Democrats are lying about the public option

healthcare

Mark my words: a public option health care plan will someday be the only plan.

Don’t put any faith in today’s democrat promises. With a few votes and a sympathetic president, future liberals can (and will) alter public option’s scope. With impunity. That is government’s track record:

  • Social Security expands: At inception, a 1% tax on the first $3,000 of income funded the system. By 1940, it paid $35 million of benefits. Now it’s a 6.2% tax on the first $102,000 of income and pays $650 billion of benefits. (source)
  • Income tax expands: In 1913, when the Sixteenth Amendment was ratified, the income tax was 1% of all earnings over $3,000. Now it is between 10% and 35%, depending on your bracket. (source)
  • Even the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation expands: “When the PBGC was created in 1974, Democrats running Congress assured everyone there was no taxpayer risk because the agency would be funded by fees from pension plans, as well as by the assets of plans the company takes over.” “Now the PBGC has a $33.5 billion deficit,” and this is before it is about to take on much of Delphi’s pension, a politically-motivated, union face-saving “second biggest pension bailout in PBGC history.” (source)
  • How about those automaker loans? What started in 2008 as large loans is now a giant taxpayer giveaway that just won’t end.

I could fill a whole blog post with expansionism.

Even with current democrat promises, public option probably starts out with a massive tax subsidy and forced lower payments than what private insurers can negotiate (a la Medicare). It will creep like St. Augustine grass and gradually smother all other options. Future expansionists will just seal this fate.

Don’t get me wrong: the current system is flawed. And Obama is right about a lot of its flaws. But as an expansionist liberal, anything he prescribes is quackery.

Why Texas’s Driver Responsibility fees are really a tax

Per Frontburner:

…it’s certainly a deterrent for me to walk down one side of the street when I see twenty yards in front of me a gang of menacing-looking thugs approaching from the opposite direction.  I’m most likely to cross the street and avoid the possible confrontation.  … However, if I were told as I walked down that sidewalk (with no thugs in sight) that some number of years after I have walked down the sidewalk, a group of thugs might be called together (after much legal wrangling and automatic appeals, etc.) and might possible menace me for having had the audacity to walk down that sidewalk on their side of the street — I probably wouldn’t be deterred.

This argument applies to any punishment far removed from the crime, including Texas’s silly “Driver Responsibility” fees. They have no deterrent effect, and they are not paying for a service.

This is simply a way that liberals and too many Republicans hide new taxes.

North Korea about to collapse?

Kim Jong Il, twit extraordinaire
Kim Jong Il, twit extraordinaire

When you’re out of options, you do crazy stuff.

Does this explain North Korea’s missile diplomacy? They backed up implied threats against Hawaii only with mid-range missiles?

Is North Korea angering its best friend? I can’t believe China appreciates pointless destabilizing provocation of its neighbors and trading partners.

I don’t see a logical end. Sure, North Korea’s threats usually rocket past any logical end, but this is a new color of nuttyness.

Is North Korea having an internal struggle? Can freedom-loving nations capitalize on it? Has the media investigated this?