You know government has gotten too big when postal supervisors have their own lobbying group issuing outrgaed press releases whenever their feelings get hurt. Come on guys, it's not like complaints about the lousy service and budget busting expense at the USPS are unprecedented in American political discourse!The National Association of Postal Supervisors has fired back at President Barack Obama for dragging the U.S. Postal Service further into the health care debate. In an Aug. 14 letter, NAPS President Ted Keating accused Obama of using the Postal Service as a “scapegoat” and unfairly painting it as “an example of inefficiency” during a health care town hall meeting last week. Obama told a crowd in Portsmouth, N.H., Aug. 11 that private health care insurance providers should be able to compete with a government-run public option because “UPS and FedEx are doing just fine. … It’s the Post Office that’s always having problems.”
Keating pointed out that UPS and FedEx revenues are falling faster than Postal Service revenues, and reiterated the overtime, management and work hour reductions the Postal Service has made over the last year:
On a more serious note, the pique of the postal superviors reminds me of the most under-reported reason that Obamacare is floundering and has proven itself deeply unpopular: Obama himself has been a terrible advocate for his position, isssuing gaffe after gaffe in a Biden-esque tidal wave of loggheric fiascos that have paniced rather than soothed, insulted rather than communed.
1. At his ABC "townhall," he responded to a woman's question as to whether her 99 year-old grandmother would have qualified for a pace maker under his plan. The Great Charmer suggested that the old lady might be better off taking a pain pill. Heartless, and also medically wrong. A "pain pill" would be dangerous for someone with a heart condition.
2. At his "health care" press conference, he stated that great savings and efficiencies could be realized by setting up a panel that could better allocate resources. His "simple" explanation: sometimes there's a red pill and a blue pill, and the blue pill is cheaper, yet just as effective, but the market incentivizes using the expensive one. Obama's plan would step in and end such waste. Putting aside the disquieting echoes of "The Matrix," the red pill/blue pill metaphor could only appeal to people who either graduated from Harvard, or failed to finish high school. What if the "blue pill" is only 70% effective? Why would Big Pharma go to the effort of developing new "pills" if the Drug Panel decrees they cannot be sold? And where does Obama think the blue pills come from? They almost always start out life as expensive red pills.
3. At the same press conference, he claimed that doctors were doing frivolous tonsilectomies to increase their profit margins. He hadn't gotten the memo that (1) tonsilectomies have fallen from favor and are not performed as much as they used to be and (2) most doctors - aside from wanting to make money - enter their profession because they want to be care givers. The idea that they would perform unnecessary surgery on children was deeply insulting, and could only come from someone who spends too much time around lawyers.
4. Also at the same press conference, he insulted the Cambridge police department, and Officer Crowley. It wasn't health care related, but it made Obama look like an asshole at the exact moment he needed to be putting on a friendly face to sell health care reform. This was the worst gaffe of the year, as it punctured his image as a racial healer and made him look like a typical progressive hectoring the police. This inevitably carried over to the health care debate.
5. At his health care townhall in NH, he answered a question from a little girl who asked about "mean signs." The girl turned out to be the daughter of a major Obama fund raiser and was an obvious plant. Not technically a gaffe, but it made him - and progressive health care - look like bullshit
6. This was also when he drew the ire of the post office. He did this by trying to reassure people that the public option wouldn't crowd out private insurance because (I'm paraphrasing) "FedEx and UPS compete with the USPS and they're doing great while the post office is inefficient and losing money." How reassuring! To support public health care he cited the branch of the government that people complain the most about! What do people hate about the post office? Long lines and inefficiency. What do they fear about gov't-run health care? Long lines and inefficiency. He's lucky that he didn't cite Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which would have further underscored the free marketer's fundamental point: private enterprise always does thing better than the gov't.
7. This was the same place where he said the AARP had endorsed his plan, when the AARP had done no such thing. The AARP quickly put out a statement saying this was not so, but the damage (to AARP) was done. As far as I know, Obama has never retracted this brazen lie.
8. Just to add insult to injury, Obama said that doctors would rather amputate a diabetic's leg, rather than engage in preventive care because Medicare reimburses them "$30,000" for amputations, but a pittance for preventive care. First, they are reimbursed a fraction of $30,000. Second, the guy doing the amputating is never the guy who has been seeing the diabetic for regular check-ups. Third, if there are doctors out there making money off of for-profit amputations, they would have been drummed out of the profession long ago.
The sad thing is he's obviously trying to convince people through the use of Reaganesque "folksy anecdotes." The problem is that Reagan was a charming, affable guy who'd been around, while Obama is a know-it-all who has spent his adult life in academia and the public sector. Plus, for all his outward charm, Obama is a real wise-ass who is not afraid to insult people who get in his way.
Obama and the Left can try to blame Angry White Men or whomever. They can rant about swastikas all they want. They can try to find the one guy at the rally dumb enough to bring a gun. But nothing will detract from the basic truth that their plans are deeply unpalatable and that their "once in a generation" Great Communicator is not up to the task of persuading people otherwise.
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