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Opinion
Mark Boehler, editor
4A • Sunday, November 24, 2013
Corinth, Miss.
JFK conspiracy in plain sight For all these years, they’ve hidden the truth about the Kennedy assassination. It didn’t require a conspiracy. It just took repeating a falsehood until it became conventional wisdom. The myth about the Kennedy assassination is that President John F. Kennedy, at great personal risk, traveled to Dallas, aka the City of Hate, and was somehow murdered by an atmosphere of Rich intolerance. The truth is that was shot by a communist. Lowry heAs James Piereson writes National in his brilliant book “Camelot Review and the Cultural Revolution,” liberals had the choice after the assassination to make Kennedy a martyr to civil rights or admit that he was a casualty of the Cold War. They found the notion of Kennedy dying for racial progress much more congenial and useful, even though it depended on a rank distortion. The interpretive misdirection began in the immediate aftermath of Lee Harvey Oswald’s act of murder. Pundits and analysts still follow the well-worn script, often boiling down their indictment to one word: Dallas. The epigraph of the new book “Dallas 1963” is a letter to the mayor at the time: “Dallas, the city that virtually invited the poor insignificant soul who blotted out the life of President Kennedy to do it in Dallas.” Slate calls a letter to Kennedy’s press secretary warning JFK not to visit Dallas because he might be killed by a right-wing mob “eerily prophetic,” which would be unassailably true ... if Kennedy had been killed by a right-wing mob. In a New York Times op-ed, history scholar James McAuley calls Dallas “the city that willed the death of the president.” Who knew that municipalities had such frightening powers? George W. Bush is lucky he wasn’t killed in office by Burlington, Vt., or Berkeley, Calif. In a news report, Timesman Manny Fernandez writes of the “painful, embarrassing memories of the angry anti-Washington culture that flourished here 50 years ago — and now seems a permanent part of the national mood.” Get it? The rancid political culture of Dallas that was responsible for the death of Kennedy lives on today in the tea party, which needs to be stopped before it kills again. There are at least two problems with all this. The first is that cities don’t kill people. Neither does political hostility. There was plenty of kookery, racism and ugliness in Dallas circa 1963 — and much derision and abuse of Kennedy — but none of those things picked up a rifle and shot the president of the United States. The second — and amazingly enough, saying it still carries a subversive hint of revisionism — is that Oswald was a thoroughgoing communist. As Piereson recounts, Oswald tried to defect to the Soviet Union. He told a reporter that his reasons were “purely political.” Trying to renounce his citizenship, he gave a note to an official at the U.S. Embassy in the Soviet Union that said, “I affirm my allegiance to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics” and “I am a Marxist.” Eventually, he returned to the United States and grew disillusioned with the Soviet Union but not with the idea of revolution as exemplified by Fidel Castro’s Cuba. He subscribed to The Militant, published by the Socialist Workers Party, and the Daily Worker, published by the Communist Party. He posed for a photograph holding both publications and the rifle he would use to shoot Kennedy. Oswald had hoped to travel to Cuba and serve in Castro’s government. To establish his bona fides, he set up a chapter of the “Fair Play for Cuba” committee during a stay in New Orleans. He traveled to Mexico City and visited the Cuban and Soviet embassies in his bid to get to Cuba. He was still trying to navigate the bureaucracy when he heard Kennedy would be visiting Dallas. The Kennedy assassination has always invited elaborate theories about a cover-up of the truth about that awful day. But it’s not complicated. The lie has always been in plain sight. Rich Lowry can be reached via e-mail: comments.lowry@nationalreview.com.
Prayer for today Gracious Lord, may I not spend most in equipment and forget the tides, which may desert me on the sands, or the rocks in the channels, which may crush the finest vessel. May I be prepared for the hard knocks if they come, but may I know how to keep clear of them. Amen.
A verse to share “I beseech you, brethren, (ye know the house of Stephanas, that it is the firstfruits of Achaia, and that they have addicted themselves to the ministry of the saints,) That ye submit yourselves unto such, and to every one that helpeth with us, and laboureth.” — 1 Corinthians 16:15-16
What happens in Vegas Editor’s Note: Bill O’Reilly is on vacation. The following column was originally published in December 2012. LAS VEGAS – This is a town that looks better at night. Millions of lights pierce the darkness creating a visual that is both energetic and trance-inducing. The multilayered lightshow is dazzling and unique in America. But when the sun comes up, Las Vegas speaks directly to the recession. Halfcompleted buildings loom over the landscape like giant steel skeletons. Some developers ran out of money and simply walked away leaving huge, hulking abandoned structures to absorb the desert wind. But just down Las Vegas Blvd. are the winners: lavish hotels that cater to one’s every need. This is a city that best defines the two Americas and our very competitive capitalistic system. If you want to understand the free marketplace, Las Vegas is an excellent classroom. Millions of hardworking
folks come here to have fun. In order to maximize the entertainment, you have to Bill spend monO’Reilly ey. Whether you spend it The O’Reilly Factor on gambling, live shows or fine dining, it’s up to you. The money flow supports tens of thousands of service workers and, at a much higher level, the movers who run the tourist businesses. If you can’t make a decent living in Vegas, you are in major trouble. Responsible workers are sorely needed. But still there is destitution on display. Addiction is the primary driver of that, although laziness is featured, as well. Some of the poor in this town simply want to play all the time. And they pay a price for that, as prosperity eludes them. Some of the have-nots sit on sidewalks hoping for money from passersby. Sometimes, gamblers give
the beggars casino chips. Panhandlers say the best time for them is after midnight when the winners emerge from the gambling dens. Redistribution is much easier when you’ve just run the table. President Obama should spend some time in Vegas. Maybe then he would understand capitalism better. No matter how many handouts the panhandlers get, their circumstances rarely change. The money is mostly used to feed their compulsions. On the other end, the rich 1 percenters hustling the gambling tables are trying to increase their affluence by taking chances. In the process, they are providing salaries for the hardworking men and women who keep the entertainment establishments running. Bottom line: Both the wealthy and the poor in Vegas are exercising their personal freedoms. From observing the action in Vegas, Obama might finally realize that it’s freedom of choice that most
often dictates who fails and who succeeds in the capitalistic system. In Vegas, no outcomes are guaranteed and no government can level the playing field. Prosperity or lack thereof is all about individual decisionmaking. But the president would most likely never admit that, because it goes against his belief that government can impose a form of social justice by forcibly redistributing the wages of the successful. For Barack Obama, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Veteran TV news anchor Bill O’Reilly is host of the Fox News show “The O’Reilly Factor” and author of the book “Pinheads and Patriots: Where You Stand in the Age of Obama.” To find out more about Bill O’Reilly, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www. creators.com. This column originates on the website www.billoreilly.com.
For Obamacare architects, problems are features, not bugs The defects of the Obamacare website have become well known. But the problems with the law go further than the website. These problems are not incidental, but central to its design and the intentions of its architects. Many Obamacare backers, including Barack Obama, would prefer “single-payer” health insurance. The government would pay for everything and you would get health care for free. There is an inconsistency here with the way we treat other things regarded as the basics of life — food, shelter, clothing. Government subsidizes food purchases only for some — though a sharply increasing number in the Obama years — through food stamps. It also has subsidized housing through loan guarantees and laws encouraging mortgages for the uncreditworthy – policies that resulted in the financial crisis of 2008-09. Government hasn’t yet proposed subsidizing the purchase of clothing. But the thought is that health care, imposing disproportionate costs on some individuals, should be provided for free. Obamacare’s architects knew the votes weren’t there for single-payer insurance, so they fashioned their health care legislation and regulations to reduce out-of-pocket costs for people with different health care needs. Insurance policies have to include coverage for servic-
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es that many consumers will not need, including maternity coverage and mental Michael health treatBarone ments. E v e n Columnist Obamacare enthusiasts, such as Harold Pollack of the University of Chicago, suggest that the administration should “revisit just how minimal the most minimal insurance policies should be.” But that would work against the Obamacare goal of moving everyone toward paying less out of pocket for health care. Even more egregious is Obamacare’s requirement that policies for one age group cost no more than three times the cost for another. In practice, this means that young consumers, who incur few heath care costs, are asked to subsidize people in old age groups, who incur many more. This is the opposite of the progressive economic redistribution, which American liberals usually favor. People in their 20s tend to have negative net worths. They owe more — in consumer debt, on college loans — than they have in bank accounts, home equity and financial assets. In contrast, people in the 55-64 age group, the oldest covered by Obamacare, tend to have relatively high net worths. Federal Reserve
wealth statistics consistently show that Americans reach their peak net worth in these years. After age 65, they start spending that net worth down. So why did the Obamacare architects want to take from the poor and give to the relatively rich? Because they want to make health insurance less like insurance — which protects you against unlikely and unwelcome events — and more like an entitlement. Equalizing premiums tends to move in that direction. The fact that Obamacare policies are like auto insurance policies that cover oil changes is, for the Obamacare architects, a feature — not a bug. Of course, reducing health care outlays once the insurance premium is paid makes health care consumers less price-conscious. It means that market mechanisms that have reduced the cost of noninsurable treatments — cosmetic surgery, Lasik treatments – will not be operating. And it increases the likelihood that health care providers will act like the callous unionized employees in Britain’s National Health Service who let patients in the Mid Staffordshire hospitals die unattended or lie in their own waste. The problem for Obamacare architects is that people are resisting being conscripted into their service. The low penalties for remaining uninsured in early years, plus the difficulty of
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using healthcare.gov, mean that many young people are not signing up. This means that insurers will likely be stuck with a group of subscribers who are relatively sick and will have to raise premiums sharply next year to avoid losses – the death spiral you have been reading about. It also means that others, particularly those not eligible for subsidies, may go shopping outside the website for policies that cover catastrophic costs and leave them free to decide whether and how much to spend on routine care. The Obama administration’s response has been lawlessness — suspending the law on employer mandates, subsidy verification, subsidies for federal health exchange policies and availability of pre-existing policies. The insightful liberal journalist Thomas Edsall asks on his New York Times blog, “Is the federal government capable of managing the provision of a fundamental service through an extraordinarily complex system?” The answer, on health care as on food, shelter and clothing, seems to be “no.” Daily Corinthian columnist Michael Barone is senior political analyst for The Washington Examiner, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Fox News Channel contributor and a coauthor of The Almanac of American Politics.
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