The latest evolution of the health care monstrosity slinking through the Capital is just as dangerous as earlier versions. The House is considering a version that would supposedly allow doctors to negotiate prices with the government instead of the earlier plans that included set prices that amounted to price controls.

Price controls are a problem because they are historically unrealistic and, over the long run, produce shortages. When a company is forced to sell an item at a price below the cost of production, distribution, and profit they stop producing—resulting in a shortage. Price controls also cause shortages through overconsumption. Thomas Sowell in Basic Economics (pg 29) tells of wealthy people who did not even live in the city holding on to apartments covered under New York’s rent control laws. This reduced the number of apartments available for the poor who were supposed to benefit from the laws.

When one of the agents is the government, negotiated prices are price controls with a less offensive name. Control is negative and implies a use of force. Negotiation sounds warm and fuzzy, sitting down over coffee and biscotti, and seeking what is best for both parties. In order for a negotiation to be effective, and balanced, each must have something to offer and negotiate from an equal footing. When one agent is far more powerful than the other, negotiation quickly gives way to demand. How is anyone, other than a separate sovereign nation, to negotiate with the US government? This is not possible because the government will set the terms of the negotiation. This will quickly degenerate to hidden price controls along with the resulting shortages.

What our healthcare system needs is a healthy dose of free market economics. Our system has been under the boot of big government for too long; Mr. Obama and his cronies in the Congress want us to believe the solution is adding the other boot.

President Obama plans to tell your kids to study hard and stay in school. In a national address to school children scheduled for Tuesday September 8, he plans to tell them this and a bit more. While this is not unusual for presidents, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush did the same thing, the original plan tells us a great deal about the man who now sits in the Oval Office.

Though changes have been made due to outrage, the lesson plans accompanying the speech originally included having the children write letters describing how they could help the president. While other presidents saw the value of inspiring children to stay in school, President Obama seems to have no problem using this as a tool for an American Jungvolk. Now, I know he did not write the speech, nor did he create the lesson plans to go with it, but the sycophants he surrounds himself with have shown no reticence to presenting him as the Messiah and Deliverer and he shows no sign of reigning them in.

No other president in modern times has demonstrated such a propensity for forceful expansion of government influence. He has increased government power in the financial industry through bailing out companies that were faltering largely due to liberal congressional meddling. Before long the opportunity came to seize control of a huge portion of the American auto industry. Once powerful GMC was bailed out with a huge chunk of the stock in the hands of the government after years of being pillaged by excessive union demands—unions that backed Obama and his cronies.

I’m not an apocalyptic conspiracy theorist, so I do not believe in an orchestrated attempt to get the nation to this point so at the right moment Barak Hussein Obama could bring us into some near future dictatorship. Please don’t regale me with your theories of the Illuminati or the Trilateral Commission or the Council on Foreign Relations. Neither do I want to hear misguided theories about how Obama is the Antichrist. Such discussions are useful for inspiring fear but have little use in meaningful and useful political discourse.

What I do see is a man who seems to have believed his own press. He seems willing to do whatever it takes to expand government influence (with him at the reigns) into all areas of our lives. Whether it is indoctrinating children to seek ways to support him—not the country, not the Constitution, but him personally— or taking control of industry, redistributing wealth from the productive to the unproductive, determining who gets paid what or bankrupting our children, grandchildren and beyond, his opinion of himself shows through.

Mr. Obama, my children and I do not need a Messiah. We already have one. You are the president which means you have been hired by the American people. Just as you can be hired, you can be fired. It is my greatest hope that in the next Congressional election the teeth of your presidency (control of both houses of Congress) will be lost. In the next presidential election hopefully the American people will tire of their venture into political idolatry and will send you back to Chicago.

Americans for the most part are polite, at least conservatives are. For years we’ve seen conservative speakers shouted down by unwashed and unproductive liberal professional protesters. On college campuses you can usually tell the speakers political views by the volume of the audience. It is good to finally see conservatives getting in their verbal shots at liberals. During a town hall meeting in Philadelphia with HHS Secretary Sebelius and Senator Arlen Specter, brotherly love quickly fled the room. The issue at hand was healthcare and the people of this country are finally recognizing the liberal agenda for what it is—an effort to seize as much of the economy as possible and control the lives of the American.

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The latest news buzz has been on Barack Obama’s plans for universal healthcare. It is easy to bring out sad stories of people who seem to fall through the cracks in the system and go without care, but before we scrap the greatest healthcare system in the world we must make sure we have the facts straight. It is seldom helpful to base laws on emotional appeals.

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Every member of Congress since 1884 has taken the following oath of office:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

Those elected to represent a congressional district answer to their people first (as the sovereign body) and then to the people’s document—the Constitution. The founders knew a strong central government was needed to deal with foreign nations and ensure a strong union between the states, but they feared a federal government without restrictions. Besides establishing the branches of our federal government and defining its relationship to the states and the people the main emphasis of the Constitution is to restrain this new leviathan. For example, the navy is a permanent fixture, provided for in the constitution, while the army must be funded with new legislation every two years. The founders, in effect, placed a sunset clause on something as essential as an army to protect the people from abuse by their own leaders. (more…)

It has been popular over the last century to defend populist causes with a fluid interpretation of the Constitution. Attempts to find support for everything from abortion to welfare have been based on a “loose” interpretation of our founding document. This is actually as old as the document itself. Thomas Jefferson demanded a strict interpretation until he became president and loosened up for the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark Expedition. For decades the largest constitutional battle was over a national bank. With our long history of the Federal Reserve and FDIC insurance we find this surprising, but the battle over this was of great constitutional significance. The problem was that the Constitution does not give Congress the power to create corporations, so according to the strict interpretation based on the Tenth Amendment only states could charter banks. Eventually this battle was dropped as more pressing problems came to the fore—like the Civil War. With the obliteration of the Tenth Amendment during reconstruction those demanding a strict interpretation of the Constitution were forced to retreat. (more…)

If George Bush had proposed moving control of the Census into the White House, the media would have exploded. Crowds would have stood outside of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. burning Bush, Cheney and Rove in effigy. The liberal machine would have accused the president of entrenching control and moving toward tyranny. Since Barack Obama proposed it the silence has been deafening. (more…)