The Plan For Incremental Takeover Of Our Lives

The health care bill recently signed into law is a staring point for the Democrats and their progressive allies who intend to continue hammering away until government is completely involved in our health care decisions. Their ultimate goal is to have a single payer program run by the government. They want to put insurance companies out of business.

And they will do it with a manufactured “crisis.”

There were warnings that the health care takeover would result in higher costs for companies. The alleged benefits from tax cuts for small business are narrow and limited in scope and actually punish those with more than 50 employees.

As soon as the bill was signed into law many companies filed information regarding the impact on their business. The businesses have cited impacts of up to 1 billion dollars. For many, this is because they will no longer be able to write off a subsidy they get from the federal government. The government provides a subsidy to these companies to keep their retirees on the company plan for prescription coverage. Private plans are much better at cost control than the government and this is why the government pays a subsidy for companies to keep retirees. Having them on Medicare would be more costly to the government.

Now these companies are reporting the impact of the bill and how the new law will affect them. Their claims drew the scorn of Henry Waxman who wants to know how their assessments can be off compared to the independent assessment (read CBO) that Congress relied on.

News flash, the companies base their numbers on reality and the CBO bases its numbers on the imaginary world of government make believe. If the CBO was not told to assume anything that is actually impacting these companies then it could not figure the cost.

Waxman is trying to intimidate these companies because their reports run contrary to what we were all told. This plan is supposed to save money but it will cost us all money. If people think that these companies will not pass the cost on to consumers then they are living with Alice in a place called Wonderland.

Better yet, suppose the companies decide not to keep their retirees on the company prescription plan? They will be moved to Medicare prescription which would add about $1000 for each person enrolled. If this happens, about 2 million people could end up in the government plan. This would take away the “savings” estimated by the CBO ($5 billion) and would increase the amount the government spends by around 2 billion dollars (a 7 billion dollar swing). The CBO estimate was no doubt one of the “assume the companies can’t write off the subsidies and still keep their retirees on their rolls.”

If retirees are forced into Medicare prescription it would end the debate on whether you could keep your plan if you liked it.

Waxman is making a show of this but this is by design. Obama and the Democrats want costs to rise because then they can declare another crisis that requires government intervention. As Rich Lowry points out in his latest piece:

Democrats clearly plan to blame the private sector for all the downsides of their health plan. Pres. Barack Obama told liberal lawmakers in a private lobbying session that the bill is only “a beginning.” Any increase in costs and premiums — both of which are inevitable — will be attributed to corporate malfeasance requiring yet more government intervention.

Increase in costs and premiums both of which are inevitable. We were sold this plan on its cost saving qualities. Pelosi, Reid, Obama and every other Democrat appeared before the cameras and told us this would lower our costs and save money. Any mention of the increases in premiums that have occurred since the bill became law has been met with scorn and ridicule from those who believe that it will drive costs down.

Obama told his Democrats that costs and premiums will go UP and that this was inevitable.

And that is good because the Democrats can blame it on the companies and generate the need for even more government intervention.

Henry Waxman is the tool who is making this happen. As companies demonstrate the rise in costs (something Obama said was inevitable) Waxman can call them out, claim they are to blame and then Democrats can get busy generating more legislation designed to take control of even more of our lives.

This is all by design. These Democrats now have a foot in the door and they will, as Pelosi suggested, be kicking more doors down.

In other words, we created this mess which will create more messes and then we can get involved even more.

Remember, America will never accept Socialism outright but we can be led to it in tiny increments. The progressives have been making small gains for nearly a century and now they are ready to take much bigger ones.

They are ready to declare another crisis and generate more new laws to control more of our lives.

The Democrats must be defeated in November. We need to destroy them.

UPDATE: Interesting article from the American Spectator.

Never surrender, never submit.
Big Dog

Gunline

[tip]If you enjoy what you read consider signing up to receive email notification of new posts. There are several options in the sidebar and I am sure you can find one that suits you. If you prefer, consider adding this site to your favorite feed reader. If you receive emails and wish to stop them follow the instructions included in the email.[/tip]

Evolution, Denied

The Liberal Left just love to trot out old Charles Darwin, at every chance they get, mistakenly believing that his theories on the Evolution of the various species, indeed of man himself, abrogate the belief and even existence of God. The Left love a secular world. They could not be more wrong, but God gives everyone the free will to accept or deny his existence, so if that is what Liberals choose to do, that’s fine with me.

What I can’t understand however, is the way they, like Peter in the Garden of Gethsemane, deny the theories of Darwin, as they relate to businesses and economics. Libs, the rooster is crowing. (For all who didn’t get the reference, read a Bible).

Businesses, corporations, and monetary entities have a life of their own, and when healthy, they grow, they expand, and they can and will gobble up the weak among them. All quite similar to the natural world. Companies grow and evolve, often changing into something different than their original shape, business- wise.This is evolution in a corporate environment, and it’s a healthy thing when business grows- more jobs, more money, more opportunities to advance in a corporate sense- all well and good.

What liberals fail to understand, or accept, ( and here’s the blatant hypocrisy), is that when corporations fail to adapt to changing conditions in the business environment, they begin to fail, to die, as it were. This too, is a part of the natural world of business. The corporation fails, and other corporations swoop in and strip the corpse of all assets that might be valuable, thus making themselves stronger. This is how the business world operates when it is left on its own. Like the dinosaurs, nothing in the business world is too big to fail. Everything has its time, and then fades away.

When, however, you artificially prop up a corporation, and keep it limping along past its lifetime, you do no one any favors, indeed you tend to favor the ill corporation to the exclusion of everything else, and the systemic illness begins to spread to other businesses, because they have been denied and ignored in favor of the sick corporation, so their business has suffered also.

Pretty soon this malaise spreads to the ancillary businesses that served parts of the corporation, and, much as the Swine Flu has begun spreading among the population, so do the effects ripple among the smaller businesses, when the smaller businesses could have been freed up to find another corporation to service if the “too big to fail” corporation had been allowed TO FAIL.

So we come to the very root of the hypocrisy the Liberal Left, of as they like to call themselves, “progressives” ( a term they had to reach back in the past for- a “retro” re-branding). Here, on the one hand, these people worship at the statue of  Darwin, saying that we have been descended from monkeys, and there is no God, just random atoms colliding helter- skelter. If someone brings up any weaknesses in Darwin’s THEORIES, these people are ridiculed as weak- minded, ignorant, superstitious country bumpkins. After all, EVERYONE who is wise just knows that religion is SO yesterday.

These same people who grovel at the feet of  Darwin blatantly ignore the same rules, or theories when they apply to businesses and corporations, and that is inconsistent, much as saying that gravity is a law, but rubber balls are exempt from following this law.  The strongest part of Darwin’s theories on natural selection is the part about survival of the fittest, so why would anyone ignore this part of his theories?

Survival of the fittest- come on, let’s hear all you liberals say this- shout it from the rooftops. What? No? You don’t want to believe this, because you might be scared you are not fit? Maybe not- after all, you are the ones who want to coddle everyone and everything. The unfortunate by- product of all of this coddling, is that now you have immature people, or, in this case, corporations, entities that cannot take care of themselves as they should.

The eagle, the symbol of our country, has a way of raising his young that ensure the survival of the species. As the chicks fledge out their feathers, and begin to sit on the edge of the nest, flapping their wings, and building up their strength, the parents begin to take away the nest. One by one, the sticks that made up the nest begin to disappear, until these chicks are left with no option but to fly or fall. The parents will follow their children on their first flight, but they ensure that their children WILL make their first flight, thus launching their own life. If, for some reason, the chick could not fly, it would have crashed and died, and while the parent might have felt grief, the world goes on.

And so the world must go on, but not with crippled corporations. I drive a chevrolet, but if GMC fails, then that is the fault of the brains of that company, including the unions and anyone who had a part in deciding the direction that company was going in. The same thing applies to Banks and other institutions.

If you wanted to skew business evolution, to give some companies corporate steroids, you would all take your money out of banks that had taken the TARP funds, and put your money in those banks that didn’t take the government bribes. This would reduce the government’s grip on financial institutions, and cause these smaller banks to grow- but that would be good, for these banks didn’t make the bad decisions that led to government control.

Perhaps it’s time we gave the liberal left a lesson on evolution, and survival of the fittest.

This plan will work, and it will give the good banks a good boost. If the Left can mess with evolution, so can we.

Big Dog

[tip]If you enjoy what you read consider signing up to receive email notification of new posts. There are several options in the sidebar and I am sure you can find one that suits you. If you prefer, consider adding this site to your favorite feed reader. If you receive emails and wish to stop them follow the instructions included in the email.[/tip]

What Happens In Vegas Is Only For The Feds

Barack Obama is in a bit of hot water with Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman after the sainted one leveled his scorn at companies that have received taxpayer bailout money taking their employees to Las Vegas for business meetings. Goodman said it makes no sense for them to cancel and move the meeting to San Francisco based on what Obama said.

I have to agree that it makes no sense to force a company to cancel a meeting because it is a waste of money if they are only moving to another location.

I imagine that Obama was upset that taxpayer money was wasted on a meeting in Las Vegas. He had to make an example of the companies so that people would understand that he would not allow their money to be wasted.

The only problem with that is that about 220 of his employees will be going to Vegas for a meeting in May and the entire trip will be paid for by taxpayers. In these tough times it is inconceivable that taxpayer money would be used so that employees can go to Vegas for a meeting. All this at a time when record amounts of money are being borrowed to waste on a recession and while people are losing their jobs.

The employees in question are those who work for FEMA, the much maligned organization that made a cursory visit to Kentucky during the recent ice storms that killed about 50 and left half a million or so without power in the dead of winter.

Can anyone, even Dr. Joan maybe, explain how it is bad for businesses that have received taxpayer money to go to Vegas for their meetings but not bad for taxpayer money to pay for government employees to go there? Couldn’t FEMA use those modern methods of communication that Obama is all in favor of to have a virtual meeting? VTC, web collaboration, stuff like that.

I bet it would save a bunch of taxpayer money and demonstrate that the Obama government is no better than the private businesses he chooses to scold. It would also show that he wants to be as good a steward with our money as he expects the bailout recipients to be.

Then again, if that were the case he wouldn’t be spending a TRILLION dollars of money we do not have. It is the cost of the plan plus the interest that makes it over a TRILLION dollars. Just wanted to point that out to those who don’t understand a budget, financing, and business.

Source:
Federal Times

Big Dog

[tip]If you enjoy what you read consider signing up to receive email notification of new posts. There are several options in the sidebar and I am sure you can find one that suits you. If you prefer, consider adding this site to your favorite feed reader. If you receive emails and wish to stop them follow the instructions included in the email.[/tip]