Why We’re In Trouble

Wonderful quote from Mark Steyn on what is behind much of what is happening at the federal and local levels in our country:

“Big government depends, in large part, in going around the country stirring up apathy — creating the sense that problems are so big, so complex, so intractable that even attempting to think about them for yourself gives you such a splitting headache it’s easier to shrug and accept as given the proposition that only government can deal with them.”

Of course, it helps if you imagine the words being said with a British accent, but the beauty of this statement is that he’s absolutely right.  He goes on to say:

“Let’s say you carelessly drop Ted Kennedy’s health care plan on your foot, and it breaks your toe. In the old days, you’d go to your doctor (or, indeed, believe it or not, have him come to you), he’d patch you up, and you’d write him a check. That’s the way it was in most of the developed world within living memory. Now, under the guise of “insurance,” various third parties intercede between the doctor and your checkbook, and to this the government proposes adding a massive federal bureaucracy, in the interests of “controlling costs.” The British National Health Service is the biggest employer not just in the United Kingdom but in the whole of Europe. Care to estimate the size and budget of a U.S. health bureaucracy?”

He further notes: 

“When President Barack Obama tells you he’s “reforming” health care to “control costs,” the point to remember is that the only way to “control costs” in health care is to have less of it. In a government system, the doctor, the nurse, the janitor and the Assistant Deputy Associate Director of Cost-Control System Management all have to be paid every Friday, so the sole means of “controlling costs” is to restrict the patient’s access to treatment.”

Yep.  That’s what we’re looking at, folks, if the current administration gets its way:  restricted access to treatment.   This is another article that discusses the health care situation in more detail than Steyn, and the author observes:  “Over the next decade, under President Obama’s budget, federal spending will increase 25 percent faster than revenue, says the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. … If we continue with all other government programs in operation today and raise the taxes to pay for Medicare, plus Medicaid—the health program for low-income folks—the Congressional Budget Office estimates a middle-income family by the middle of this century will have to pay two-thirds of its total income in federal taxes.”  Yep – he said “middle-income family.”

One of the most difficult things for me lately is where to begin:  there is just so much that is galactically out of whack with everything that this administration is trying to do that it truly is mind-boggling.  But will the government stop long enough to finish one thing before starting another?  Apparently not. 

By the way, I found this lovely piece on the Clinton administration circa 1994.  The more things change, the more they stay the same. 

This is not why I can’t sleep tonight, by the way.  I have furnace/air conditioning installation people coming tomorrow, and I just can’t relax.  I’m not sure why…..