None of the Above

None of the Above
© 2011 Ross Williams

Despite my best efforts I couldn’t avoid the headlines this morning.

Politics is a waste of time and effort. The Republicans-who-would-succeed-Barama had a get-together last night to explain to us what was wrong with each of them, but to mostly gang up on Barama. They have plenty of ammunition for both activities, and I’m a little surprised they could yack and jabber about all the available faults in such a short amount of time.

They deserve credit for their remarkable brevity if nothing else.

All morning long I’ve been subjected to radio and internet news soundbiting the “debate” and describing how Barack Obama was the main target of criticism among the future Republican primary opponents, as if the purpose of the general election sixteen month from now is to be the most anti-Barama candidate around. Speaking as not-a-fan of Barama, I’d prefer the most reasonably anti-Barama candidate; it is not enough to quibbledick for the sake of quibbledicking. We had eight years of retarded Democrats doing that to Bush. If Bush had said two plus two equaled four, Democrats would say, “Nope! Five!” out of principle. ...as if being deliberately wrong for political spite is a principled quality worth electing.

Hint: it ain’t. Bush was right about quite a number of things – a reality Democrats cannot bring themselves to concede today any more than they could six years ago.

Just like Obama is right about some things. The fact that he’s also wrong about a lot more – and a lot bigger issues – doesn’t alter the fact that he’s still right about some. Because of that, I do not want a knee-jerk anti-Barama. I want someone with the perspective and knowledge to be able to discern between where Barry Hussein is right and where Barry Hussein is wrong. ...and where he’s simply posing for his statue, which he does altogether too frequently.

A short list ... a very short list ... of Barama’s faults [in policy] include, but are not limited to, the following:

1] the administration’s response to our slow-motion economic train wreck. If the economic problems in our country were exacerbated by Bush billowing our national debt by $500 Billion a year for several straight years [and it was] then the rational response is not to double that by adding $1 Tr.. Tr.. Trillion a year to it as Barama has done. It is to stop finding excuses to spend money we don’t have. Why does this even need to be explained to some people?

2] you don’t hang our country’s friends out to dry for any reason. Not if they’re pseudo-democratic dictators like Mubarak; not if they’re pesky Jews who are rude to the Palestinian hooligan neighbors you like who have been single-mindedly attempting to finally solve the Jewish State Question for over 60 years ... you don’t do it.

2]a] you don’t spend six years criticizing high-handed international bullying when “the enemy” does it, and then turn around and do it yourself. Barama ... Bush. Libya ... Iraq. Both are American bullying, but only one of each had cease fire violations to fall back on. Technicalities count; the world revolves around technicalities.

3] When the nation and the world needs a fiscally moderate United States to stabilize worldwide monetary fluctuations and misvaluations, you don’t give the US and the world Obamacare. Besides every shred of evidence available on the subject of government-run health coverage showing unmistakably that it does not work, it is a cost that cannot be covered without printing more money based on sovereign value that doesn’t exist, and which China owns the lion’s share of. What do we do for an encore? mandate Mandarin in grade school? Is that “forward thinking” for the new millennium?

It is with Obamacare that this morning’s major headline that I couldn’t avoid is concerned. The Republican candidates are all against Obamacare – with good reason. But one of those candidates, when he was the governor of Massachusetts some time back, gave his state the same program. The political result is that most Republicans line up to take pot shots at the ex-governor of Massachusetts for criticizing Obamacare when he created Romneycare.

Since most politicians are loyyers I know better than to ask if they’ve ever read the Constitution. Of course they did; they’ve all had at least one class in the subject. I’m left having to ask a few other questions instead:
- did they pass the course?
- do they remember anything about it? and
- have they suffered a traumatic brain injury or otherwise acquired long-term memory loss?

Apart from every scrap of experiential evidence declaring that government-run health coverage schemes do not work any better than privately-run schemes, the arguments against Obamacare include this most important consideration:

It is not among the allowed duties or obligations of the federal government to regulate health coverage.

In other words, it’s not their job. Technicalities still count as much as ever.

But a question may, for some, remain: is it, then, anyone’s job?

Interestingly, the Constitution that the Republican field either failed to learn, forgot about, or had cold-cocked from their skulls has an answer for that:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

So the answer is: the states have the power to muck about in government-run health coverage if they choose to defy reality and lose money by providing an inept service at bloated costs. Since Massachusetts is a state, and its governor was spearheading a state-policy that the US Constitution allows to the states by failing to define it as a federal authority, the ex-governor of Massachusetts does not deserve much of the criticism he’s been given for enacting health coverage in his state.

Instead, he deserves criticism for enacting a policy that has shown itself to merely be inept non-improvement on the available alternatives.

The feds can’t, but the states can. If the states don’t want to, then we can, individually. That’s what our Constitution was written to promote. Yet that’s what not one current politician of either party has the perspective or knowledge [or gumption, for that matter] to understand.

We’ve been steeped for so long in the bilious brew that claims the feds can ... whatever they want to. It seems that most have leapt from “feds can” to “feds should” or – among the Republicans, on this issue – “feds should not” without even bothering to look at the rules. The discussion does not properly belong in “should” versus “should not”; with the Constitution worded the way it is, the discussion is entirely between “can” and “cannot”.

And sadly, the one potential candidate who is in the position to advocate for state-run health coverage because it’s allowed and against US-run health coverage because it’s not doesn’t even understand the rules of the government he wishes to lead well enough to know the difference.

Those who had to read the Constitution for professional education have uniformly disavowed themselves of that Constitution after entering their profession. It’s going to be another in a long line of third party votes from me.