THE HEALTHCARE PICKLE

Why do we find ourselves in this healthcare pickle?  How did the federal government get the idea they could insert themselves into our health insurance industry?   People forget that government is force.  And that it is force at the point of a gun.  A model for the Obamacare law can be found in the federal seat belt law, requiring car manufacturers to install seat belts in every car....just as the Obamacare law requires insurance companies to place Obama's requirements into your health insurance policy. 

When seat belts in cars became mandatory in 1968, there was national debate on whether or not the federal government had the authority to force you to wear a seat belt...or even if the federal government had the authority to force car manufacturers to only sell cars with seat belts installed.  The federal government does not force you to wear a seat belt, and is forbidden by law to do so.  BUT, the power of the federal government doesn't stop there, even though it should.  What the federal government did regarding seat belts is threaten more legislation to force car manufacturers into installing passive restraints /air bags.  The idea was that if air bags were installed, seat belts would no longer be necessary, quelling the debate.  But the automakers rebelled and said the passive restraints would push the price of cars out of reach for most car purchasers.  The automakers, at the behest of the Department of Transportation, then lobbied state governments to pass seat belt laws, forcing drivers and passengers to be fined if caught not wearing a seat belt.  Supposedly if the automakers did this, the passive restraints would not become mandatory.  But guess what?  The Federal government proceeded to make air bags mandatory anyway. And the cost of cars has escalated greatly, just as health insurance is now.

The Fraud of Seat Belt Laws

"While the hundreds of millions of dollars spent in support of seat-belt laws has been a horrendous financial burden to society, the greatest cost is really not money. It’s the loss of freedom. Seat-belt laws infringe a person’s rights as guaranteed in the Fourth, Fifth, and the Ninth Amendments, and the civil rights section of the Fourteenth Amendment. Such laws are an unwarranted intrusion by government into the personal lives of citizens; they deny through prior restraint the right to determine one’s own individual personal health-care standard."
"While seat-belt use might save some people in certain kinds of traffic accidents, there is ample evidence that in other kinds, people have been more seriously injured and even killed only because they used seat belts. Some people have been saved from death in certain kinds of accidents only because a seat belt was not used. In those cases, the malicious nature of seat-belt laws is further revealed: such persons are subject to fines for not dying in the accident while using a so-called safety device arbitrarily chosen by politicians."

Sound familiar?  Now replace the car manufacturers with insurance companies and you can see the federal government through Obamacare has mandated what insurance companies MUST provide, selling health insurance policies because of federal force.  As with seat belts, some will benefit, but others will suffer.  The Federal government got away with an unconstitutional law in 1968 regarding cars and your driving choices, and since then Congress has had a jolly old time of it regulating and mandating toilets, light bulbs, insulation, dry wall, paint, and nearly every other product you might want to purchase.  Now it's health insurance.  The unconstitutional precedent was set to using the force of federal law to mandate what product providers must offer to the marketplace.  In the case of Obamacare, insurance policies, someone(s) in the Federal government decided what the insurance policies must cover and not cover.  But if you have any respect for being American and for the U.S. Constitution, you realize the Federal government has no legitimate role to play in any of these areas of the market.  The prosperity of our nation was created by a free market, and whenever the force of government manipulates that, there are winners and losers.  Mostly losers.  This is what Mussolini did in fascist Italy.  It is also what the debt-laden Europeans have done, to create their own economic destitution. I can give you many historical precedents of failed and failing nations whose governments took this kind of power away from their people.  But that's a long story and I am told, sadly, that no one wants to hear about it today. 

  

One big difference from the seat belt analogy to health insurance is that now, with Obamacare, the federal government has taken one more huge step into your life by mandating that you purchase that product, a product you may or may not want or need, or can afford.  (You weren't forced to buy a car, however, if you did, it had to have a seat belt.)  

Just as car manufacturers were vilified if they balked at Federal mandates, insurance companies have been vilified if they dare to fight off Obamacare.  So instead, just like the car manufacturers, the insurance companies got on board with the Feds and tried to comply. They had no choice in the matter, not if they wanted to survive.  Now Obama is making them the scapegoat for his failing program as Obama moves closer to his stated goal of single-payer socialist healthcare.  Someone tell me, what can Obama know about your personal healthcare that you would give him the right to dictate to you what you need or want in health insurance?   Same question of DC bureaucrats and politicians.  What is your doctor or hospital going to be allowed to do?  And what choice will you have? 

Well,  there is the pickle.  As long as you are willing to give government the power over your personal decisions about your life, what products you buy or offer, the American promise of freedom, economic or otherwise, is shot to hell.  This is a pickle I didn't "choose" to be forced to eat.    

COMPARE THE LEVIATHAN OBAMACARE TO THE FAIR TAX AND WHAT DO YOU GET?

I've begun looking at candidates for a U.S. Senate seat in North Carolina to replace the Obamabot Kay Hagan.  We have a crowd stepping up for that seat, 5 running so far.  They all seem like nice folks.  One woman and four men.  One is a doctor and one is a medical nurse practitioner.   One a broadcaster personality.  Two libertarians.  One is the current Speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives.  One a pastor, representing the Christian conservative side of things.  There is rumored subterfuge, some of which has credibility with Karl Rove backing one or two of them.  Rove's rumored scheme is to back one of them as a spoiler to knock out the most likely Tea Party contender.  Party politics is becoming uglier.  I'm sure it always was and I am just seeing more of it.  

So as I've been looking at these candidates I am finding one or two of them are promoting the Fair Tax.  Red flags for me, if you have read my former posts about that.  All of the candidates are saying they would make the effort to get rid of Obamacare.  Green lights all around on that one.  But what is a person thinking... that they know Obamacare is bad, but they want to say the Fair Tax is good? Am I crazy or are these folks disconnected from reality?

Both Obamacare and the Fair Tax are leviathan programs of taxation.  Both programs grab a huge amount of the economy for control by the Federal government.  Oh...yeah..those Fair Tax guys say it doesn't control anything, but just taxes new goods and all services.  They say you would be in control by deciding to purchase or not.  Uh huh.  Obamacare taxes medical devices and insurance policies.  Obamacare takes over 1/6th of the economy.  The Fair Tax would take over most of the economy, all but the 'used goods' part.  You don't have to pay the taxes unless you want to get your hair cut or buy a new house or car, or new clothes or dishes, or pay someone to wash your car, or buy Christmas gifts for your family.   But that's o.k.  You don't have to pay Obamacare taxes unless you buy an insurance policy, or want a knee replacement or a pump for your diabetes medications.  No problem.  What?

Both Obamacare and the Fair Tax require a new IRS scheme of collections.  Both require a new technological solution of reporting your activities to the Federal government.  Both are expensive, comprehensive, unwieldy, and use an untrustworthy government bureaucracy to implement all of the processes.  

I'm going to say the obvious once again about the Fair Tax.  The Revolution that created this nation was begun by fighting off consumption taxes by a controlling government.  What has happened since then?  Today we have people promoting themselves as patriots who are promoting consumption taxes.  What is the difference between Obamacare which taxes your health insurance and the Fair Tax which taxes your purchases of goods and services?  Again, both using the Federal government to decide what will be taxed and using technology to track your purchases?  At least if the tax is based on your income, the minutiae of your daily life is not tracked by the IRS.  Granting that tracking everything by the Federal government is now becoming the norm, there is another disconnect; some of the same people who like the Fair Tax also say they are against Smart Meters and Black Boxes which track every kw hour you use and every mile you drive.  This gives me whiplash!    

Surely we can do better than this.  Libertarians, such as the Reason Foundation, are lately promoting 'public private partnerships' for roads using tolls, too.  They pretend this is a "free market" solution, when it is nothing but a taxpayer guaranteed profit scheme for some corporate entities who manage infrastructure projects.  The Fair Tax is nothing more than a different name for the VAT (value added tax) used in the EU.  And as long as you are using VAT type taxation, then just pile on carbon taxes while you are at it.  As far as I can see, the Fair Tax is a VAT tax and is all too similar to Obamacare taxes.  Instead of, or in addition to, taxing your healthcare, the Fair Tax taxes everything else. I just can't get excited about a candidate who wants to promote that for America.  I want the Federal government taken down to its proper size...the one where DC is only in charge of national security and foreign relations.  All of this domestic manipulation of citizens' personal lives needs to bite the dust as all other socialist tyrannies eventually do.  Let's get rid of it now while we still can.

I'd say I'm confused, but I don't think I am.  Something doesn't compute with this kind of thinking.  And I'm definitely NOT happy about candidates promoting themselves as conservative constitutionalists, but are then promoting programs that are anything but constitutional solutions to shrinking the out of control Federal bureaucracy.

I'm continuing to look at the candidates for this Senate seat.  I hope I can land on one that makes me happy.  And if I do find that candidate, is it one who can win?  The search continues.

THE PRICE OF EVERYTHING - CAMPAIGN DONATIONS

I'm not equipped enough to go into the Federal Reserve details with the continual printing of some $85 billion per month that is being pumped into the nation.  I just know the problem continues and escalates.  But I came across an article this morning that explains something about where the money is going.  Consider the price of anything and ask what is in that price...what does the supplier do with the money that you spend to purchase anything?  Does the price have any true relationship to the cost of production with added profit for the company producing it?  (economics is not my tour de force...just warning you.)

Because our government has become a corrupt soviet socialist + fascist system of "pay to play," the companies from which we purchase goods and the non-profits to whom citizens donate are paying off politicians for "favorable" legislation.  Trust me, there will never be enough money in your pocket to get into this club.  And trust me, the supposed "favorable" legislation is not "favorable" to you, but is designed to strip your pockets and grease the skids for government clients.  

The article that caught my attention was this  From the Daily Caller on the subject of how environmentalist groups spent fortunes on the VA governor's race.  Ask yourself why they would do that?  

Two of McAuliffe’s biggest funders were the Virginia League of Conservation Voters and  NextGen Climate Action. They each spent about $1.7 million on the former Democratic National Committee chairman’s campaign. The Virginia Chapter of the Sierra Club gave nearly $500,000 to McAuliffe. 

  Green groups also spent millions on TV ad buys during the campaign. NextGen Climate Action, which was founded by San Francisco billionaire Tom Steyer, spent more than $2.4 million — the most spent on TV buys by any group.

Steyer, a major Obama fundraiser, has been a large backer of anti-Keystone XL campaigns and his political group, NextGen, also supported the election of Democrat Ed Markey of Massachusetts to the Senate.

Environmentalists were successful at making global warming a central issue in the campaign, having former University of Virginia climate scientist and global warming activist Michael Mann stump for McAuliffe.

 The same article explains that the coal industry also donated to McAuliffe, but didn't contribute anywhere near the huge amounts that the environmentalists did.  As you know, the coal industry is being decimated by the leftists in elected and unelected positions.  I would guess that the coal industry doesn't have the disposable funds to play this game any more.  Whether or not you agree that fossil fuels are evil, you would have to conclude that the fossil fuel industries have afforded us all a great life of prosperity AND that America has the cleanest energy industry on the planet.  Your energy rates and costs keep going up and up in your house.  You also know that wind, solar, and biofuels are not going to provide anything close to the energy needs we have or will have in the future....And that they are more expensive alternatives.  You also have to know that environmentalist groups who are pushing the hoax of global warming / climate change are not interested in your energy security. 

Lest you think I am raining on the environmentalists only, no I am not.  Corporations are doing the same thing; pouring buckets of money into campaigns.  Some do it through the Chamber of Commerce.  Some do it through the US Green Building Council.  Some just do it directly.  Pay to play.  

The point I am trying to make is that the price of your cup of coffee, your gallon of gasoline, your house, your light bulbs, your everything, is paying to elect people who have no interest at all in the free market system, but have every interest in picking your pocket.  You see, these campaign contributions aren't manifested out of thin air.  They come from you when you purchase something....and then you wonder why the price of everything is going through the roof.  You are paying to elect people who don't care if your standard of living goes into the basement as long as they get their piece of your pie.

Campaigns for candidates run on money.  Karl Rove is now worth millions of dollars.  And gee, I guess we've all seen the Clinton's coffers fill up and overflow. I honestly don't know how to change the system of campaign contributions to something less corrupt.  I don't believe we should have a government run campaign system, so scratch that.  If you have a better answer on this, I'd like to hear it.

Just saying...all of this Fed printing isn't going into your pocket as I'm sure you noticed.  But it is going somewhere.  I think a large part of it is going straight back to those who are shoveling it as fast as they can into the pockets of government legislators.  In the meantime, inflation is rolling right along.  Too many dollars in chase of too few goods.  So all of this money is not going into production of needed goods.  You pay more for the goods you need and the politicians are laughing all the way to the bank. 

I'm not sure how small government conservatives will ever win another election with this scenario in place.   As the old saying goes: Is this any way to run a railroad?