Get ready for the full implementation of Obamacare. It ain't gonna be pretty.
In Mark Steyn’s brilliant opus on the decline of America and what it means to the average citizen and the world at large, After America, he wrote: “When California goes bankrupt, the Golden State’s woes will be nationalized and shared with the nation at large… It will be as if California and New York have burst their bodices like two corpulent gin-soaked trollops and rolled over the fruited plain to rub bellies at the Mississippi. If you’re underneath, it’s not going to be fun.”
Steyn’s point being that one of the great things about America, at least in its past, is that you could escape the policies of your locale and move to a place more conducive to your way of life. Steyn points out that “universal liberalism would rather deny you that choice,” which leads us to a seemingly unrelated story…
The Problem with Mandates
Unless you’ve been busy colonizing the moon, you’ve likely heard something about the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate recently unearthed in Obamacare that all employers, including faith-based employers, must provide free birth control and abortifacients regardless of their moral objections.
The story has generally morphed into a battle between the Catholic Church and the Obama administration, but this angle misses the bigger and far more important issue. When Nancy Pelosi said we’d have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it, she wasn’t kidding. This mandate is just the tip of the iceberg of all the crap that will be coming down the pike. After all, the damn thing is like 10,000 pages long, filled with exemptions and goodies for the politically connected and all kinds of stuff that will make a routine doctor visit seem like a day at the DMV. In a word, it will be awesome.
While this particular HHS mandate is certainly a First Amendment religious liberty issue, it also distorts an already distorted medical market and more distortion is on the way. The federal government is exacerbating the problem of rising medical costs by forcing insurance companies and employers to cover just about everything. In a truly free market I would have a range of coverage from which to choose.
If I could, I would choose only catastrophic coverage and use a pay-as-you-go system for preventative and general illness doctor visits, but I can’t. Instead, due to mandates of this, that and the other, I have little choice in coverage. It’s either pick the expensive coverage, or the more-expensive coverage because I’m forced to pay through higher rates for someone else’s poor choices, the coverage of which has been mandated.
With birth control and abortifacients, putting aside the moral argument, why the hell am I paying for something that’s readily available and relatively cheap? And, if you can’t afford it, just march yourself down to Planned Parenthood, which I am also subsidizing against my will.
Herein lies the greater philosophical issue of positive versus negative rights. I’m foursquare behind the negative rights philosophy, which is the core of America’s founding. Positive rights, in which the government declares you have rights to things like free medical care, allow the government to dictate how you exercise those rights. And if that’s the case, how are such “rights” really rights?
True liberty is based on the concept that government’s role is to secure the ability to pursue your God-given (not man-given) rights. Negative rights, so called because they restrain government’s interference with the individual, ensure liberty. But progressives are not individualists, believing that the general populace needs to be both controlled and coddled, which flies in the face of America’s founding and its success as the greatest guarantor of individual liberty in the history of the world. Did America emerge as such because it was conceived as a welfare state?
Conservatives believe in the power of the individual to sink or swim based on their own merits and the choices – both good and bad – they make. So, if someone’s so hard up that they can’t buy birth control, is that my fault? Or, is it possible they’ve made poor personal decisions, both financially and morally, that led to them to seek free birth control and abortifacients?
With the HHS mandate, poor choices are rewarded while those of us trying to do the right thing are punished for those poor choices. And so it goes as my betters half a continent away dictate what’s best for me with one-size-fits-all “solutions” I’m forced to accept.
In a more Federalist system where locals rule and make decisions for their community I can get the hell out of Dodge if need be when the local government taxes and regulates me into oblivion. Increasingly, this is no longer the case, as the federal government involves itself ever more intimately in my personal life, taking on a role once reserved for the individual and his or her local government, the proverbial two corpulent gin-soaked trollops rolling over the fruited plain. If you’re underneath that, it’s not going to be fun, unless you have that kind of fetish, as progressives apparently do.
There’s no joy watching Mitt Romney’s march toward the GOP nomination. The man is uninspiring. I won’t hold that against him. In 2008, Barack Obama was inspiring, but no one knew what they were inspired to do. It was campaign about nothing. Not only is Mitt Romney uninspiring, he talks in the same platitudes as Obama. It’s a campaign about “believing in America.” What the hell does that even mean? As usual, Mark Steyn sums it all up better than I can.
Romney’s is a benevolent patrician’s view of society: The poor are incorrigible, but let’s add a couple more groats to their food stamps and housing vouchers, and they’ll stay quiet. Aside from the fact that that kind of thinking has led the western world to near terminal insolvency, for a candidate whose platitudinous balderdash of a stump speech purports to believe in the most Americanly American America that any American has ever Americanized over, it’s as dismal a vision of permanent trans-generational poverty as any Marxist community organizer with a cozy sinecure on the Acorn board would come up with.
After half-a-century of evidence, what sort of “conservative” offers the poor the Even Greater Society?
Mitt Romney will be raked through the coals for his comments about not caring for the poor, but the deeper issue is that “safety nets” have helped create this mess. It’s not just the safety net for the poor, but it’s the safety nets for everyone. The nation is running a textbook example of moral hazard. If there’s no incentive not to fail what’s the incentive to succeed? Over the last 30 years consumption is up 50% among the very poor in the United States. Oh, to be poor in the United States of America in 2012! I believe in America!
The goal of any conservative should be to do things to encourage economic growth. Ultimately that helps the poor more than a safety net. If Mitt Romney’s idea of leadership it be a caretaker for a nation staggering towards insolvency then what’s the point in defeating the President? Obama’s policies will simply help us get to a dystopian Mad Max version of the state much faster. Let’s give Obama the second term that Jimmy Carter was never able to have.
It appears that Romney is trying to plot the same course to the White House that Obama used in 2008. The Romney strategy is to say nothing for the next ten months and hope the other guy is so unpopular that he wins by default. If Romney is unable to convey any kind of real message now why does anyone think he’ll be a good President? What is Romney’s big idea? What does he intend to do when he’s elected? I’ve been following this closely for months and I can’t tell you a single specific thing that Romney intends to do to solve our fiscal crisis.
What do I know about Romney? He likes to fire people, he believes in America, and he’s not worried about the very poor. Awesome!
Is this the next President of the United States?
Liberals rejoice! Conservatives were vanquished in Iowa. Mitt Romney won in Iowa after hardly giving the state a second thought. Bachmann, Perry, Cain, and Gingrich all had their moments in the sun before failing spectacularly. Perry and Gingrich are the only ones left and they’re candidacies are on life support.
We’re left with Santorum, Romney, Huntsman and Paul. I’m being generous to Huntsman and Paul. Paul’s candidacy isn’t going anywhere. The problem with Paul is he’s too worried about defense spending. He offers no solution on our fiscal problems. To put it in perspective we could eliminate our defense department and still be on the road to fiscal ruin. Paul seems more concerned with kookiness than with our fiscal problems.
Jon Huntsman has bet the ranch on New Hampshire. I have to admit that looks risky right now. Coming out of Iowa Rick Santorum is going to get all the press. It’s difficult seeing Huntsman being able to chop through Santorumania.
Speaking of Santorum…. the National Review has basically become an extension of the Santorum campaign. Rich Lowry’s tweets this morning were depressed at the very thought that Rick Perry was soldering on in South Carolina. How dare Perry get in the way of Santorumania! Even Rush Limbaugh is trying to defend Santorum today. Mark Steyn is really the voice of reason during these depressing times.
Rick Santorum is a wee bit too far down the compassionate-conservative end for my tastes, but he gave (as Newt would say) an extraordinarily remarkably profoundly good speech last night. Maggie got the right adjective: “grounded” — very real, very secure, very grown-up. Mitt did himself no favors by dashing on immediately afterwards and burbling cheesy stump-speech boilerplate. As readers will know, I broadly agree with Santorum that, ultimately, culture trumps economics — or, as he puts it, you can’t have limited government and a strong economy without strong families. But no doubt by the time the media are through with him that will be assumed to mean he has a secret plan to lock up the sodomites.
It’s a shame Mark Steyn was born in Canada and can’t run for president. Mr. Steyn gets it. Sadly, liberals don’t and many Republicans aren’t much better. Santorum is cut from the same mold as President Bush. If you like big goverment with splash of social conservatism he’s your guy. Santorum will drive the Christianphobes crazy, but he won’t reduce the size of the goverment. He’s not an alternative to Romney in any real sense, other than religion. A candidate who talks about the problems with contraceptives is never going to be elected in the twenty-first century.
Generally I’m optimistic about the future. However, I’m starting to adopt Mark Steyn’s view of the world. Western civilization is getting older, not having children, and is in so much debt that the barbarians are ready to fight over what’s left. In a few years the United States’ interest payment on our debt will be enough to fund China’s military budget. Why isn’t anyone alarmed about this? A greater number of American citizens cannot see a future without their particular handout.
The farming industry has its stupid subsides. Health care is bankrupting the West. The United States paid for Europe’s defense for a half century and the continent is still going bankrupt. Shouldn’t that be a warning for the United States? If Europe is going bankrupt on unsustainable health care entitlements, government pensions, and bureaucracy why do we think this will it work in the United States? It’s just not liberals who are stupid. The Republicans have grown into government caretakers. No one is talking seriously about the world’s fiscal problems. Restoring the United States government to year 2000 levels would be a good start, but it needs to go back to 1960 if there’s ever a chance of climbing out of the hole.
What is the new answer from the conservative establishment? Rick Santorum? A culture war hero who is against free trade, in favor of corporate welfare, and thinks birth-control pills are a problem. Mitt Romney? The former governor of Massachusetts who thinks RomneyCare is fundamentally conservative? This is how a Republic ends folks. Since the FDR administration the populace has traded more and more freedom to the federal government for welfare, health care, and social security. None of these things are sustainable and the size of the government grows ever larger. The bureaucracy’s reach grows ever further. You can’t sell homemade pies in Pennsylvania without a permit. You can’t sell lemonade on your street without paperwork. Did you catch a fish by accident? Yep, the government has a role in that as well.
In the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century the government fought large corporations. The same can’t be said now. Major corporations learned their lesson. Now they give generously to both parties. Their lobbying efforts have not gone unrewarded. The government has bailed out airlines, car manufactures, and banks. What is the risk in running your company into the ground if the state is always there to bail you out? It’s just not bailouts. The government has become a tool for telecommunications companies. The United States telephone, cable, and internet infrastructure is at the disposal of AT&T and Verizon. Not too big to fail, but too big to allow competition.
It should be embarrassing to the average American that our internet speeds are slower than Europe or that our airline industry doesn’t allow competition. However, most Americans don’t know. The product of a prosperous nation is to be run by corrupt leaders and corporations with too much influence. When you boil it all down we’re past the point of elections having any special significance. If you’re driving off a ledge does it really matter how fast you’re going?
Bureaucrats and corporations are corrupt, but they’re not dumb. They see the handwriting on the wall. This is a scary time to be living in the United States because some action has to occur to keep this business model afloat. Usually that means war. This time next year it’s likely that there will be a new President-elect, but I won’t be any more optimistic. The names change but the policies remain the same.
I’m not afraid of fear itself, nor am I particularly fearful of the latest market upheaval. What I am fearful of is the government reaction to all this. My greatest fear is that the government will double down on its out of control spending and economic monkey business in reaction to the “crisis.”
It’s about time government let the market do its thing and leave us alone. Every time government gets involved it succeeds only in saving powerful cronies from having to sell their second home in Aspen. What do we, the average America citizen who gets dinged for all this crap, get in return? Nada. Zilch. Nothing.
Oh, but we do get something. We get to pay more taxes and deal with more regulation! Then, we get all the wonderful unintended consequences that go along with it. Those consequences then create another “crisis” that must be once again fixed by government. And so it goes.
Perhaps our beloved representatives will finally learn that they can only take so much from the productive and pile up only so much debt, but I doubt it. As Mark Steyn puts it in the subtitle to his latest tome, After America: Get ready for Armageddon.
Please Don’t Panic: I’m happy that Homeland Security had gotten rid of the confusing color coded terrorism alert system. It was always a bit of a farce. The new big idea is to send a mass text message to those who are in harm’s way.
A new national alert system is set to begin in New York City that will alert the public to emergencies via cell phones. It’s called the Personal Localized Alert Network or PLAN. Presidential and local emergency messages as well as Amber Alerts would appear on cell phones equipped with special chips and software.
Ah yes, I can see it now. Can you just image the chaos if the government sends a mass text to everyone riding the subway in New York? It would be a huge panic scene. I’m very interested to see how this works. Right now it seems like a good way to start a stampede. Why not just send a mass text to the entire nation that says “FIRE! RUN LIKE HELL!!” This clip below from Seinfeld is how I imagine the system working
Allies? It’s bad enough that Pakistan has nukes and that the nation is full of Islamic fundamentalists. Now they’re thinking about cooperating with the Chinese on the downed helicopter we left after the Osama Bin Laden raid. Apparently the United States’ helicopters are equipped with some kind of anti-detection technology. Obviously China is interested in getting their hands on the technology.
I’m confused as to what the United States policy is on Pakistan. They didn’t help us find Osama Bin Laden after 10 years and we had to invade their nation to take him out without authorization. The U.S. was afraid that someone in the Pakistan government would tip Osama before we got there. It’s been a bad PR week for Pakistan. Handing over this helicopter to the Chinese isn’t going to help things.
RomneyCare/ObamaCare 2012: Mitt Romney is set to give a speech tomorrow on the issue of health care. Romney hasn’t backed down from the health care reform he passed in Massachusetts while he was governor. Going into 2012 this is a huge problem for Romney because RomneyCare looks a lot like ObamaCare. Plus, RomneyCare is having all kind of problems in Massachusetts (shocking).
It doesn’t appear as though Romney is going to back away from his legislative failure. In other words, his candidacy is dead on arrival. President Obama’s most significant legislative achievement is a dismal failure and a dramatic overreach by the federal government. If it’s not overturned by the courts voters are going to going to have it abolished. I’m not sure how Romney can dance around this problem.
Religion of Peace News: Mark Steyn over at The Corner points out the absurdity of the mainstream press when it comes to covering crimes by Islamic extremists.
A 28-year old Yemeni man boards a flight to San Francisco in Chicago, and shortly before landing charges the cockpit while shouting “Allahu Akbar!” Authorities say they “do not yet have a motive.”
By the way, this is from the evil FOX News network. It should be pointed out that when Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was tragically shot a few months ago the press had no problem attaching Sarah Palin to the story. When Jared Lee Loughner started shooting he didn’t yell “you betcha” or “for Palin.” Over the last twenty years the list of attacks that started with “Allahu Akbar!” are too numerous to mention, but the press can’t speculate on a motive unless it’s Sarah Palin.
The most recent issue of Time Magazine asks, “Is America Islamophobic?” I’m sure I could plumb the depths of this issue, but why bother when Mark Steyn fully exposes “Islamophobia” and all the other multi-cultural “phobias” that have emerged during this hyper-tolerant, PC, hate-crime era for what they really are in his classic tome America Alone?
As someone who’s called Islamophobic and homophobic every day of the week, I can’t help marveling at the speed and skill with which Muslim lobby groups have mastered the language of victimhood so adroitly used by the gay lobby. If I were the latter, I’d be a little miffed at these Ahmed-come-latelys. “Homophobia” was always absurd: people who are antipathetic to gays are not afraid of them in any real sense. The invention of a phoney-baloney “phobia” was a way of casting opposition to the gay political agenda as a kind of mental illness: don’t worry, you’re not really against same-sex marriage; with a bit of treatment and some medication, you’ll soon be feeling okay.
On the other hand, “Islamophobia” is not phony or even psychological but very literal – if you’re a Dutch member of parliament or British novelist or Danish cartoonist in hiding under threat of death or a French schoolgirl in certain suburbs getting jeered at as an infidel whore, your Islamophobia is highly justified. But Islam’s appropriation of the gay lobby’s framing of the debate is very artful. It’s the most explicit example of how Islam uses politically correct self-indulgent victimology as a cover. You’ll recall that most Western media outlets declined to publish those Danish cartoons showing the Prophet Mohammed. Thus, even as they were piously warning of a rise in bogus “Islamophobia” – i.e., entirely justified concerns over Islamic terrorism and related issues – they were themselves suffering from genuine Islamophobia – i.e., a very real fear that, if they published those cartoons, an angry mob would storm their offices. It was a fine example of how the progressive mind’s invented psychoses leave it without any words to describe real dangers.
I finally bought my own copy of Mark Steyn’s book, America Alone. I read a library copy shortly after it was published in 2006, but enjoyed it so much that I knew I would re-read it and refer to it often. It is, in a word, brilliant.
If you’re a “progressive,” you probably won’t agree with its premise, which is basically that there are two populations going in opposite directions: one is shrinking and getting older (post-Christian, postmodern Western civilization) while the other is growing and decidedly younger (Islam).
What happens when the first is coddled by the state from cradle to grave and believes in nothing while the other is animated by a violent ideology that takes no prisoners? Then add the fact that the former are elderly and addled by pop culture and politcally-correct multiculturalism while the latter are youthful and angry? The end of the world as we know it, at least according to Steyn.
The edition delivered to my front door includes a new introduction. While almost every sentence in the book is quotable, here’s a tasty one I found in the intro:
“Why do radical imams seek to convert young Canadian, British and even American men and women in their late teens and twenties? Because they understand that when you raise a generation in the great wobbling blancmange of cultural relativism, a certain percentage of its youth will have a great gaping hole where their sense of identity should be. And into that hole you can pour something primal and raging. Islam is an ideology. To claim it’s “race” is so breathtakingly stupid as to give the game away – and to confirm that “Racist!” is now no more than the cry of a western liberal who can’t stand his illusions being disturbed.”
The right to free ice cream isn't spelled out in the constitution, but when has that ever been a problem for "progressives."
I have to admit I’m growing a little weary of politics. Perhaps it’s the Arizona controversy and the left’s ability to ignore logic and its apparent inability to read. It seems our population is fine with being ignorant. It’s easier to be angry and upset with Arizona than to actually realize that its law not only mirrors the federal law, but provides additional protection from racial profiling. So if we boycott Arizona, shouldn’t we boycott Washington?
Then, on the other side, there are those who spend time theorizing about the President’s birth certificate. The Republic has a lot of problems, but the President’s birth certificate isn’t one of them. The average American’s knowledge of our current fiscal situation is abysmal. Sure, most Americans can tell you that the economy is not doing well, but how many people cared before 2008? Most Americans are frustrated by the business cycle, not the 40-plus years of governmental mismanagement of finances.
For the United States to right this fiscal Titanic it would take a huge majority in Congress to do it. I don’t see how this is possible as long as the Democrats have the support of 40 percent of voters. The Democratic party doesn’t have a plan to balance the budget or reduce our debt, only plans to run us into the ground financially. Sadly, neither does the Republican establishment. Eventually this economic policy leads to California.
“So goes California so goes the nation,” or so the saying goes. California is our homegrown version of Greece. The citizens of California want big government, but they don’t want to pay for it. The indelible Mark Steyn has an article about the situation in Greece, but it’s just as relevant to California and the United States.
The problem facing the Western world isn’t very difficult to figure out: we’ve spent tomorrow today, and we can never earn enough tomorrow to pay for what we’ve already burned through. When you’re spending four trillion dollars but only raising two trillion in revenue (the Obama model), you’ve no intention of paying it off, and the rest of the world knows it.
Most liberals I know haven’t thought this far ahead. They’re in favor of free health care like they’re in favor of free Baskin Robbins ice cream. The ice cream tastes good, it’s available in 31 flavors, and no one really cares who’s paying for it. I too am in favor of free ice cream because providing it to Americans would be a helluva lot cheaper than free health care.
Eventually we end up like Greece, except there will be no one left to bail us out. There’s no Tea Party in Greece. It’s the Government Party there. Almost everyone is employed by the state and they all want to keep their 14-month annual pension (that’s not a typo; they get paid for 14 months of work in a 12-month period). Think that can’t happen in the United States? It’s happening already.
In Yonkers, more than 100 retired police officers and firefighters are collecting pensions greater than their pay when they were working. One of the youngest, Hugo Tassone, retired at 44 with a base pay of about $74,000 a year. His pension is now $101,333 a year.
It’s what the system promised, said Mr. Tassone, now 47, adding that he did nothing wrong by adding lots of overtime to his base pay shortly before retiring. “I don’t understand how the working guy that held up their end of the bargain became the problem,” he said.
“It’s what the system promised.” What happens if the system is broken? I apologize, but I really don’t feel sorry for able-bodied men who retired at the age of 40. What are these people contributing to society? Being a police officer is a respectable job, but it shouldn’t mean that 15 to 20 years service equals 30-plus years of pension. Obviously some of these pensions are related to disability, but not all of them. Until progressives take this problem seriously the United States is headed to bankruptcy.
The U.S. entitlement problem was grim before Obama was in the White House. Instead of fixing it Obama has doubled down on entitlements. Mark Steyn has an article out today titled “Welcome to Deemocracy.” As usual Steyn sums it all up.
Look around you, and take it all in. From now on, it gets worse. If you have kids, they’ll live in smaller homes, drive smaller cars, live smaller lives. If you don’t have kids, you better hope your neighbors do, because someone needs to spawn a working population large enough to pay for the unsustainable entitlements the Obama party has suckered you into thinking you’re entitled to. The unfunded liabilities of current entitlements are $100 trillion. Try typing that onto your pocket calculator. You can’t. There isn’t enough room for all the zeroes, and, even if they made a pocket calculator large enough, and a pocket large enough, you’d be walking with a limp. To these existing entitlements, Obama and his enforcers in Congress propose to add the grandest of all: health care, on a scale no advanced democracy has ever attempted.
Steyn also points out that ObamaCare will be the biggest expansion of the IRS since World War II. Someone has to collect all those taxes.
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