Tuesday, October 8, 2013

So, are these the people you want running your health care?

We have arrived at something very important, very profound in the last week in the United States of America.  Yes, let's use the full name because this is a problem that goes to the fundamental nature of the country.

The government is using its police power against the public interest to make what it thinks is a clever anti-Republican point about the government shutdown. 

Leave aside the substance of the Republican argument that Obamacare is hopelessly compromised by the executive fiats already issued on it by the president -- precisely that selective lawlessness that the section of the presidential oath "to take care that the laws be faithfully executed" is meant to prevent.  If that is the larger point, and it is, we also all see the smaller point -- that all the people in favor of Obamacare don't want to participate in it.  Companies don't want it; unions don't want it; and the people who, if they didn't read or write it, at least passed it, don't want it.  So it is not unreasonable for the Republican majority in the House, the government body closest to the public, to seek a delay in the individual mandate, a stance reinforced by the incompetent introduction of the program.

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