URLs du Jour

2009-06-28

  • Call me crazy, but I've never been a huge fan of corporate welfare, bloated bureaucracy, massive regulation, or killing prosperity. At least without detectable benefits. In voting for the Waxman-Markey Cap-n-trade bill, at least 219 members of the House of Representatives, however, have shown that they are all for that stuff. Marc Morano has a good summary.
    The House of Representatives passed a bill it did not read, did not understand. A bill that is based on crumbling scientific claims and a bill that will have no detectable climate impact (assuming climate fear promoters are correct on the science and the bill is fully implemented – both implausible assumptions).
    You can see how your Congresscritter voted here. Mine own, Carol Shea-Porter, unsurprisingly voted yea.

    The thing that really sticks in my craw, though, is the "did not read" bit. Tom Smith rakes his dimwitted (Republican) Congresswoman over the coals for her vote:

    I don't doubt there are plenty of smug hybrid drivers around Temecula but really, in a bill this bad, you could have found a good reason for voting against it just by opening it at random. Of course, that assumes there was a copy in existence, which I gather was not technically the case. But even there, I think most people would regard it as a good reason to vote against a bill that it was in fact impossible to read it, or even most of it, before voting on it. Many of us in law related areas, just to take a random example, would consider it our fiduciary duty to actually read, perhaps even carefully, a legal instrument that would dispose of trillions of dollars of other people's money, before attaching our name to it. Is it too rash for a Congressperson to be expected to do the same? If so, you could have a rule of thumb -- less than $100 Billion: no worries, whatever, go ahead and sign without reading. But more than $100 Billion, or $1 Trillion, say, maybe read that sucker first. Just a thought.
    Just do a quick s/Temecula/Portsmouth/ on that paragraph, and it's a wish-I'd-written. Any half-competent GOP candidate running against Carol Shea-Porter in 2010 should wrap this misfeasance around her neck like the dead albatross it is.

  • On the "health care reform" front, Michael Cannon of Cato gets a high priest of the Church of Universal Coverage to admit that 'universal coverage' isn't much about improving health; it's pretty much all about power.

  • As if to provide an example, McQ notes a current proposal to finance the scheme: taxing any private health plans deemed overly generous by Your Federal Government.

    Unless, mind you, such plans were negotiated by a union. In which case, they're off the table.

    So "health care reform" is not really about "fairness" either. Cannon's right: it's all about power. And unless you belong to some powerful Democratic Party constituency, you ain't got much.

  • Thank goodness the watchdog press is focusing like a laser beam on all this! Oh, wait…

  • I cant imagine that DraftSanford2012.com will be around for much longer, so click while you can.


Last Modified 2012-10-07 8:00 AM EDT