October 2009 - Posts
When the history
of the United States is written the date Monday, October 26, 2009
will be one which those seeking to trace the growth and intrusiveness
of the Federal government will note for marking the start of the
nationalization of the American health care system. The date is
important because on that day Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid
announced that he was introducing the so-called “public option”
into the Senate's version of President Obama's horribly mis-named
“health care reform” bill. According to Senator Reid his version
of the public option will allow individual states to “opt-out” of
participation in the plan. Details of the opt-out provision have not
been finalized but, given the Federal government's propensity to
withhold funds from states which fail to act in the manner that our
Grand Masters desire, it is likely that funds for some other portion
of the reform plan will be withheld so as to encourage states to do
the right thing. In the long term it likely won't matter as private
health insurers will succumb to the competition from the
government-subsidized health insurance plan.
We are told that
the “public option” will act to increase competition between
private insurance providers. This assumes that competition in
providing private health insurance is somehow lacking. Those who
maintain that this is so often point to the similarity in prices
offered for similar insurance coverage. This is a fundamental error
in defining competition and, like so many other fundamental errors
that the parasitic class makes, this one is going to end up costing a
lot of money. The error which is being made is the confusion of
similarity of the prices quoted for the same sort of coverage from
different companies with a lack of competition. It is the same thing
as asserting that there is no competition between WalMart and Target
based on the fact that the prices of the vacuum cleaners they sell
are close to each other. For example, I checked the insurance quotes
for health coverage for two adults, both non-smokers, with no
resident children. The policies I looked at had $5000 deductibles,
20% coinsurance rates, and $30 office visits, along with allowing me
to keep my current doctor. The prices I got back ranged from a low
of $280.55 to $303 per month – not a significant differential in
price, but there were ten companies included in that spread, plenty
of competition from where I sit. And there shouldn't be much of a
difference in price for the simple reason that health insurance
pricing is based on statistical expectations of health outcomes
across a broad spectrum of the insured. A large disparity in price
would be indicative of either substantially different internal costs
or important divergences of coverage – the “fine print.” The
fact that I was able to obtain quotes on roughly one hundred
disparate policies, issued by more than ten companies, tells me that
competition for my health care dollar is alive and well. The lack of
a wide price spread for similar coverage is also an indication that
the companies involved have roughly the same costs of doing business
– costs undoubtedly increased by governmental interference in what
is left of what was once a free market.
Unfortunately,
the level of economic education in this country is such that most
people are not capable of seeing through the fog of the statist
propaganda that is being disseminated about the “public option.”
This makes them susceptible to the argument that introducing a
government run (and subsidized) health care insurer will increase
competition and result in lower insurance prices. The sad fact is
that a government-subsidized health plan will be less expensive, for
the insured person, than will similar coverage from a private company
– the politicians will see to that. The Federal government will
simply subsidize the public option to whatever extent is necessary –
raising taxes and hiding the costs as needed – because to do
otherwise would be to expose the lies about how the public option
will actually work.
As time goes on
the subsidized nature of the public option insurance will ensure that
it will gradually drive private insurers out of the market. Besides
the subsidies offered the purchasers of public option insurance, the
Federal government is sure to impose further regulatory burdens upon
private companies – regulations that the government itself will be
exempted from. The added costs of the regulations will act to force
private companies to raise their prices in order to remain
profitable. The Federal government is also sure to impose new
minimum requirements for health insurance policies regarding the type
of coverage they must meet – minimums the public option insurance
will either be exempted from or which taxpayers will find themselves
footing the bill for. This sort of action on the part of the
Federal government will act to drive non-state actors from the health
insurance stage.
Even if some
states do opt-out of the public option there will come a time at
which it will no longer matter. Sooner or later the market for
private health insurance will shrink to the point at which it will
not be sustainable. For private insurance to be viable the market
for the product needs to be large enough that affordable policies can
cover the cost of the occasional catastrophic illness on the part of
some of the insured. I don't pretend to know how large that market
need be but it is likely to be bigger than the populations of states
that might choose to opt-out; states such as Wyoming, Montana, and
Arizona – to name some of the states that sometimes show signs of
resisting Leviathan's continued growth. In any case, at some point
in the future there will no longer be private health insurers and the
nationalization of yet another piece of the United States' economy
will be complete. And it will all have started on October 26, 2009.
We all know that
anger is a powerful emotion. Politicians know this well and often
work to deliberately fan the flames of anger in order to attain their
own goals. Some, such as Adolf Hitler, Hideki Tojo, Mao Tse Tung,
and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, attain mastery of the art of
manipulating emotions to lead their countries into war, or campaign
against supposed internal enemies to increase their personal power.
There is another political figure who is showing that he is a master
of this art and is working to not only increase the power of the
State but, also, his own influence, prestige, and power. This man
has changed the aim of his country's internal politics and has
radically altered the economic and legal foundations of that nation
in less than a year in office. That man is none other than American
President Barak Obama.
Mr. Obama, for
all his veneer of impassiveness and his soothing speeches in which he
proclaims his desire for everyone to live in peace and harmony,
fails to match his actions to his words. He is accomplishing this by
fanning the flames of class hatred and resentment with his constant
repetition of what has quickly become the official myth of the
current economic crisis with which all of us are living. In almost
every speech, interview, and press conference which he gives the
President is at pains to repeat the same distortions, omissions, and
outright lies about the causes and course of our economic problems.
That in itself would be bad enough, but President Obama, as part of
his propaganda offensive, is urging banks and other financial
institutions to continue with many of the same policies that have
caused all this trouble in the first place. He is putting banks in a
damned of they do and damned if they don't position – for they will
be the first ones blamed, again, when the next round of economic
trouble comes our way, as it must when all of the hundreds of
billions of dollars that the Federal Reserve has created out of thin
air begin coursing they way through the economy. Chances are good
that all of that new fiat money will trigger a round of inflation
that will make that of the the late 1970s and early 1980s look like
small potatoes. But I digress.
The President
has launched what amounts to a class war by repeating that the cause
of our current mess is attributable, in large part, to the actions of
grossly overpaid, greedy bankers, hedge fund managers, and other
banking and investment professionals. He goes on to compound the
deceit by asserting that those same greedy people are refusing to
loan money to supposedly deserving businesses and individuals in
spite of having received hundreds of billions of dollars in TARP
funds in order to avoid bankruptcies. According to what has become
the gospel according to Saint Obama, misguided Federal policies such
as the Community Reinvestment Act, the demand for more and more
mortgage backed securities on the part of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,
combined with market distorting, artificially low interest rates set
by the Federal Reserve have nothing to do with our problems. Indeed,
the Federal government is cast as the hero of the drama because of
its selflessness in acting to provide untold billions of dollars in
taxpayer-backed funds to bail out the short-sighted greedy bankers
and financiers, takeover AIG, GM, and Chrysler and prevent what is
portrayed as an economic cataclysm. By acting as it did the Federal
government has supposedly protected us all from that dread phenomenon
– market instability, whatever that is – and enabled most
Americans to continue life as usual.
By making use of
a willing left-leaning mass media propaganda machine the American
people have been subjected to a nearly continuous barrage of
misinformation. This has resulted in many Americans becoming ever
more angry with the “greedy bankers” who are supposed to be at
the heart of the mess which has cost millions of ordinary citizens
their jobs. And President Obama has not been slow to take advantage
of the emotional storm which he has had a large part in creating. He
is proposing to slap a bunch of new regulations on banks and
financial markets. This is to be expected from a Democratic
President elected on a platform promising some sort of undefined
“change.” The new part of the proposed policy changes involves
using the power of a now nearly-unrestrained Federal government to
set limits on the pay of executives in the banking and financial
sectors whose companies partook of TARP funds. Little did these
people realize what a poison pill they were being handed when then
Treasury Secretary Henry “Chicken Little” Paulson brought them
the bailout money that he had frightened our spineless
Congresscritters into giving him. The President's new proposals are
certainly not part of any deal they thought they were signing up for.
This is not the
first time that a misguided economically-illiterate president has
imposed wage controls. It is the first time that wage controls have
been targeted at a single group of employees and certainly the first
time they have been introduced without even the poor excuse of
fighting inflation (which was used during WII and later by Richard
Nixon in the early 1970s). This move represents the opening shot in
a class war: carefully aimed at a group which has been painted black
by the State's propaganda machine for more than a year. Those cheers
you hear in the background are coming from the throats of American
citizens who have not only been unable to see through the State's
propaganda smokescreen, but are also unable to see that this
assertion of Federal power marks a precedent which will some day be
applied to them. President Obama is openly proclaiming that this
wage cap is being adopted only to punish an unpopular class. What
will happen to the next class that displeases him – say small
business owners who fail to provide whatever the Federal government
should decide is needed as part of the president's health care reform
effort? How about the doctors and other health care professionals
who “make too much?” After all, we've already been told many
times that those who make more than $250,000 a year are wealthy and,
by socialist definition, have too much money.
The Federal
government under President Obama has already shown that it does not
care about enforcing contract law – as is evident from the many
demands from both the White House and Capital Hill that bonuses,
contractually owed to former Merrill Lynch employees, not be paid by
Bank of America – which didn't want ML in the first place. (See:
http://www.ncbusinesslitigationreport.com/articles/fiduciary-duty/
partway down the page with the title “Threats and Secret Promises:
Bank of America's Merger with Merrill Lych”). This government has
no concern about passing what amount to ex post facto laws (forbidden
explicitly by the constitution) when it comes to dealing with the
economic crisis we find ourselves in, particularly when those laws
apply to those greedy bankers. President Obama and his team of merry
men, ably assisted by Congresscritter Barney Frank and his fellow
clowns on the House Financial Services Committee, have no problem
with unilaterally changing the rules of the game, after the other
side has already started playing by the rules as originally written
down. (See:
http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2009/10/barney-frank-on-wall-street-pay-limits.html,
and
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/12/frank-willing-to-take-oba_n_157172.html)
Not content with limiting the pay of executives whose companies took
advantage of TARP funds the president and his allies are seeking to
extend these limits across the spectrum of financial service
companies.
Now, I'm not
defending the actions of the Wall Street bankers who helped bring
about the current mess, they do have a fair share of the blame for
not having had the sense to see that Federal government-induced
market distortions were bound to come back and bite them in the ass.
Nor am I defending the incredible salaries some of them have gotten
over the years, although there is at least some economic
justification for disbursing billions of dollars in bonuses for good
performance. The truth of the matter is that the bankers and
financiers are not blameless and, if they had any sense of honor, at
least some of them should be seeking to give back some of the money
they received for making decision which, in the long run, have turned
out to be horrible mistakes. If they can live with their consciences
I, as a good libertarian, am not going to try to coerce them into
doing anything they don't want to do as regards their levels of
compensation.
But I am
concerned with where Mr. Obama is taking this nation. In less than a
year in office he has made changes in this nation's economic
structure which would bring smiles to the faces of Karl Marx, V.I.
Lenin, and Mao Tse Tung – taking over large parts of the economy
directly with the takeovers of GM and Chrysler and making other
sectors dance to his tune, as with Wall Street and, soon enough,
health care. The changes that FDR wrought upon this nation's
economic structure are but pimples compared to those of a man who has
never run a business, has never had to adhere to a budget, managed to
vote “present” more than anyone else in Illinois history when he
held office in that unfortunate state, and now is in charge on what
was once a vibrant national economy. His continued calls for more
regulations to be placed on America's financial sector are meeting
with wide acclamation and, most likely, will be put in place –
complete with salary caps for executives in that arena. Little does
he realize that in doing so he will be adding costs to financial
transactions performed in this country – costs which are not found
in many other places which would love to have the business we will be
losing. Barak Obama has shown that he is a master at crowd
manipulation – especially when that crowd consists of people
convinced that life “owes” them everything from a place to live,
to food, to health care simply because they exist. Class warfare is
alive and well in the United States. We can only hope that it will
not become physical in nature.
The many recent
calls for further regulation of financial markets and institutions in
the United States are but one manifestation of the left's infatuation
with the idea that humans and their society are perfectible if only
enough rules and regulations are put in place to control their
actions. They also mark one more step on the road to totalitarianism
in the U.S. We have been told many times in recent months that it is
necessary to place further restrictions, on what is already a market
over-burdened with Federal regulations, in order to “ensure that
this [the current financial crisis] never happens again.”
President Obama has not only called for more regulation of the U.S.
financial markets, but, also, seems to agree that some sort of
international oversight of those markets is necessary. Given that
the Federal government has apparently won the propaganda war over who
is responsible for the recent “meltdown” of financial structures
around the world –- it was unregulated bankers and financiers who
brought the calamity upon us – it is virtually a certainty that
more onerous restrictions will be placed upon the evildoers in order
to prevent them from causing such damage again: all to the cheers of
a poorly educated and informed populace.
The apparent
success of the Obama regime's drive to further control the nation's
banking and financial infrastructure is another step on the road to
making the United States a police state. As the Federal government
moves to place caps on the remuneration of those who work in the
banking and finance fields all Americans lose yet more of their
freedom – the majority simply haven't yet recognized that fact.
Given President Obama's recent speeches in which he declares that the
banks which were bailed out by the Federal government are not loaning
enough money to businesses and consumers it will probably not be long
before policies will be put in place which will define how much money
banks and other financial institutions must loan to various classes
of customers; likely, whether or not they would ordinarily qualify
for those loans. Despite the President's many disclaimers that he
doesn't want the Federal government involved in the day-to-day
management of such areas of the economy as the auto industry and Wall
Street his actions say otherwise. Given his recent calls for banks
to return to the good old days of loaning money willy-nilly it is
obvious that he has not learned anything from the lessons of the
current economic troubles – indeed, he wants to force banks back
into the very practices which helped get us into this fix in the
first place. Each time the Federal government puts in place more
regulations, every time a Federal or state prosecutor decides to
bring criminal charges against bankers and financiers for actions
that were not crimes when they were made, every time Federal and
state prosecutors are allowed to conflate civil law infractions with
criminal actions (as is often the case with so-called “conspiracies”
whose members are brought to trial) the United States takes another
step on the road to becoming a police state.
One of the signs
that one is living in a police state is an increased unwillingness on
the part of most citizens to say or do anything which might be
construed as opposing the State. The State seeks to attain this goal
in several ways. It starts by introducing young people to the vision
of the State as a benevolent entity –- one which is concerned only
with providing citizens with the best possible life; at the low, low
cost of sacrificing a few civil liberties which don't matter all that
much anyway. For those who have already passed through the State's
education system the mass media (which are always required to obtain
licenses from the State in order to operate) are enlisted in the
propaganda effort. This is particularly true when socialist programs
and policies are being discussed There is an increase in the number
of puff pieces published or aired which seek to portray the
leadership of the State as wise, enlightened individuals who desire
nothing more than to make the citizenry happy, well-fed, and willing
to join the leadership in bettering the nation internally and
strengthening it against all external and internal enemies. During
the period of Nazi rule in Germany this mode of operation was known
as “working toward the Fuhrer.” Citizens are encouraged to
inform the State's police agencies of any “unusual” activities on
the part of their neighbors. Everyone, young and old, is encouraged
to be alert for anything which might threaten “national security.”
The police are increasingly used to monitor the political actions
and speech of the citizens: various types of “thought crime” are
defined and viewed as, in many cases, more serious than plain,
old-fashioned crimes such as assault and larceny. In an effort to
make certain that everyone is made aware of the many threats facing
the State and thus the Nation, and the people arrests are made and
trials held. Many times the information that leads to the arrests is
provided by informants –- often in the pay of the State –- to the
State's increasingly politicized and militarized police agencies.
This serves to reassure the mass of citizens that the State is ever
on guard to keep them safe, while also introducing an element of
doubt about what constitutes a crime, as many of the alleged plots
never get any further than discussing or “planning” some alleged
outrage against the State. (Check out the books The Tyranny of
Good Intentions and Go Directly to Jail: The Criminalization
of Almost Everything , both available through Amazon for more
details than I can go into here). The fact that, in many cases, no
overt actions need to be taken in order to commit a crime causes many
citizens to cease even talking about perceived shortcomings of the
government and its leadership. This results in the State being able
to declare that the vast majority of its citizens are happy and
content with the policies of the government –- which is very
convenient whenever someone does actually complain.
The United
States is rapidly approaching this state of affairs. Much of the
mass media is dedicated to feeding the populace intellectual pablum.
Look around at the magazines and newspapers which line the check-out
lanes at supermarkets. It is unusual for any of these publications
to print anything of a political nature and when they do the articles
are almost invariably rehashed “talking points” in favor of
whatever new program the current regime is touting as a way to cure
some perceived societal ill. The airwaves, with the exception of
so-called “conservative talk radio”, are likewise almost devoid
of serious discussions of political issues – the shouting matches
of such programs as the “O'Reilly Factor” cannot be considered to
be reasoned discourse. In most cases even those media outlets which
purport to oppose the proposed action by the State are themselves
pushing for some increase in the power of the Federal government:
it's only that the power will be exercised in a different manner or
in an alternative area of life.
The current
debate over health care “reform” is but one example of this
phenomenon. The Democratic proposal is to place some Federal
bureaucracy in control of all aspects of health care. They would
mandate that everyone purchase health insurance –- whether it makes
sense in the individual case or not. The insurance policies will
have to meet certain government-defined criteria in order to be
considered legal. The current Federally-controlled health care
system –- Medicare -– will be required to scale back the services
it will pay for (to the detriment of those participating in the plan)
in order to partially pay for the new program. What is left of the
free market in medical services will be killed and buried beneath
tons of new Federal regulations and guidelines.
The Republicans,
rather than pushing for reducing the role of the Federal government
in health care, also want to increase its power in this area. Rather
than the Democrats' “public option” (State-subsidized health
insurance) the Republicans wish to put in place something called
“co-ops”. Though no one really knows how they would operate the
safe bet is that they will be another way of increasing the Federal
government's involvement in health care. One can work one's way down
the list of Republicans' objections to the Democrats' proposal and
find similar things. All the Republicans' substitutions still result
in the growth of the power, size, and intrusiveness of the Federal
behemoth: they do not act to reduce the influence of the Federal
government in this field.
In like manner,
one can go through the list of issues confronting this country and
see much the same thing. Democrats want to use the power of the
Federal government to legalize “gay marriage”, while Republicans
seek to use the same power to forbid them. Democrats want to use
Federal power to not only allow women the right to an abortion -–
they wish to force medical service providers to perform the
procedures no matter the feelings and beliefs of the workers.
Republicans want to use the power of the central government to ban
abortions altogether. The list goes on and one is hard-pressed to
find an issue on which one side or the other wants to reduce Federal
power in the area under discussion, let alone act to eliminate that
power entirely. Through all of this the Constitution is more and
more viewed as an antiquated obstacle to enabling the growth of
Federal power. No longer do the vast majority of our U.S.
Representatives, Senators, and members of the Executive branch take
their oaths to “preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution”
seriously.
As time goes on
the power of Leviathan waxes and fewer citizens move to oppose the
growth. Even now there are few areas in life that are not subject to
some form of Federal regulation. As the State's intrusiveness has
grown so has its police powers: necessary in order to ensure
compliance with its wishes. The United States is effectively a
police state; it's just that in most cases we call our police
“bureaucrats” or administrative law judges in order to disguise
their true function and make their intrusions more palatable to the
masses. Until now they have remained largely non-violent in the
exercise of their vast powers. We cannot count on that to continue
and only the foolish wish to see that power increased. What is left
of free political discourse in this nation is rapidly disappearing.
If the Democrats get their way and the FCC once again imposes the
so-called “Fairness Doctrine” the presence of voices opposing the
growth of totalitarianism on the airwaves in this country will be
mostly silenced. In the meantime those who dispute the need for, or
the legality of, the continued growth of the monstrosity that our
Federal government has become are labeled as miscreants who represent
a small minority of the populace and who are motivated by racist
hatred of the new President's policy initiatives. It is anyone's
guess how much longer these voices of dissent will be tolerated by
the Obama administration or, for that matter, any administration
which replaces it. The State's power continues to grow and most
Americans ignore the threat it poses so long as they can keep up with
who gets kicked off the island next.
The
Michigan state legislature has avoided another shutdown of the state
government by passing a budget resolution that gives them another
month to craft a budget that meets the needs of the state. The
Republicans are holding firm on not raising taxes while cutting a lot
of the social programs that have grown like mushrooms over the last
thirty years or so. Meanwhile, Governor Jennifer Granholm and the
Democrats are casting about for more ways to lay hands on the money
that the few remaining employed workers in Michigan manage to bring
home. Governor Granholm is campaigning hard to not cut any of the
funds allocated to K-12 education and college scholarship programs.
Her reasoning on this is that Michigan needs to “create a favorable
business environment” and that the way to do that is to have a
well-educated population ready for high-tech manufacturing jobs, such
as putting together wind turbines, one of her favorite hobby-horses.
And, we all know that the government run education system is a model
of efficiency and has no place to save money.
Granholm
and the state's Democratic leaders are attempting to portray
themselves as being concerned about the decline in Michigan's
unemployment numbers and overall economic situation and, by their
lights, I suppose they are. However, as with the crowd in
Washington, the folks in Lansing have little concept of what it takes
to make a state attractive to new businesses. Rather than looking
for ways to cut taxes and lower the numerous barriers to entry for
businesses in Michigan, the state's Democrats are taking the opposite
tack. Governor Granholm proposal:
•
Raises the tax on a pack of cigarettes from $2 to $2.25 and taxes
other tobacco products at that new effective rate to raise a
combined $135 million.
• Applies the state's sales tax to professional and college
sports tickets, and concerts, generating $87 million.
• Places a penny tax on each bottle of water sold in Michigan
to raise about $18 million.
• Generates $8 million by reducing the value of state credits
for film production.
• Gathers $83 million by limiting next year's proposed increase
in state earned income tax credits for low-wage workers.
(see:
http://www.mlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2009/09/governor_jennifer_granholm_rel.html)
.
Along with the increased taxes the Democrats are also pushing for a
variety of new regulations and interventions in the marketplace for
energy. For instance, on a trip to Japan in September of 2008, in an
attempt to get Japanese wind turbine manufacturers to open new
factories in Michigan she said
“a legislative agreement will require
DTE and Consumers Energy to shift at least 10% of their power from
renewable sources such as wind power. She said Michigan stands to
create as many as 60,000 jobs in renewable energy industries, but
that the state needs a mandate for renewable energy.” (from
“Granholm pushes for energy mandate to interest Japanese firms”
(see:
http://www.wind-watch.org/news/2008/09/11/granholm-pushes-for-energy-mandate-to-interest-japanese-firms/)
The governor is also pushing to tighten
state regulations on coal-fired power plants, in spite of the lack of
enough “environmentally friendly” renewable energy sources to
meet the state's increasing energy demands.
“In Michigan, for instance, Democratic
Gov. Jennifer Granholm is talking about tightening environmental
regulation when it comes to coal-fired power plants. Republicans
don't have the votes to impose less regulation. “ (see:
http://www.mlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2009/03/some_states_picking_economy_ov.html)
And it's not only the energy generation
sector of the economy which is attracting the governor's attention.
She is also seeking to impose further regulation on auto insurance
companies doing business in the state.
“Gov. Jennifer Granholm has threatened
penalties for any insurance carriers that do not go along with a
freeze on rates for a year.
The insurance consumer advocate, Melvin
Butch Hollowell, in a 335 page report, claims auto insurance has
become unaffordable for too many. He is calling for lawmakers to
change state law to require that insurers obtain the insurance
commissioner's approval before raising rates and they they consider
allowing a low cost auto policy with reduced benefits. Those are
among the 10 changes he is recommending.” ( see:
http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/midwest/2009/02/05/97633.htm
)
In making these charges the governor conveniently overlooks the
fact that it is state government requirements that are acting to
drive up the cost of auto insurance for Michigan's drivers. For
starters, the state requires that all auto owners must purchase a
no-fault insurance policy in order to be able to own a vehicle. The
state also does not allow the insurance companies to vary the cost of
their product based on where a driver lives. This has amounted to
requiring out-state drivers to subsidize the insurance of those who
live in the Detroit area – raising their rates, but keeping them
“fair” for the Detroit area, which, surprise, surprise, votes
heavily Democratic. Talking about the increase in insurance rates
gives the governor an opportunity to castigate businesses for
responding to a situation caused by the intervention of the
government into the marketplace.
So, on the one hand the governor talks
a good story about how to improve Michigan's sagging economy, but
with the other she erects barriers to entry of new firms, or
expansion of existing ones. This is typical of those who believe
that only the government is capable of making the “correct”
decisions regarding what needs to be done to improve the prospects of
Michigan's economy. Is it any wonder that new businesses are not
exactly lining up to open or expand in this benighted state? Given
the governor's approach to solving Michigan's economic problems I can
only hope that the Republicans stick to their guns and force the
Democrats to make serious cuts in social programs that, in many
cases, have not been in existence many years, and which we used to
get along fine without. Failure to make real cuts to Michigan's
budget and take steps to keep it from growing like Topsy once the
economy does manage to turn around will only delay that rejuvenation
of the economy of a state which has been suffering from the effects
of recession for most of the last decade. Unless businesses are
convinced that Michigan will become, and remain, a good state in
which to operate we will not see the type of growth that is necessary
to put Michigan back near the top of the economic heap, as it was
when I was growing up.
One
of the things which has gotten less attention than it needs in all
the noise that has been generated by the debate over health care
reform is one that is fundamental to not only health care, but the
very manner in which our country is governed. Simply stated it is
this: can the Congress legally mandate changes to our health care
system and then turn the operation over to bureaucrats? According to
our Constitution the answer is also very simple: No. The reason lies
in the very first line of the Constitution proper where, in Article
I, Section 1 it says: “All legislative Powers herein
granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which
shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives. “
And yet, turning legislation, that is the making of the laws under
which we all live, over to an ever growing Federal bureaucracy is
exactly what the proponents of “change” wish to do. You see,
once the Congress passes the law enabling changes to how the nation's
health care is provided, the details of its implementation – the
actual writing of the rules, that is the laws, defining how things
will work – is turned over to some Federal agency.
I
realize that I'm out of step with the times on this issue, but this
is certainly not what the Founding Fathers intended for our
government to be. You see, not only do bureaucrats make the rules
but they also, via the mechanism of so-called “administrative
courts” decide how those rules are to be enforced. In effect they
get to act as law makers, law enforcers, and judges. Combining these
three functions under one roof is certainly not what those who spent
considerable time and effort figuring out how to separate them
intended for our nation. Our Founding Fathers set forth the
principles of separation of powers not because they wanted to make
our government complex but because they recognized that doing so
would help to prevent the rise of tyranny. They counted on the greed
for power that is present in the heart of every politician to
maintain that separation: they believed that the Congress would act
as a check on the President and the Courts would act to check the
power of both. They did not dream of the possibility that the three
branches would collude to increase the power of all of them so as to
be able to kill the liberty and freedom that they had struggled so
hard to obtain and pass on to future generations. But that is
precisely what has happened.
For
many years our Constitution worked pretty much as intended. While it
did so Americans not only saw their country grow in size, but also in
economic power, so that by the time of WWI our nation was the largest
economic power in the world, having overtaken Great Britain in the
1880s. In a space of less than 150 years our country went from being
so feeble that its very continuation in existence was in doubt for
many years, to a position of world leadership – all under the basic
structure that had been laid down in the summer of 1787. There had
been a few deviations from the intent of the Founding Fathers, but
they were few and far between and, as yet, the power of the Federal
bureaucracy was still very limited. All this happened during a
period of change in technology, science, and the arts such as the
world had never seen before – a period which saw the average
American's yearly income rise considerably even though there were
millions of people immigrating to this country. Not everything was
perfect, understandable as we are dealing with humans here. But, in
any case life got better for the vast majority of people over a
considerable period of time under a Federal government that remained
small and which by-and-large lived according to the rules set up in
the Constitution.
Things
began to change some in the early years of the 20th
century with the growth of the so-called “Progressive” movement –
a movement which held that people would be better off under a
government which was run by an expert bureaucracy: a system which
allowed outside third parties to make the decisions about how others
should act, because they supposedly knew what was best for them. The
movement made some progress and managed to establish such now
monumental bureaucracies as the FDA and the U.S. Department of
Agriculture. On the whole, though our system of government still
worked as the Founding Fathers intended it should. The executive,
legislative, and judicial functions of government were kept separate
and people were still largely able to live their lives free from the
interference of the government.
All
that changed with the coming of the Great Depression and Franklin
Delano Roosevelt. He was elected in 1933 on promises to bring a “New
Deal” to Americans; a government which cared about them as
individuals, one which would bring order and stability back into
their lives, one which would provide them jobs, certainly not one
they should fear. And Americans bought it as they valued economic
security above freedom and liberty. FDR, for his part, kept his
promises, pushing a veritable deluge of legislation through the
Congress in his fabled first 100 days in office. He created a forest
of Federal bureaucracies with a plethora of initials to go with them:
the NLRB, NIRA, CCC, WPA, and a host of other agencies and programs
came into being.
The
Supreme Court held back the tide of socialist legislation finding
that many of Roosevelt's new agencies and laws were unconstitutional
– mainly on the grounds that the Congress was delegating its
legislative powers. At that time the Court recognized what most
Americans seemingly did not – that allowing the consolidation of
legislative, enforcement, and interpretive powers to reside in one
agency was a sure path to the destruction of the liberty and freedom
which made the United States unique among the nations of the world.
The Court realized the truth of Benjamin Franklin's old adage about
giving up a little liberty for a little safety and losing both in the
long run.
FDR
was furious that the Supreme Court would dare to stand in the way of
his schemes to vastly expand the power and reach of the Federal
government and launched his infamous attempt to pack the Supreme
Court with justices who would rule in his favor. It was at this
point that a couple of the judges on the Court, fearing more for
their future job security than they did for the Constitution, had a
change of heart and began to rule in favor of the Administration on
many of the contentious issue of the day. The lack of the courage of
their convictions on the part of two or three men in 1937 has doomed
Americans to lives in which the wishes of unelected Federal
bureaucrats count more than our own in many areas of life.
And
it's all built on a legal fiction. The fiction is that the Congress
hasn't really delegated its legal authority to make the laws because
it continues to exercise some type of “oversight” of the powerful
bureaucracies it has created. The fact that Congressional oversight,
certainly in its ability to control the day to day operations of our
multitude of Federal agencies, is a farce, doesn't keep the courts
from insisting that it exists. A few Congresscritters holding
hearings into some matter whenever the public outcry becomes such
that they fear for their own re-election, particularly when no
individual is held accountable for his or her actions, is not
oversight: it is political theater designed to keep the masses happy.
This is another insistence in which clever politicians and lawyers
have subverted the clear meaning of the Constitution to the detriment
of the American people. Yet most people don't even stop to think
about it so ingrained has the apparatus of oppression become in our
lives.
Now,
the President and his supporters wish to expand the reach of the
government into the one area in which its control has been, to this
point, relatively controlled. The supporters of the President's
scheme to “reform” health care are at pains to point out that
there really in no difference between having health care decisions
made by lackeys of the State or employees of health insurance
companies. They fail to realize that there is a critical difference
– if a health insurance company too often abuses its customers it
finds that those customers begin taking their business elsewhere –
an option that will not be available once Federal bureaucracies are
set up to make health care decisions for us. The private insurers
are not perfect. It is important to realize that some of their
policies are brought about by Federal government regulations that are
already in place concerning rates of reimbursement for procedures and
limits on lifetime expenditures for things such as durable medical
equipment. It is doubtful that putting more power into the hands of
unaccountable minions of the State will improve the overall quality
of health care in this nation.
The
American public needs to wake up and realize that it is the results
of policies, not the intentions behind them that are important in the
final analysis. I may want to set up a government-mandated wage
structure that insures everyone who works a decent wage. But if the
result of the policies that I put in place to achieve that goal is
that many marginally employable persons lose their jobs because
businesses can no longer afford them at my new higher wage rates I
have actually achieved the result of consigning more people to the
welfare rolls or life on the street. Certainly I would not expect to
be rewarded for having brought about such a debacle, but that is
exactly what happens when Americans continue to return the same old
faces to Congress election after election. Given the lengthy track
record of policy failure that the Federal bureaucracies have it is
doubtful that they will do any better if they are given the power to
directly govern the course of health care in this nation. And that's
what will happen if Congress passes such a law because the Congress
will give up its legislative power as part of the deal, even though
out Constitution says that it cannot do that. Federal employees will
have the power to make the laws, enforce them, and interpret what
they mean (becoming judge, jury, and, in some instances literally,
executioner). If you think our current health care system is a mess
give it a few years under the gentle ministrations of an all-powerful
bureaucracy – it will get worse.