The Conservative Cave
Current Events => General Discussion => Topic started by: megimoo on August 24, 2009, 05:57:04 AM
-
Hillsdale College history professor Paul Rahe writes to comment on the current political scene:
Why are the Democrats in such trouble? I think that the answer is three-fold.
First, as I argued in my last Power Line post, the so-called "stimulus bill" was passed in both the House and the Senate in a manner suggestive of tyranny. It was written in camera with the help of a legion of lobbyists, and it was presented and shoved through before anyone in Congress even had a chance to read it, much less think about it, and the same argument could be made concerning the passage of the cap-and-trade bill in the House and the Obama administration's handling of the bailout and the bankruptcy proceedings of Chrysler and General Motors.
Second, the first of these bills was an obvious scam - a massive pay-off to Democratic party constituencies at the expense of the American taxpayer on a scale that guarantees much higher taxes before long and that almost certainly will drive up interest rates. In the long run, it is not a stimulus bill in any shape or form. It is the sort of spending certain to retard growth.
Third - as I argued in some detail in "Obama's tyrannical ambition," rationing was the point of the Obamacare proposal.
By now, of course, everyone - apart from those so partisan that they believe every lie foisted upon them by the party apparat and those who flack for it at CNN, ABC, MSNBC, and the like - understands as much. They recognize that all of the talk, dripping with compassion, about the supposed health care crisis and the need to cover the uninsured was a cover for an attempt to do away with Medicare and replace it with something less costly. And this prospect they do not like it one bit.
Consider Lee Siegel. He prefaces his recent piece in the Daily Beast with the announcement that he considers "the absence of universal healthcare . . . America's burning shame." Then, however, he acknowledges that "on one point the plan's critics are absolutely correct. One of the key ideas under consideration - which can be read as expressing sympathy for limitations on end-of-life care - is morally revolting."
Make no mistake about it. Determining which treatments are "cost effective" at the end of a person's life and which are not is one of Obama's priorities. It's one of the principal ways he counts on saving money and making universal healthcare affordable.
This reeks of the Big Brother nightmare of oppressive government that the shrewd propagandists on the right are always blathering on about. Except that this time, they could not be more right. . . .
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/08/024350.php