Posted by
David A. Jared on Tuesday, December 29, 2009 3:08:51 PM
Ever notice that pieces of legislation are called "Bills?" Ever wonder why? If you had doubts before, this past year should have cleared it up for you...in spades! As bad as Republican Congresses were between 2001 and 2006 (when the Democrats regained control), they were NOTHING compared to what the Democrats are currently doing to us and the world's economy and ESPECIALLY to our own future economies. Having effectively created a situation in which the U.S. dollar is worth about 12 cents--and falling--the Democrats in charge in D.C. are rapidly impoverishing our kids and grandkids before they've earned a single dollar themselves and there doesn't seem to be a single thing we can do about it...at least until November 2010, and maybe not even then.
We have FAR too many people in this country who (1) vote for whomever they "like" because of how well they photograph, (2) vote for whomever they see as likely to "give" them stuff they see as "free," (3) vote for whomever their local media outlets SAY are "responsible," "honest," or "good" for their respective community, (4) vote for whichever candidate has a "D" behind their names because "everybody knows" that "D's" are "'for' the little guys like me," or (5) vote AGAINST someone their local media or entertainment outlet makes fun of. None of these reasons are intelligent, seriously considered reasons someone deserves your vote--which MAY be the most valuable asset you own (and which may not be yours for very long if the so-called "progressives" get their ultimate wishes.)
Liberals are all about "control." They TELL you that they are not--that they are "for" freedom--but their history belies that claim. Virtually every piece of legislation that comes out of a liberal-dominated legislature does one of two things. Either it costs you your hard-earned money, or it takes away some aspect of your personal freedom and responsibility, or both. Nothing illustrates this better than the Obamacare bills currently under consideration, both of which do both.
First of all, don't EVER forget one simple fact. The government CANNOT "give" you anything that it hasn't already taken away from someone else to whom it rightfully belongs. Secondly, there's not a politician alive today that doesn't consider, first and foremost, how a pending piece of legislation will affect their chances of keeping their position of power and prestige. Thirdly, NEVER forget that liberal politicians MUST lie about their motives and intentions in order to keep the votes rolling in. If they tell you the truth about what they want to do to the country, they couldn't get themselves elected dogcatcher. Liberals want (and work dilligently towards) removing from you, your power of decision-making and ceding it to the central government and its bureaucracies. When called on it, liberals will tell you that they are "protecting" you from the bureaucracies inherent in corporations or some other entity they are currently using as a bugaboo, as if some clerk in the bowels of the EPA is somehow more "caring" than one in a corporation, the existence of which depends solely on the good offices of its clientelle. No government bureaucrat's job depends on how well he/she does it. Civil service "rules" make it nearly impossible to fire an incompetent employee of the government.
Never forget, too, that the government produces NOTHING of intrinsic value. It may pay someone else to produce useful products, such as Teflon or miniaturized computers and their components, both of which are products of NASA's space effort, but it's private parties or contractors who actually produce what the government thinks it needs. The government MUST pay for such things out of tax revenues, too. In other words, the money YOU are forced to pay to the government, apparently just for the privilege of living in America. Taxes are merely legalized theft. Most States define "theft" as, "The taking, by force or threat of force, property of another and converting it to one's own use--or to the use of another, not the owner." A clearer definition of government taxes would be hard to design.
The founders understood that any government needs revenues in order to perform its necessary functions. They designed the Constitution, in part, as a means of providing for the collection of such revenues. Over the years (particularly the last 80 or so) the government has assumed for itself more and more "duties" that the founders never intended for it--largely under the aegis of that part of the Constitution which reads, "...promote the general welfare..." or the Constitution's commerce clause which empowers Congress to "regulate" interstate commerce." "Regulate" had a far different meaning in the late 18th Century than it does now. Then, it meant, "...to make regular (or even)." To the left, it means to "control." Recent Supreme Courts have chosen to follow the left's definition instead of the founders' original intent. Instead of insuring that no State could impose confiscatory taxes on a neighboring State's competing industry when shipped across State lines, Congress, and the Supreme Court, have taken the extraordinary position that, in one infamous case, a farmer in Kansas, growing wheat, could NOT grow it, because he intended to harvest it and convert it to feed his own cattle, even though both the wheat field AND the cattle were his and were entirely inside the State of Kansas, because wheat is a commodity traded in "interstate commerce" and his doing what he intended "might negatively impact the overall price of wheat that IS intended to be traded across State lines!" Congress had ceded its "power to regulate interstate commerce," in this case, to the Department of Agriculture and some petty bureaucrat it the DoA's bowels thought that allowing an individual to exercise such freedom might "harm" other farmers' incomes in other States!
The same sort of "regulation" has been applied to peanuts, for example. A farmer, wishing to grow peanuts, must first get "permission" from the Department of Agriculture in the form of an "allocation," which specifies how many acres of peanuts he may produce. If he exceeds the acreage allowed by that allocation, he can be forced to plow the excess acreage under, and, if he has no "allocation" at all, he can be forced to destroy his entire crop. I know personally of a man who planted an acre of peanuts to attract deer for hunting season. An Agriculture "inspector," flying over the guy's land saw them and filed an injunction, forcing him to destroy the crop, even though it was never his intention to put the peanuts into "interstate commerce."
If Obamacare becomes the law of the land, it's a dead-bang certainty that the following things WILL occur. (1) Your taxes are going to go up. Obamacare CANNOT exist at current levels of taxation. Still, its fans are claiming that we're all going to "get more and better health-care under government "guidance" at lower costs," a practical impossibility. It may be a bit lower for a few--those that pay almost nothing now may get it "free," but SOMEBODY'S got to pay for it. Guess who. (2) The availability and quality of your health care will be ADVERSELY affected. Right now we have "x" doctors to treat "y" patients who have health care insurance. If you increase the ratio to "x" doctors to treat "y" PLUS 47,000,000 "new" patients, it only stands to reason that doctors will be forced to give less attention to each patient or patients will be forced into long waiting-lines. Less attention per patient means lower quality of treatment per patient as doctors are forced to speed through their days in order to meet the demand for their attention. Less attention means more mistakes and more mistakes mean more and more lawsuits, which will enrich the trial lawyers, but almost no one else except politicians. (3) Private insurance will go the way of the dodo. With the government "competing" with private insurers and not having to show a profit, businesses will inevitably dump employees into the "public option" (Which WILL be in the final version of the bill. You can count on it.) and private insurers will simply have to fold up for lack of clients. (4) Finally, your health care will inevitably be rationed. The same number of doctors with 47 million more patients means that some care you were able to receive will simply no longer be available and some government bureaucratic "board" or "panel" will decide who "deserves" what treatments--and how much such treatments will "cost." In each and every socialized medicine system on the planet, that's been the inevitable result--and a large reason why so many Canadians, not to mention Canadian doctors, now cross over to the U.S. for medical treatment and why well-to-do Europeans are doing the same thing.
Do what you have to, but make certain that you do EVERYTHING you can to stop Obamacare. It's a disaster in the making and once enacted, may be impossible to undo.