Why ObamaCare Passage Marks A Day That Shall Live In Infamy

The pundits have rightly compared the gigantic ObamaCare bill with the Roosevelt administration – if nothing else than because we haven’t seen any government program so gigantic since then.

In a way that is very fitting.  Because we can bookend December 7, 1941 and March 21, 2010 with the same prediction: a day that shall live in infamy.

December 7th was a disaster because FDR utterly failed to see a clear and present danger building on opposite sides of both oceans.  We failed to take precautions.  We failed to arm ourselves.  We even failed to protect ourselves.  What made it so criminal was that we had years of ample warning, but simply chose to ignore it.

March 21 was hardly a surprise, either.  Just as with December 7, a lot of Americans saw it coming, but lacked the power to do anything but point and shout about the coming disaster.  The major difference is that on December 7, 1941, our government failed to protect our way of life, whereas on March 21, 2010, our government actively attacked our way of life.

And now it is here.  And now that it is here, it will grow like a cancer.  Slowly at first – it doesn’t fully kick in until 2014 – and then it will erupt like a big poisonous mushroom.

Charles Krauthammer described what the passage of ObamaCare means with his usual brilliance:

“Nonetheless, it will be the law of the land as of tonight and we’re going to be a different country.  We are on our way, there is absolutely no chance we are not going to end up with national health care.   This is nationalizing health care, the insurance companies are now utilities, they are contractors. the government makes all of these decisions, only a matter of time and will probably happen after the Obama administration.  But he will be remembered as the father of national health care as they have in Canada or Britain and it starts tonight.”

Krauthammer is in no way exaggerating or politicizing the regulatory takeover of private insurance companies by the government under ObamaCare.  That can be demonstrated merely by examine what Dennis Kucinich said about ObamaCare and about the role of private insurance companies before he went ahead and voted for it anyway:

• “I don’t know what there is for my constituents”
• It’s “a license to just steal money from people”
• ObamaCare is a “giveaway to the insurance industry”
• This bill is “not going to protect consumers from these rapid premium increases
• It provides “no guarantees of any control over premiums”
• It is “forcing people to buy private insurance”
• It’s going to result in “five consecutive years of double-digit premium increases”
• “I just don`t see that this bill is the solution”
• “The insurance companies are the problem and we`re giving them a version of a bailout”
• “This bill doesn`t change the fact that the insurance companies are going to keep socking it to the consumer”
• It results in a “giveaway to the insurance industry”
• “You`re building on sand. There`s no structure here”
• If we pass this bill, “all we`re going to have is more poverty in this country”
• If we pass this bill, “people aren`t going to get the care that they need”

This remaking of private insurance companies as utilities, as contractors for the government, is fascism, pure and simple.  The government didn’t nationalize them, as it would do under communism, but it created a massive new set of regulations, and bureaucracies, and mandates, and taxes that quintessentially takes them over as agents of the state.  And that is what fascism is all about:

The entry under “Fascism” in The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics reads in part:

Where socialism [i.e., communism] sought totalitarian control of a society’s economic processes through direct state operation of the means of production, fascism sought that control indirectly, through domination of nominally private owners. Where socialism nationalized property explicitly, fascism did so implicitly, by requiring owners to use their property in the “national interest”–that is, as the autocratic authority conceived it. (Nevertheless, a few industries were operated by the state.) Where socialism abolished all market relations outright, fascism left the appearance of market relations while planning all economic activities.

And that is exactly what is happening.  Liberals may not like my term, but it couldn’t be more applicable here.  Obama demonized the insurance companies, and he will now regulate and control and dominate them “in the national interest.”

ObamaCare amounts to a regulatory takeover of the private health insurance companies.  They will be told what to do, how to do it, and how much to charge (although you might see them massively raise rates in preparation to protect themselves for the onslaught that is coming their way).  The government under Obama already owns General Motors and Chrysler.  His administration already essentially owns many banking institutions.  The government under Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac controls more than 90 percent of the nation’s secondary mortgage market.  And Paul Volcker acknowledged that “the federal government was responsible for up to 95 percent of all new home mortgages in the fourth quarter of 2009.”

Even the student loan industry was effectively nationalized under ObamaCare.

It’s naked fascism.  And that fascism which was slowly trickling onto us during the Bush years has now become an massive avalanche under Obama.

Fascism is bad, of course.  But the economic consequences of this fascist takeover of our health care system may be even worse than the political ones.

As for that, consider what Weekly Standard journalist Steve Hayes said (link includes video of the following):

“I think that if you take a step back from this the real story here is is the deficit and that story.  Everybody’s familiar with the debt clock; we’ve all seen how fast it moves.  This is going to put it on double time or triple time because when you go back and you look at the history of entitlements in the country, that’s the pattern.  There are promises that this is going to cut deficits or debt, and it never does.  You look back at at what FDR said when he signed Social Security into law in July 1935. He said it would act as a protection for future administrations against the necessity of going deeply into debt to furnish relief to the needy. He also said this is a law that will take care of human needs and at the same time provide the United States and economic structure of vastly greater soundness. Social Security today?  $43 Trillion dollar unfunded liability – that’s 400 thousand dollars per household in the United States today. And you go back to 1965.  LBJ did the same thing. You saw Nancy Pelosi carrying the gavel – it’s the same argument.  He said it would be $1.50 a month for the average worker.  $1.50 a month.  Three dollars per month after you’re 65.  Today, Medicare has a $57 trillion dollar unfunded liability.  $500,000 dollars per American household.  This will bankrupt the country.”

FDR said in 1935 when he signed Social Security into law:

It is a structure intended to lessen the force of possible future depressions. It will act as a protection to future Administrations against the necessity of going deeply into debt to furnish relief to the needy. The law will flatten out the peaks and valleys of deflation and of inflation. It is, in short, a law that will take care of human needs and at the same time provide for the United States an economic structure of vastly greater soundness.

$43 TRILLION dollars of unfunded liability.  That is $400,000 for every household in the country.  That is $184,000 for every single man, woman, and child in the country.  Please pay up now.

Does that sound like something that lessened the force of possible future ANYTHING? A protection to future administrations against the necessity of going deeply in debt???  Something that provides the United States with an economic structure of vastly greater soundness???  We’re doomed.

Maybe you don’t care that this giant boondoggle is going to crash and burn your country, and that your children or grandchildren will literally die as a result of your greed and selfishness.  But I do.

They promised us a bogus Utopia, and that Utopia is about to collapse into the fiery pit of hell.

What was it that Lyndon Johnson promised us when he sold his load of Medicare malarkey?

Now here is how the plan will affect you.

During your working years, the people of America–you–will contribute through the social security program a small amount each payday for hospital insurance protection. For example, the average worker in 1966 will contribute about $1.50 per month. The employer will contribute a similar amount. And this will provide the funds to pay up to 90 days of hospital care for each illness, plus diagnostic care, and up to 100 home health visits after you are 65. And beginning in 1967, you will also be covered for up to 100 days of care in a skilled nursing home after a period of hospital care.

And under a separate plan, when you are 65–that the Congress originated itself, in its own good judgment–you may be covered for medical and surgical fees whether you are in or out of the hospital. You will pay $3 per month after you are 65 and your Government will contribute an equal amount.

Let me tell you how Medicare affects me: It affects me with a $57 trillion unfunded liability.  It affects me with a bill of $500,000 for every single household in America.  It affects me with an individual bill (that every single man, woman, and child in this country owes) of $230,000.

The forerunner of the CBO underestimated the actual cost of Medicare by a whopping factor of 10.  If they repeat their little boo-boo, ObamaCare will cost $10 trillion dollars over ten years, and the United States will completely collapse as an independent nation-state.

And that’s $230,ooo on top of the $184,000 I owe for Medicare.  I owe $414,000.  And my household owns $900,000.  And great googly moogly, we don’t got it.  We’re on a speeding train that is going to keep hurtling along until it flies off a cliff and crashes.

Hey, I got an idea: let’s double that.  Hell, let’s triple it.

If you believe that the government is going to create a trillion dollar entitlement that ensures 47 million more people – (John Larson, chairman of the Democratic caucus, used the “47 million” figure on ABCs “This Week” just yesterday; he used it again on CNNs “State of the Union”) and spends less money than is spent now, you are an abject fool.

And that “47 million” clearly includes 17 million illegal immigrants.  The Democrats’ incredibly cynical plan is to take health resources from you and from your children and grandchildren and give those resources to illegal immigrants so they can capture the Hispanic vote.

The metaphor is a dozen people rushing into your house to eat your food and consume your resources while your own kids go hungry.  No one would do this.  But your government is doing it under Democrat Party tyranny.

The real cost of this bill is over $6 TRILLION.  The Democrats filled their legislation with gimmicks, such as assuming they would cut doctors’ Medicare reimbursements by 21% when they know they won’t, then putting that “Doctor fix” in another bill.  That will add $208 billion to the real cost of their plan.  Then they falsely start the bill’s ten-year score in 2010, when the benefits don’t start getting paid out until 2014.  That accounting deceit masks the fact that the REAL cost of the bill is $2.3 trillion.

The $6 trillion (PLUS!!!) figure comes from the biggest and most despicable shenanigan of all: all the money from American citizens who will be unconstitutionally forced to purchase health insurance isn’t counted in the CBO score.  At all.  Not one penny.

In other words, your ObamaCare – which really isn’t even deficit neutral at all – was sold as “deficit neutral” because it doesn’t count the trillions and trillions of dollars that American citizens will be compelled by their government to pay for health insurance.

ObamaCare amounted to the slitting of the national wrists.  And we’re going to start bleeding out until we either abandon it or die.

The Republicans have a few more tactics to fight this bill, but they amount to starting backfires to try to temporarily contain a massive hungry forest fire.  It won’t be enough, and it probably won’t ultimately succeed.

Thirty-eight states and counting are now working to preempt the ObamaCare disaster by protecting their citizens from this disgraceful and unconstitutional boondoggle.

Having this monster 2,700-page government takeover of health care may be the only chance this nation has of avoiding a very-near term financial implosion.

If this bill isn’t stopped, one day Americans will look back at the late great former United States of America and realize that that was the anvil that broke the camel’s back.

Democrat’s ‘Commonsense Plan’ Revealed: Let’s Nationalize the Oil Industry

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi swept the Democrats into power two years ago with the following promise:

Washington, D.C. – House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi released the following statement today on President Bush’s, Speaker Hastert’s, and the Republican Congress’ empty rhetoric on gas prices. Key facts on the Majority’s failure to address gas prices follows Pelosi’s statement.

With skyrocketing gas prices, it is clear that the American people can no longer afford the Republican Rubber Stamp Congress and its failure to stand up to Republican big oil and gas company cronies. Americans this week are paying $2.91 a gallon on average for regular gasoline – 33 cents higher than last month, and double the price than when President Bush first came to office.

“With record gas prices, record CEO pay packages, and record oil company profits, Speaker Hastert and the Majority Congress continue to give the American people empty rhetoric rather than join Democrats who are working to lower gas prices now.

“Democrats have a commonsense plan to help bring down skyrocketing gas prices by cracking down on price gouging, rolling back the billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies, tax breaks and royalty relief given to big oil and gas companies, and increasing production of alternative fuels.”

And did Pelosi and her fellow Democrats deliver on their “commonsense plan”? Sure they did. They demonized Bush, demonized the oil industry, got a bunch of television face-time presiding over a bunch of hearings where they didn’t hear a word the experts said, and basically demagogued their way to gas prices that have shot through the roof since their promise to fix the problem.

House Minority Leader (and Republican) John Boehner observed the second anniversary of Pelosi’s Great Big Fat Giant Pandering Demagoguing Lie by observing:

House Republican leaders on Tuesday challenged Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to release a plan to lower gas prices that they say Democrats touted when they were in the minority.

“Two years ago this week, you stated that House Democrats had a ‘commonsense plan’ to ‘lower gas prices,’ ” the letter said. “In light of the skyrocketing gasoline prices affecting working families and every sector of our struggling economy, we are writing today to respectfully request that you reveal this ‘commonsense plan’ so we can begin work on responsible solutions to help ease this strain.”

The letter is signed by Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio), Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), Conference Chairman Adam Putnam (R-Fla.), Policy Chairman Thaddeus McCotter (R-Mich.) as well as other members of leadership: Reps. Kay Granger (R-Texas), John Carter (R-Texas), Tom Cole (R-Okla.) and Eric Cantor (R-Va.).

In a press release dated April 24, 2006, Pelosi said, “Democrats have a commonsense plan to help bring down skyrocketing gas prices by cracking down on price gouging, rolling back the billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies, tax breaks and royalty relief given to big oil and gas companies, and increasing production of alternative fuels.” The letter cited policies put in place during the GOP control of Congress that the Speaker claimed had raised prices on American consumers to benefit oil companies.

The House GOP leaders’ letter points out that the price of gasoline has spiked $1.18 since Democrats took over in January and stands at $3.51.

“Once a nightmare scenario, $4 gasoline is now a very real possibility of becoming a summer staple,” the letter stated. “In some cities, including San Francisco and Chicago, it is already a startling reality.”

Pelosi’s office did not respond immediately for comment.

In my neck of the woods, for the record, gas was $4.45 a gallon today at the discounted Sam’s Club station (June 18, 2008).

But don’t worry: the Democrat’s are working on their “commonsense plan” even now…

Ta Daaa! Let’s nationalize the oil refineries!

It’s the commonsense Marxist totalitarian thing to do. Our good buddy Hugo Chavez over in socialist Venezuela did it. C’mon, guys; it’ll be even more fun than controlling health care!

As President Bush implored the Congress to open up ANWR, the coastal shelves, and other known oil reserves for drilling, and as he called on Congress to open up more refineries, one Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) shared The Plan:

At one point during press conference, Hinchey of New York seemed to veer from the Democratic talking points to suggest that U.S. refineries be nationalized.

“Our Republican friends also talk about the need to, you know, set up ways in which the material can be refined; refineries. Well, do we own refineries? No, the oil companies own refineries.

Should the people of the United States own refineries? Maybe so. Frankly I think that’s a good idea. Then we could control the amount of refined product much more capably that gets out on the market.”

When it came time for reporters to ask questions, a reporter jumped on this:

Q I’ve got a question about the issue of — you mentioned the issue of nationalizing refineries and having nationally owned refinery capacity. A lot of other countries have nationalized their oil industry. You mentioned that the oil and gas companies may not want to drill on these lands, so that they can take advantage of ever- higher gas prices. Is there any thought to having bills that would nationalize some of these refineries or start a national oil company?…

… REP. HINCHEY: “Yeah, there’s thought going on about this. Frankly, this is something that I think is essential. And I think it’s only a matter of time before it takes place. I think that the — we’ll — what we have to do has to be in the interest of the American people, primarily, basically, in the interest of the American people, not in the interest of some major corporations. And the determination as to how much of this very important material gets refined, and consequently out on the market, is in the hands of the oil companies. And they just do. They make those decisions based upon their efforts to drive up the price as high as they can and keep it as high as they can for as long as they can.

So I think that this is something that this Congress should be thinking about. And certainly it’s something that I’m thinking about, and I think that there are a few others already in the Congress who are thinking about it as well.”

Hinchey joins prominent Democrat Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), who earlier used the even better term: “socialize,” to describe The Plan To Socialize Everything:

A report by Fox News, captured in a clip posted on YouTube.com, showed Waters challenging the president of Shell Oil, John Hofmeister, to guarantee the prices consumers pay will go down if the oil companies are allowed to drill wherever they want off of U.S. shores.

Hofmeister replied: “I can guarantee to the American people, because of the inaction of the United States Congress, ever-increasing prices unless the demand comes down.”

The Shell exec said paying $5 at the pump “will look like a very low price in the years to come if we are prohibited from finding new reserves, new opportunities to increase supplies.”

Waters responded, in part, “And guess what this liberal would be all about. This liberal will be about socializing … uh, um. …”

The congresswoman paused to collect her thoughts.

“Would be about, basically, taking over, and the government running all of your companies. …”

The oil executives responded, according to Fox News, by saying they’ve seen this before, in Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela.

Well, it’s a good thing the Democrats are finally releasing their “commonsense plan.” I was getting worried that the Democrat’s promise to fix the high oil prices were nothing more than their usual pandering.

Congress couldn’t even run a cafeteria without driving it into the ground. But don’t worry: I’m sure they’ll do much better running the health and oil industries.

What will be the legal grounds for this move? Well, the same Democrats who care so deeply about the rights of foreign terrorists that they want to give them full access to the rights and privileges of U.S. courts take a slightly different tact with big oil companies. At the last round of the staged communist show trial known as the Big Oil Hearings back in May, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) told the oil executives, “I can’t say that there’s evidence that you are manipulating the price but I believe that you probably are so prove to me that you’re not.”

You see, in the bizarro world of Democrats, terrorists must be considered innocent until proven guilty with all the rights and privileges of the American legal system, whereas American companies – and the American citizens who run them – are simply guilty until proven innocent.

Oh, socializing/nationalizing the oil industry isn’t their only idea, of course: they’ve already managed to brilliantly send food prices through the roof by mandating corn-based ethanol (people in the third world are literally starving because of this idiocy), which produces an incredibly expensive government-subsidized fuel source that requires more energy to produce than it actually generates. And Democrats also plan to attack the oil industry with a “windfall profits” tax that oil companies would immediate pass on to consumers (Jimmy Carter tried this, and it backfired on him too, but fortunately for Democrats no one pays much attention to history any more).

One day, the American people will finally hold Democrats accountable for their stupid, shortsighted, ignorant, pandering, demagoguing nonsense.

I’ve got dibs on a cave I came across on a hike. When our society comes crashing down because it was starved of the energy (by which I mean ‘oil’) that was essential to sustain it, it will be nice to have a nice warm place to go instead of freezing in the dark. And we won’t let the Democrats take over the new energy source (by which I mean ‘firewood’) – at least for a couple hundred years until some future society sufficiently dumbs down enough to give them power again.

Maybe liberalism is some kind of means to control the growth and success of the human race: from the slime, to the protozoa, to the fish, to the monkey, to the ape, to the human, to the liberal… and then right back down the drain to the slime again.

Understand one thing: Democrats don’t give a damn about how much it costs you to drive to work. They care about “global warming” and “maintaining a pristine environment.”

I’ve got a couple of articles on the global warming issue: “What You Never Hear About Global Warming,” and “What the Science REALLY Says About Global Warming.” Realize the most heinous regimes in human history were all preceded with lofty claims; and that the big government Illuminati can run roughshod over any one and any thing when they are acting in the name of “saving the planet from ourselves.”

The secret truth of the matter is that Democrats do not – repeat do not – want to increase the oil supply. They want to reduce the use of oil by means of conservation and by embracing windmills and such (well, as long as the windmills aren’t in their back yards, anyway). The only way Americans will conserve oil is if they are forced to do so. And the only way Americans will be forced to do so is if oil becomes a lot more expensive than it is now.

I would love it if Democrats – who don’t want to increase the oil supply in favor of conservation – put their money where their mouth is and quit using up the oil supply and started conserving. Quit driving; quit heating your homes in the winter; that sort of thing. Then both sides could have what they wanted: Democrats could conserve; and Republicans could have an increased supply. But that sort of idea rests on the premise that Democrats are not hypocrites – so it will never happen.

I watch darn near everyone go flying past me on the freeway while I drive the speed limit darn near every single day, and I know for a fact that Americans aren’t particularly interested in “embracing conservation.”

Enter the Democrats, who don’t know how to fix anything, but sure know how to massively screw things up through taxes, legislation, regulation, litigation judicial activism, and more lies than you can shake a stick at on your best stick-shaking day.

When you are paying $10 a gallon the way they already are in other socialist European countries, just think about those happy polar bears.

Maybe you can recite the liberal-environmentalist mantra to yourself to calm down: “Polar bears are more important than my kids. Polar bears are more important than my kids. Polar bears are more important than my kids…“