Hillary's Iron Fist Shows

Hillary Clinton has been trying to cast herself as the 'mommy' for these United States. However, even when she is trying her best to assume a persona of the loving mommy, she cannot entirely hide her statist, big-government motives. Further proof, if any were needed, that Hillary is at heart a socialist Big Sister was provided by the New York Times this morning. According to the Times, Hillary is proposing to enforce her universal health-care ideas by garnishing the paychecks of any workers who choose not to participate. The Times writes,

Mrs. Clinton, who did not answer Senator Barack Obama’s question on the topic in a debate last Thursday, was pressed repeatedly to do so Sunday by George Stephanopoulos on the ABC program “This Week.” When Mr. Stephanopoulos asked a third time whether she would garnish people’s wages, Mrs. Clinton responded, “George, we will have an enforcement mechanism, whether it’s that or it’s some other mechanism through the tax system or automatic enrollments.”

Although the Times use of actual analysis (though very little) in revealing Clinton's intent was a small shock, it should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed Clinton's career. From the very first, she is an unabashed big-government promoter, who believe that the government can do better at making individuals' decisions than those individuals themselves. Clinton tried to foist a massive government-run healthcare plan on the Untied States in the 1990s, and now she wants to try again, despite the fact that many Americans simply do not want to buy insurance- especially younger single people who do not see the need and choose not to spend the money. As the Power Line crew so correctly writes,

The least-acknowledged fact in the present debate over health care is that many millions of Americans have no good reason to buy health insurance. This is especially true of single young people, above all single men. They rarely become seriously ill, and they know that if they are unlucky enough to be in an accident or contract a serious illness, they will be treated anyway. So, quite properly, they see no reason to pay for health insurance or--the same thing--place a high value on health insurance as an employment benefit.

Pizza Hut learned this a few years ago when it pioneered a program that made health insurance available to its part-time workers at remarkably advantageous rates. To the company's surprise, few of its part-time employees--fewer than ten percent, as I recall--signed up for the plan. Even at subsidized rates, the vast majority of young, single employees had no interest in spending money on health insurance.

Thus, the crocodile tears that are shed over "the uninsured" are by no means entirely genuine. One of the basic purposes of just about anyone's "health care plan" is to find a way to force those millions of young, single people to pay for the health care required by their elders.

This is quite correct. And I for one, do not see anywhere in our Constitution that the government, especially the federal government, has any rights or power to force people to buy things they simply do not wish to purchase. If we were living in a Communist country, then the government would indeed have that power, as we see in China and other such countries. However, the United States is quite different- we deliberately chose to limit the government's power to force us to do things we don't wish to do. And forcing younger people to pay for their elders' healthcare is a particularly egregious abuse of that power. If Hillary wants to try that, then she ought to at least be honest about her intent to abuse the power of the federal government in ways that it was never intended. Hat tip to

NY Times scare stories on US Healthcare

It is strange how studies by groups like the World Health Organization (WHO) are trumpeted by news organs like the New York Times when said findings advance the preferred views of the news organ itself. It is even stranger when studies that do not represent the preferred beliefs of news organs, or corrections that make a moockery of a story (such as Duff Wilson's fantasy-laden stories about the Duke Rape Hoax) are hidden on the back page, or not published at all.

A case in point is the recent study by the WHO that finds US healthcare is only the 37th best in the world. Naturally, the Times put these results on the front page, without bothering to invetigate how the WHO reached them. This is relevant because as John Stossel points ou in his excellent rebuttal of the WHO study on TownHall.com, the study is fatally flawed in deteremining what amounts to "good" healthcare as opposed to "bad" healthcare.

According to Stossel, the WHO put high emphasis on life expectancy. Since the US has a much higher murder rate and auto-accident death rqate than virtually any other advanced country, this has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of healthcare one receives, it would perhaps have been nice if the Times had mentioned this. It did not. In addition, the WHO graded countries' healthcare system according to how socialist they were. As Stossel writes, "The WHO judged countries not on the absolute quality of health care, but on how "fairly" health care of any quality is "distributed." The excellence of care in this country thus was downgraded because not everyone has totally free access to it! This little point also did not make it into the Times' story, though it did make a point that our system is "unfair".

American healthcare certasinly does need fixing. But it would be nice if the media would cease their scare tactics in pursuit of a system like Cuba or Canada. Having lived in a country (Japan) that does have a central healthcare system, I am well aware that Japanese pay more for their system than I do for mine- even when I paid for my own. I also have a wife who is a registered nurse, and have had to pay some calls to doctors for treatment, so I have seen our system up close and personal. In the end, our system is not perfect, but it contains more positives than almost any other I have experienced. Too bad the Times can't focus on some of those positives, instead of trying to scare Americans into adopting a system that consistently does worse.

Is Hillary a Socialist?

Not according to her! As reported by the Gateway Pundit, Hillary Clinton reacted angrily to a question on her universal healthcare ideas at the National Association of Black Journalists Convention. The questioner had the gall to actually ask her why she was trying to bring socialized medicine to the United States, and stated that it would hurt black communities the worst.

Hillary responded by flat lying, saying angrily (quote courtesy of Say Anything)“Number one, I have never advocated socialized medicine, and I hope all the journalists hear that loudly and clearly because that has been a right-wing attack on me for 15 years, and it is wrong.”

As Gateway Pundit, Say Anything and The Anchoress all correctly pointed out, this is a complete falsehood. In her husband's first term, Hillary was charged with and ultimately produced, what everyone agrees was a model of socialized medicine on the lines of Canada and Great Britain. This was so far out of line with American tradition, that even her own party, which controlled Congress at the time laughed at her and refused to pass it.

Now as a Presidential candidate, she is still advocating socialized medicine, in that she expects to take from the top 50 percent of tax-payers in order to transfer wealth in the form of health care to the bottom fifty percent. (And on a side note, many of the uninsured in America are in this country illegally and who definitely should not have their health care paid for by us in any case). In any event, this is wealth redistribution, and definitely qualifies as socialism.

Hillary may not like her socialistic tendencies to be brought into daylight, but there can be no doubt, based on her public utterances, that she is a committed socialist, who longs for the days when she can further socialism in the United States. And if that day ever comes, we will all be much worse off- socialism has a nasty way of first removing rights, then replacing them with strictures and punishments. Except for the rulers, who Mrs. Clinton so badly wants to join.

On a side note, best wishes for a speedy recovery go out to The Anchoress, who is currently experiencing some health issues of her own. We send our prayers for a quick recovery.

Hat tip to The Anchoress.