Tag: Leviathan

Quote of the Day

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Quote of the Day

I stole this one from my boss’s blog:

I will add as a fifth circumstance in the situation of the House of Representatives, restraining them from oppressive measures, that they can make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as on the great mass of the society. This has always been deemed one of the strongest bonds by which human policy can connect the rulers and the people together. It creates between them that communion of interests and sympathy of sentiments of which few governments have furnished examples; but without which every government degenerates into tyranny. If it be asked what is to restrain the House of Representatives from making legal discriminations in favor of themselves and a particular class of the society? I answer, the genius of the whole system, the nature of just and constitutional laws, and above all the vigilant and manly spirit which actuates the people of America, a spirit which nourishes freedom, and in return is nourished by it.

If this spirit shall ever be so far debased as to tolerate a law not obligatory on the Legislature as well as on the people, the people will be prepared to tolerate anything but liberty.

James Madison as “Publius”, Federalist No. 57, February 19, 1788

“. . . the people will be prepared to tolerate anything but liberty.”

We certainly seem to be.

It’s Not Really Prophecy

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A couple of weeks ago I wrote Malice vs. Stupidity, a post in part about the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) – a piece of self-congratulatory legislation overwhelmingly passed by our Congresscritters in the wake of lead-contaminated toys from China. While listening to the Vicious Circle #15 podcast this afternoon, I heard Alan say that he fully expected to see someone get prosecuted and convicted for selling a children’s book in violation of that Act, and TD (I think) said the book probably wouldn’t even be contaminated – thus someone would go to jail for selling a legal product.

Then this evening Instapundit links to a story about the Feds going after garage sales:

Seller, beware: Feds cracking down on garage sales

If you’re planning a garage sale or organizing a church bazaar, you’d best beware: You could be breaking a new federal law. As part of a campaign called Resale Roundup, the federal government is cracking down on the secondhand sales of dangerous and defective products.

The initiative, which targets toys and other products for children, enforces a new provision that makes it a crime to resell anything that’s been recalled by its manufacturer.

“Those who resell recalled children’s products are not only breaking the law, they are putting children’s lives at risk,” said Inez Tenenbaum, the recently confirmed chairwoman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission.

The crackdown affects sellers ranging from major thrift-store operators such as Goodwill and the Salvation Army to everyday Americans cleaning out their attics for yard sales, church bazaars or — increasingly — digital hawking on eBay, Craigslist and other Web sites.

Secondhand sellers now must keep abreast of recalls for thousands of products, some of them stretching back more than a decade, to stay within the bounds of the law.

Keep reading and you’ll see that the Federal agents charged with enforcement of these laws are also given the responsibility to enforce the CPSIA restrictions as well.

Is there anything the Federal government isn’t responsible for regulating or enforcing anymore?

“All of these things serve to make America less American.”

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Daniel Hannan, conservative member of the European Pariament for Britain gives a speech at the Army-Navy club in August of this year. Worth your time:

Part I:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8vJYfxR14Y&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&w=640&h=505]
Part II:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3ftNEzSjQY&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&w=640&h=505]
Part III:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTuEaoicXlQ&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&w=640&h=505]

Thanks, DJ.

An Investment in Failure

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The 6/23/09 QotD:

Before the 1994 Republican takeover, Democrats had sixty years of virtually unbroken power in Congress – with substantial majorities most of the time. Can a group of smart people, studying issue after issue for years on end, with virtually unlimited resources at their command, not come up with a single policy that works? Why are they chronically incapable?

One of two things must be true. Either the Democrats are unfathomable idiots, who ignorantly pursue ever more destructive policies despite decades of contrary evidence, or they understand the consequences of their actions and relentlessly carry on anyway because they somehow benefit.

I submit to you they understand the consequences. For many it is simply a practical matter of eliciting votes from a targeted constituency at taxpayer expense; we lose a little, they gain a lot, and the politician keeps his job. But for others, the goal is more malevolent – the failure is deliberate. Don’t laugh. This method not only has its proponents, it has a name: the Cloward-Piven Strategy. It describes their agenda, tactics, and long-term strategy.

American Thinker, 9/28/08 – Barack Obama and the Strategy of Manufactured Crisis by James Simpson

My 6/11/09 QotD:

Philosopher Bertrand Russell suggested that “Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.” And, it was Albert Einstein who explained, “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” So which is it — stupidity, ignorance or insanity — that explains the behavior of my fellow Americans who call for greater government involvement in our lives?

According to latest Rasmussen Reports, 30 percent of Americans believe congressmen are corrupt. Last year, Congress’ approval rating fell to 9 percent, its lowest in history. If the average American were asked his opinion of congressmen, among the more polite terms you’ll hear are thieves and crooks, liars and manipulators, hustlers and quacks. But what do the same people say when our nation faces a major problem? “Government ought to do something!” When people call for government to do something, it is as if they’ve been befallen by amnesia and forgotten just who is running government. It’s the very people whom they have labeled as thieves and crooks, liars and manipulators, hustlers and quacks.

Walter E. Williams, Americans Love Government

Now, Thomas Sowell from August of 2007:

It is not just in Iraq that the political left has an investment in failure. Domestically as well as internationally, the left has long had a vested interest in poverty and social malaise.

The old advertising slogan, “Progress is our most important product,” has never applied to the left. Whether it is successful black schools in the United States or Third World countries where millions of people have been rising out of poverty in recent years, the left has shown little interest.

Progress in general seems to hold little interest for people who call themselves “progressives.” What arouses them are denunciations of social failures and accusations of wrong-doing.

One wonders what they would do in heaven.

—

They have shown no such interest in how tens of millions of people in China and tens of millions of people in India have risen out of poverty within the past generation.

Despite whatever the left may say, or even believe, about their concern for the poor, their actual behavior shows their interest in the poor to be greatest when the poor can be used as a focus of the left’s denunciations of society.

When the poor stop being poor, they lose the attention of the left. What actions on the part of the poor, or what changes in the economy, have led to drastic reductions in poverty seldom arouse much curiosity, much less celebration.

This is not a new development in our times. Back in the 19th century, when Karl Marx presented his vision of the impoverished working class rising to attack and destroy capitalism, he was disappointed when the workers grew less revolutionary over time, as their standards of living improved.

At one point, Marx wrote to his disciples: “The working class is revolutionary or it is nothing.”

Think about that. Millions of human beings mattered to him only in so far as they could serve as cannon fodder in his jihad against the existing society.

If they refused to be pawns in his ideological game, then they were “nothing.”

Now, three quotes from my perennial “progressive” commenter Markadelphia:

Show me Nancy Pelosi calling for violence and cheering when a comment is made about lynching. I don’t doubt that she is corrupt–mostly everyone is up there–but fervent and psychotic? No. – 08/10/09

—

I have spent my entire life (41 years) studying history and have no problem admitting that, on the whole, Democrats have been more criminal and racist then Republicans. – 10/31/08

—

Correct me if I am wrong. You believe that government is corrupt and would make the health care situation worse. I too believe that government is corrupt but that’s because we elect nincompoops to office. If we elected people who were skilled and intelligent rather than someone you can have a barbeque chicken sandwhich with, then I believe government can work. – 09/08/07

We’ve established that Markadelphia (and by extension, I would hope, most on the Left) understands and admits that “mostly everyone” on Capitol Hill is corrupt, and that, “on the whole” Democrats have been more criminal than Republicans (not that that distinction matters a great deal, other than the fact that they are in complete control of the legislative and executive branches of government at the moment.)

After the 2008 election, I have to ask: Did we get rid of the “nincompoops”? Or did we just swap out a few?

And, given that “mostly everyone” on Capitol Hill is still corrupt, why on EARTH should we assume that “Cap & Trade,” “Health Care Reform,” “The Stimulus Plan,” or any other piece of massive legislation being proposed is anything OTHER than another DELIBERATE “Investment in Failure”? Another power grab by the corrupt and criminal class already seated in the halls of power?

Which is it – ignorance, stupidity, or insanity? I really want to know.

UPDATE:  Original JSKit/Echo comment thread is available here, thanks to John Hardin.

Multiply by the Zip Code

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Via Neo-Neocon comes this fascinating piece by an actual doctor on the wonders of .gov health care, Obamacare and Me. By all means, read the entire piece, but I want to archive here the crucial portion:

I have taken care of Medicaid patients for 35 years while representing the only pediatric ophthalmology group left in Atlanta, Georgia that accepts Medicaid. For example, in the past 6 months I have cared for three young children on Medicaid who had corneal ulcers. This is a potentially blinding situation because if the cornea perforates from the infection, almost surely blindness will occur. In all three cases the antibiotic needed for the eradication of the infection was not on the approved Medicaid list.

Each time I was told to fax Medicaid for the approval forms, which I did. Within 48 hours the form came back to me which was sent in immediately via fax, and I was told that I would have my answer in 10 days. Of course by then each child would have been blind in the eye.

Each time the request came back denied. All three times I personally provided the antibiotic for each patient which was not on the Medicaid approved list. Get the point — rationing of care.

Over the past 35 years I have cared for over 1000 children born with congenital cataracts. In older children and in adults the vision is rehabilitated with an intraocular lens. In newborns we use contact lenses which are very expensive. It takes Medicaid over one year to approve a contact lens post cataract surgery. By that time a successful anatomical operation is wasted as the child will be close to blind from a lack of focusing for so long a period of time.

Again, extreme rationing. Solution: I have a foundation here in Atlanta supported 100% by private funds which supplies all of these contact lenses for my Medicaid and illegal immigrants children for free. Again, waiting for the government would be disastrous.

—

I am a pediatric ophthalmologist and trained for 10 years post-college to become a pediatric ophthalmologist (add two years of my service in the Navy and that comes to 12 years). A neurosurgeon spends 14 years post-college, and if he or she has to do the military that would be 16 years. I am not entitled to make what a neurosurgeon makes, but the new plan calls for all physicians to make the same amount of payment. I assure you that medical students will not go into neurosurgery and we will have a tremendous shortage of neurosurgeons. Already, the top neurosurgeon at my hospital who is in good health and only 52 years old has just quit because he can’t stand working with the government anymore.

You want to know what “Single-payer Universal Health Care” would be like for those with serious illness?

Take that, and multiply by the Zip Code.

It’s Not About Ownership, It’s about CONTROL

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It’s Not About Ownership, It’s about CONTROL

Since it appears to be “Spank Markadelphia” week here at TSM, I’d like to point out one of his sillier “gotcha!” points, one he is so proud of:

Currently, 20+ trillion dollars is in the hands of private organizations in this country. That’s 99.77 percent of our nation’s wealth. The other .23 percent is owned by the government.

—

Most bankds(sic) have paid back their loans and the government owns .23 percent of our wealth. The rest is in private hands. So…who has the power again?

I think he got his information from The Atlantic, since he used a graph from there in a post of his own, but that piece says 0.21%. I believe he’s mentioned this number here in other places, but my Google-fu is weak this evening.

So, for Markadelphia, possession of wealth is apparently the only marker of power that matters.

No wonder he apparently hates people with three vacation homes.

I found an interesting piece today from the Center for Fiscal Responsibility, which declared that yesterday, August 12, was “Cost of Government Day” – the day on which working people stopped earning money that would go to Federal, State, and Local governments, and finally start going into their pockets. It was the latest date this has ever happened. Per the piece, the date shift is almost entirely due to the recent massive increases in Federal spending – Bush’s TARP and Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, noting “. . . these spending bills set taxpayers up for a year when federal spending has reached a record 28.5 percent of GDP.

The GDP for the US, according to the CIA World Factbook was $14.33 trillion in 2008. As many are now aware, our annual expenditure for health care in 2007 was estimated at $2.4 trillion, about 1/7th of our GDP.

And now the government wants to control a bigger – much bigger – chunk of that.

So the Federal government controls about 28.5% of our GDP – that is, about $4.8 trillion dollars annually. To that they want to add a significant portion of an additional $2.4 trillion – and, if you happen to believe (as I do) that the plan is to eventually control it all, and with “normal government efficiency” that means more than the $2.4 trillion we spend now, while we get less for it.

The control of $4,800,000,000,000 annually isn’t power?

Then there’s this:


The ability to print money isn’t power?

And, finally, the Federal Government outright owns an estimated 28.8% of all land in the United States, and with the Kelo v. New London Supreme Court decision of 2005, pretty much any government entity can take any property they want for pretty much any reason. In addition, as of 2004, the Federal government outright owned a bit over 411,000 buildings, about 17.5% of which (and 20% of the square footage) provide housing to American citizens. (Source: GSA’s FEDERAL REAL PROPERTY PROFILE 2004 – PDF)

THIS isn’t POWER?

By comparison, at his peak Bill Gates was worth only $101 billion.

So, who has the power again?

Oh, and just who is it that controls the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, FBI, NSA, CIA, Secret Service . . .

“You Don’t Trust Me?”

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Claire McCaskill asked that question of her constituents at a Town Hall meeting, insisting that a “single-payer” bill wouldn’t pass. The response was swift. I’m going to pick on Markadelphia some more, because he is such a stereotype that he lends himself to it.

We’ve been discussing the ChOsen One’s enthusiasm for rushing “Health Care Reform” through the Congress with as little delay, transparency, and discussion as possible, and just why that might be. As many here have objected (me included), it’s a plan that will lead to “single-payer” / “Socialized medicine.”

Markadelphia denies this. For example:

I don’t know for certain what system we will have. So why are you so certain that it will be a single payer system and be as bad as GB?

And:

I didn’t answer the question because the solutions that are out there don’t have the government as a single payer. What they have is the government as one option and private insurance as another.

And from his own blog:

And speaking of the single payer system, the final bill floating around DC is the United States National Health Care Act. This bill is a single payer system, similar to Canada’s health care system, that was put forth by John Conyers. Of the three bills that seek to overhaul health care in the United States, this is the one that is being taken the least seriously. Although, you wouldn’t know it by listening to hyper paranoid voices on the right.

In fact, virtually all single payer advocacy groups have been screaming at the top of their lungs that they are being excluded from the process…other than a pity meeting with Max Bachus. The fact is that this bill is never going to pass because our country, despite what the flat earthers will have you believe, is center right. Private industry will never be shut out of the process. It’s too integral to our economy and our future as a nation. This is very true when it comes to health care. I do agree that competition spurs innovation and with a single payer system, we would not have that.

And that’s why out of all three bills, I favor HR3200 out of all three. Primarily, it offers the best of both worlds and addresses the issue of how to pay for all of this. Wyden’s bill relies too heavily on the private sector and Conyers bill will, in all likelihood, break the bank. We need to strike a balance and that’s what this bill does. And this balance allows for traps and pitfalls that are going to occur along the way where the other two really don’t.

Yes, Markadelphia trusts the government to come up with a “third way” that will provide a “public option” without eliminating private insurance.

Neo-Neocon found a video I’ve been waiting for. I’ve seen all of these clips spread around, but someone took the time to compile them into a coherent whole:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZ-6ebku3_E&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&w=640&h=505]
Why are we “so certain that it will be a single payer system and be as bad as GB?” Because they’ve told us what they’re doing. It’s not a Trojan Horse, it’s just right there!

Why should we trust them? “It is not a principled fight!” Indeed, it is not. The fact that they are confident enough to admit it publicly, proudly, should frighten you.

It does me.

Quote of the Day

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Quote of the Day

Hat tip to commenter GrumpyOldFart who found it in a comment thread at HotAir

It’s darkly amusing to watch them fumble across this new, less slanted landscape, shrieking the devil words they think will scare voters out of questioning them. If you look beyond the squalid little insinuations about swastikas and un-American fifth columns, even the less hysterical challenges to the legitimacy of their opponents are revealing. The accusation that people asking questions at town hall meetings are paid operatives of the insurance companies supposes the superior virtue of politicians to private industry. When Obama’s political staff sends out marching orders to supporters, along with scripts for how to look credible and concerned while advocating state-run health care, it is considered to be noble “community organizing.” If insurance companies were to assist with any kind of organized resistance to Obama’s agenda, it would be denounced as sleazy and sinister.

To appreciate this mindset, you must embrace the central tenet of socialism: the State is caring, compassionate, and wise, far beyond the vile and money-grubbing businessmen of the private sector. The insurance industry couldn’t possibly know anything useful about insuring people, could it? Of course not. Only their greed prevents them from showering Americans with cheap, universal coverage. The same dynamic is at play when liberals sneer at the idea of allowing energy companies to have any say in energy policy. It’s also why the Left loves to extol the virtues of “working Americans,” while offering only hatred to the business owners who employ them, and arrogant contempt for the consumerist culture that purchases the products they create. On any given topic, the only legitimate voices belong to politicians and their supporters. Businessmen are expected to sit quietly in their cells and await judgment. — “Doctor Zero”

And this seems an appropriate place to repeat a couple of quotes from Jonah Goldberg’s best-seller, Liberal Fascism:

Progressivism, liberalism, or whatever you want to call it has become an ideology of power. So long as liberals hold it, principles don’t matter. It also highlights the real fascist legacy of World War I and the New Deal: the notion that government action in the name of “good things” under the direction of “our people” is always and everywhere justified. Dissent by the right people is the highest form of patriotism. Dissent by the wrong people is troubling evidence of incipient fascism. The anti-dogmatism that progressives and fascists alike inherited from Pragmatism made the motives of the activist the only criteria for judging the legitimacy of action.

—

This has been the liberal enterprise ever since: to transform a democratic republic into an enormous tribal community, to give every member of society from Key West, Florida, to Fairbanks, Alaska, that same sense of belonging – “we’re all in it together!” – that we allegedly feel in a close-knit community. The yearning for community is deep and human and decent. But these yearnings are often misplaced when channeled through the federal government and imposed across a diverse nation with a republican constitution. This was the debate at the heart of the Constitutional Convention and one that the progressives sought to settle permanently in their favor. The government cannot love you, and any politics that works on a different assumption is destined for no good. And yet ever since the New Deal, liberals have been unable to shake this fundamental dogma that the state can be the instrument for a politics of meaning that transforms the entire nation into a village.

—

All public policy issues ultimately boil down to one thing: Locke versus Rousseau. The individual comes first, the government is merely an association protecting your interests, and it’s transactional, versus the general will, the collective, the group is more important than the individual. Everything boils down to that eventually. And the problem with “compassionate conservatism” is the same problem with social gospelism, with Progressivism and all the rest: it works on the assumption that the government can love you. The government can’t love you. The government is not your mommy and it’s not your daddy, and any system that is based on those assumptions will eventually lead to folly.