The Urge to Save Humanity is Almost Always a False Front For the Urge to Rule
Politics / US Politics Apr 05, 2010 - 05:33 AM GMTBy: James_Quinn
“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.” H.L. Mencken
http://static.howstuffworks.com/gif/hurricane-nasa-andrew-sequence.jpg
I can't believe the news today
Oh, I can't close my eyes and make it go away
How long, how long must we sing this song?
How long? How long?
'Cause tonight we can be as one, tonight
Sunday, Bloody Sunday
Sunday, Bloody Sunday
Sunday, Bloody Sunday
U2 – Sunday Bloody Sunday
Bono wrote this song in 1983. He was describing the slaughter of thirteen unarmed Catholic civil rights protestors in Derry, Northern Ireland on January 30, 1972 by British troops. Many of the victims were shot in the back. The Irish Republican Army employed this tragic event to mobilize thousands of recruits to their cause. The incident triggered more violence that lasted for decades and resulted in many more senseless deaths. When governments make imprudent decisions and craft irrational policies there are consequences. Murdering unarmed protestors resulted in decades of civil war in Northern Ireland. Unleashing a new multi-trillion dollar entitlement hurricane, when we already have the Social Security/Medicare hurricane bearing down on us and a Federal Reserve caused Depression level 5 hurricane already raging will have calamitous consequences for our nation. March 21, 2010 will go down in U.S. history as our Sunday Bloody Sunday. The ideologues on both sides of the healthcare debate care only about the next election and how they will spin the votes of their opponents to attain victory. The economic consequences of this 2,400 page abortion of a bill are secondary because these politicians will be retired or dead when our grandchildren get the bill.
“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”
H.L. Mencken
“If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.” H.L. Mencken
Politicians have demonstrated over decades to be completely ignorant of the long-term impact of the rules and regulations they have inflicted upon the American people. For those who believe that creating a new entitlement for 32 million people, hiring 16,500 new IRS agents to enforce the new regulations, and allowing government boards to make your healthcare decisions for you will reduce costs and improve healthcare, I will point you to the facts versus promise of prior legislation. A Senate Joint Economic Committee released a report in 2009 found that health care plan costs are always dramatically underestimated by the politicians that create the entitlements:
- Medicare (hospital insurance) - In 1965, as Congress considered legislation to establish a national Medicare program, the House Ways and Means Committee estimated that the hospital insurance portion of the program, Part A, would cost about $9 billion annually by 1990.v Actual Part A spending in 1990 was $67 billion. The actuary who provided the original cost estimates acknowledged in 1994 that, even after conservatively discounting for the unexpectedly high inflation rates of the early ‘70s and other factors, “the actual [Part A] experience was 165% higher than the estimate.”
- Medicare (entire program) - In 1967, the House Ways and Means Committee predicted that the new Medicare program, launched the previous year, would cost about $12 billion in 1990. Actual Medicare spending in 1990 was $110 billion—off by nearly a factor of 10.
- Medicaid DSH program - In 1987, Congress estimated that Medicaid’s disproportionate share hospital (DSH) payments—which states use to provide relief to hospitals that serve especially large numbers of Medicaid and uninsured patients—would cost less than $1 billion in 1992. The actual cost that year was a staggering $17 billion. Among other things, federal lawmakers had failed to detect loopholes in the legislation that enabled states to draw significantly more money from the federal treasury than they would otherwise have been entitled to claim under the program’s traditional 50-50 funding scheme.
- Medicare home care benefit - When Congress debated changes to Medicare’s home care benefit in 1988, the projected 1993 cost of the benefit was $4 billion. The actual 1993 cost was more than twice that amount, $10 billion.
- Medicare catastrophic coverage benefit - In 1988, Congress added a catastrophic coverage benefit to Medicare, to take effect in 1990. In July 1989, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) doubled its cost estimate for the program, for the four-year period 1990-1993, from $5.7 billion to $11.8 billion. CBO explained that it had received newer data showing it had significantly under-estimated prescription drug cost growth, and it warned Congress that even this revised estimate might be too low. This was a principal reason Congress repealed the program before it could take effect.
- SCHIP – In 1997, Congress established the State Children’s Health Insurance Program as a capped grant program to states, and appropriated $40 billion to be doled out to states over 10 years at a rate of roughly $5 billion per year, once implemented. In each year, some states exceeded their allotments, requiring shifts of funds from other states that had not done so. By 2006, unspent reserves from prior years were nearly exhausted. To avert mass disenrollments, Congress decided to appropriate an additional $283 million in FY 2006 and an additional $650 million in FY 2007.
Based on this track record, do you believe President Obama when he declares that his national healthcare plan will save $136 billion in the first ten years? It appears the rocket scientists on the Democratic side of the aisle have trouble estimating the costs of the entitlements they hand out on a regular basis. Republicans, on the other hand, tend to slightly underestimate the cost of their invasions (Rummy says $50 billion; taxi meter says $977 billion and counting).
Platform for Your Lies
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
H.L. Mencken
Blanket of silence
Makes me want to sink my teeth in deep
Burn all the evidence
A fabricated disbelief
Pull back the curtains
Took a look into your eyes
My tongue has now become
A platform for your lies
Cage the Elephant – Back Against the Wall
Washington D.C. is a sordid cesspool crawling with thousands of shady politicians, power hungry bureaucrats, slimy lawyers, and corporate lobbyists with pockets stuffed with one hundred dollar bills. Legislation is bought and sold to the highest bidder. The rock group Cage the Elephant captures the mantra of Washington D.C. in their latest hit song. For the last few decades Congress could get away with silence as the public was preoccupied with getting rich day trading, flipping houses, and buying electronic gadgets with limitless credit cards. Their backroom deals and corporate payoffs were ignored. Not anymore. These “servants of the people” have had the curtain pulled back, revealing their foul deeds. What these historically uninformed bureaucrats failed to realize is that we have entered a Fourth Turning. The mood of the country changes dramatically during this Crisis period. The citizens will not ignore what was overlooked in the 1990’s. Leaders will be held accountable for their actions. Institutions will be replaced if they fail. Civility will be cast aside. Violence, pain and sacrifice are inevitable. The politicians with common sense are fleeing Washington in droves, retiring and accepting jobs with the companies that bought their votes for the last few decades.
The last year has been a never ending competition of lies. The American public has been subjected to misinformation and lies from the tongues of politicians who hire pollsters and PR firms to fabricate their propaganda. Democratic talking points hammered home incessantly are:
- Insurance companies are evil and must be stopped from screwing Americans.
- The healthcare plan will reduce deficits by $136 billion in the 1st ten years and $1 trillion in the 2nd ten years.
- The healthcare plan will reduce Medicare waste by $500 billion.
- The biggest middle class tax cut for healthcare in history.
Even the pea brained pundits on CNBC know the stock market is a discounting mechanism that looks forward 6 to 12 months. With Obama blaming insurance companies for everything that is wrong with our healthcare system and declaring an end to their reign of terror, you would think their stocks would reflect a miserable future. As you can see from the chart below the five biggest insurance companies in the country are dancing in the aisles of Congress over this plan. It is funny how their stocks have doubled the market while Obama declares he is going to stick it to them. Considering insurance company and drug company lobbyists wrote large portions of the bill, maybe Obama was stretching the truth, just a little.
Company |
26-Mar-09 |
26-Mar-10 |
% Change |
S&P 500 |
$833.00 |
$1,167.00 |
40.1% |
Aetna |
$24.39 |
$34.32 |
40.7% |
CIGNA |
$18.62 |
$35.90 |
92.8% |
United Health |
$21.59 |
$32.63 |
51.1% |
Wellpoint |
$36.42 |
$63.05 |
73.1% |
Humana |
$25.06 |
$47.20 |
88.3% |
The truth is that Obamacare will increase budget deficits, increase costs for everyone, decrease levels of service, increase wait times for procedures, and drive doctors out of the profession. Only a delusional liberal ideologue could believe that throwing 32 million people into the healthcare system could possibly reduce costs. Democrats specifically wrote the bill in a way to manipulate the CBO scoring system. Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the CBO director from 2003 to 2005, knows all the tricks of the trade. His honest assessment of the bill concludes that the federal deficit will increase by $562 billion. The major deceptions in the healthcare bill are as follows:
- The bill declares it will trim $463 billion from Medicare spending and use it to finance insurance subsidies. But Medicare is already bleeding red ink, and the health care bill has no reforms that would enable the program to operate more cheaply in the future. Instead, Congress will continue to regularly override scheduled cuts in payments to Medicare doctors and other providers. With an anticipated 200,000 doctor shortage by 2020, Congress will never make these cuts.
- To operate the new programs over the first 10 years, future Congresses would need to vote for $114 billion in additional annual spending. But this so-called discretionary spending is excluded from the Congressional Budget Office’s tabulation.
- $70 billion in premiums are expected to be raised in the first 10 years for the legislation’s new long-term health care insurance program. This money is counted as deficit reduction, but the benefits it is intended to finance are assumed not to materialize in the first 10 years, so they appear nowhere in the cost of the legislation.
- The bill uses $53 billion in anticipated higher Social Security taxes to offset health care spending. Social Security revenues are expected to rise as employers shift from paying for health insurance to paying higher wages. But if workers have higher wages, they will also qualify for increased Social Security benefits when they retire. So the extra money raised from payroll taxes is already spoken for. It cannot be used for lowering the deficit.
These are just the costs that were purposely misrepresented in the healthcare bill. The unintended consequences in a 2,400 page bill that was not read by the people who voted for it will be immeasurable. The Bill will bring 32 million high usage people into the healthcare system and force insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions. Sounds like a humane thing to do. The last time I looked, insurance companies are for-profit entities. If they are forced to take on riskier customers, they will increase premiums on all their customers. According to the Congressional Budget Office, insurance premiums will double in the next few years. The bill will do nothing to lessen that increase. Obama pays for large swaths of the bill by taxing people making over $200,000 and imposing fees on drug manufacturers, health insurers, and medical device manufacturers. The rich will change their behavior to avoid these taxes. It seems ironic that many of the Americans that earn more than $200,000 per year are doctors. The corporations will pass along the fees and taxes to the consumers of their products.
It is clear that prices for all forms of healthcare will be going up. At least we can be sure that services levels and care will decline while wait times for service go up. A survey in the New England Journal of Medicine reports that 46% of doctors may give up their practice in the wake of this bill. There is no doubt that many doctors will choose to shrink their patient loads or retire. In Massachusetts, after the passage of Romneycare, the wait to see a primary-care physician increased from 33 to 52 days. Surely adding 159 new programs, thousands of new rules and regulations, and a boatload of government bureaucrats will improve healthcare for all. According to a recent report by the Association of American Medical Colleges:
- There are currently 700,000 doctors in the U.S. today. That is one doctor for every 450 people.
- With the rapidly aging population, the need for doctors would have been 860,000 by 2025.
- With the passage of universal healthcare, the need will be 910,000 by 2025.
- The number of people graduating from Medical school has been flat at 16,000 per year since 1980.
- The supply of doctors will only be 750,000 in 2025.
- Approximately 53% of all the doctors in the US are over 50 years old.
- Only 1% of doctors under 35 are in General Practice, while 47% of those over 50 years old are in General Practice.
Doctors will face greater workloads, lower reimbursements and still be subject to frivolous lawsuits by ambulance chasers, as the Democrats surprisingly chose not to address medical malpractice lawsuits. The fact that 96% of the contributions from the Trial Lawyers of America go to the Democratic Party couldn’t have had an impact on Democrats not addressing this issue in a 2,400 page “reform” bill. Despite the future doctor shortage, higher premiums, longer wait times, more paperwork, and boards of bureaucrats deciding your treatment, at least you have the comfort of knowing the IRS will be enforcing the 2,400 pages of rules and regulations with threats of fines and imprisonment. The IRS is well known for their extreme competence and ability to enforce rules and regulations. There are already 100,000 pencil pushing, mouth breathing thugs occupying the offices of the IRS. They are so efficient in their existing endeavors that it is estimated that they have somehow not collected $354 billion of taxes that they are owed. They now have the green light to hire 16,500 more hooligan enforcement agents to crack skulls if you fail to purchase government healthcare. Thomas Sowell sums up the fantasy that only a liberal intellectual could believe:
“It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it.”
Truth Confined
“I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant.”
H.L. Mencken
The paranoia is in bloom,
The PR, the transmissions, will resume,
They'll try to push drugs to keep us all dumbed down,
And hope that we will never see the truth around,
SO COME ON!
Another promise, another scene,
Another package not to keep us trapped in greed,
With all the green belts wrapped around our minds,
And endless red tape to keep the truth confined,
Muse - Uprising
H.L. Mencken was a renowned newspaper columnist for the Baltimore Sun from 1906 until 1948. His biting sarcasm seem to fit perfectly in today’s world. His acerbic satirical writings on government, democracy, politicians and the ignorant masses are as true today as they were then. I believe the reason his words hit home is because he was writing during the last Unraveling and Crisis periods in America. The similarities cannot be denied. The Roaring Twenties of decadence, financial crisis caused by loose Fed monetary policies, stock market crash, Depression, colossal government redistribution of wealth, and ultimately a World War all occurred during his prime writing years. I know people want to believe that the world only progresses, but they are wrong. The cycles of history reveal that people do not change, just the circumstances change. How Americans react to the undulations of history depends upon their age and generational position. Mencken captured the essence of American politics and a disconnected populace 80 years ago. Even though many people today feel the average American is less intelligent, more materialistic, and less informed than ever before, it was just as true in 1930 based on Mencken’s assessment:
“The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
You can make your own judgment on the accuracy of his statement. His appraisal of U.S. Senators and citizens in our so-called Democracy captures the spirit of the travesty that occurred in Washington DC over the last month:
“Democracy gives the beatification of mediocrity a certain appearance of objective and demonstrable truth. The mob man, functioning as citizen, gets a feeling that he is really important to the world—that he is genuinely running things. Out of his maudlin herding after rogues and mountebacks there comes to him a sense of vast and mysterious power—which is what makes archbishops, police sergeants, the grand goblins of the Ku Klux and other such magnificoes happy. And out of it there comes, too, a conviction that he is somehow wise, that his views are taken seriously by his betters — which is what makes United States Senators, fortune tellers and Young Intellectuals happy. Finally, there comes out of it a glowing consciousness of a high duty triumphantly done which is what makes hangmen and husbands happy.”
People still read newspapers in the 1930s to acquire credible information about the economy, politics and economy. Today’s corporate owned rags aren’t fit to line a bird cage. The mainstream media is a platform for the lies of their corporate sponsors. Each TV network or newspaper spouts propaganda that supports the financial interests and ideology they are beholden to. Does anyone think they are obtaining the truth from Paul Krugman, Chris Matthews, Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh? Evidently the answer is yes. In the 1930s you needed to count on newspapers for the truth. Today, you get more truth from a rock band’s lyrics than the mainstream media. The group Muse captures the exploitation of the masses practiced by the government, media and corporations that run the country in their song Uprising. The purpose of those who wield power is to keep the masses dumbed down and paranoid regarding terrorist threats and artificial enemies. By convincing the dense public that acquiring material goods on credit was a smart thing to do, they have trapped them in a web of debt. By making life an inexhaustible bureaucratic nightmare or rules, regulations, forms, ID cards, registrations, and red tape, those in power maintain control and retain power. H.L. Mencken would be proud:
“Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”
Let’s See How Far We’ve Come
“The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.”
H.L. Mencken
I'm waking up at the start of the end of the world,
but it's feeling just like every other morning before
Now I wonder what my life is going to mean if it's gone
The cars are moving, like, a half a mile an hour and I
started staring at the passengers who're waving goodbye
Can you tell me what was ever really special about me all this time
But I believe the world is burning to the ground
Oh well, I guess we're gonna find out
Let's see how far we've come
Let's see how far we've come
Well I believe it all is coming to an end
Oh well, I guess we're gonna pretend
Let's see how far we've come
Let's see how far we've come
Matchbox Twenty – Let’s See how far We’ve Come
The corporate – government - banking oligarchy started the fire. The world is burning to the ground and politicians have thrown gasoline onto the fire with passage of the Obamacare bill. To anyone willing to think for just a few minutes, the picture is unambiguous. This requires the ability to think critically. Critical thinking is the careful, deliberate determination of whether one should accept, reject, or suspend judgment about a claim and the degree of confidence with which one accepts or rejects it. Critical thinking employs not only logic but broad intellectual criteria such as clarity, credibility, accuracy, precision, relevance, depth, breadth, significance and fairness. Critical thinking requires extensive experience in identifying the extent of one's own ignorance in a wide variety of subjects ("I thought I knew, but I merely believed"). One becomes less biased and more broad-minded when one becomes more intellectually empathetic and intellectually humble. I have observed little or no critical thinking skills in the pompous asses that write daily columns in today’s newspapers and zero critical thinking skills among the vacuous pundits and brainless fashion models that yap all day long on CNBC, MSNBC, CNN, Fox and the Big 3 dying networks.
Any thinking would be a shocking change of pace from the corrupt corporate owned politicians in Washington DC. Other than Ron Paul, Paul Ryan and few other critical thinkers, critical thinking from a politician or a government bureaucrat is about as likely as Obama not using a teleprompter. Everything being spewed at the public from the MSM, Wall Street, and Washington DC is intellectually dishonest, manipulated and packaged by pollsters and PR firms. I’ve come to the conclusion that those in power prefer public school systems of the United States to churn out ignorant, non-questioning morons. A populace that is incapable or uninterested in critically thinking about the important issues of the day is a politician’s best friend. Ignorance is the state of being uninformed about issues and unaware about the implications of those issues. It is not about intelligence. A huge swath of America is ignorant due to lack of education and a low class upbringing. But, I know many college educated people who haven’t read a book in 20 years or could care less about economic issues. They made a choice to be ignorant. Most Americans are incapable of looking beyond a 2 to 3 year time horizon. That is why the median 401k balance in the U.S. is $13,000. That is why the average credit card debt per household is $16,000. That is why 25% of all homeowners are underwater on their mortgage. Politicians, banks, and marketers take advantage of this ignorance to enslave the average American. An informed, interested, questioning public would be a danger to the government as described by H.L. Mencken:
“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.”
There were already two fiscal hurricanes churning towards our shores before Obama and his non-critical thinking Democratic minions launched a third storm. No matter how many intellectually deceitful mouthpieces like Paul Krugman, Keith Olbermann, and Sean Hannity ignore the facts, the fiscal foundation of the country is crumbling under the weight of unfunded entitlement promises, out of control government spending and far flung military misadventures. Only someone who is intellectually bankrupt, like Krugman, would declare the National Debt at $8 trillion as a looming disaster when George Bush was President, but declare that a $12 trillion National Debt headed towards $20 trillion isn’t a danger now that Barack Obama is President. Olbermann proclaimed Afghanistan a disastrous misadventure when Bush was President. Now that Obama runs the show, the surge is working and Obama’s brilliant leadership has turned the tide. Hannity never uttered a negative word about a Republican neo-con, the Iraq War or the Afghan strategy between 2001 and 2008. Now he defames Obama on a nightly basis for being weak on Defense, despite that fact that Obama has doubled the troops in Afghanistan and proposed the largest Defense budget in the history of the country. The non-thinking worshippers of these ideologues never question or even reflect upon the facts.
The combination of educationally uninformed, ignorant by choice, and intellectually dishonest will be fatal for the country. Total U.S. debt as a % of GDP is at an all-time high, exceeding 370% of GDP. It is 25% higher than it was at the depths of the Great Depression. Consumer debt has barely fallen, while government debt has skyrocketed in the last year. The financial crisis was caused by excessive utilization of debt. In order to correct these imbalances, the country needed to undergo a deleveraging and reversion back to a country of savers. Savings equals investment. Instead, our “leaders” have reduced interest rates to 0% and have gone on an unprecedented government borrowing and spending spree. Savers are punished, while gamblers and speculators are rewarded. Anyone who thinks about this strategy for a few minutes will realize it is asinine and hopeless.
Based upon the Obama administration’s own 10 year budget plan, The National Debt of the U.S. will exceed $25 trillion in 2019. That is double the current figure of $12.4 trillion. This is after George Bush doubled the National Debt from $5.6 trillion to $11 trillion during his reign of terror. It seems one thing Republicans and Democrats can agree on is that spending money they don’t have will have no negative consequences. We add $4.4 billion of debt to this figure each and every day. We add $183 million to this figure each and every hour. The interest on the National Debt has been averaging $400 billion per year even with an effective interest rate of 3.3%. Much of this interest is paid to foreign governments like China, Japan and OPEC nations. This is $1.1 billion per day of interest to foreigners. With just the slightest bit of critical thinking one could easily perceive that with a National Debt of $25 trillion and a likely increase in interest rates to at least 6%, our annual interest costs would increase to $1.5 trillion per year.
The entire revenue of the U.S. government totaled $2.1 trillion in 2009, with $900 billion of those funds earmarked for Social Security outlays in the future. Does this seem sustainable? President Obama submitted a budget of never ending trillion dollar deficits and then gives speeches declaring that we must get our deficits under control. He appears on the MSM declaring his fiscal responsibility and what passes for a journalist these days nods their head like a lapdog and lobs the next softball to the President. You have to be delusional to believe this claptrap. Luckily for the politicians, most Americans are delusional and uninterested. They just got another text message from their BFF. H.L. Mencken understood the false promises of democracy 80 years ago:
“Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses. It is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”
The critical thinking folks at Casey Research in their February report analyzed the already catastrophic Obama 10 year budget and ignored the pie in the sky revenue assumptions, exceedingly low interest rate suppositions and ridiculous postulations regarding military spending. The annual growth in government receipts over the last decade has been less than 1%. Obama’s budget is based upon a 7.8% average annual increase for the next 10 years. Even Paul Krugman should question that assumption. But he won’t. No one in the MSM is even interested in the truth. The assumption regarding the interest rate on the National Debt is 3% for the entire 10 year period. I guess the laws of supply and demand don’t apply to the Obama administration. Even Turbo Tax Timmy could figure out that interest rates are headed higher over the next decade. Military spending has grown at an annual rate of 8.5% over the last decade. Obama’s 10 year budget assumes growth of less than 2% annually. No new wars are anticipated, the existing futile wars of choice end, and the war on terror is an absolute triumph, over somebody. If George Bush made these shameful assumptions the MSM would laugh him out of the room. When the savior makes the same outrageous statements, silence reigns among the liberal ideologue networks.
Using a still optimistic receipt growth rate of 3.5%; assuming that interest rates will gradually increase by 1% per year; and military spending increases at recent levels, the National Debt would reach at least $40 trillion by 2020. The country would collapse well in advance of reaching this level. This doesn’t even address the false assumptions of the healthcare entitlement just passed. This fiscal hurricane is a Category 5. The Social Security/Medicare hurricane is off the scale and will reach our shores in 2020.
The United States needed to implement a long-term plan ten years ago to address the impossible to fulfill promises made by its corrupt, intellectually bankrupt politicians. Americans’ inability to deal with reality and fondness for not thinking beyond tomorrow has shown them to be an inferior species, as Mencken noted:
“The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants above everything else is safety.”
Take the Power Back
“All government, of course, is against liberty.”
H.L. Mencken
“It doesn't take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.” H.L. Mencken
Rise up and take the power back,
It's time that the fat cats had a heart attack,
You know that their time's coming to an end,
We have to unify and watch our flag ascend!
SO COME ON!
They will not force us,
They will stop degrading us,
They will not control us,
And we will be victorious!
Muse - Uprising
The shame of the so-called healthcare debate, which raged for over a year, is that five or six changes to the existing system would have improved the scheme dramatically. The biggest lie foisted upon the public by the Democrats and their mainstream media allies is that 32 million people do not have access to healthcare. The non-critical thinking public just soaks in this propaganda without question. The fact is that every person (including illegal immigrants) can walk into a hospital emergency room and must be treated, whether they have health insurance or not. Therefore, it is a question of cost and delivery. There are no Americans dying in the streets due to no healthcare insurance, despite what Keith Olbermann might be spewing on a nightly basis. Of these 32 million “uncovered” Americans, 18 million of them earn more than $50,000 per year, with half of those earning more than $75,000 per year. These people are mostly young and don’t feel the need to purchase health insurance. Another 4 million people are eligible for Medicaid or SCHIP and haven’t signed up. There are 310 million people in the country and the American people just allowed the government to take over their healthcare in order to cover 10 million long-term uninsured that already had access to every hospital in America. We have fallen for the assurance of safety at the price of liberty. The result will be an ever increasing number of unproductive leeches demanding their “right” to free healthcare, while producers are sucked dry. The only beneficiary will be government bureaucrats and politicians.
“For society as a whole, nothing comes as a 'right' to which we are 'entitled'. Even bare subsistence has to be produced.... The only way anyone can have a right to something that has to be produced is to force someone else to produce it... The more things are provided as rights, the less the recipients have to work and the more the providers have to carry the load."
Thomas Sowell
Not allowing insurance companies to deny people with pre-existing conditions coverage, allowing people who switch jobs to retain coverage, expansion of the COBRA program, allowing insurance companies to compete on a national basis across State lines, limiting malpractice awards, and providing healthcare vouchers to the truly disadvantaged would accomplish expanded coverage with lower costs. Expert health courts could replace the existing malpractice system that enriches lawyers, awarding victims quickly while eliminating the 60 cents of every dollar that go to lawyers and administration costs. But, this was not the true purpose of “reform”. This was about an ideology of government command and control versus liberty, freedom, and individual choices. The entitlement state is now absolute. The badly informed masses now expect a government provided retirement, government provided old age insurance, government provided health insurance, 99 weeks of unemployment payments, food stamps, welfare payments, subsidized government housing, subsidized government auto financing, free public education, protection from criminals, protection from terrorists, cheap oil, and easy credit. All they had to do was sacrifice liberty and freedom to obtain privileges and security. In the end, Americans will be left with neither, privileges, security or freedom. The promises made were false. The money needed to fulfill the pledges doesn’t exist. The promised security is actually a false flag for control through rules, regulations and ultimately coercion. H.L. Mencken understood human nature would never change:
“What men value in this world are not rights but privileges. Most people want security in this world, not liberty. It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucinations too seriously.”
The mood of the country has changed dramatically in the last three years. A Crisis period of epic proportions is upon us. A small minority have begun to rise up against the tyranny of government control over their lives. The vast middle class is slowly coming to the conclusion that they have been screwed. Their real wages are lower than they were in the 1960’s. They pay for the welfare state. They bail out the rich bankers. Their jobs were shipped to China. The fat cats in New York City and Washington DC are beginning to worry. Their time in power is coming to an end. The average person is starting to ask questions:
"Let me get this straight. We're going to be gifted with a health care plan written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn't understand it, passed by a Congress that hasn't read it but exempts themselves from it, to be signed by a President who also hasn't read it and who smokes, with funding administered by a Treasury chief who didn't pay his taxes, to be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese, and financed by a country that's broke. What the hell could possibly go wrong?"
I know the arrogant self righteous intellectuals that populate the MSM are worried by the tone of their nightly shrieking. The target of their vitriol is the Tea Party movement. This movement developed during the insurgent Ron Paul Presidential campaign. The central theme of the movement is that government is too big, spends too much, exerts too much control over our daily lives, and wastes our treasure and our soldiers’ lives on maintaining an empire. This is truly a grassroots movement of middle class Americans who have had enough lies. The only critical thinking about the long term implications of our fiscal policies is being done by the citizens within this movement. The reaction from the liberal MSM is predictable. They are depicting these true American patriots as extremists, racists, anarchists, and nut jobs. These “intellectuals” stoop to associating a disgusting sex act called tea-bagging with middle class Americans protesting out of control government spending. They seek out the one racist sign among 10,000 signs at peaceful protests. They are aghast at depictions of President Obama as Hitler, when they were silent as President Bush was burned in effigy. Dissent and peaceful protest are portrayed as dangerous to society. Voicing your opinion is depicted as anti-American by the liberal MSM. On the other side, the Fox News neo-cons led by Ann Coulter and Sarah Palin, are trying to corral the movement for their purposes. This is what the entrenched ruling elite do. The fat cats from both parties want to derail the Tea Party movement. Smaller government is not a goal of Democrats or Republicans.
The intellectually bankrupt MSM, Wall Street fat cats, and corrupt DC politicians are right to fear the Tea Party movement. The mood of the country will not be reversed. The storm will not subside. The existing institutions will fall in the next 10 to 15 years. There will be blood. The Federal government will not voluntarily get smaller. The entitled class will be angry when the spigot of benefits and privileges is shut off. Wall Street bankers, mega corporations, and corporate media that control the strings of Washington puppet politicians will fight with all their power to retain control. The military will need to make fateful choices regarding their duty to country or their crooked leaders. The passage of government controlled healthcare over the objections of the majority was the final straw. When British troops fired on unarmed protestors on Sunday, January 30, 1972, decades of bloody violence ensued. When Congress passed the 2,400 page takeover of the U.S. healthcare system on Sunday, March 21, 2010, against the will of the American people, they set in motion a rebellion that they will not control. The cause of liberty is sound and the leaders are determined. The die has been cast. Financial collapse is now baked into the cake. Social chaos will ensue when collapse envelops the nation. Foreign conflict is likely, as China, Russia and Middle Eastern countries take advantage of our fiscal weakness. Critical thinking will not keep the grim reaper from his destiny with the ruling elite.
“The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.”
H.L. Mencken
http://fc03.deviantart.com/fs25/f/2009/251/1/6/Tea_Party_Express_2_by_c3d.jpg
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
Benjamin Franklin
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By James Quinn
James Quinn is a senior director of strategic planning for a major university. James has held financial positions with a retailer, homebuilder and university in his 22-year career. Those positions included treasurer, controller, and head of strategic planning. He is married with three boys and is writing these articles because he cares about their future. He earned a BS in accounting from Drexel University and an MBA from Villanova University. He is a certified public accountant and a certified cash manager.
These articles reflect the personal views of James Quinn. They do not necessarily represent the views of his employer, and are not sponsored or endorsed by his employer.
© 2010 Copyright James Quinn - All Rights Reserved
Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors.
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