Next up for Frank – health care

There were a lot of people who were anywhere from disappointed to outraged that our recently-elected Congressman, Frank Kratovil, was one of those who voted in favor of the Waxman-Markey “cap and trade” bill, better thought of as the “energy tax”. While 44 mostly “Blue Dog” Democrats (a group Kratovil likes to consider himself a part of) voted “nay”, Frank decided to send a bill that hadn’t even been completely put together yet on to the Senate.

Because Congress is now off on its Fourth of July recess, it’ll be a few days before Kratovil gets back to work with the next big-ticket item on the Obama agenda: his version of health care reform (read: eventual single-payer system like Great Britain or Canada). Understandably, a lot of people aren’t thrilled with the idea of nationalized health care.

In this case, though, my guess is that Kratovil isn’t even going to be one of those on the fence – he’s going to jump lock, stock, and barrel in favor of it. Does the phrase “Universal Health Care Means Universal” ring a bell? If not, let me remind you.

I can already see this three-ring circus being placed into motion. Unfortunately for those who believe in transparency and limited government, neither of those seemed to be the case on cap-and-trade and I wouldn’t be too surprised if we see hundreds of pages added to a House bill regarding health care at oh-dark-hundred the night before the vote, which will likely be set again for a day before Congress recesses. When you’re trying to allocate huge portions of the private-sector economy, speed and stealth are your friends.

Friends, it’s more important than ever that people become aware of what’s happening. What’s quite troubling to me is that news tends to focus on trivial things like the recent passing of a number of celebrities whose names history will little note nor long remember and not on the all-out assault on freedom and liberty being waged by the current Administration and Congress with the consent of the man a bare plurality of First District voters (remember, Kratovil only had 49% of the vote) sent to Washington with the understanding he would act and vote as a moderate-to-conservative Democrat.

A few days ago I was in a conversation with people my age when it was brought up that people who lived through the Great Depression had no idea they were living through such a period – they just knew things were hard economically. We don’t have the benefit of standing 20 years hence and looking back knowing what happened and assigning a name to it. All we know is that economic times are difficult and pretty much everything government’s tried to address it has only served to put America deeper in debt and more beholden to foreign creditors without much to show for it. Someone may be getting wealthy but it’s not the average guy or the family on Main Street.

At what point do we realize that the answers being tried in Washington aren’t the approach we should take? How many will tear themselves away from the unceasing news cycle mourning the death of a so-called “King of Pop” and look at someone who’s amassing the power of a king himself by appointing “czars” to take over major industries?

Once in awhile the news will speak to the unrest in Iran over their recent election or pause to speculate more recent events in the small Central American republic of Honduras, where their President wished to circumvent a constitutional restriction on his time in office (shades of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela). Those who seem to care (expressed, for example, in the TEA Party movement) are derided as kooks or worse.

When caring about my country becomes the sign of being a kook, well, I guess I just happen to have a lot of the nation’s hard-working producers on my side so I’ll take my chances. Hopefully the smooth talk of politicians like Frank Kratovil won’t work its magic the next time they’re on the ballot.

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer.

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