Archive for the Category » welfare state «

Backfire! Health care will put us all into the public option

November 11th, 2009 | Author: akagaga

Let’s pretend you run a business. Let’s pretend it’s located in New York State, and you already pay crippling state and federal taxes that make it hard to compete. You have 10 employees, 7 with families and 3 who are single, with an annual payroll of $509,000. Pelosi’s health care system gives you a choice:

You can pay Pelosi’s 2% tax, which totals $10,180 for the year, and dump all your workers into the government health care system, or
you can pay $63,100 and continue to provide private insurance for your employees

Which option would you choose?

Similar scenarios were outlined by Rep. Joe Barton of Texas on the house floor before the bill was passed, but it obviously had no effect, which leads one to wonder: do Pelosi and company want everybody to have good health insurance, or do they really just want everybody to have government-run health insurance? CNSNews had this to say:

Because the government-run public option would be able to undersell the government-approved private plans in the government-run insurance exchange, the government-run option would soon be the only option.

Government would control our health care from womb to tomb, a time span likely to be shortened by government care.

Category: health care, politics, taxes, welfare state | 3 Comments

Obama’s Dictionary & Abortion Funding

October 27th, 2009 | Author: akagaga

When I was growing up, they called this lying. But that’s not politically correct anymore, so I’m putting it in Obama’s Dictionary. From CNSNews:

Rep. Bart Stupak (D.-Mich.) told CNSNews.com that President Barack Obama told him in a telephone conversation that when he said in his Sept. 9 speech to a joint session of Congress that “under our plan no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions” he was not talking about the actual bill drafted in the House but about the president’s own health care plan—which has never been written.

“I don’t know if it is a game of semantics or what,” Stupak said of Obama’s nationally televised declaration to Congress that the health-care plan will not allow federal funding of abortion.

Both the House and Senate versions of the health-care bill permit federal funds to pay for insurance plans that cover abortions.

As I haven’t had time to keep Obama’s dictionary up to date (dodging through all the smoke & mirrors is a dangerous and time-consuming process) I’ve decided to finish it right here and now. I think these two last entries should cover just about anything the man might say.

Entry #8: no = yes

Entry #9: yes = no

The End

Category: abortion, health care, hypocrisy, newspeak, Obama, Obama's Dictionary, politics, socialism, truth, welfare state | 3 Comments

Freedom from Anxiety

November 10th, 2008 | Author: akagaga

This morning FEE highlighted an article written by Robert Higgs, published in May 1996. Titled “The Welfare State: Promising Protection in an Age of Anxiety,” it’s a nice little history of how we got where we are, starting like this [emphasis added]:

Anxiety, according to The Random House Dictionary, denotes “distress or uneasiness of mind caused by apprehension of danger or misfortune.” By this definition, the twentieth century qualifies as an age of anxiety for Americans.

There is irony in this condition, because in many respects we twentieth-century Americans have enjoyed much more security than our forebears. Our life expectancy has been longer, our work easier and more remunerative, our style of life more comfortable, stimulating, and unconstrained. Yet notwithstanding all objective indications that our lives are better than those of our ancestors, we have become incessant worriers.

Our predecessors dealt with their worries by relying on religious faith. For tangible assistance, they turned to kinfolk, neighbors, friends, co-religionists, and comrades in lodges, mutual benefit societies, ethnic associations, labor unions, and a vast assortment of other voluntary groups. Those who fell between the cracks of the voluntary societies received assistance from cities and counties, but governmentally supplied assistance was kept meager and its recipients stigmatized.

In the twentieth century, especially during the past sixty years, Americans have placed their faith in government, increasingly in the federal government. Since Franklin Delano Roosevelt assumed the presidency in 1933, voluntary relief has taken a back seat to government assistance. Eventually, hardly any source of distress remained unattended by a government program. Old age, unemployment, illness, poverty, physical disability, loss of spousal support, child-rearing need, workplace injury, consumer misfortune, foolish investment, borrowing blunder, traffic accident, environmental hazard, loss from flood, fire, or hurricane—all became subject to government succor.

Perhaps it’s time to put our faith in the only One who can be trusted.

Jesus said to her,
“I am the resurrection and the life;
he who believes in Me will live even if he dies,
and everyone who lives and believes in Me
will never die. Do you believe this?”
(John 11:25-26)