Just Because They Can

Anyone who’s been around babies knows the game where you place an object in front of a baby and the baby throws the object on the floor so that he may have the pleasure of watching you pick it up.  The baby never tires of this delightful game, because it marks the point in a child’s life where he first understands what it feels like to have power.  The game goes on indefinitely unless and until the adult refuses to play, at which point the baby will scream and so begins the real test of who is actually in charge. 

Fast forward to adulthood and unfortunately it turns out that some babies never quite grow up.  Oh they grow facial hair and sprout breasts and all that but alas that pretty much sums up their journey to adulthood.  While others grow up and realize that the earth does not revolve around them, these arrested individuals – let’s just go ahead and call them liberals – can think of nothing but their own egos.   Regardless of age they have not outgrown the sense of pleasure that comes from forcing others to bend to their will.  Consequently they spend an inordinate amount of time and effort crusading for the most unlikely causes. 

They sue to make parents and vets take down crosses memorializing their dead loved ones (“American Atheists Sue Over World Trade Center Cross”  ˜Abc News; “Grieving California mom takes down cross on road after group’s protest, more appear”  ˜Fox News).

They sue, boycott and otherwise bully to turn St. Patrick’s Day parades into LGBT propagandafests (“Gay rights politics get in the way of St. Patrick’s Day parades”  ˜The Washington Post).

They sue and bully towns and organizations to take away symbols of Christmas (“Man Sues to Eliminate Christmas” ˜ABC News).

They sue to protect obscure species of rodents, fish and bugs (“Lawsuit Launched Over Water Project That Will Hurt Endangered Kangaroo Rat”  ˜Center for Biological Diversity (yes, that’s a real organization);  “Activists To File Another Lawsuit Over Delta Smelt”  ˜Wineindustryinsight.com; “Groups file lawsuit over endangered NE beetle”  ˜AP)

The latest game involves an attack on the food industry as liberals and special interests have joined forces to demand costly and unnecessary changes to labeling regulations (“Liberal Groups, Democratic Members of Congress and Organic Food Industry Present President Obama with Demands for New Food Industry Labeling Regulations”  ˜The National Center for Public Policy Research); “Here we go again — Another California GMO-labeling bill introduced”  ˜American Council on Science and Health).  Never mind that these foods have a history of being perfectly safe.  Never mind that food producers already can and often do include this information on their labels.  Voluntary action does not satisfy the liberal’s inner need to make people do stuff.  According to Jeff Stier, Senior Fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research in Washington, D.C., and head of its Risk Analysis Division, "Mandatory labeling of GM foods fails every justification for requiring them: scientific, economic, legal, and most of all, common sense.  [This is] for the sole benefit of those seeking the labels."

Now, we know why the organic food industry is involved and we know why the lawyers are involved – money.  That’s right, the almighty dollar. But why do liberal groups and democrats want to make all these food producers jump through yet more hoops for no good reason?  Because they can, that’s why.  They’re throwing stuff on the floor so they can watch us pick it up.  It makes them they feel powerful.  Now they can sit around in their living rooms, high-fiving each other over their important victories as they pass around a joint. 

Conservative blogs abound with story after story examining the incomprehensible and trying to make sense of the hypocrisy and dishonesty.  Undoubtedly there sometimes are deeper motives at play, usually money and/or the desire to surreptitiously advance an unpopular agenda.  But in the absence of a clear motive the answer is very simple:  it’s just because they can.

P.S.

No doubt the lefties and the rare breed of rabid libertarian that stalks my blog will try to argue that conservatives are just as guilty based upon their history of opposing or regulating things like drug use, prostitution and same-sex marriage.  I know it may seem incredible to some that behaviors which have proven to have serious and far-reaching societal implications would be compared to, say, interfering with the habitat of a certain bug or erecting a cross to memorialize a dead child or soldier but trust me, the comparison will be made.  A combination of stunted mental maturity and deep immersion into the world of leftwing propaganda renders some folks incapable of making rational distinctions.  But by all means, let them make the argument.  I welcome the amusement.  

˜CW

Calling Bullshit on Rand Paul

This morning I learned with great annoyance and dismay that Rand Paul is the latest Republican to jump on the Republicans-need-to-be-more-inclusive bandwagon.   At a dinner event with GOP Senator John Cornyn of Texas, Paul suggested that Texas would be a democrat state within 10 years if the Republican Party doesn’t change its ways. 

“…we have to be a more welcoming party,” Paul said. “We have to welcome people of all races. We need to welcome people of all classes - business class, working class.”

“We need to have people with ties and without ties, with tattoos and without tattoos; with earrings, without earrings,” he said. “We need a more diverse party. We need a party that looks like America.”

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2014/02/09/rand-paul-warns-his-former-home-state-texas-could-turn-blue/

There are plenty of reasons to find fault with the Republican Party but for right now let’s focus just on Senator Paul’s remarks.  This strategy of using phony reasons to castigate one’s own party in order to supposedly “save” it absolutely dumbfounds me.  What kind of an idiot thinks he can “broaden the Republican tent” by reinforcing the Democrats’ false mantra that the Republican Party is nothing but of bunch of old white men who hate everybody else?  Whose side is Rand Paul on, anyways?  I challenge Senator Paul to bring us one, JUST ONE, person who has embraced conservative ideas and wanted to be part of the Republican Party but was rejected because of his skin color or his appearance.  He can’t because there aren’t any. 

   

Mr. Paul says, “We need a party that looks like America.”  As nice as it would be if characteristics like race, gender, age and culture played no role in people’s political persuasions that’s not the reality.  The Democrat Party has made sure of that and you’ll note, Senator Paul, that the Democrat Party doesn’t seem to be particularly concerned that their own party in no way mirrors the demographic make-up of the American population.  The Republican Party is not a social club.  It has a purpose and that purpose is to promote leadership that will live by the Constitution.  The goal of the Party should be to build a following around that, regardless of what it ultimately looks like, so please get your priorities straight.

There are two ways to broaden a political tent, Senator Paul.  One way is to welcome anyone regardless of where they stand on the issues.  This means you lose the focus on your Party’s mission and control of its direction, of course.  It means that you really have no purpose for existing except to bring people together under the meaningless banner of ‘Republican Party,’ for what little that’s worth.  The other way is to persuade people, either through education or by forced experience, that your platform is the right one.  In doing so you may or may not have a Party that “looks like America,” but you’ll have a Party that actually stands for something and has meaning.

In light of his remarks and his presidential aspirations, I would urge conservatives to be diligent in their attention to Rand Paul.  As a long-time Republican he knows as well as any of us that the Party does not reject people for the way they look or for their socio-economic status, so what is he doing here?  The “we-need-to-be-more-inclusive” song is often a prelude to suggesting that Republicans need to relax their stance on issues like illegal immigration, same-sex marriage, welfare programs and national defense, among others.  If Paul truly believes we’re on the wrong side of those issues, fair enough.  Let’s have an open, honest debate.  But let’s NOT do it in a misguided effort to broaden the tent.

˜CW

I will Not Pretend

To all leftists – past, present and future….

When you tell me that Americans’ choosing to be less productive because of Obamacare is a “good thing,” I will not pretend that you believe what you say.

When you tell me there’s “not a smidgeon” of corruption in the IRS targeting of your enemies, I will not pretend, as some will, that you are sincere.   We both know you lie.

When you tell me that $1 spent in food stamps puts $1.74 back in the economy, I will not pretend that you are anything but a brainless fool.

I will not pretend that you love the country you presume to “transform.”

I will not pretend that you stand for the rights of women if you embrace, defend or admire a serial woman abuser like Bill Clinton.

I will not pretend that your alliances with purveyors of anti-Americanism say nothing about you and your intentions towards this country.  I refuse to be that blind.

I will not pretend that you care about American soldiers when you play politics with the military.

I will not pretend that your actions do not speak louder than your phony words.

I will not pretend that you are a nice guy in over your head.

I will not pretend to respect a liar and a fraud, because liars and frauds do not deserve respect.

I will not pretend that your wide smile doesn’t hide the ruthless, vicious person you really are.

I will not pretend that you see yourself as a government servant.  We both know who you believe the servant to be.

I will not pretend, as so many do, that you care about the environment as you travel the world in your jets and limos.

I will not pretend that it means nothing when you say one thing and do another, because I’m not stupid.

I will not pretend that you care about education when you and your friends are responsible for its decline.

I will not pretend to respect you for the office you hold when you don’t honor that office yourself.

Don’t pee on me and tell me it’s raining.  I will not pretend that the emperor or empress is wearing clothes.  I will not be a polite, silent witness to my own destruction.

  

˜CW

Truisms: The Case against Liberalism

I hesitate to write this post because it’s going to require that for the sake of argument I accept the premise that liberalism is a well-intentioned, idealistic ideology intent on “making the world a better place.”  Really I would just as soon slam my hand in the car door than accept such a falsehood, but for the future of the nation I will make the sacrifice. 

Now to further set the stage, let’s have a word about truisms.  I’m a big fan of true crime shows.  I’m fascinated by the ways crimes are solved and how our justice system works (or doesn’t!).  Sometimes I will imagine that I am on the jury, and I’ll weigh the evidence to decide whether or not I would convict the accused.  During this process I will look for evidence that definitively points to guilt.  These are the truisms of the criminal justice world.  If the victim’s head is found in the defendant’s refrigerator, that’s a truism that pretty much seals the deal for me. 

Certain truisms in life are like the irrefutable pieces of evidence in a trial.  No reasonable analysis can be made while ignoring them, and yet that’s precisely what liberals do every day.  They ignore basic truisms that we know to exist; truisms that, if heeded, would make liberal policies impossible to sell (hence the reason they always lie).  Here is a sample of the truisms that come to mind:

Truism #1 – The more you reward certain behaviors, the more of them you’ll get.

I’d like to see someone dispute this perfectly simple fact.  Every parent and pet owner understands it.  And yet our federal, state and local governments, guided by the hand of liberalism, can’t spend money fast enough to reward people for not working, for making bad decisions and for sneaking into this country illegally; hence the number of people doing all of those things has EXPLODED.  Creating a nation of thieves and freeloaders does not fall under the heading of “making the world a better place,” particularly when it’s hardened the hearts of normally generous Americans who usually don’t mind helping people down on their luck but who’ve grown cynical and weary from decades of seeing their tax money squandered on people gaming the system.  The truly needy are the ones who will suffer in the end, so that’s a FAIL for liberalism.

Truism #2 – There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

Too bad whoever coined this phrase doesn’t get royalties on it, as it is said over and over to confront the liberal lie that stuff which comes from the government is “free.”  Liberal goodies are all paid for by somebody, of course, but apparently saying, “You’ll now get free birth control forcibly paid for by your neighbors” just doesn’t have the same cheery ring to it.  As long as the freebies have to be paid for by somebody, the bill is going to eventually come due, so promises of free lunches are harbingers of liberal FAILURE.

Truism #3 –People are not careful consumers when they’re spending other people’s money.

Anyone want to dispute this?  Would government bureaucrats be spending billions of dollars on lavish conferences, robotic squirrels, bridges to nowhere, useless studies, benefits for dead people, and of course the infamous and overpriced Obamacare website if all of it were coming out of their own pockets?  The increasingly suppressed role of the consumer in healthcare is one of the top reasons that healthcare has become so expensive in recent decades.   We don’t know or care what it costs because the insurance company is paying the bill.  So what is the liberal response to this truism?  Answer:  take more power from the consumer and give it to the government.  FAIL.

Truism #4 – The correlational relationship between supply, demand and price is a well-known fact.

If you understand why dog poop is cheaper than diamonds then you understand Economics 101, which means you have no excuse for believing the ludicrous lie that Obamacare would somehow magically reduce the cost of healthcare, given that demand would be greatly increased while supply would be stagnant at best (I’ll give the libs that generous assumption so they can stay focused on the main point here).  We’ve already begun to see the effect of liberal meddling with the insurance and healthcare industries while pretending that the truism of supply and demand does not exist, and it is an EPIC FAIL.

Truism #5 – The pursuit of self-interest is the nature of human beings.

Businesses, like any other rational consumer, strive to pay the lowest possible amount for labor and other goods needed for their operations.  They profit whenever there’s a large pool of unskilled workers competing for jobs.  This competition for low-skilled jobs and the pressure it puts on wages is the worker’s incentive to seek the education, skills or experience they need to increase the value of their labor and better satisfy their own self-interest.  As they do so, the pool of unskilled labor shrinks and businesses have to offer more to attract good people.  This natural system works well until the liberals start messing with it.  By waiving their pens and insisting that the unskilled should be paid an artificially high wage because liberals deem that they deserve it, they rob businesses of the right to pursue self-interest and they upset the natural consequence of that - a better skilled and more productive work force.  It’s a lose-lose for everyone, and a major FAIL.

Truism #6 –The law of natural consequences is necessary to a functional society.

Liberals took away the natural consequences of having children out of wedlock (i.e. stigma and poverty), and now we have an epidemic of single mothers unable to adequately support their families.  The welfare rolls and Medicaid, in particular, have skyrocketed and are part of the growing debt that threatens to destroy this country.  By legislating and continually raising the minimum wage they took away the natural consequences of failing to become a skilled worker.  Now we have people who march and scream for better wages instead of aspiring for better jobs.  By removing or softening the consequence of walking away from mortgages and credit card debt, liberals have made it harder for everyone to get a loan.  Now they want to let people pass the buck for student loans they amassed at liberal-run universities.  Without natural consequences we are a nation of irresponsible freeloaders with little consideration for anyone but ourselves.  FAIL, FAIL, FAIL and FAIL.

The thing about truisms is that you can’t escape them, even if you’re a liberal.  There is no justice, social or otherwise, when we reward people for bad behavior.  Ignoring the basic laws of economics and suppressing the natural human drive for self-interest does not result in “economic equality.”  The “liberty” and “freedom” that liberals unbelievably profess to stand for cannot exist when we amass power in the government where some take it upon themselves to “spread the wealth” earned by others. 

Based on a preponderance of the evidence presented, there is no way that liberalism, as defined by liberals, can ever do what it purports to do.  It can never be anything but doomed.

˜CW

Here We Go Again

With Hillary Clinton being the presumptive nominee for the democrats in 2016 the anti-Hillary campaign from the Right has already begun and we can expect that it will increasingly inundate the blogosphere and the world of campaign commercials over the next two years.  Hundreds of millions of dollars will be spent to remind voters about Travelgate, Whitewater, Hillarycare, Vince Foster, disappearing and reappearing documents, Benghazi and the political partnership masquerading as a marriage with Bill Clinton.  All of this matters, or at least it should, yet it’s also a distraction from the more fundamental argument for why people like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton should not be elected, which is this:  They’re liberals, they’re leftists, and they’re wrong for this country.  In fact they’re wrong for ANY country, so perhaps conservatives should agree to align themselves behind one bumper sticker for this campaign:  “It’s Liberalism, Stupid!”

Liberalism has given us the welfare nation, the entitlement society, a nation of illegal immigrants and illegitimate children, a declining dollar, a shrinking workforce, Obamacare, and a debt crisis that’s about to explode in our faces and alter life as we know it.  It’s cost the U.S. its world ranking in education, its AAA credit rating, its credibility and its common sense, not to mention its soul.  It’s destroyed nations before and it’s destroying us.  If we can make that case, if we can get that message across, then the campaign against Hillary becomes quite simple and it goes like this:  “She’s a leftist.  Any Questions?”  More importantly, the argument is timeless and non-discriminatory.  It applies to every leftist that comes along, saving conservatives the time, energy and resources of reinventing the wheel and building a different case against each and every opponent, as we now do. 

Let us remember that the strategy we have now isn’t working.  We throw everything and the kitchen sink at them and they throw the same back at us and in the end we lose.   We make it about the candidate, not about ideas, and when their ideas fail they simply produce another candidate.   It’s time to use our elections – both our primaries and general elections - to remind and/or educate voters about the effects of progressivism and what they can expect in the future if it continues. 

˜CW

Ronald Reagan, EMTALA & the Roots of Obamacare

I was visiting at a friend’s house one day when her three-year old son asked to look at photos.  My friend told him, “We’ll look at the pictures after [CW] leaves.”   He looked at me and I immediately knew what was going through his young mind.  The solution to his problem was plainly obvious and simple, and without another second’s hesitation here’s what he said to me: “Leave.” 

I can definitely relate to that little boy, because ever since Obama began lobbying to create the massive entitlement program known as Obamacare on the basis that hospitals are overwhelmed treating the uninsured for free the solution was obvious to me:  stop doing that.  Problem solved.  But like my friend’s child who had to learn a lesson about the delicacies of polite behavior with company, I’ve had to learn the hard lesson that mistakes made by those in government can virtually never be undone (which is the reason, of course, that Obama is so desperate to march forward with Obamacare in spite of its infamous problems).  When I suggest that instead of ruining the country with Obamacare we simply put an end to the mandate for free-loading it usually earns me a blank stare, as if I’d suggested doing the impossible.

Let me just say that most people pay their federal income taxes because the potential consequences for not paying can be pretty dire.  I’m no fan of our federal tax system but there’s a lesson to be learned here, to wit:  the possibility of bad consequences is usually sufficient to make most people want to avoid them.  Thus if the consequence of being uninsured means that you could potentially get hit with a huge medical bill or else face penalties akin to those of not paying your taxes, trust me when I say that a lot more people would get insurance voluntarily and much of the purported impetus for Obamacare would go away.  But since common sense seems to be off the table, let’s at least look at who we have to thank for helping to sow the seeds of our destruction.

When I brought this subject up in my last post, a commenter (hat tip to Drpete) pointed me to The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), described this way in a 2012 article in Forbes:

“EMTALA, one of the great unfunded mandates in American history, required any hospital participating in Medicare—that is to say, nearly all of them—to provide emergency care to anyone who needs it, including illegal immigrants, regardless of ability to pay. Indeed, EMTALA can be accurately said to have established universal health care in America—with nary a whimper from conservative activists.  In response, many health policy types worried about a “free rider” problem, in which people would intentionally go without health insurance, knowing that federal law required hospitals to care for them anyway.”¹

EMTALA inexplicably included no requirement for free-loaders to reimburse hospitals at a later time.  It was passed in 1986 by a republican Senate and a democrat House and signed by… Ronald Reagan.

According to an article from the website for The National Center for Biotechnology²:

“Although only 4 pages in length and barely noticed at the time, EMTALA has created a storm of controversy over the ensuing 15 years, and it is now considered one of the most comprehensive laws guaranteeing nondiscriminatory access to emergency medical care and thus to the health care system. Even though its initial language covered the care of emergency medical conditions, through interpretations by the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA) (now known as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services), the body that oversees EMTALA enforcement, as well as various court decisions, the statute now potentially applies to virtually all aspects of patient care in the hospital setting.”

And…

“Although the initial intent of EMTALA was to ensure nondiscriminatory access to emergency medical care, its practical ramifications have broadened significantly over the years and arise from 3 sources: the statute's original language (5); the interpretive guidelines that have been issued by HCFA, which are not merely suggestions but have the force of law; and the various federal court decisions that have resulted from alleged EMTALA violations.”

Ezra Klein, liberal columnist with the Washington Post, summed up why EMTALA is a Progressive’s dream:  “A universal health-care insurance program is the logical endpoint of the bill Ronald Reagan signed into law mandating (pretty much) universal emergency hospital care.”³

That’s government racketeering explained in a nutshell:  create the problem (strain on hospitals due to mandated free care) and use it as an excuse for wealth transfer, which is what universal healthcare amounts to in the end.  And look how perfectly it works.  The requirements under EMTALA are ostensibly what led to “Romneycare” and inspired the Heritage Foundation and Newt Gingrich to propose government- mandated health insurance coverage, giving liberals and libertarians a fair basis for pointing to “conservatives” as the ones who first proposed health insurance mandates. 

I suppose it’s fair to say that the federal government’s involvement in decreeing that hospitals provide free care didn’t exactly begin with Reagan.  My brief research on it traced the start back to 1946 with passage of The Hospital Survey and Construction Act (or the Hill–Burton Act), a bi-partisan sponsored law passed at the behest of Harry Truman in 1946 with a democrat senate and house.  It was amended and extended over the years by various administrations and congresses before culminating in the disaster that is EMTALA, which vastly expanded the free care decree.

I don’t know what Reagan and other republicans were thinking when they passed this law.  I think it’s fair to say…they weren’t.  Now we’re all paying the consequences.

~CW

¹http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2012/02/07the-tortuous-conservative-history-of-the-individual-mandate/

²http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1305897/

³http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2011/01/repeal_emtala.html

Marco Rubio: Thinking Inside the Box

I’m going to have to put a shield of Plexiglas around my TV to protect it from the onslaught of household objects that I routinely hurl at it these days, so maddening is it to watch the nonstop parade of politicians who are either lying or putting up a hopelessly inept fight against the lies.  In an interview with Marco Rubio last night Greta Van Susteren talked about the latest demon slithering out from the Pandora’s Box known as Obamacare:   people being dropped from health insurance plans deemed “substandard” by the elitists running our government.  Gee, what a surprise.  Playing devil’s advocate, Greta asked Rubio what should be done about people who have plans that don’t cover basic insurance needs like hospitalization:  “…if someone gets hit be a car,” she asked, “and then ends up in the emergency room, it somehow becomes an expense for the rest of us, no?” 

The correct answer is “No,” followed by something like this:

"The false premise that the rest of MUST pay for those who fail to plan for their own medical needs is the foundation that the entire Obamacare scheme is built upon.   Who says the rest of us have to pay their bills?  WHO wrote that law? 

"What’s happened here is a classic example of liberals insulating people from the laws of natural consequences and subjecting the rest of us to the laws of unintended consequences.   We see this over and over again, whether it’s the rest of us paying for welfare babies, someone else’s college expenses or a mortgage that someone walked out on.  If you’re an adult who fails to plan for yourself or your child and you wind up in the emergency room, you should be prepared to face the consequences and pay that bill even if you have to do it on a long-term payment plan.  Ironically, simply letting things work the way they should have would have been the best way to naturally entice people to buy insurance on their own.  So why did we stop doing it that way?  My guess is that if you follow the liberal policy trail you’ll find the real problems started with the increases in out-of-wedlock births and illegal immigration, two groups that have pushed the limits of the system and made collection particularly difficult.  So if you really want to solve this problem, the first order of business is to get liberals or progressives or whatever the heck you want to call them out of the business of running our government." 

Here’s Rubio’s response:

 “…that needs to be up to the individual to choose what kind of insurance plan they have.”

Huh?   As you can see, he not only missed a prime opportunity to explain how liberal policy led us to the debacle of Obamacare (assuming he’s ever bothered to think about it), he didn’t even answer the question that was asked, exposing him and all republicans to the charge that we have no answer to Greta’s question.  

We are doomed.

˜CW