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A good short TV spot on Obamacare A quick entry from me: take a look at this item via Reason TV spot about the monster of a healthcare bill that passed at the weekend in the US. (I love the Incredibles-style music in it, by the way). As Gillespie puts it, the government underestimates of spending on things like health is not a bug, but a feature. The message that comes through, of course, is one that applies to governments worldwide. Do we honestly expect that politicians who are capable of the sort of accounting tricks surrounding building projects like the Olympic Games in London can be trusted to give accurate, costed predictions on things like healthcare spending, or education, or defence procurement?
Bear that in mind as we read the latest performance by UK finance minister, Alistair Darling, today.
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That music is the theme song from “Emergency,” a late 60s/early 70s show on paramedics and ER staff. A true classic.
We don’t do comprehensive very well.
Sen. Lamar Alexander [R. TN.]
Most American companies sponge off corporate welfare, because they cannot compete with foreign companies, so the private sector is a gigantic joke as much as the US Federal Circus. Look at McDonalds, which gets taxpayers dough to market itself abroad!
Fact is, America’s health insurance companies are run by crooks and whores. “Pre-existing conditions” is a scam that Madoff would be proud of.
Oh, and how’s about those wonderful American pharmaceuticals who can’t compete against foreign competition. And don’t you just love how they feed children drugs they don’t need for made-up illnesses to gullible American parents, turning their kids into the drug addicts of the future?
Or Lockheed, which, when it was too incompetent to compete in the commercial market, became a welfare sponger and friend to Japanese gangsters.
To this day, this failed company scams welfare handouts, most famously for its plane that needs maintenance every 3 hours (hmmm wonder who has to pay Lockheed for that?).
Look at the crooks at the Pentagon, who lost $3 trillion+ of taxpayers money. Three Trillion, that makes the Pentagon the most incompetent government bureaucracy on Earth, and maybe the entire universe. How do you misplace that much? Halliburton destroying trucks and then billing the US taxpayer for it. If you want to get rid of incompetent government, start with the bloated, fat waste of space that is the Spentagon. So useless it can’t win wars against third world countries.
Thanks to the US Supreme Court, American’s need not bother voting anymore as Benito Mussolini’s vision of a government run by corporations has finally been made a reality thanks to the 5 Fascist Judges.
The notion of Obama being a “socialist” is absurd. Like 97% of all US politicians he’s a corporatist.
If Obama is a socialist, then Bush must be a Communist; Bush presided over the Wall Street Welfare Programme, the biggest welfare programme ever instituted. Surely the ultimate statist is one who believes in giving taxpayers money to the rich (as Bush clearly did). To give aid to the poor is at least well-intentioned and makes some kind of sense, but to give welfare to the rich shows a true love of big government, Bush gave to those who did not need it! The mark of a real communist.
Relugus, and you have the gall to talk about folks being sold meds they don’t need. Sounds like you could use a few, old chap, even though some of your points have merit.
Relugus – you know nothing about the backround and associations of Barack Obama and YOU DO NOT WANT TO KNOW.
Someone could play you recordings of Obama and his Comrades openly admitting their beliefs and you would just shut your eyes and put your fingers over your ears and go “la, la, la” so you could not see or hear what you were being show.
As for corporate welfare – GOOD POINT.
Let us ABOLISH IT.
For a start we could abolish unconstitutional schemes like Medicare and Mediciad which put HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS of Dollars in the hands of so many enterprises and institutions.
I am sure you would be in favour of abolishing these subsidies Relugus…..
Why are you looking like that?
Why are you backing off?
I do not understand – after all I have just suggested something entirely in line with what you just said.
There is no difference between the Republicans and Democrats, its all a big show, punch and judy BS so people don’t realise Wall Street is pulling all the strings.
The United Fruit Company has come home to America, the country which inflicted Banana Republics on millions of the world’s citizens while spouting about “freedom” (except when the fruit and oil companies don’t like they way you vote), is becoming a Banana Republic itself. Poetic justice in motion.
It is a truly delicious irony that the 5 Republican justices of the Supreme Court will go down in history as ushering in big government. As Max Keiser remarked, they voted to line their own pockets. The tea-baggers proved they are corporate slaves by not attacking the Supreme Court’s act of treason.
I would also add that social security was in surplus until Pentagon incompetence in Iraq and Wall Street’s Welfare handouts sucked it all away. It has long been Wall Street’s ambition to steal taxpayer’s pensions.
Contrary to the naive thinking of many conservatives, corporations are all in favour of bigger government (that’s why they love China). Goldman used the government to destroy its rivals. Wall Street to a large extent controls the US government and Senate, it is the chief engine and cheerleader of government spending.
Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton, Bush 2, Obama…all corporatists. There is no “free market” in America, the notion is a myth. When the rich can buy politicians, you cannot ever hope to have a free-market.
Only by keeping bankers and lobbyists out of the halls of government can you have a truly free market.
The irony is that a real socialist would restore some free market principles by cleaning out the Wall Street cancer. They certainly would not hire men like Geithner and Emanuel.
As for the constitution the Pentagon is totally unconstitutional; a standing army that serves the interests of defence contractors as its main priority with the taxpayers that fund it coming a very distant second, if they even come second. There is something seriously sick about a government body that gives taxpayers money to people who rape women and lock them in crates, and which allows Abu Ghraib to happen under its nose.
Relugus had only one coherent point in him.
Yes, the US government has been running the insurance companies with an increasingly heavy hand since the 1930s.
Now that the government has engineered a crisis sufficiently large to require a complete take-over of the system, the US government can engineer an even larger disaster.
But you’re wrong about Madoff. He was an amateur compared to Obama and Pelosi.
Exhibit A is that you actually think you see through things.
They’d like to thank you, Relugus. It wouldn’t be so easy for the government to nationalize industries if they didn’t have the left convinced the corporations were running the country.
We are so screwed.
Of course this as just as constitutional as a law saying all jews must die, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be upheld or challenged simply ignored.
see you in a private clinic in Hungary, India, or New Zealand. That is if I survive the gun battle over refusing to buy their insurance as they have just outlawed my HSA.
The Left’s fantasy:
200 channels, one school.
Marry whomever you want, these three doctors.
I wish Wall Street were “pulling all the strings;” at least then we would have a coherent set of laws and tax policies. Unfortunately, while that may have been at least partly true once upon a time, those days are long gone. It is now the federal government which completely dominates all large businesses (automobiles, insurance, banking, mortgage lending, now health care, etc.), and at the moment the government is controlled by the left wing (trade unions, Soros and his allies, leftist foundations and think tanks, activist organizations, etc.).
“Benito Mussolini’s vision of a government run by corporations has finally been made a reality.” Umm, a few small problems with that. First, it’s backward, as noted above: it’s the government which controls corporations, as in fact was also the case in Mussolini’s Italy. (It’s called “Fascism”; look it up.) Second, Mussolini was a hard-core leftist, not some stooge of Italianate conservatives or industrialists. So if you don’t like calling Obama a socialist and would rather correctly label him a fascist, I’ll all aboard with that.
The sad thing is that buried among the nonsense Regulus makes a few valid points (corporate welfare, unconstitutional standing army, the US transforming itself into a banana republic before our eyes). Unfortunately, he then he goes and spoils it with some new idiocy (“‘pre-existing conditions’ is a scam”, as if it makes any sense whatsoever to insure against a contingency which has already occurred). I guess it’s a case of the proverbial blind pig occasionally finding a truffle, or the stopped clock which is right twice a day. We can enjoy those moments, rare and fleeting though they are.
Favorite protest sign:
“At least buy me a drink first.”
LOL.
Buckle your seat belts, kiddies…the next few years are going to be a bumpy ride.
I am fortunate, in that my insurance group includes a university hospital. If things get desperate, there will be care available to me.
Relgulus.
Military spending’s share of the economy has been DECLINING for decades (by the way the builder of the Pentagon was F.D.R. – who even you can not claim was pro business).
The entitlement programs (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and so on) are now vastly more important than military spending.
As for “unconstitutional”.
Wrong again.
It is the entitlement programs (like so much else) that are unconstitutional.
Both the army and the navy are clearly constitutional if Congress votes for them (they are listed in the specfic powers granted to Congress by Article One, Section Eight of the Constitution of the United States).
The specific powers – not just the preamble “the common defence and general welfare” which, I agree with you, is the PURPOSE of the powers granted to Congress (NOT some 1933 style National Socialist “Enabling Law” allowing Congress to spend money on anything it declares for the “general welfare”).
“What about the Air Force” – that is why (during WWII) it was the United States ARMY Airforce.
As for the Marine Corps – that is is actually older than the Constitution itself (did you not know?).
If you are serious about limiting the size of government you have to fight the ever growing cancer that is the WELFARE STATE – but of course you are not serious, you are just a poser doing the “I am against corporations” dance of the “libertarian” left.
Are you even serious about that dance?
Would you have voted against TARP or the “stimulus” Bill?
I doubt it.
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Socialism means that benefits come from the government. Capitalism means benefits come from corporations. The extremes of either ideology do not work. Completely Socialist means that there is no productivity. Completely Capitalist means that the power divide gets bigger, infrastructure crumbles, and the majority of people, hard working or not, suffer. Furthermore, I believe that the power of each ideology needs to be in flux, otherwise the problems of the extremes start to occur.
The Capitalist Banks, Enron, Health care and so on had the power. It failed from too much power. Now the power is going to the government. It needs to and will or the corporations will become to powerful. Obviously, later on the government will become too powerful and it will have to swing back.
The change is happening, and it is scary for those that have their power invested in corporations at the moment. But sometimes you have to trust a government that you have elected, over a corporation that is legally obligated to it’s shareholders, not it’s customers.