Our Gangster Government
Riding from Hanover to New York, I've discovered that the bus is terrible for writing but pretty good for reading. One of the morning's best offerings: Michael Barone, angry.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Barone reports, has written a letter to the chief lobbyist for private insurance plans that bristles with crude threats. Raise premiums? Criticize ObamaCare? Just you try, Sebelius writes. Ordinarily dispassionate, Barone. very justly, erupts:
The threat to use government regulation to destroy or harm someone's business because they disagree with government officials is thuggery. Like the Obama administration's transfer of money from Chrysler bondholders to its political allies in the United Auto Workers, it is a form of gangster government.
Freedman > ObamaCare Trumps the First Amendment?
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Jul '10
Re: Our Gangster Government
Facing a little backlash, is she?
Nothing that 17,500 new IRS agents can't handle.
May '10
Re: Our Gangster Government
Creeping issue here with the Big-C contributors that perhaps editors should take note of -- Adam F. effectively posted this comment two days ago. There seems to be an increasing incidence of double-posting. I know it's hard to keep up with everything but it's a bug I think you guys need to fix either through organizing by topic, or having your eds. screen contributor posts before they go live on the board. Just sayin...
Edited on Sep 13, 2010 at 8:26amJul '10
Re: Our Gangster Government
What are you referring to?
May '10
Re: Our Gangster Government
It has always been thus. On the right we believe in getting tough with the international thugs and trying gentle persuasion with our domestic political opponents and with the left it is just the opposite.
They always urge cooperation, persuasion and the all the "hearts and minds" stuff with our enemies but believe in absolute ruthlessness at home. Ram unpopular "reforms" down our throats and bully us ever after on the implementation. And anything you can't win through the legislative process can be achieved at the hands of a sympathetic judge.
Their rationale, of course, is that the international thugs may fight back with guns and bombs but we never will, that we will all go along sheepishly as we have for years. And Hollywood and the MSM will dutifully trot out the "hate militia" storylines to discredit anyone that disagrees.
That's why November is so important. We must turn the tide at the ballot box before it gets ugly.
May '10
Re: Our Gangster Government
Adam Freedman posted the Secretary's comments on 9/11 at 9:20 EDT. I get that Peter is now contributing the reaction of another writer to those comments but it shanghais the topic and loses the thread developed there.
Jun '10
Re: Our Gangster Government
Being around lots of people doing things the "Chicago Way" can rub off on you, if you're not careful.
May '10
Re: Our Gangster Government
Barone/Caddell 2012! (Ace of Spades has a running joke about Pat Caddell, like the Chuck Norris jokes, except dirtier, cause it's Ace of Spades.)
The other time I remember the Wrathful Barone was another instance of "gangster government". The forced handover of GM from the investors to the unions. Something about brazen thuggery sets him off.
I lived in Chicago for years, and don't remember anything like this. Those guys were more subtle. It must be the influence of the Head Walrus of the AFL-CIO.
Jul '10
Re: Our Gangster Government
Trace Urdan
Adam Freedman posted the Secretary's comments on 9/11 at 9:20 EDT. I get that Peter is now contributing the reaction of another writer to those comments but it shanghais the topic and loses the thread developed there. · Sep 13 at 8:44am
I don't see a problem with this particular post, Mr. Urdan. It's unfair to say that one contributor can't post a noteworthy response to another contributor's quoted text. That's pretty much all Mr. Robinson has done, and any comments in this thread are meant for Mr. Barone's response, rather than for responses to the offensive comments made by Czar Cerebellum or whatever her name is.
Edited on Sep 13, 2010 at 8:54amMay '10
Re: Our Gangster Government
Well said, EJ.
Aug '10
Re: Our Gangster Government
Trace Urdan
Adam Freedman posted the Secretary's comments on 9/11 at 9:20 EDT. I get that Peter is now contributing the reaction of another writer to those comments but it shanghais the topic and loses the thread developed there. · Sep 13 at 8:44am
That thread, because it involved a freedom-of-speech issue and was posted on 9/11, spiraled off into a discussion predominantly about whether exercising freedom of speech by book-burning is edifying. The digression turned out to be a good conversation, but maybe it's not so bad to have the topic re-posted here so that this conversation can focus more on the freedom-of-speech issues related to Obamacare.
I rather enjoy hearing what differing contributors have to say even on the same topic, so perhaps rather than eliminating many posts on the same topic, they could be linked together somehow so that it would be very easy to navigate between them.
May '10
Re: Our Gangster Government
Aaron - What I left out of that narrative is this fact: The left believes that they can implement socialism and negate both the desire for liberty and a cry for a second American revolution by buying off the middle class through entitlements. But when you actively bankrupt the nation, it defeats the purpose.
If you paid into Social Security for twenty or thirty years and suddenly realize the "trust fund" is nothing but IOUs and that you may never see a dime, that's not a bribe that works. Top that off by promising your children a future of "new normal" double-digit unemployment? Yeah, that works.
Aug '10
Re: Our Gangster Government
M Barone:
She promises to issue regulations to require "state or federal review of all potentially unreasonable rate increases" (which would presumably mean all rate increases).
And there's a threat. "We will also keep track of insurers with a record of unjustified rate increases: Those plans may be excluded from health insurance Exchanges in 2014."
That's a significant date, the first year in which state insurance exchanges are slated to get a monopoly on the issuance of individual health insurance policies. Sebelius is threatening to put health insurers out of business in a substantial portion of the market if they state that Obamacare is boosting their costs.
Could we have more details on how this shutdown of insurers exercising their right to free political speech (the most protected category of speech) might be accomplished?
Kenneth says it's
which sounds plausible. But the more we know about how they plan to do this, the easier it must become to exercise our rights as citizens -- or at least the rights we're supposed to have -- to rid ourselves of such tyranny.
What recourse do we have against such thuggery?
May '10
Re: Our Gangster Government
The insurance industry is heavily regulated. There can be threats of audits, non-participation in government programs, etc.
The bottom line is that there is a myriad of ways the government can make their lives complicated, uncomfortable and more, much more, expensive.
May '10
Re: Our Gangster Government
Well, nothing unexpected in this. Once you are convinced that you are absolutely and exclusively in the right, as our ruling class is, and you have assess to the instruments of power, as they do as well, all sorts of thuggery becomes acceptable and even laudable.
Eventually every despot sends critics off to the gulag in order to prevent the spread of "mis-information".
May '10
Re: Our Gangster Government
Exortion only works to a point. If Obamacare pushes some insurers beyond an ability to be adequately compensated and remain afloat, those insurers will be free of such threats.
When government merely burdens your still-profitable business, you have incentive to play along and bite your tongue. But when government forces you out of business, remaining silent has no benefit. So, sadly, as the situation worsens, it may also become more hopeful.
In the words of Harvey Dent (quoting an old proverb), "The night is darkest just before the dawn."
May '10
Re: Our Gangster Government
Let's face it. Isn't the idea here is to make private insurance so unprofitable and so expensive as to force the American people to cry out for the simplicity of single-payer government-run medical care?
May '10
Re: Our Gangster Government
The plan of extremists like Obama and Pelosi might be less to direct the nation than to enact a reset.
Aug '10
Re: Our Gangster Government
EJHill
The insurance industry is heavily regulated. There can be threats of audits, non-participation in government programs, etc.
The bottom line is that there is a myriad of ways the government can make their lives complicated, uncomfortable and more, much more, expensive.
I suspected as much. And these things are tough to fight. But... This is a big country, and a few times in its history, some folks must have taken on the politically-motivated auditors, the absurd non-participation barriers, and won. How did these folks do it and can we learn something from them? (Since we're supposed to have these rights, we might as well find any way possible to successfully exercise them, right?)
What I hope for most is repeal. But I'll settle for dismantling it by any legal means, if it comes to that. I know people are already busy trying this on other fronts, but what about this one?
Free speech! It's like sunshine and puppies! People hafta love it! Right?
May '10
Re: Our Gangster Government
But they do want to enact a peaceful reset, yes?
Aug '10
Re: Our Gangster Government
Yeah, of course it is. That's why it's so important to stop it while (if) we still can. I don't want to live in a country where the only medical freedoms -- if any -- I have left for myself and my children revolve around certain aspects of our genitalia.
Grrr...
Edited on Sep 13, 2010 at 10:01am