What’s wrong with Socialism?

A common and vehement criticism of Obamacare is that it is Socialism.  OK, many people are thinking, we got that.  What those folks want to know is, what’s so wrong with Socialism?  To a very large minority, if not a slim majority, of Americans, Socialist government-run health care doesn’t seem so scary.  It seems like the people in Canada, Britain, France, Sweden, etc not only seem fine with that, but look prosperous and happy and free, to boot.

‘Socialism’ is a frightening accusation to less than 40% of the population, and you don’t win elections with 40% of the vote.  If a program is Socialist, and a person is campaigning against that program, they need to either:
- 1) explain why Socialism in America is a very bad thing that should not only be rejected, it should be fought against, or;
- 2) come up with another criticism of the program that actually resonates with the voters.

What does not work to convince people that Socialism is bad because it’s not something else (eg; “it’s not free enterprise”).  There are huge numbers of people in the middle who want to know what works, not which ideological label an idea carries.

Another thing that does not work is pointing out what happens when Socialism goes horribly wrong.  Saying, “We go from Constitutional freedom, to being France, to being the Soviet Union, to being Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge if we adopt this Socialist program.”  That doesn’t scare or convince people, they just look at you funny.

Many Americans don’t really know what Socialism is, how it compares and/or combines with free market capitalism, how it mutates to Marxist Communism, why, if it works ‘over there’ it won’t work ‘over here’, and many other issues.  I know staunch free market capitalists who are also staunch advocates of Social Security and Medicare, and who really don’t want to talk about it.

So why should we, as Americans, beware creeping Socialism?

There are many academic definitions of Socialism available, thank you Google.  Real quick and dirty, Socialism is where the government owns the railroad, free market capitalism is where a group of fat cats own the railroad.  In some countries, the government owns the telephone company, that indicates a Socialist tendency.  In other countries, the telephone companies are owned by private citizens (investors), which indicates free market capitalist tendencies.

The reality is that Socialism works pretty well in a lot of developed countries.  Why wouldn’t it be a good thing here?  I’ve addressed this several times in the past, but it bears revisiting.  America is a unique country, it is not very much like other countries.  France bans the public wearing of religious garb and has a government panel to decide what is officially “French enough”.  The French are rabidly, unashamedly, and unabashedly nationalistic.  That is the cultural setting required to make Socialism work.

In countries where Socialism works, the government has a professional cadre of powerful and dedicated civil servants who actually operate in the best interest of the Nation.  People who live in successful Socialist democracies don’t complain about their civil servants because their civil servants are both: civil and servants.  That is the governmental setting required to make Socialism work.

In developed Socialist democracies where Socialism works, there are cultural values that enforce a work ethic and responsible citizenship.  The murder rate in developed Socialist democracies is less than half the murder rate in the United States.  Using murder rates as an indication of civil compliance, people in successful developed Socialist democracies follow the rules.  Populations that don’t follow the rules lead to failed Socialist states.

Socialism is bad for the United States because we don’t have the culture, the government, or the civil society to make it work.  In our Nation, the outcome of expanding Socialism will be failure.  The system will collapse, with the wealthy getting out unscathed and the poor driven down into eternal dependence and poverty.

There is a small culture of radical, violent Marxism in this country, the “political power comes from the barrel of a gun” crowd, that is waiting patiently in the wings to move closer to controlling our destiny.  Our Nation is ill-equipped to keep that marginal group in check.  Moving closer to Socialism empowers the radical, violent Marxist fringe in this Nation and opens the specter of a cycle of strong, sharp reaction and counter-reaction (similar to what happens in lawless Nations).  If enough people become dependent on government entitlements it is inevitable, due to our electoral system(*), that a confrontation with the Marxist extreme will ensue.

Lastly, it is our Constitution that guides us.  When we leave the Constitution, we are then making things up as we go along.  We started doing that some time ago, and Socialist federal programs move us farther off the path described in the Constitution.

Regarding the Tenth Amendment, the presumption is that if lawmakers wrote a provision, that they intended for it to have some consequence.  Thanks to self-serving decisions by the Supreme Court, is now gutted.  By enacting <Socialist> programs based on no Constitutional authority, we leave the Constitution behind, placing the future in peril.

I went on too long, but my point remains.  Waving the boogey-man of ‘Socialism’ doesn’t work to sway people.  Anyone who would campaign as an anti-Socialist, free market capitalist needs to explain consequences rather than assign labels.  Inevitably, there is a role for government regulation, denying that only insures that one’s positions will be dismissed by thoughtful people.

We do not have the culture to support Socialism.  We do not have the government to support Socialism.  We do not have the civic relations to support Socialism.  The introduction of Socialism provides entry to radical, violent Marxist elements who have the destruction of democracy as their goal.  And federal intervention in the form of Socialist programs weakens and undermines our Constitution.  It sneaks in at night and changes our Nation without the chance for the people to give informed consent.

I don’t claim that what I’ve written here is the be all and end all of this topic.  I do know that bald claims to how bad Socialism is ring hollow to a lot of people.  Anyone who would be that free market capitalist candidate is going to have to explain to a lot of people who are dependent on government programs right now why that is a bad thing for them.  I don’t hear or see that happening, all I see is Sean Hannity popping a vein while he recites the same stock phrases ever more urgently.

G’day all, and may God continue to bless America!

Library day

Today is my day to volunteer at the library.  I’m trying to get my walk in before I report there for duty, but we have rain showers blowing through.  Dedicated as I am to my exercise regime, I hate to start the day soaking wet and cold.  So while it pours outside, I’ll put my thoughts on, well, whatever this is called … not ‘paper’ exactly, but whatever.

The political debate is beginning to shape up nicely.  The Conservative side is being fairly effective in rebuffing the race-baiting attacks from the Progressive/Marxists.  The odiferous contents of the health industry bailout bill are becoming public.  Oh my goodness, what a stinkpot of corruption, loopholes, special deals, and unintended consequences.

Since last night I’ve been pondering the schisms on the Conservative right.  The greatest obstacle to returning balance to our federal government (by returning at least one house of congress to Republican majority control) are the Conservatives themselves.  Having spent a good bit of my life as an outsider and iconoclast, I do understand the reluctance to conform to party dogma and kowtow to party leadership.  The Republican party and Republican leaders are responsible for a lot of that resistance and resentment.  But very roughly speaking, here’s what you have:

- Mainstream, old school fiscally Conservative, socially moderate Lincoln/Teddy Roosevelt Republicans; 
- The talk radio extreme Conservative group;
- The Ron Paul fanatics, who can’t win anything but can cost other Conservatives an election;
- The Tea Party groups, who don’t want a leader or central platform at all, they just want to mill around with signs and grumble;
- The Libertarians, who are anti-everything and Utopian dingbats, good points of their theology notwithstanding.

To return to racism for a long paragraph, racism in America found a home in the Democratic party.  Just before, during, and right after the Civil War, racists of both North and South were Democrats or Democratic splinter groups.  Up through Lyndon Johnson’s presidency, the Old South was solidly Democratic (it was even called “the solid South”).  Democratic moves away from blatant racism, led by John Kennedy and then Lyndon Johnson, shook the confidence of some southern Democrats.  Very shrewdly and even more subtly, Richard Nixon made a home in the Republican party of disenchanted southern Democrats.  The South has been Republican ever since.

My point in all this is simple and direct: the Republican party is seen by many as a home for, if not racists, at least those with their own idea of what it means to be a “true American”.  I’m not going to try to deny anyone a political home, but I’ll tell you this.  For a Republican to win elections that are even moderately contested, they need to build a base that does more than passively accept everyone.  To win big elections, Republicans need to actively embrace African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, Asian-Americans, women, gays, Native Americans, Jews, Muslims, what I’m trying to say here is, everyone.

No criticism intended, however I have been to several Republican political events and the audiences have been astonishingly undiverse.  Perhaps hyphenated Americans aren’t Republicans, so what?  If Republicans don’t learn to talk to everyone, to explain their message in a way that resonates with those outside the traditional majority (now numerical minority), they will continue to struggle to hold onto any political power.  Republicans need to spend more time figuring out how to talk to traditional minorities (now numerical majorities).  The traditional fiscal Conservative, social Moderate Republican vision of a Nation built on the rights we are endowed with by our Creator (Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness) are for the benefit of all, not just an extreme element at one end of the political spectrum.

This is the duty and responsibility of the Republican party and Republican candidates.  The duty of Ron Paulistas, Tea Partiers, Libertarians, Patriot Groups, and others marching to their own drummer is to get involved in the Republican Party, influence policy, and put forward their own candidate for the Republican nomination for offices.  Every Republican voter is responsible for actively embracing all who would embrace Conservative values, being informed, being intolerant of the intolerant, and meeting the minimum requirement of citizenship: cast an informed vote in every election.

Also, you can go to zfacts, oneillhealthreformblog, and pnhp, read their drivel, and let them know what you think.  IMHO, they are advocating the creation of a 21st Century ghetto for the less well off, and are actively recruiting residents to take up permanent residence in the government handout programs they advocate.  I find all three websites riddled with errors, inconsistencies, and omissions that can only be ignored through wishful thinking.

G’day all, and may God continue to bless America!

Monday

My regrets in advance, nothing much today.  I was going to write about the legacy of misery we inherited from the British, but it’s just too contentious.  If I start to point out how utterly defective our distinctly English common law system is, it would spool off into the void of outer space.

It’s drizzling, my walk today was soggy, I have to get to the title company to deposit some money in trust with them, then I have to get to Kaiser to confirm my offer to volunteer.  I did the indoctrination on Saturday and it was surprisingly in depth.  Terms and conditions of volunteering, pathogen protection and sanitation, privacy rights, it was all quite impressive.

I was also going to write about how the overpaid physician cadre in this country is ruining our future, but that too will have to wait for another day.  There was a young, fit physician who turned down a position in public service to stay at cable network and rake in the dough, then shoot off his mouth on what he thinks public policy should be.  The guy had a chance to shape public policy, but it didn’t pay enough!!!  Limousine liberals.  I’m so glad I decided to not write about that today.

G’day all, and may God continue to bless America!

Sunday thoughts

Just got back from my walk and the rest of the day is planned, and I was going to leave this alone for the rest of the weekend.  But walking time is thinking time, and you know what they say.  And I’ve always been a bit of a squirrel (in the ‘squirreling things away’ sense) about this kind of thing.  I feel that I’ve earned one day of playing hooky here, but not two days.  So if I do some worthwhile work here today, I still have my one free-pass day in reserve.

I heard on the TV yesterday, from one of those experts ‘they’ bring in, that 60% of the US population receives more from the government than they pay into the government.  This works to the advantage of government officials and employees equally well, because the skim on this transfer is what pays the bills in Washington.  Our Democracy, indeed our Nation, is in a fragile condition (celebrating politicians and beneficiaries notwithstanding).

I hold the law industry and the medicine industry to be guilty as co-conspirators in creating this state of dependence.  They both argue for things that benefit their own interests, while wrapping themselves in the cloth of compassion.  That self-righteous and self-serving pose is only an attempt to conceal the benefits and cash flows and power they stand to gain.  Law and medicine need to get back in touch with the fundamentals of individuals paying for what they need or want, what people can afford, what people can pay for.  In other words, some sort of ecologically sound, sustainable economic model that doesn’t steal from future generations for the sake of generous benefits to present day voters.  Right now, both the law and medicine industries are utterly dependent on redistribution, and this will not last.

Quick thought, a rehash of what I wrote a couple days ago about the concept of rights.  We know that our rights come from God(*), and it is the duty of government to not impinge on those rights.  That’s from the Declaration of Independence and other founding documents.  We get our rights from God.  The government cannot give us rights because it is not within their power.  Government can defend our rights, as was done by Abraham Lincoln and Eisenhower and Kennedy and  Lyndon Johnson.  In the worst case, it can attempt to take them away and the design of our government from the Founding was intended to prevent the federal government from doing that.  The lawyers have been working for 200 years to figure out how to sidestep the Constitution, and they are getting close.

And we have no rights that come at the expense of our fellow citizens.  I have no right that you must pay for, and you have no right that I must pay for.  There are two exceptions, which occurred to me as I considered the emerging claims to a ‘right’ to housing (the President’s bailout plan for the mortgage industry).  And the link to the healthcare mandate (purchase a qualifying health insurance plan, or suffer the coercive power of the federal government to confiscate your goods and possessions).

There are only two classes of citizens who can be coerced into doing something against their will.  Because our federal government is authorized by we the people to exercise this coercive power over select groups of Americans, we the people assume the responsibility and grant these people the right to food, clothing, shelter, and medical care.  Who are these people who we can coerce into doing that which they do not want to do, and to whom we owe every necessity of life?

Rather arbitrarily, the first group is young able-bodied males, once they have been drafted into the military.  The second group is convicted felons, once they have been jailed.  In both cases, and acting in our name, the government has denied these folks their liberty, their ability to earn the necessities of life for themselves, so we become burdened and they become entitled to food, clothing, shelter, and medical care.

Anyone who thinks that federal government entitlements to individuals does not rob the recipient of independence and ultimately freedom is delusional.  Believing that citizens can receive that which they have not earned and paid for and still maintain their freedom and independence is undiluted “Marxist Utopia” thinking.  These federal entitlement programs are creating a new form of serfdom, beholden ‘citizens in name only’ who have voluntarily forfeited that which so many generations of Americans have suffered and sacrificed and fought and died for: Freedom and Independence.

As I’ve pointed out before, where there is a contractual relationship, where citizens pay in to receive a benefit later, this is a different situation.  People deserve what they’ve paid for: Medicare, Social Security, etc.  Somehow, with the staggering cuts to Medicare that we now face, even that simple and apparently equitable equation seems to be posing a threat to Progressive plans for the New American Utopia.

Progressive policies are creating a growing and semi-permanent underclass, dependent on the government, living in fear of self-sufficiency, unable to even imagine the dignity that comes with freedom handouts and a subservience to a whimsical and distant federal government.  Any government big enough to give you everything you need is big enough to take away everything you have.

Representative Ryan said on TV the other day that soon it may be “too late” to recoup the concept of “Free and Independent”, but I disagree.  We have time.  The Progressives … Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Woolsey, etc … have no clue because they live in a bubble world.  They did not grow up in the broad sweep of our Nation, but rather in privileged and/or isolated pockets of like-minded-thinking.  They imagine that this Nation has a resilience, and they evoke and depend on that resilience even as they trample its foundations.  But they do not know the real flexible strength of this Nation.  There is a resilience in America that will not tolerate the federal government attempting to take for itself that which is reserved for God(*).

That’s simple enough for even a lawyer or doctor to understand.

G’day all, and may God continue to bless America!

PS: Two chances to help re-establish the Constitution as the blueprint for America.  One http://www.jimjuddforcongress.com/ her and the other http://www.danawalshforcongress.com/ here.  There are many, many more across the Nation, but setting the Constitution above personal agendas has to start somewhere.  Jim and Dana are willing to try, which is more than I can say for myself.  So I have no reservation in recommending a visit to their websites.

A CNN afternoon

My blood pressure has been pretty good lately.  Really good, in fact.  I should have left well enough alone, but nooooo.  I had to go listen to CNN on Sirius radio this afternoon.  I may be slightly facetious here, but at least to my ear there was important stuff to comment on.

Specifically, I listened to Wolf Blitzer and his panel, then Don Lemmon and his panel discuss current events.  Much talk about the verbal threats against government officials.  A fire requires three, or four, things to survive.  Fuel, oxygen, heat, and many fire scientists would now include ‘chain reaction’.  The heat, smoke, and perhaps flames of political discussion require a similar environment.

If the media, including CNN, that it is one side (The Conservative Right) contributing the elements of potential political flames, they are wrong.  Both sides are pitching fuel and heat and oxygen on the pyre, it’s only a matter of time ‘till flames burst out.  I felt that what was being said on CNN today was equally as inflammatory as what I’ve heard on Fox, “so there!”.

A couple of observations.  One, if you’re arguing with me, you aren’t listening to me.  If we are going to have a discussion, we both need to listen.  Signal to me that you are listening by asking questions for clarification before you launch into a canned response.  If you sit there, impatiently waiting for the first chance to interrupt and inject your nullification of my message, then what we’re going to have will have nothing to do with communicating, understanding, accommodating, reconciling.

Two, success is elusive.  If you are measuring success by income statistics, you are going to miss a lot.  Even worse is evaluation by anecdote.  But I’m beginning to wander, let me get back on topic.  If you want to be successful, find out what it is that people you consider to be successful are doing, and do that.

I am not going to be sympathetic, impressed, convinced, or very inclined to help, if you tell me that you want to be a world championship runner, but you then refuse to train just as hard and long and diligently as world championship runners do.  Sports is supposed to teach us lessons about life, but as I pointed out a couple of days ago, the descent of professional sports into routinely worsening sportsmanship fails us on that level.  And the failure of professional sports to transmit the message that the lessons of hard work and dedication and good life choices that lead to success in sports are also required for success in real life.  So professional sports fails on that level, as well.

I have heard sports and other public figures make statements to the effect of, “I’m not being paid to be a role model.”  That rings false in a cultural environment where those who achieve some success in real life are expected to pay more, with the reasonable justification that they have benefited more.  If wealthy accountants are supposed to pay more income taxes because they have benefited more from society, then the same principle applies to everyone who has had success, and public figures through their public success owe the public service of being a role model.  For this, my hat is off to Tiger Woods, because when he stumbled, he did not lash out, blame others, deflect, make excuses, or any other rotten behavior.  He took responsibility, and to all appearances is making the maximum effort a man can make to right his wrongs.  Mr. Woods, if you read this, please know that I don’t like what you did, but you have my absolute respect for the way you are handling it.  I would be proud to have my son look to you as a role model.

Oh Dear, now I’ve really gone and run off at the mouth.  That’s it, the rest of today and the weekend are for me and my family.  I will be back with you on Monday morning.  Until then, may God continue to bless America!

Does Georgetown know what they’re sponsoring?

Generally, Georgetown University in Washington, DC gets approximately zero percent of my interest, unless it’s a college basketball or NBA draft issue.  But they sponsor a website right here that is setting new highs for bad logic.  I’ve addressed my problems with their work directly to them, and fully expect to get censored right off the site, but here’s what has a bone stuck in my craw (wherever that is).

In today’s flagship article, regarding state constitutional challenges to the health industry bailout bill the author says:

“Reminiscent of southern governors in the 1960s blocking their state universities’ gates, these legal officers in effect are saying ‘not on our sovereign soil.’”

That is a blatant, oft-repeated and refuted ad hominem attack (*).  Ad hominem attacks are a logical fallacy, nothing in an argument that follows has any foundation.  In my fairly extensive life experience, the most common motive for an ad hominem attack is to force one’s adversary to defend issues that are irrelevant to the current discussion.  In the world of logic, it is a parlor trick.  I expect colleges and universities to have higher standards for what they publish and sponsor.

So looping back to what I wrote yesterday about civility and sportsmanship, I have encouraged ‘that site’ to stop adding fuel to the fire of public outrage on this topic.  Taunting words lead to disrespect in return.  When you call someone’s mother a whore, you can expect to get spit in your face.  Whether responsible supervision will prevail ‘over there’ is an issue that only history will settle.

G’day all, and may God continue to bless America!

(*) And as I’ve repeatedly stated, the entirely valid and proper role of the federal government in civil rights does nothing to establish the same in other, unrelated areas.  That argument would be another type of logical fallacy which I can’t name off-hand, and don’t have the time or energy to look up right now.

PS: OK, I broke down and looked it up.  It’s a fallacy of composition, or closely related.

Be Prepared

As concerned and informed citizens, it’s essential that we be prepared.  People with an agenda that differs from the Constitution will have well crafted talking point trickery to confront the unprepared with.  These talking points are generally hollow, but just as often quite confounding if one is forced to respond on the fly.  Some examples:

(Everything below being said, I still support California SB810, because if the citizens of California decide they want to pay for universal single payer, they should be allowed to.  Anyone who doesn’t like it can vote with their feet.  As opposed to having the federal government remove that option.  Tenth Amendment forever!)

TP1: Why shouldn’t the government be able to make you buy health insurance?  They make you buy car insurance…
R1: You only have to buy car insurance if you own a car.  And that insurance is for the protection of others, not you.

TP2: Everyone should have health insurance, why shouldn’t the government make people buy it?
R2: Should the government force everyone to do whatever the majority decides that ‘everyone’ should do, or whatever people ‘should’ do?

TP3: If people don’t have insurance, we all end up paying for it at the emergency room anyway.  This is just the government forcing people to be responsible for their own welfare.
R3: No it isn’t.  It’s a great big freebie with no motivation to ever become self sufficient.  Bottomline arguments favor essential care at the emergency room over lifetime unlimited entitlements.

To limit the potential for stupidity, we should face some health care realities.  The health industry charges too much, check US physician income versus international physician income.  US docs make twice as much as Australian docs, and three times as much as French docs.  Every cost in health care scales with physician pay. (*)

We want and we use too much health care.  Life is full of anecdotes about how “if I hadn’t … I’d be dead”.  But anecdotes aren’t  statistics.  I’ve spent a lot of time overseas and Americans are insanely, utterly selfishly, obsessive about health care.  We want more than we can afford, what we get is never good enough, and we want someone else to pay for it.

Once you get beyond public health issues like vaccinations (hotly debated by idiots out to sue doctors), public sanitation, etc,  much of the rest of health care comes down to lifestyle choices and preventive medicine.  Neither of which require an MD for anything except for maybe review and oversight.  All the great “House” style medical miracles are incredibly important to the individual, but hardly even a blip to the system.  Of course, everyone wants their own MD, but until MDs begin to agree to work for wages tied to patient incomes, everyone who wants an MD will not be able to afford one.

The solution, facetiously speaking?  Getting someone else to pay for your doctor is the preferred option.  By using the government as the impersonal intermediary, the person getting the benefit doesn’t have to see the person giving the benefit.  There is no one giving the benefit, “it’s from the government”.  And the politicians, who provide nothing whatsoever, get to take the credit while siphoning off their costs (multiple offices, staff, travel and perks, opulent health care and lavish retirements, etc).

G’day all, and may God continue to bless America.

(*) Giving away my next post for free: Then look at  the insane, untterly unproductive legal costs associated with our health care industry.  Not just the malpractice settlements, the general legal ‘hangers on’ that every medical industry entity has to feed and clothe.  And the defensive medicine that is practiced, and on, and on.  But of course, much of this stems from the deformities of our asinine common law legal system.  France and Germany and Spain (not to mention Louisiana), with their civil law systems, aren’t burdened by a system run by, and for the benefit of, lawyers.

There is a reason to hold Conservative views

This is going to be short and punchy, I’m not going to fool around here.  We’ve spent the last 40 years randomly throwing out the conventions of society.  If one person suffers a wrong, real or imagined, then there is no time or reason to figure out what happened or why in the pursuit of a cure.  The fix is simple, if it’s a traditional value then it’s assumed to be to blame.  Whether it’s an intact family, personal responsibility, obeying all the laws (including immigration laws), whatever … throw it out and substitute the opposite.

What brings this to mind so poignantly is the sweaty flap being raised by Progressive/Marxists over citizens demonstrating their ire.  This has been long in the making, and entirely on the Progressive/Marxist side.  Start with the Weather Underground and move forward.  Sportsmanship is that set of behaviors that allow us to compete, to fight hard, to go for the win, yet not end up hurting or killing each other.

When a professional team scores, and follows that with a celebration, it’s bad sportsmanship and it is a fundamental, underlying cause of the degeneration of good manners in society.  I don’t care how much you like football, or any individual player, when a quarterback gets sacked and then taunted, it is only a very short step to what is happening to Congressmen now.  You can’t have one without the other.

This has manifested a newly distressing breakdown in civility during the State of the Union address and in the Senate.  If you accept, much less defend, President Obama’s dressing down of the Supreme Court while they were obliged to sit stoically, then it’s a simple matter to go step-by-step to the alleged name calling and spitting of the past two days.  As my Mother used to say, “I don’t care what Johnny did!”

Conservatives have been guilty of plenty of incivility and general nastiness.  But right now it’s President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Leader Reid who hold all the cards.  The ball is in their court, and they are doing nothing to return sportsmanship to our civic lives.  You can’t make up what “leadership” is, it simply is what it is.  And setting an impeccable example is irreplaceable in the tollbox of leadership.

I beg your support in this, please be civil.  Please be respectful.  We do not want for our public lives to descend to the lowest common denominator.  No matter how much our politicians would like to drag us all there.

Thank you, and may God continue to bless America!

Yet another, and I swear this time …

… this will be the last mindless, syncophantic Progressive/Marxist blog that I will respond to.  Over at the very elaborate, highly stylized Bluelyon they are busily typing their little fingers to the bone with pure party talking point drivel.  Who is asking the only really really really important question, “Who is going to pay for this, and how?”.

They write plenty of their own stuff, but in this case they quote an alleged physicians’ group (PNHP).  The docs didn’t like the health industry bailout package because it didn’t go far enough.  They did not volunteer to provide their services for free, oh no!, they want you to pay them for my health care (unstated, but in the absence of contradictory evidence, and with an affirmative pitch for single-payer, then reasonably assumed to be self-evidently true).  The docs blame evil insurance companies, but in an unsupported act of faith then place their trust in the federal government.

The federal government runs Medicare and Medicaid, and we now have the following:
1) Medicare is headed directly for bankruptcy;
2) A major clinic now declines new Medicare patients;
3) A major drugstore chain now declines new Medicaid patients.
In other words, despite decades to practice and untold piles of taxpayers’ money, the federal government has proven itself absolutely incompetent to run a health care system.

So the docs are wrong on two fronts.  First, if they really believe a word they are saying, they would commit to the following pledge: “I will provide care to you for an hourly rate billed by me of no more than four times (4X) your hourly income rate.”

Second, if health care is to be a government function, which may be unavoidable due to ongoing failures in that marketplace, then the federal government has no role to play.  The Constitution makes it clear that the federal government is forbidden to be involved, the provision of services directly to the people is a function reserved to the states.  The Massachusetts plan may be failing, but it will not bring down the entire Nation.  Whatever is going wrong in Mass can be fixed in Mass.  And the people of Mass will get what the people of Mass are willing to pay for.

Thank you most sincerely for your patience in bearing with this final, closing rant of mine against the mindless zombie Progressive/Marxists who know so well what they want, and know even better who they want to pay for it.  As I wander off into the woods, mumbling to myself….

G’day all, and may God continue to bless America!

Goring the beast

My piece yesterday apparently raised alarm flags over at that quasi-intellectual website I mentioned yesterday.  Here is their response, and my reply … right here.  These folks, and by that I mean the entire Progressive/Marxist movement, insist on trying to tie health care to civil rights.  It is scarcely worth wasting my valuable time to bat this stuff down, but every reasonable American should be prepared to respond to this kind of left handed attack.  Because for the illegitimate Left, when all else fails, the thing to do is to throw down the race card.

So this is really all they have, except their incessant appeals to unabashed self-interests at the expense of others (“when people realize how much they’re getting, they’ll forget about who pays for it and jump in the band wagon”).  The Progressive/Marxist movement is bound and determined to get as many people as possible beholden to government giveaways, all the better to get control over any and every aspect of private life.  Every person on a government program is a potential Progressive/Marxist voter, and yet even that doesn’t work so well.  Even many of those who may need help understand they would be far better off if not dependent on the government.

Be free or be comfortable.  Choose one.  The two concepts  don’t always go together.  To the extent that the Progressive/Marxist movement can convince people that their goal in life should be comfort, not freedom, the Nation is sunk.  They, including President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, and Leader Reid are baffled by common folks out in the country who would rather be free and struggle than to be beholden to the federal government at the expense of their freedom.

This health industry bailout bill is the watershed, it is the tipping point for our Nation.  If we can recover, from this, there is hope.  If we cannot overcome what’s been done to us by the Congress and the President, then I say this to you: hunker down and prepare yourself as best you can, get your assets offline and out of sight, become a lawyer or federal government employee, do what you need to care for yourself, your children, your grandchildren.

My rights may never come at your expense, and your rights may never come at my son’s expense.

G’night all, and may God continue to bless America!