President Obama heads to Montana for a town hall Friday, with anther one in Colorado on Saturday. Including his stop in New Hampshire, the president has chosen three of the most libertarian states in which to make his argument for a big government plan. While his team would say it’s just another example of the president dealing with opponents head-on, one starts to wonder if there isn’t a hope that Obama will have the chance to face off with, as the DNC calls them, a “Deather.” New Hampshire produced none as the selected questioners were saccharine-sweet, but today might be the day that the White House gives the microphone to a Walter Sobchak-type. The risk is another “spread the wealth around” gaffe by Obama. The reward would be the chance to show the president suffering for his efforts, but still willing to engage with a country not-quite worthy of him. The worse things get for the president on health, the more willing the administration may be to take chances. Part of the problem with refusing to believe that the opposition to the plan is actually organic is that Democrats stop listening entirely and treat real concerns of senior citizens and small business owners as part of some crazy conspiracy.

The proposed health care legislation is just as bad, if not worse, than TARP. Sec. 142 of HR 3200 grants the new Orwellian titled “Health Choices Commissioner” broad lawmaking authority including the power to set standards for every Americans health insurance plan, to determine which of your current insurance plans do or do not meet that standard, and then to punish plans that do not meet that standard. Even worse is what is not yet in the bill, but is desperately wanted by the Obama administration. A super-empowered Medicare Payment Advisory Commission that is specifically designed to “save money in an apolitical, technocratic way”. The entire purpose of this part of Obamacare would be to take medical decisions away from patients and vest it in a panel of experts specifically designed to be completely unaccountable to the American people. Is this what the Framers of the Constitution had in mind? When the Constitution was being ratified, James Madison, writing as Publius, sought to allay fears that the new national government would turn into a Leviathan. In the 45th Federalist Paper he emphasized that adoption of the Constitution would create a government of enumerated, and therefore strictly limited, powers. Madison said: “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined… [and] will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce….” Federal tax collectors, Madison assured everyone, “will be principally on the seacoast, and not very numerous.” Exactly six months after publication of this essay, New York became the 11th state to ratify the Constitution. Is turning over one-sixth of our nation’s economy over to Obama’s super-MedPAC panel in any way consistent with this vision?

…Government run Medicare with a staggering $37 TRILLION of unfunded debt.  Shadow wants to make it seem like 100% of Americans has a 50/50 chance of getting their health insurance canceled.  In fact, when you actually look at the numbers, it’s the top 1 percentile of people with high medical expenses, greater than $35,543 who have a chance of getting their health insurance canceled.  You can see for yourself right here. Let’s also discuss auto insurance as well.   Why should anyone have to pay higher auto insurance premiums because they have a higher incident of traffic accidents, right?  Let’s abolish all pre-existing records of accidents, traffic violations, and theft of cars too. Should we take a look and discuss reform on preexisting condition insurance? Yes it’s worth discussing it and further studying it before making inflated claims.  Let’s also discuss how allowing health insurance companies to sell plans across state lines can increase competition and reduce the risk pool (a favorite of the current Administration).  While we’re at it let’s address tort reform as well (a taboo of the current Administration as trial lawyers gave millions to them).  These will lead to lower costs for ALL Americans… See Fleckenstein Debunk all ten talking points at link above.

 

It should now be beyond dispute that the Obama administration represents a continuation, solidification and expansion of the Bush legacy, with some minor changes in some areas and a vast acceleration of government growth in others. And yet, as we can joyously witness, the president is running into problems.

The most conspicuous feature of the Bush years was the nearly invincible faith in government power in the realm of national security. So pronounced was this trust in the national security state, war on terror, and U.S. empire, that the opposing Democrats, many of whom dissented from the Iraq war and the worst excesses in executive spying, detention and torture, looked reasonable in comparison. Many conservatives and libertarians even favored the Democrats in the 2006 election in hopes of reining in the profligate and warmongering Republicans. Eventually, Bush and the neoconservatives ran into a wall. The Iraq war continued to consume American and Iraqi lives but the democracy and peace that were promised never came. After the administration’s incompetent handling of Katrina in 2005, the Republicans began losing support among moderates, who became increasingly frustrated with the mounting deficits, the erosion of their liberties and the prolonged war abroad. Then, in 2008, the financial sector collapsed, despite the Republican presidential candidate’s insistence that the “fundamentals of the economy” were sound. By November, the GOP had been marginalized. The economic crisis has breathed new life into the Democratic agenda of corporate socialism and expansive federal government at home, just as the national security crisis of 9/11 had tipped popular opinion toward the Republican agenda of preventive war and attacks on our civil liberties. But it had took years for Bush and his team to lose support among the political center, whereas we are witnessing support for Obama unravel much more quickly. This could all turn around, of course, but we have reasons to be hopeful. Obama’s health care plan, his most ambitious domestic policy program, is in peril. Although he has a solid Democratic majority in both Congressional houses, politicians are vulnerable to public opinion, and opinion is split. Some polls show a slight majority supportive of his plan. But in the last few weeks, polls have also shown a larger percentage opposed than in favor. Senior citizens, one of the demographics that was supposed to benefit the most from Obamacare, are the most skeptical group. In order to get his plan through, Obama has to court two groups of Democrats — those who are relatively fiscally conservative and are skeptical of socialized medicine, and those on the far left who do not want too many compromises with the insurance industry and desire a full-blown single-payer system. Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office has undermined one of the administration’s central claims, that the health care proposal will cut costs. The CBO has detracted in other ways from Obama’s economic agenda, warning that Obama’s deficit may be four times as high as the already ridiculously large deficit from Bush’s last year in office. In February, the CBO determined that Obama’s stimulus program could be harmful to economic recovery in the long run. And the people are feeling the failure, so far, of Obama’s economic program. Much of the public remembers the warnings that without the bailouts the sky would fall and they recall the promises that the stimulus would give an immediate boost to the economy. As Goldman Sachs reports record earnings and yet unemployment continues to rise, many Americans are detecting a bait and switch and are altogether unimpressed with Obama’s handling of the economy. Here we see the two major limits on government power in play. One is public opinion. As political theorist Franz Oppenheimer and others have pointed out, government operates, in the end, with the tacit consent, or at least acquiescence, of the people. No matter what form of government, from a dictatorship to a pure democracy, the government requires social legitimacy in the eyes of enough of the public to do what it does. Public ideology is key. If a majority is strongly opposed to the government’s operations, eventually something has to give. It is the importance of public opinion that explains why governments, whether ostensible republics or autocracies, would ever utilize censorship, propaganda, or control of the public school system and media to shore up public support for their works. Constitutions alone cannot limit government. The overwhelming bulk of what the federal government is engaged in, from imperial wars to drug prohibition, from Social Security to Medicare, is unauthorized by the Constitution, and yet they persist. What matters ultimately is the Constitution in the hearts and minds of the people. So long as the American public supports unconstitutional actions, such actions will commence. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, as Jefferson noted. The Constitution spells out great limits on the government, but without the support of the people, the document loses its teeth.