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« on: September 15, 2010, 01:32:57 PM » |
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The Patriot Post Chronicle 9-15-2010
From The Federalist Patriot
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The Foundation
"I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious." --Thomas Jefferson
Editorial Exegesis
"'As a consequence of us getting 30 million additional people health care, at the margins that's going to increase our costs -- we knew that,' President Obama said at his press conference Friday in response to a question about rising health spending. That wasn't how he sold the plan, but, anyway, that's a truism. Here's another: The White House was always going to blame insurance companies for any cost increases, even when its own policies cause them. Witness Kathleen Sebelius's Thursday letter to America's Health Insurance Plans, the industry trade group -- a thuggish message even by her standards. The Health and Human Services secretary wrote that some insurers have been attributing part of their 2011 premium increases to ObamaCare and warned that 'there will be zero tolerance for this type of misinformation and unjustified rate increases.' Zero tolerance for expressing an opinion, or offering an explanation to policyholders? They're more subtle than this in Caracas. What Ms. Sebelius really means is that the government will prohibit insurers from doing business if reality is not politically convenient for Democrats. ObamaCare includes a slew of mandated benefits for next year, such as allowing children to remain on their parents' plans until age 26 and 'free' preventative care (i.e., no direct out-of-pocket cost sharing for consumers). The tone of Ms. Sebelius's letter suggests that she doesn't understand that money is exchanged for goods and services, and that if Congress mandates new benefits, premiums will rise. ... ObamaCare gives Ms. Sebelius's regulators the power to define 'unreasonable' premium hikes, which will mean whatever they decide it will mean later this fall. She promised to keep a list of insurers 'with a record of unjustified rate increases' and then to bar them from ObamaCare's subsidized 'exchanges' when they come on line in 2014. In other words, insurers must accept price controls now or face the retribution of a de facto ban on selling their products to consumers four years from now. This is nasty stuff and an obvious attempt to shift political blame for rising insurance costs before the election. It's also an early sign of life under ObamaCare, when all health-care decisions are political and the bureaucrats decide who can charge how much for a service or product. Democrats built this system and they now own it politically. The least they could do is take credit for its consequences." --The Wall Street Journal1
Insight
"Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself." --economist Milton Friedman (1912-2006)
"Eloquence may exist without a proportionate degree of wisdom." --author Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
Upright
"Even America's bitterest enemies understand why we mark July 4th with parades, speeches and fireworks: to celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence. We're proud of our nation, and justifiably so. So why do we virtually ignore September 17th? That's the date, in 1787, when our Founding Fathers signed the Constitution. ... Yet today, on many issues, this vital document is frequently ignored, even undermined, by some of the very people who have taken a public oath to uphold it." --Heritage Foundation president Ed Feulner
"While America's liberal elite have not reached the depths of tyrants such as Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Hitler, they share a common vision and, as such, differ only in degree but not kind. Both denounce free markets and voluntary exchange. They are for control and coercion by the state. They believe they have superior wisdom to the masses and they have been ordained to forcibly impose that wisdom on the rest of us. They, like any other tyrant, have what they see as good reasons for restricting the freedom of others." --economist Walter E. Williams
"Why has the left directed so much time and effort into demonizing ordinary Americans? Because the Tea Party's three primary planks -- limited government, fiscal responsibility and Constitutional fealty -- represent the greatest threat to liberalism since its flowering in the 1960s. A smaller, fiscally responsible government dedicated to a Constitution expressly designed to limit the power of the state is the death knell for those dedicated to the idea their worldview must be imposed on Americans by an ever-expanding state. The left's worst nightmare is an America comprised of largely self-sufficient, clear-thinking individuals left to their own devices." --columnist Arnold Ahlert
"Nearly all of the tax cuts Americans have seen the past year and a half advance some liberal moral or social good. The overriding goal of the stimuli and tax breaks -- from the things we build to the jobs we save to the tax credits we get -- is to pick economic winners, steer us in the right direction and wheedle citizens to be good boys and girls. To offer comprehensive, amoral cuts would be to admit ideological defeat. ... This president would never surrender to such indignity." --columnist David Harsanyi
"If you read this weekend's New York Times' hit job2 on would-be Speaker John Boehner and his 'lobbyist friends,' you might think, as the reporter clearly thinks, that John Boehner is cozier with lobbyists than most powerful politicians are. But did you know: · Nancy Pelosi has raised almost twice as much money from lobbyists this election as Boehner has? · At least 18 House Democrats have raised more lobbyist cash this election than Boehner has. · Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid have pocketed more lobbyist cash in the past 18 months than Boehner has raised in the past 6 elections, combined?" --columnist Timothy Carney
Dezinformatsia
Don't know much about history: "It's both instructive and discouraging to look at the state of America circa 1938 -- instructive because the nature of the recovery that followed refutes the arguments dominating today's public debate, discouraging because it's hard to see anything like the miracle of the 1940s happening again." --New York Times columnist Paul Krugman ("What Krugman calls 'the miracle of the 1940s' is more commonly known as World War II, a ruinous conflict that cost some 60 million lives, including more than 400,000 American ones, and that entailed the near-extermination of Europe's Jewish population." --WSJ columnist James Taranto) |
