Wednesday, July 01, 2009

Invitation to Fraud

How will the government contain costs and limit fraud when anyone with some basic computer equipment can make his own Medicare card?

Money quote:
You want to know what a Medicare identification card is like? It is a little larger than the standard size for credit cards and driver’s licenses. (Of course. Couldn’t have the federal government make a card that will fit in a stack with all the other cards you use.) It has no magnetic strip. It is plain vanilla text and fonts—no security features whatsoever. It could be counterfeited by a sixth-grader with a scanner. It is made out of flimsy paper that would barely qualify for a really cheap business card.
Hat-tip: The Corner

How Does This Help?

Jonah Goldberg explains how the federal government has responded to the economic crisis by flushing money down the toilet.

Recall the White House mantra of “never let a crisis go to waste.” Though the economic implosion had specific causes stemming from the financial and housing markets and how they were regulated, President Obama insisted that the items on his campaign wish list — overhauling health care, imposing carbon cap-and-trade, and reforming education — would be the real solutions to the crisis.
“The fact is, our economy did not fall into decline overnight,” Obama told Congress in February. And only by “investing” in policies formulated years before “toxic asset” became household words could America get out of the crisis.

As a result, we’re now stuck with some of the most absurdly counterproductive legislation imaginable. The national debt is growing faster than the GDP. According to the Congressional Budget Office, within ten years Uncle Sam’s publicly held debt will double to 82 percent of GDP. The CBO predicts that by 2038, our debt will be 200 percent of GDP. Debt siphons off growth for the simple reason that dollars go to paying it off rather than investing in something productive.

Meanwhile, thanks to ongoing trade deficits and relentless borrowing, America’s financial status is deteriorating rapidly. The Commerce Department reported Friday that the value of foreign assets owned by Americans is $19.89 trillion, while the value of American assets owned by foreigners is $23.36 trillion. In other words, we are a “net debtor” to the tune of $3.47 trillion. That represents a 62 percent increase over 2007. Foreigners, most significantly China, own nearly 50 percent of our government’s public debt.

So while the Obama administration frets over the largely phony idea that we are dangerously dependent on foreign oil (Canada sends us about as much oil as the entire Persian Gulf region, and Mexico not much less), we are increasingly threatened by dependence on foreign bondholders who could wreak havoc on the dollar and our interest rates far more easily than OPEC could cut off our oil.

And what are we doing in response? For starters, the House passed carbon cap-and-trade legislation that essentially adds an onerous and inefficient energy tax on everyone, outsources jobs to carbon-profligate India and China, and raises tariffs in an attempt to stem the inevitable bleeding of jobs and manufacturing (the last time we raised tariffs in the midst of a bad recession, we got the Depression). Rather than have America invest in new oil and gas jobs (among the highest-paying of any industry), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insists that one-time gigs weatherizing Granny’s attic and replacing light bulbs are preferable.
Funny how the "solutions" to our economic crisis were just the policies Obama campaigned on long before our financial system began to implode.