or ten or a hundred? After all, God hears from heaven. The broken and contrite spirit He will not despise.

Another reason I write is because my foolish little song was sung in church this morning. It may or may not have been successful, but for me it was significant. The last time one of my songs was sung in church was eleven years ago. God came to that church, and we witnessed a mini move of God in our midst.

Lest I start puffing myself up, I am quick to retreat from any pride. However, I must say, it’s the topic of my song that is significant to me: "Holy Spirit, You are welcome here." This song encapsulates my desire for the glorious habitation of God in our church. It is, I think, exactly what God is calling us to: Crying out for His presence.

This is the crux of my presentation: Are we ready to consider a purposeful and committed prayer for revival? Can we have a all night prayer time, once a month perhaps? Can we have extended worship times where we go in with the specific purpose to sacrificially offer up our hearts to God? Can we commit to ushering in the Presence of God by making a way for Him to come? Revival starts with prayer and a bit of faith.

I submit this to you and the rest of the leadership for prayerful consideration.


1Co. 2:4-5 My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on men’s wisdom, but on God’s power.

How to Replace Obamacare - impressive read.

 How to Replace Obamacare

JAMES C. CAPRETTA and ROBERT E. MOFFIT

When the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (commonly known as "Obamacare") was signed into law in the spring of 2010, congressional opponents vowed that the fight was not over. The most disastrous features of the new law would not take effect until 2014, leaving time for a concerted campaign to avert catastrophe. The way to spend that time, these opponents argued, was working to "repeal and replace" the law that Congress had just enacted.
The "repeal and replace" formulation quickly caught on, but it was not without its critics. That Obamacare should be "repealed" was obvious, given how strenuously conservatives and many independents objected to the new law. But "replace"? Hammering out the details of a new health-care law might easily stir controversy and sow discord, thereby undermining the push for "repeal."

This concern is not unfounded. But repeal will not be enough, for a simple reason: Although Obamacare would worsen many of the problems with our system of health-care financing, that system clearly does call out for serious reform. Despite the widespread public antipathy toward the new health-care law, simply reverting to the pre-Obamacare status quo would be viewed by many Americans, perhaps even most, as unacceptable. After all, a repeal-only approach would leave many of the most grievous flaws in our system of financing health care unaddressed. Chief among them would be steadily rising health-care costs, driven by the same misguided government policies that so evidently demand reform.

If the problems that are today obvious to the public had been addressed by market-oriented policies over the past few decades, there would have been no political opening through which to ram Obamacare. Instead, these problems were allowed to fester; by 2009, they had become so acute that there was strong sentiment, even among some business-oriented conservatives, that "something had to be done." And as the 2010 congressional debate over Obamacare reached its climax, this sentiment — that some action, even an imperfect one, would be better than nothing — likely played a large role in enabling the health-care law to pass.

This history suggests that, now that Obamacare is with us, the law cannot be reversed without a credible proposal for what should take its place. Those reforms must account for both the strengths and the weaknesses of our health-care system, and must solve the problems that contributed to the demand for Obamacare in the first place. There is room for debate about the particulars of these reforms, and different components of our health-care system will call for different kinds of fixes. What any effective solution must involve, however, is the creation of a true market in health coverage — one that drives efficiency through competition, and places health-care decisions in the hands of consumers and taxpayers, where they belong.

WHAT NEEDS FIXING

America's health-care system has important strengths that must not be overlooked. Most notable among these are an openness to medical innovation that is absent from more centrally planned systems and a network of clinics and hospitals capable of offering the most advanced care found anywhere in the world. The vast majority of Americans (almost 80%) have ready access to this high level of care through third-party insurance arrangements, obtaining coverage from their employers or from federal programs like Medicare and Medicaid. Another 10% have individually purchased coverage.

But for all its considerable strengths, the system suffers from pervasive weaknesses as well. The most serious of these is rapidly rising costs. According to the Congressional Budget Office, between 1975 and 2005, annual per-person health spending in the United States rose, on average, 2 percentage points faster than per-person economic growth. In other words, the escalation of health costs has far outpaced the rise in our national income. This has left more and more people unable to afford insurance, and it now poses significant problems for government budgets: Both federal and state governments spend an enormous amount on health care, but government's revenue base for taxation grows along with the economy, not with health-care costs. So as government spending on health care has surged, tax collection has not kept pace — yielding the primary driver of today's deficits and mounting debt.

Of course, government health-care programs and policies are largely responsible for these rising costs in the first place. To begin, the design of Medicare is terribly flawed: Because the program pays providers of care based on the volume of their services, it creates a massive incentive for inefficiency and overuse. And because Medicare is the biggest payer in most health-care markets in America, that incentive badly distorts the economics of the entire sector. Furthermore, the Medicaid program inflates costs by (among other policies) having states control how the program is run while the federal government pays most of the bills. The result is that neither party has both the incentive and ability to keep costs in check.

The third driver is the tax exclusion for employer-provided insurance: The federal government does not count the amount that employers spend on health insurance for their employees toward workers' taxable income. This tax exclusion inflates costs by effectively rewarding higher-premium plans and by encouraging employer-purchased insurance, thereby preventing a real consumer market in coverage. The people who use the insurance (workers) are not the people who buy it (employers); many Americans thus have no idea how much is spent for the health care they receive. As a result, there is no clear relationship between cost and value, without which there can be no real prices, no real incentives for efficiency and quality, and thus no limitations on the growth of costs.

But while the cost explosion is clearly the greatest problem with America's health-care system (and the cause of most of its other problems), costs are not always the focus of the public debate. The most politically salient problem is often the lack of secure insurance coverage for many millions of Americans, and the related problem of insuring Americans with pre-existing and expensive medical conditions. This concern — that if these Americans lost their insurance they might not be able to find affordable coverage again — is of course related to the high cost of care, which has made it more difficult to provide affordable coverage for everyone, including the sickest among us. But the problem of providing stable insurance to people with pre-existing conditions is also driven by factors unrelated to costs. Foremost among these is the heavy reliance on employer-sponsored insurance that is not owned by workers, and therefore not portable when workers move from job to job or leave the work force.

Proponents of Obamacare like to create the impression that there are tens of millions of Americans trapped by their pre-existing conditions, sick and stuck with lousy insurance and no options. In truth, the vast majority of working Americans have good and secure coverage today, including many millions of people with expensive health conditions. Thanks in part to protections enacted into federal law in 1996 (through the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA), a person who remains continuously insured as he moves from job to job is protected against inflated premiums and coverage exclusions stemming from a health condition. Thus only a very small percentage of Americans face the pre-existing condition dilemma.

But a small percentage of our large population is still a lot of people. There is no denying that cracks in the system exist, and that many Americans fall through them. This is particularly true of people who need to move from job-based coverage into the individual market. Here the 1996 law is entirely inadequate: People who leave the work force and need to buy insurance on their own can face sky-high premiums for weak coverage just because they happen to suffer from a health condition over which they often have little control. Though the number of families in such circumstances is relatively small, it is large enough that many Americans are personally acquainted with people facing these unpleasant realities. This experience is enough to shape public opinion; surveys show that roughly four out of five Americans support provisions in Obamacare that require insurers to sell their products to all comers at the same rates without regard to health status.

The Obama administration is trying to channel this desire to fix the problem of covering pre-existing conditions into a case for retaining the entire Obamacare edifice. Starting in the middle of 2009, the president and his top aides took to calling their plan "insurance reform," as if the law's most important elements were simply new rules designed to protect hapless consumers from unscrupulous insurance companies.

This is, of course, a gross mischaracterization of what Obamacare actually does. Among other features, the law implements a massive expansion of taxpayer obligations. It adds two new entitlement programs at an expense of at least $1 trillion over a decade. In that same period, it raises taxes by more than $500 billion. It cuts Medicare payments to those providing medical services by roughly $500 billion, and sets up an unaccountable board — the Independent Payment Advisory Board — to enforce new caps on future Medicare growth through specific payment cuts to Medicare providers. Most egregiously, it puts the federal government in command of the health sector, giving bureaucrats immense new power to decide matters ranging from what services must be covered in every American's insurance plan to how doctors and hospitals organize themselves and do business.

Obamacare is thus far more than "insurance reform." But it is revealing that this is how the administration hopes the law will be perceived by average Americans. Obamacare's opponents should take note of the appeal of this idea: Our nation does need real insurance reform, but it can be implemented in ways that address the problems with our health-care system instead of exacerbating them.

PILLARS OF REFORM
To be credible, the replacement for Obamacare must address in a plausible way the genuine problems with our system of financing health care. Pre-eminent among these are the explosion in costs, the rising numbers of uninsured, and the challenge of covering Americans with pre-existing conditions.

The good news for Obamacare opponents is that much of the work of building such a plan has already been done. A small but persistent band of reformers and economists has spent many years promoting and refining the elements of a market-based approach to remedying what ails American health care. These ideas have animated scores of plans released by various organizations, including some proposed after Obamacare's enactment. And while these plans differ in their details, they share a core set of seven principles that should form the basis of any proposal for replacing Obamacare.

The first crucial component of any serious reform must be a "defined contribution" approach to the public financing of health care — the essential prerequisite for a functioning marketplace that imposes cost and quality discipline. In most sectors of our economy, the normal dynamics of supply and demand keep costs in check and reward suppliers that find innovative ways to deliver more for less. As described above, however, this is not the case in the health-care sector, principally because the federal government has completely distorted consumer incentives.

For market forces to work, consumers must be cost-conscious. Those who decide to consume goods or services must face tradeoffs that require them to prioritize the various uses of their money. In the health sector, there is virtually no cost consciousness on the part of consumers: The vast majority of Americans get their insurance through their employers or through Medicare or Medicaid. In each case, as noted above, the federal subsidy grows as the cost of insurance grows, thereby undermining the incentive to keep costs low. When an employer decides to provide a more generous health-benefit plan to his employees, the U.S. Treasury pays for a good portion of the added costs, because health insurance is a tax-free fringe benefit for workers. When a doctor orders more tests or procedures of dubious clinical value for a patient enrolled in Medicare, it is mainly taxpayers who pick up the tab. And when states pile more people into Medicaid, it is again taxpayers — federal and state — who shoulder the cost. With this kind of subsidy structure, it is not at all surprising that cost escalation throughout the health system has been rapid.

A replacement program for Obamacare must therefore move American health care away from open-ended government subsidies and tax breaks, and toward a defined-contribution system. Under this approach, health coverage would be provided through competing insurance plans; government's involvement would come through the provision of a fixed financial contribution toward the purchase of insurance by each beneficiary. That subsidy would not vary based on a person's insurance plan, giving Americans every incentive to shop for good value in their health coverage and to get the most for their defined-contribution dollars.

In the context of employer plans, this approach would mean moving away from the unlimited tax break that is conferred on employer-paid premiums, and instead providing directly to workers a fixed tax credit that would offset the cost of enrollment in the private insurance plans of their choice. Workers selecting more expensive insurance plans would pay for the added premiums out of their own pockets. Those choosing low-premium, high-value plans would pocket the savings, enabling them to offset additional health expenses if they wished to do so. This system would not only be more efficient: It would also be a far more equitable way to provide health benefits through the tax code. American taxpayers would get a break for health coverage as individuals, irrespective of their employment status or the generosity of the health plan provided by their employers.

In the context of Medicare and Medicaid, meanwhile, the government would similarly provide a fixed (though of course far more generous) level of support, sometimes called "premium support," that would guarantee insurance coverage to beneficiaries but would allow them to choose among competing options and encourage them to seek out the best value for their money (as discussed at greater length below).

The second pillar of reform should be personal responsibility and continuous-coverage protection. Obamacare attempts to address the challenge of covering people with pre-existing conditions with heavy-handed mandates, especially the requirement that all Americans enroll in government-approved insurance plans (the so-called "individual mandate"). A replacement program for Obamacare should come at the problem from the opposite direction, with government forsaking coercion and instead extending a new commitment to the American people: If you stay continuously enrolled in health insurance, with at least catastrophic coverage, you will never again face the prospect of high premiums associated with developing a costly health condition.

For this commitment to become a reality, some changes would have to be made to both federal law and state insurance regulation. (These proposed changes are discussed in more detail in "How to Cover Pre-existing Conditions," by James Capretta and Tom Miller, published in the Summer 2010 issue of National Affairs.) To begin, the federal government would need to close the gaps in protection that emerge when people move from employer-sponsored plans to the individual market regulated by the states. This problem could be remedied by amending the 1996 HIPAA law to allow workers to move directly from group to individual insurance without first having to pay out of pocket for the (lengthy) extension of their employer-based plans through so-called "COBRA" coverage. In 1985, the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (or COBRA) allowed workers who lose their jobs to remain on their employers' health-insurance plans for months, provided they pay the full premium cost themselves (usually a significant expense). HIPAA then required workers eligible for this COBRA option to exercise it before they could be given any protection in the individual insurance markets regulated by the states. Since hardly any workers follow this prescribed course, they enter the individual market with no protections from pre-existing condition exclusions. That would change if workers were protected when they moved directly from group to individual insurance plans.

Next, states would need to amend their regulations of the individual and small-business insurance markets to require insurers to sell coverage to customers who have remained continuously covered. These new regulations would also have to require that such coverage be made available at standard rates — that is, at rates that apply without regard to differences in health status (age and geographic adjustments would be permitted).

Because some workers who leave job-based plans for the individual market could be quite sick, a credible Obamacare replacement plan would also need to include a new approach to covering the high insurance costs for these Americans. Different proposals have offered different mechanisms, but all would move the burden away from the sick patients themselves to a larger and broader pool of people, either through regulation or through a direct government program such as a high-risk pool. For people who have not been continuously insured, these protections generally would not apply. States could continue to allow insurers to charge higher premiums to these individuals based on their respective health risks. There would thus be a very strong incentive for all Americans to remain continuously covered. (At the time of enactment, it would make sense to give those Americans who were not in continuous coverage the opportunity to come into the new system without penalty and to secure this new protection.)
This approach would achieve the goal of providing realistic and affordable options for people with pre-existing conditions, but without imposing the misguided, overbearing, and counter-productive architecture of Obamacare — and in a way that encourages a competitive insurance market and an innovative health sector rather than undermining them.

The third pillar of reform must be a genuine partnership with the states. Under Obamacare, states are treated as mere functionaries in a new centrally planned and federally managed system. The law gives state officials a take-it-or-leave-it choice: They can implement and administer the new policies under Obamacare — such as state-level insurance exchanges — to the letter, without any deviation or adjustment, incurring the extra costs of these new programs along the way. Or state governments can refuse this managerial responsibility and instead have the federal government come in and operate the exchanges and other new components of the law on the states' behalf. But in neither case are the states afforded any independence or flexibility, any room to adapt the requirements imposed by Obamacare to the particular circumstances of their populations, or to innovate to achieve greater quality or efficiency.

A replacement plan must be true to the Constitution and reflect a genuine federalist philosophy. Any program to address the problems in American health care will entail some degree of national policy, but it can still leave ample room for state initiative and encourage state-level solutions. There is good reason to allow such discretion: States vary significantly in their demographics, their economic profiles, their infrastructure, their levels of employment and poverty, their Medicaid enrollments, and their numbers of uninsured. There is wide disparity among states in the costs of uncompensated care, the scope of employment-based health insurance, and the condition of individual health-insurance markets. States differ markedly in the range of their health-care problems and in their capacities to cope with them.

Moreover, states can be powerful engines of policy innovation and experimentation in health-care reform, insurance-market reform, and tort and medical-malpractice reform, as well as in the financing and delivery of care in safety-net programs. In recent decades, a number of states have attempted their own solutions to our health-care financing crisis. But because that financing crisis is driven by deformed federal policies, all that these states have been able to do is try to mitigate the effects of Washington's mistakes. A reform that addressed those mistakes directly at the national level could then free the states to address the problems of health-care financing in the ways that best suit their needs.

To respect federalism and reap its benefits, nothing in an Obamacare replacement agenda should compel state adoption, instead leaving the participation of state governments completely voluntary. Those states that do participate in any federal initiative should be given meaningful control over the most important components of regulation, especially the power to design and operate their own health-insurance markets (within minimal federal standards). Such deference to state authority would mean allowing states to retain full control over matters like what coverage to require in health insurance and how to facilitate consumer enrollment in qualified plans. Crucially, no Obamacare replacement program should include a federal requirement that states set up health-insurance exchanges that could later become instruments of excessive regulatory control. Rather, states should be given two tasks: informing consumers of their insurance options, and easing their enrollment into the plans they choose by cooperating with the federal government to facilitate the payment of credits and vouchers directly to private insurers. How states perform these critical tasks should be left entirely up to them.

Defined-contribution financial support, protection for Americans who remain continuously enrolled in insurance plans, and genuine federalism are the essential overall concepts that must define any serious health-care reform. But policymakers will also need to apply these principles to the transformation of today's funding and financing mechanisms: the tax exclusion for employer-provided health coverage, and the Medicaid and Medicare systems.

TAX REFORM AND HEALTH REFORM

The fourth pillar of a real reform agenda would therefore address the tax treatment of employer-sponsored plans. Today's arrangement is somewhat counterintuitive: Because the tax exclusion for health-care premiums is open-ended, workers and employers have an incentive to make health benefits a disproportionately large share of total compensation. And because employers obtain and manage health plans for their workers, there is far too much distance between those who purchase care and those who consume it. The key decisions in American health care thus rest not with patients and doctors, but rather with employers, managed-care executives, and government officials — a structure that has prevented the emergence of a properly functioning marketplace. Individuals and families rarely have a property right in their health-insurance policies and rarely control the terms and conditions of coverage (as they do with auto, life, or home owner's insurance). Health insurance is rarely portable in any real sense of the term, as workers cannot remain enrolled in the same insurance plans when they switch jobs.

Federal tax policy is at the root of these market malfunctions, and has caused a host of related problems. These include higher health-care costs, the absence of continuous and secure coverage, a lack of transparency in health-care financing, discrimination against lower-income workers and favoritism toward higher-income workers, and a playing field tilted decidedly in favor of group health insurance and against individually purchased coverage. Among economists, including some of President Obama's advisors, there is an overwhelming consensus that reform of health-insurance markets must begin with a major change in the federal tax treatment of health insurance.

The most plausible way to implement such a change would be to transform today's tax exclusion for employer-provided insurance into a standard tax credit that would extend to all Americans, regardless of employment status, which they could then use to purchase the private coverage of their choice. As to how such a consumer-controlled federal tax credit would be designed, policymakers have a variety of options from which to choose. For instance, in its 2011 "Saving the American Dream" plan, the Heritage Foundation proposed replacing today's unlimited tax break with a new, non-refundable tax credit that would be phased out for the wealthiest citizens. Another approach would be to limit the credit to some pre-determined level of insurance coverage. Because the credit amount would not be increased for workers selecting more expensive insurance plans, those choosing such plans would pay the difference while those opting for plans with lower premiums would not be penalized (with a diminished tax benefit) for economizing.

One such proposal was offered during the 2008 presidential campaign by Senator John McCain, who suggested a universal program of refundable tax credits that would be payable to all households. In 2007, President George W. Bush proposed replacing today's tax treatment of insurance with a universal deduction for health-insurance premiums that would be available to people in employer-sponsored plans, as well as to those in the individual market. In both cases, the value of these credits and deductions would increase over time by some measure of inflation — ensuring that they would keep pace with fluctuations in the cost of living, while also ensuring that government's costs would remain predictable and manageable.

In all of these formulations, the essential common element is a move toward consumer control. Individuals would become active, cost-conscious consumers looking for value in the health-care marketplace. This shift would, in turn, create tremendous incentives for those delivering medical services to find better and less expensive ways of caring for patients and keeping them well.

For the purposes of implementing tax-based health-care reform, it would make sense to bifurcate the market for employer-based coverage into small and large employers. For smaller employers (for instance, those with fewer than 200 employees), there is reason to move quickly to change the tax treatment of job-based insurance: Many small businesses do not even offer coverage today, so a reform that substituted tax credits for today's tax preference would immediately help millions of working Americans get better coverage than they now have. Indeed, the availability of a credit or deduction would likely reduce the number of uninsured Americans by a significant measure. Consumers wouldn't want to leave the credit money on the table, and insurers would be eager to provide them with ways to spend it. Insurance companies would thus have every reason to design minimal plans (including, at the very least, catastrophic coverage) with prices roughly equal to the amount of the credit or deduction, and consumers who might otherwise not buy coverage would have every reason to purchase those plans. Moreover, the insurance marketplace for small-business workers tends to be volatile, with workers passing in and out of coverage frequently as they change jobs or leave the work force. Moving toward a tax-credit system would give these workers the chance to sign up for insurance that they would own and keep, even as their life circumstances changed.

On the other hand, many tens of millions of Americans are now signed up with good and stable large-employer plans. Although these workers see a need for reform, they do not want to lose the coverage they have today. For both political and practical reasons, it would make sense to leave these people where they are, in their large-employer plans, as the reforms in the other parts of the marketplace are implemented and refined. The advantages of these changes — including the expansion of personal and portable health insurance, lower-cost health coverage, and higher take-home pay — would, over time, become evident to workers in large-employer plans. The key, however, is that the decision to change coverage would rest not with government but with workers and employers, who would be under no obligation to change the terms of employees' benefit plans. The only modification that should be pursued immediately is the placement of an upper limit on the amount of employer-paid premiums eligible for the existing federal tax break; this would level the playing field somewhat between the existing tax benefit and the new tax credit. Under this proposal, premiums paid by employers above the upper limit would be counted as taxable compensation to workers. This would give both employers and employees a stronger incentive than they have today to move toward low-premium, high-value plans.

An important additional detail of such a reform plan would apply to people who are eligible for a federal tax credit (or perhaps a Medicaid voucher) and yet still do not sign up for coverage. For these people, one option would be to establish an automatic-enrollment program in which states assign people on a random basis to a series of state-approved private plans. The insurers offering these default options would be allowed to adjust the up-front deductibles as necessary to ensure that the premiums for the insurance plans do not exceed the credits enrollees are eligible to receive. The aim would be to make sure that people who are placed in an insurance plan by default pay no additional premiums out of their own pockets. Those automatically enrolled could switch out of their default plans into other insurance plans at any time (subject to state rules governing enrollment periods); if they had moral or other reasons for not carrying insurance coverage, they would be free to drop out of insurance enrollment altogether.

Such a default enrollment program could be an important feature of a credible replacement plan, allowing millions of Americans to leave the ranks of the uninsured and to secure continuous-coverage protection without the coercion of Obamacare's mandates. This flexibility would likely be a very attractive selling point for a consensus replacement proposal.

IMPROVING HEALTH CARE FOR THE VULNERABLE

The fifth key component of a genuine health-care reform plan must be an overhaul of Medicaid. Medicaid is actually three separate programs: health insurance for lower-income working-age adults and their children, health and long-term care for the non-elderly with severe disabilities, and long-term care for the frail elderly. For the purposes of replacing Obamacare, the relevant program to change is insurance coverage for working-age adults and children; the other parts will need reform as well, but should be addressed in a separate legislative effort.

Medicaid coverage for working-age adults and children has its roots in welfare. Starting in 1965, women with low incomes, along with their dependent children, were given cash support through a federal-state program (known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children until 1996, and then transformed into the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program), and provided with medical coverage through Medicaid. Over the years, Medicaid has been modified many times by federal and state statutes, but the program still retains its welfare-based characteristics. Most troubling among these is the program's tendency to discourage recipients from securing better-paying jobs, since Medicaid coverage is not integrated with our employment-based system of insurance. For instance, if a woman on Medicaid were to accept a higher-paying job, she might lose her Medicaid insurance without being offered insurance through her place of employment. The result could therefore be a net reduction in her overall financial well-being.

Furthermore, because Medicaid pays exceedingly low fees to care providers, the program does not always offer high-quality coverage. Not surprisingly, as states have pushed physician-reimbursement levels well below the actual costs of caring for Medicaid patients, many doctors have responded by severely restricting the number of Medicaid patients they will see. The result for people on Medicaid is often a lack of accessible quality health care, precisely what the program is supposed to provide.

In replacing Obamacare, policymakers should move lower-income people out of the limited sphere of Medicaid options and into the same private health-insurance markets in which their fellow citizens purchase coverage. This change would afford these patients greater access to doctors and specialists, and would reduce the disincentive to higher-paying work.

There is more than one way to accomplish this objective. In the Heritage Foundation proposal noted above, for instance, existing financing for acute care provided through Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program would be transformed into a large pool of funding to be re-allocated to current beneficiaries and other low-income Americans in the form of a federal health-care subsidy (the equivalent of a "refundable tax credit") for private insurance. If they wished, state governments could provide their own support on top of this federal aid. Benefits under such a plan would be means-tested, with the lowest-income Americans receiving the most generous level of assistance and subsidies being gradually reduced for those with higher incomes as they became eligible for federal tax credits for coverage. (Because the credit in the Heritage plan is non-refundable, people would not be eligible for it until they earned enough to pay federal income taxes.)

A similar approach would give Medicaid recipients the same federal tax credit that workers would receive in a reformed marketplace for health insurance. The federal government could then convert Medicaid into a per-person allotment to the states, funded through a block grant, that would supplement the base credit for a state's low-income residents. The federal allotment to the states would be set so that, when combined with the federal support for the base tax credits or vouchers for the Medicaid-eligible population, total federal spending on the Medicaid population in a state would equal the amount that would have been spent under pre-Obamacare Medicaid. After the first year, the federal allotment to the states could be set to grow commensurate with the economy or some other reasonable measure of inflation. States would not be required to reform Medicaid in this manner; if they did, though, they would have far greater freedom to run the program according to their own priorities instead of in response to federal dictates.

The same move toward market incentives and efficiency should characterize our approach to Medicare reform in the wake of Obamacare's repeal. The sixth pillar of a replacement plan must therefore be a premium-support reform of Medicare.

It is hard to overstate the importance of such a reform to the larger goals of controlling costs and improving quality and access to coverage. Of all the changes that are necessary to bring more cost discipline to health care, moving Medicare toward a defined-contribution structure, and away from today's open-ended defined-benefit structure, is certainly the most vital. 

Medicare is the largest payer for services in most markets; the system of hospital and physician care in most communities has been built up around Medicare's financial incentives.
Today, the program's dominant fee-for-service structure provides all the wrong incentives. All of the various suppliers of medical services for Medicare patients — the diagnostic labs, the physicians, the hospitals, the outpatient clinics, the nursing homes, and many others — can bill the program separately whenever they render a service to a patient. Absent Medicare's incentives, they might well consolidate and coordinate to reduce overhead and streamline care, providing higher-quality services at lower cost. Thanks to Medicare, however, these organizations can sustain themselves financially without having to affiliate with any of the other service providers. The result is extreme fragmentation and lack of coordination, which permeates the entire health-care system to the detriment of patient care.

As long as Medicare continues to operate as it does today, the way doctors and hospitals are organized will not change and will, in most markets, remain excessively costly and inefficient. This will soon prove disastrous for the federal budget: The first wave of the huge Baby Boom generation, 77 million strong, is beginning to retire. Between 2010 and 2030, Medicare's enrollment is projected to increase from 47 million to more than 80 million beneficiaries, while the ratio of workers to beneficiaries will decline from 3.7-to-1 today to 2.4-to-1 in 2030.

Obamacare's "solution" for Medicare will exacerbate the problem, not solve it. The law claims to yield $575 billion in savings over ten years through Medicare payment cuts, but those cuts won't bring more efficiency to the program. They are simply across-the-board price controls that will shift costs off of the federal balance sheets and onto non-Medicare patients (whose costs would rise to make up the difference), while also driving willing suppliers out of the marketplace. Moreover, Obamacare has imposed, for the first time in Medicare's history, a hard cap on the growth of Medicare spending, tying it to the rate of inflation and subsequently to growth in the general economy. This would, in effect, amount to a global budget for Medicare, analogous in some ways to the tough budgetary caps characteristic of single-payer health programs. To make matters worse, this cap would be enforced in accordance with the decisions of a new Independent Payment Advisory Board — a group of 15 appointed experts whose decisions would be automatically implemented unless Congress actively rejected them.

It is worth noting that, under the statute, the IPAB's authority is confined to selective Medicare payment reductions (that is, to reducing the fees paid per service in an otherwise unreformed system), and would not extend to any changes in benefit design, beneficiary payment, or the structure of the program itself. Thus there is no prospect that the IPAB will implement reforms capable of making Medicare more efficient. The board can enforce the hard cap on Medicare spending only in the same way budget cuts have always been imposed by Congress in Medicare: through price controls that exacerbate the inefficiencies in how health care is delivered to patients.

The alternative to this disastrous, top-down, micromanaged approach is to convert Medicare into a premium-support program. While such a reform should try to capture the bulk of the huge Baby Boom generation, it should also be carefully phased in, applying only to future enrollees. A transition to a new premium-support model should exempt from the changes people who are currently in the Medicare program and those very close to retiring. (For instance, the plan offered by Republican congressman Paul Ryan and Democratic senator Ron Wyden would start with Americans who are 55 today, and so will enter the program in ten years.)

In lieu of today's open-ended benefit, a premium-support system would allow new beneficiaries (after the transition) to decide how to use a fixed-dollar contribution provided by Medicare. Each beneficiary would choose from a menu of approved insurance plans. If a beneficiary's premium for his chosen plan was higher than the Medicare contribution, he would pay the difference out of his own pocket. If he chose a less expensive plan, he would pay lower premiums and keep the savings. This structure would provide a powerful incentive for the program's participants to find high-value plans that charge low premiums for quality care, and therefore for insurers to offer such plans.

With cost-conscious consumers looking for the best value for their money, cost-cutting innovations would be rewarded, not punished as they are today. Physicians and hospitals would have strong financial incentives to re-organize themselves to increase productivity and efficiency in order to capture a larger share of what would become a highly competitive marketplace. This is the only way to slow the growth of health-care costs without harming the quality of care.

While Medicare reform is absolutely essential to restraining cost escalation and to improving the affordability of health care for all Americans, it need not be enacted in the same legislation as an Obamacare replacement program. This is true especially because a replacement program would be focused primarily on providing an alternative vision of insurance coverage for working-age Americans, not retirees. Still, the reform of Medicare suggested here is entirely consistent with, and in fact reinforces, the rest of the reforms proposed above. It is up to the sponsors of replacement legislation to decide whether moving one or two pieces of health-care legislation through Congress at a time would be more likely to result in enactment.

FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR A CHANGE

Finally, as a key criticism of Obamacare is the danger it poses to federal finances, the seventh pillar of a serious health-care reform plan must be the full offset of all new costs through spending cuts.

If past experience is any guide, Obamacare's new entitlement and massive expansions of Medicaid could cost several times more than the official estimate (about $1 trillion over a decade). Moreover, Obamacare's sponsors resorted to a series of gimmicks and budgetary sleights of hand to make it seem as if the legislation would actually improve, rather than worsen, the long-term budget outlook. But while repealing Obamacare would avert these costs, a credible replacement program would certainly entail some expenses of its own. These would result especially from the subsidization of coverage — whether through the tax credit for the purchase of private insurance, the additional support for many lower-wage workers, or the support for Americans who enter the insurance pool with pre-existing conditions.

To be sure, some of the new costs from a replacement program would be offset by the savings reaped from other components of the reform package. For example, placing an upper limit on the tax break for employer-paid premiums in the large-employer market would generate substantial revenue, partially offsetting the cost of extending credits to Americans in the small-business and individual marketplaces. The reforms of Medicaid, too, would help, ensuring that future federal costs would grow at a more moderate pace than is expected under current law.
Even so, additional spending reductions will be necessary to fully offset the added budgetary burden of replacement legislation. The spending reductions chosen should be real cuts, not budget gimmicks, and should be of sufficient magnitude to ensure that the legislation results in a net decline in federal spending, taxes, and future budget deficits.

The first place to look for such cuts is within existing health-entitlement spending. For instance, both Medicare and Medicaid subsidize hospitals for caring for the uninsured and underinsured. These subsidies could be cut back substantially or eliminated altogether in a replacement program, since that program would extend insurance protection to millions of uninsured people, thus allowing tens of billions of dollars in savings from these indirect means of support.

 

In addition, the Medicare fee-for-service program should be modified to reduce costs even during the window that precedes the full transition to a premium-support program for new entrants. Such changes could include gradually increasing the retirement age, as well as adjusting the rules for supplementary insurance coverage so that seniors have an incentive to responsibly restrain their health-care spending. Policymakers might also consider using some type of means test, adjusting the level of Medicare subsidies or premiums based on income, in order to ensure that taxpayer dollars are not providing needlessly generous benefits to the very wealthy.

A HISTORIC OPPORTUNITY

The enactment of Obamacare has created a political opening for a credible alternative to the health-care status quo. But it would be foolish to assume that this opening will last very long; once it has closed, it is not likely to appear again.

Obamacare is deeply unpopular because it is based on a bureaucratic, government-centered vision of American health care. The entire program is rooted in an expansion of federal power and everything that entails: massive new entitlements, additional dependence on government, tax hikes that hinder economic growth, and federal micromanagement of health care that produces a sharp decline in the quality of American medicine. This is exactly what voters do not want in a proposal to reform the nation's health-care system.

But voters do want a better system, with more security and with affordable and reliable coverage and care. Conservatives thus have a rare opportunity to advance their vision of reform. It will entail some controversy and political risk, which cannot be avoided in a policy arena as complex as health care. But the policy and political upsides are well worth the effort. A market-driven alternative can beat Obamacare on every metric that matters. It will be less costly to taxpayers, more flexible in meeting the diverse needs of citizens, less bureaucratic, and consistent with the Constitution and our values.

Some might observe that if this kind of program had been advanced by conservatives ten years ago, Obamacare might have been avoided in the first place. Perhaps. But it is still not too late to avert disaster: Americans are hungry for a credible alternative to Obamacare, one that carries much less risk for future taxpayers and does not give government control over the delivery of medical care. Now is the time to offer it to them.

James C. Capretta is a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Robert E. Moffit is a senior fellow in the Center for Policy Innovation at the Heritage Foundation.

The Buffet Rule: The Nation magazine

The Nation is in Cahoots with a liberal Democrat Tammy Baldwin. They published a letter from her which complains about the rich paying lower taxes than the middle class.

Others have ably explained that falseness of this, so all I wish to make note of is that Ms. Baldwin's solution is not to lower taxes on the middles class, it is to RAISE taxes on the rich.

Apparently, "tax fairness" is to make sure everyone is paying the highest rate possible.

Dear Fellow Progressive,

Every day millions of Americans wake up facing a choice between making a mortgage payment or saving for their kid's college fund. They're dipping into their retirement funds to pay for necessities like groceries and gas.

While middle class Americans struggle every day to make ends meet, millionaires and billionaires game the system to pay a far lower tax rate than families with a modest income.

But this Tax Day, we have an opportunity to change all that. I'm standing with President Obama, and a coalition of tens of thousands of progressive, grassroots activists who are calling for passage of the Buffett Rule for Tax Fairness -- because its common sense.

The Buffett Rule is named after billionaire investor Warren Buffett, one of the richest people in the world. Having endorsed our plan, he frequently notes how wrong it is that he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. And it's true -- many middle class families pay up to double the rate paid by this billionaire.

Right now, the wealthiest one-tenth of the 1% benefit from their own set of rules. But nobody should get to duck paying their fair share of taxes just because they have an expensive accountant or know how to work the system. It's not fair, and it's time to right this wrong -- you can help! Add your name next to Warren Buffett's on our petition and join the call for tax fairness!

In the next few days, the Senate will vote on the Buffett Rule. We must send a strong message to let everyone know just how committed we are to leveling the playing field between the super-rich and middle class families. For too long in America, there's been two tax systems: one for the middle class and another for the very wealthiest. It's time for everyone to start paying their fair share.

Thanks for all you do,

Tammy Baldwin

Paid for by Tammy Baldwin for Senate

Evolution - FB conversation

My FB friend A. R. posted this:

Evolution (I'm talking about the origin of all life and not the variation within a species) is widely accepted and is considered (by some) "scientific truth". Yet real science is gained through observation and experimentation. Did we observe the first form of life come into existance? Did we observe one form of life change into a completely different form of life? No..according to evolution that takes millions of years. Are there any fossils that show this slow million year process? No..this isn't true science. It's a theory a mere speculation on the origin of life.

Me: This type of evolution is an interpretation of historical data as opposed to a result of the scientific method.

M.W.: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory

M.W.: I assume this is coming from your belief in creationism?If so, please show me some of your evidence for creationism... preferably not from the bible.

Me: M.W., perhaps first you would explain how something can come from nothing. Before there was photons, gravity, or matter, before the Big Bang, where did stuff come from? And perhaps you can answer without the obligatory denigration of those who believe in god or gods.

A.R.: So should we even consider evolution a theory? Once a hypothesis is verified through experimentation and observation it becomes a theory. There are HUGE gaps in the fossil record. You'd think that if evolution were true there would be a continuous flux in the organic world instead of a very stable set of species.

A.R.: There are no sub species or transitional species. If we all evolved from one form of life why can't we interbreed? Sure in a lab we can produce a catdog but it's sterile it can't reproduce another catdog on its own can it? Not only that but where did DNA come from? It's information, a blueprint for every living organism. Information doesn't just pop out of no where.

M.W.: Here is some good information on the subject, If I had more time i would craft my own argument but i need to leave. I am by no means trying to offend anyone who may be religious.http://ncse.com/cej/2/2/do-gaps-fossil-record-disprove-descent-with-modification

M.W.: James S Trotter- A scientific theory is not the same as our everyday usage of "theory." A scientific theory is sound, backed by evidence, and demonstrable, like the theory of gravity. Evolution has more evidence than any other scientific theory to date. It is an incontrovertible fact of our universe; evolution happens.

A.R.: This movie doesnt prove creation but really no one can prove evolution or creation. It leads you to think though can random unthinking processes really be our true origin?

M.W.: Also, the tactic of elevating the super rational barrier is pointless in regards to proving any creator/disproving physics as it leads to an infinite regress of "what created that?" You ask a question that is a paradox, a trick of language.. Like the liar's paradox (google it). That is to say, if you posit that something simply had to create what came before the big bang as a rule, then your axiom also posits that something had to make that creator/creation system, then the creator of that, and so on into infinity. Now to stop at your personal creator de jour is to imply that it adheres to different axioms which implies that such an omnipotent already exists. That is no form of proof or disproof, whatsoever. Example: Saying the bible is true because God wrote it is not proof that it is true as it is predicated on the belief in which it insists exists. If this is logically acceptable then I am a potato and that is true because I said so and I should know, right... I am the one who is the potato and clearly as the potato I am most qualified to discern as to whether I am a potato or not.

A.L.: It's not the "theory" of gravity, it's the LAW of gravity. Also webster's defines "theory" as a PROPOSED explanation whose status is still CONJECTURAL. Contemplation or speculation. Guess or conjecture.

Me: M.W., the commonly accepted definition of God is a being who is not created. Therefore, your suggestion of infinite regress is a Category Error.

No one has posited that "something had to create what came before the Big Bang..." In fact, you are the one who injected gods into the discussion.

I asked you directly to account for a process where something can come from nothing. Why don't you answer that before we move on to god or gods.

M.W.: Rich, do we now have to define something and nothing? At what point did anyone say that something came from nothing? I may have made an assumption and read between lines, perhaps. I think it is quite reasonable to infer, though, that your comment carried the heavy implication that a god created the "something". You asked, "where did stuff come from?" An answer to that implies that you are looking for something that created it as you chronologically went through a cursory history of matter. If you are trying to use set theory to shroud an honest discussion, then we are at a stand still as your questions implies a certain group of sets in which one could answer. I was trying to dismiss the irrational sets wholly and confine myself to the reasonable ones. I think you may need to do a bit more research on the nature of matter and astrophysics. Again, I refer to the infinite regress that comes from raising the rational barrier as one sees fit. If a god does not require a creator logically, why does matter? This is what I am saying, these are rhetorical questions.. Any explanation for how such a god could exist is just as applicable for the nature of matter but lacks all the other evidence that physics has, ergo, physics seems to be more accurate and likely to predict an unseen truth. Also "And perhaps you can answer without the obligatory denigration of those who believe in god or gods"-- I did not inject gods initially. I am simply trying to remove such a notion that is fruitless and has no place in any scientific discussion. Really, if the linear (and generally considered antiquated now) concept of time is removed, why did anything have to "happen" " before" the big bang? Existence is manifold...

Me: M.W., I am asking a question. If you cannot answer, simply say so. Admitting your ignorance does not diminish you in any way.

M.W.: Again, this is like the liar's paradox. I cannot seem to provide an answer you find satisfactory. What, exactly is the question?

Me: Before we talk about gods, can you tell me what happened before the Big Bang, before anything existed? You have yet to give an answer, let alone a satisfactory one.

M.W.: I realize my responses are verbose and a bit long winded, but I answered that in both rational and irrational capacities in my response of 25 minutes ago.

M.W.: Nothing "happened" before the big bang. That is the simplest way I can answer that.

Me: Your last response is succinct and cogent. Thank you. If I understand you correctly, the Big Bang was the first thing that happened. Various particles of matter were floating around and reacted in such a way as to precipitate a huge explosion, creating an event where stars and galaxies formed, is this correct?

M.W.: Honestly, not to be rude, but no. There are some confusing areas when it comes to quantum dynamics at this level. For example, let’s say a photon and its behavior. It exhibits both wave and particle like behavior. But it is considered mass-less. Outside of relativistic properties and energy-mass relationships, it is hard to use our common words of particle or energy with Bosons when we are contemplating them macroscopically. I imagine you picture something more akin to a chemical reaction, which is not at all what happened in the big bang in this regard.

Me: No rudeness discerned. We are simply conversing on FB, not preparing a treatise. You have a propensity to obfuscate with minutiae when we are discussing general concepts. I am fully aware of the properties of photons, but it is tangential to the discussion. As are bosons. As is any distinction between what kinds of reaction may have happened.

If I may summarize, you appear to think that there never was a state where nothing existed. Matter has always been around. So the only real difference between you and a theist that I can see is that the events of creation were perpetrated by an unconscious, always existent, powerful force as opposed to a conscious, always existent powerful force.

I Am - Scriptures about who God is

Ge. 15:1 I am your shield.

Ge. 26:24 I am the God of your father Abraham. Do not be afraid, for I am with you.

Ge. 28:13 I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac.

Ex. 3:6  I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.

Ex. 3:14 I AM WHO I AM.

Ex. 15:26 I am the LORD, who heals you.

Ex. 20:2 I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.

Ex. 22:27 I am compassionate.

Ex. 31:13 I am the LORD, who makes you holy.

Le. 20:24 I am the LORD your God, who has set you apart from the nations.

Is. 41:10 So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God.

Is. 43:3 For I am the LORD, your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.

Is. 43:11 I, even I, am the LORD, and apart from me there is no savior.

Is. 43:15 I am the LORD, your Holy One, Israel’s Creator, your King.

Is. 43:25 I am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.

Is. 44:6 I am the first and I am the last; apart from me there is no God.

Is. 44:24 I am the LORD, who has made all things.

Is. 45:5 I am the LORD, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God.

Is. 48:17 I am the LORD your God, who teaches you what is best for you, who directs you in the way you should go.

Is. 49:23 I am the LORD; those who hope in me will not be disappointed.

Is. 51:15 For I am the LORD your God, who churns up the sea so that its waves roar — the LORD Almighty is his name.

Jer. 3:12 I am merciful, I will not be angry for ever.

Jer. 9:24 I am the LORD, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight.

Je. 24:7 I am the LORD. They will be my people, and I will be their God.

Je. 32:27 I am the LORD, the God of all mankind. Is anything too hard for me?

Zec. 10:6 I am the LORD their God and I will answer them.

Mal. 1:14 I am a great king, and my name is to be feared among the nations.

Mt. 11:29 I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

Jn. 6:35 I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.

Jn. 8:12 I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.

Jn. 8:58 I tell you the truth, before Abraham was born, I am!

Jn. 10:9 I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved.

Jn. 11:25 I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies.

Jn. 14:6 I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Jn. 14:10 I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me.

Jn. 15:1 I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.

Re. 1:8 I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.

Re. 1:18 I am the Living One; I was dead, and behold I am alive forever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.

Re. 22:16 I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the bright Morning Star.

Re. 22:13 I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.