Gary Arneson: You should be scared of government

Americans resoundingly do not want and are very much afraid of government-run health care.

After bailing out banks and car companies, spending the stimulus money, cap and trade, cash for clunkers and more than $100 trillion in unfunded liability for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, they should be scared. Yet politicians try to wear down resistance with endless talk designed to confuse and confound while discussing matters of life and death in secret.

Twelve million people, not 46 million, are too poor to buy health insurance. If this were about insuring them, rather than a power grab, a fraction of the money from the stimulus or the bailouts could have been used to buy coverage for them. We don't need to spend a trillion dollars we don't have to force everybody out of their current health insurance and into government health care that Congress wants no part of for itself.

Scientific testing of government plans by comparing them with an HMO or with medical savings accounts combined with catastrophic care accounts, allowing health insurance to be purchased across state lines, testing malpractice reform, malpractice lawsuit reform and paperwork simplification and testing it on the uninsured so everybody is covered immediately would prove that government intervention in health care is not the solution but is itself the problem.

The government is out of money. It has spent our money, our children's money and our grandchildren's money. It can't make health care cheaper, better or more accessible. But we can, without government.

• what sort of "scientific testing" the letter-writer hath in mind for the purpose and intent of the above;
  
• whether these tests are, in fact, "fair and balanced" (to use the rather hackneyed slogan of Fox Prolefeed as turns out, in Reality, to be anything but);
  
• how do we know such are not fatally flawed or otherwise skewed for purely political purposes and ends (and deliberately), especially where flawed maths are used; and
  
• what sort of formulae (preferably with checks and balances) would be used here for the purposes and intents of these tests, consistent with established laws of maths and logic assumed to be applied here for the sake of such a delusion.

Until then, we should expect to assume that such "scientific testing" desired here will probably be one using, and based on, Orwellian doublethink preferred by the "astroturf" Zealots and True Believers as expect the Great Unwashed to parrot the agenda of "the Four Hundred," the former not expected to know they're really being used "lest serious error and delusion ensue***leading to serious mental disorders."

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I'M NOT SURE IF THE MINISTRY OF SILLY WALKS WOULD AGREE, but you could add to the occasional and ever-growing such of Songs Worth Silly Walking To "Tell Me Something Good" by Rufus (featuring Chaka Khan) and "I've Got the Music In Me" by the Kiki Dee Band.

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SO MUCH FOR THE PATSY ABOUT "BEING MISLED BY THE TREACHERY OF OTHERS" INTO CRIME AND LICENTIOUSNESS: Former Liberian President Charles Taylor, on trial in Den Haag for War Crimes Against Humanity vis-a-vis the civil war in Sierra Leone a few years back by the International Criminal Court, is using the patsy that he was "tricked by a Western Intelligence Conspiracy" into surrender as ended said civil war ... the testimony likely to be used as a bête noire against him in cross-examination expected within measurable distance.

Now let's hope such among the Joe Sixpack crowd who fell for the whole "tea party" racket, unaware of its really being a mouthpiece for corporate interests and their articles of faith, start to realise they themselves are "being misled by the treachery of others." And, realising this, consider distancing themselves therefrom, realising the ensuing error of judgment.

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AND PERHAPS IT WAS TIME TO GO BACK INTO "JUST THE FAQ'S" MODE to answer one of those Pressing Questions you may have about the mindset behind this very blog:

• Where did you get the idea of free-market capitalism as "Great White Father," as used from time to time?
  This exercise in ironic sarcasm, which I direct to "the Four Hundred" and their droogs in K Street--and their propaganda shills @ Fox Prolefeed and conservative talkback radio--was inspired by longtime United States Government policies directed towards Native American and indigenous peoples, expecting them to see Uncle Sam as "the Great White Father."
  Only it turns out that such excused forced resettlement on Federal reservation lands (including the so-called "Indian Territory" in what is now eastern Oklahoma) with the poorest possible soils as precluded any attempt @ agriculture ... enforced suppression of traditional languages, religion, culture and rituals in the name of "assimilation" ... placement of children in so-called "mission schools" as used an ur-LeTourneauism for the sake of coercive power and control under State sanction and authority ... expecting Native Americans to take "civilised" names, resettle in major cities and adopt "civilised" employment as one with "assimilation" ... and excusing mismanagement, waste and fraud when it came to trust funds investing any proceeds from oil and mineral rights leases on reservation lands.
  Which the 1972 Supreme Court decision in Bryan v. Itasca County put paid to, essentially reasserting the traditional sovereign rights and sovereignty of Native American and other indigenous peoples on reservation lands (as well as applying, by extension, to Alaskan and Hawai'ian Native peoples) and expecting both the United States Government and the several states to so respect and recognise--even to the extent of Native American communities profiting from casino gaming, tax-free tobacco sales and other enterprises, in turn promoting a renewed sense of Native American pride and honour.