Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis ("Times change, and we change with them").

Friday, November 6, 2009

If it sounds too good to be true....

Once again, there's this mad rush to put to a vote another 2,000 + page bill that no one has time to read. Why? What's the hurry? It's becoming increasingly apparent that the House Democrats are desperate to chalk up  a few more"W's" before We the People come to our senses next year and show some of those creepy Dems the door. Chief among the creeps is Madame Speaker (what is it about her that I find so repellent? Maybe it's how she manages to smile while lying?) who has the gall to look into the camera and repeat Barack Obama's unconscionably dishonest claim that he would only sign a health care bill that does not add "one dime" to the deficit while at the same time assuring us that "no one will have to give up their health care plan if they don't want to." The lies and distortions from the Pelosi-Democrats just keep on coming--one analyst named Michael Cannon from the Cato Institute writes that this legislation represents "the biggest fiscal obfuscation in the history of American politics," pointing out that "the current leadership has rigged the legislation so that 60 percent of its total cost will not be made public by the CBO in advance of the House vote."

No matter, Pelosi's going to get this bill passed, truth be damned, and the American people be damned. As usual, my prayer is that saner heads prevail--Democrat, Republican, Independent, Conservative, Libertarian--and that these elected officials will not be cowed or intimidated or browbeaten by these corrupt and shameless politicians.

I read an article the other day in NRO by Mona Charen that I was sorely tempted to send to my sister, who no doubt welcomes the "safety net" the Pelosi-Obama plan represents regardless of the particulars. But I decided to leave her alone. Charen has all kinds of other reasons for being suspicious of the Pelosi-bill, but in this article, her reasons were personal. Like my sister, Charen has a teenage son who's a Type I diabetic, and apparently there's an item in the House bill that would tax medical-device manufacturers 40-billion dollars over the next ten years. The impact on companies who are beginning to make strides in the manufacture of insulin pumps and glucose monitors will be pretty severe, Charen writes, because these are small companies whose budget would be slashed if they had to pay such a heavy tax. "If this tax is enacted," Charen writes, "medical-device manufacturers will cut back drastically on R&D, and may have to lay off employees. In addition, they will charge higher prices for their products to compensate for the money confiscated by Washington. Since health-insurance plans frequently cover half or more of the cost of these already-expensive products, health-insurance rates would have to rise as well. This is just one more example of the ways health-care costs would be driven up, not down, by the Democrats’ reforms."

Here's Charen's article ("This Time it's Personal)
Here's Michael F. Cannon's article ("The $1.5 Trillion Fraud")
The Editors at NRO are also pretty disgusted. Here's their assessment ("Three Strikes Against Obama")

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