The Parable of the Referee

Dr. Zero illustrates the fallacy of the government acting as a “competitor” in the health care or any other market, by way of another parable:

Far from opposing all regulation, I maintain that clearly written, honestly enforced, minimally intrusive laws are both just and essential for wealth creation. A nation’s wealth lies in transactions between its citizens, and the pace of those transactions would be greatly reduced if consumers had no confidence in providers. Shopping malls would be considerably less active, if the shoppers had to assume every food product was potentially poisonous, every piece of consumer electronics could explode, and all of the merchants were thieves.

Obamacare and the Federalist Papers

Patrick Jakeway at the American Thinker looks at Obamacare through the eyes of the Founding Fathers, but taking a look at the Federalist Papers:

Concerning Article 1, Section 8(3) of the Constitution that “Congress shall have the power to regulate Commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes,” Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 17:

“The administration of private justice between the citizens of the same state; the supervision of agriculture, and of other concerns of a similar nature; all those things, in short, which are proper to be provided for by local legislation, can never be desirable cares of a general jurisdiction.”

The Next Target: The Internet

Now that the Democrats have passed their abomination in an effort to control the medical industry, they’re looking at the internet and licking their chops.

Democratic Representative Ed Markey writes a piece at Politico calling for Net Neutrality — because nothing will help the internets more than getting the government to tax and regulate it and use the money to pay for high-speed access for other people.

The Obamacare Abomination: Backlash

Sure, Obamacare has been passed and will likely be signed into law. We’ve seen some of the conservative responses, but there is still some recourse to strike the bill down, and there will be a massive backlash against the progressive Democrats for this. Legal challenges to the constitutionality of Obamacare — mostly against the individual mandate — are already underway. I can also see a November election cycle where Republicans win (easily) on a “repeal the bill” platform. Either way, it is highly likely that those who supported and voted for this bill will face dire political consequences.

The Obamacare Abomination: Reactions

The Obamacare bill has passed, and the President will likely sign it into law soon. The results and ramifications of this will spell disaster for our country, politically and economically. But, there’s time for that later. For now, Republicans, conservatives, and the majority of Americans, who all opposed this massive intrusion into the private sector, have suffered a major loss. Here are some reactions to the passing of the bill.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot: Germany Tells Greece to Sell Island to Pay Debt

Anyone want to buy a small Mediterranean island?

Josef Schlarmann and Frank Schaeffler told Germany’s Bild daily that the Greek state should sell stakes in all its assets to raise more cash.

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It is true that dotted in the blue waters of the Aegean are some of the country’s most valuable assets – about 6,000 islands, of which only 227 are inhabited. Many of them are privately owned by the world’s super-rich.

According to a specialised real-estate website, Greek islands evoke images of sunglass-sporting shipping magnates sipping champagne on enormous yachts, but cost as little as $2m (£1.3m).

Eminent Domain and Payback

In a seemingly brilliant turnabout, the State of Utah is setting itself up to use eminent domain to seize land owned by the federal government.

Long frustrated by Washington’s control over much of their state, Utah legislators are proposing a novel way to deal with federal land — seize it and develop it.

The Utah House of Representatives last week passed a bill allowing the state to use eminent domain to take land the federal government owns and has long protected from development.

Subsidizing the States

Tad DeHaven at the Cato Institute responds to a comment about the popularity of federal funding for state programs with many pretty charts demonstrating the dramatic increasing in federal subsidies of state programs.

Half the Service at Twice the Price

Ralph Reiland at the American Spectator takes a look at the promises made by Obamacare as far as cost versus service, and compares them to the cost estimates of other government programs. The outlook is not too good, as every government programs in history has drastically exceeded its cost estimates and generally performed far poorer than expected. And the more grand scale the social engineering plan, the more dramatic the failure, and the harder it is to reform or kill.

Power to the States

Phillip Damon of the Troubled Patriot features an essay on American Thinker about the importance of a vertical separation of powers in American government. The Constitution was written to limit the power of the federal government to only those powers ennumerated in the Constitution, with all other powers reserved to the states. Progressivism has fought long and hard against this concept, with the result of a massively expanded government that has no authority from the Constitution.