CMPN

I saw a commercial on TV the other day advertising a paint that you could put on a Formica counter top to make it "just like new". Now, I know that isn't true, and most of you know that isn't true. I suspect the company that makes the paint knows it isn't true, and I imagine even the announcer in the commercial knows it isn't true.

I'd rather have the announcer just tell me that the paint might make your Formica counter top look like new for a little bit, until you use it a little bit. At least I'd think he was being honest while I decided I probably didn't want to buy his paint.

I understand that there are a lot of people in this country who feel strongly that it is the role of government to step in and make sure everybody in the country carries health insurance. A lot of them also feel that it is the governments role to make sure that everybody who can afford insurance for themselves chips in to buy insurance for people that don't have it.

I disagree with the people that feel that way. I believe government should have a much more limited role than that. But even though I disagree with them, I do understand why they might feel that way.

Apparently President Obama is one of the people that feels that way. And since he feels that way, I would expect him to tell us that he feels that way. But he also told us that his $1.5 trillion health care plan won't add to the federal deficit. I don't believe he believes that anymore than I believe it. And I'd just as soon he would tell us that.

My old buddy Stinky Wilmont used to say "Don't pee in my ear and try to tell me it's raining".

I think that is a fair enough request.

And while you're at it, don't tell me you can paint Formica and make it like new.

Is it getting warm in here, or is it just me?...

I’m sure we’ve all heard the old theory that if you put a frog in a pan of hot water, it will immediately jump out, but if you place a frog in a pan of warm water, and turn up the heat slowly, the frog will stay in the pan, no matter how hot it gets.

I can’t testify for sure if that is true. I do remember one time in my younger days when my old buddy Stinky Wilmont and I decided to give the theory a test. One afternoon, over at Stinky’s house, we filled his mother’s stewing pot about half-way with warm water, and put it on the kitchen stove.

The plan was that Stinky would put his pet frog, Harold, in the pot, and I would start turning the knob slowly upward until either Harold or Stinky couldn’t stand it any more.

Unfortunately, as was the fate of many of our adventures, it didn’t turn out exactly as we had planned. As soon as Harold hit the water, he made a mad leap out of the pan, across the kitchen cabinets and behind the refrigerator. In our efforts to catch him, we knocked the pot of water over on the stove, and spent the next several minutes trying to outrun Mrs. Wilmont and that extra thick Redelman’s Hardware Store yardstick that she kept around for just such occasions.

Thus ended our scientific experiment. We never saw or heard from Harold again.

And we never figured out if the water was to hot right from the beginning, or if Harold just figured it was going to get to hot, and decided to make good his escape before that happened. We seldom spoke of Harold after that day.

Government has a way of turning up the heat slowly whenever it institutes a new program, and the American people seem to be pretty accepting of such things, as long as things increase slowly enough. When the income tax was first initiated in 1862, it took 3% of most Americans( in the north) income, except for the very poor or the very rich. It was eliminated 1872, shortly after the war was paid off.

When it was re-adopted in 1913, (most politicians consider permanently) it again started as a small percentage of income on a portion of the population. That percentage has slowly grown and fluctuated over the years, reaching as high as 94% on some incomes at the end of the Second World War, before settling at our current levels of nothing to 35%, depending on your income. Of course, a myriad of other taxes, such as sales and property tax, have also increased slowly and gradually so that must of us spend about half of what we make to support government services and programs.

Social Security worked out about the same way. It started out in 1936 claiming 1% from the employee and employer on the first $3000.00 of income. The plan was to slowly increase the maximum “donation” to 3% by each party. Had that remained true, even adjusting for inflation, the most you would pay today would be $700.00 per year. The government turned it up to $12,500. Slowly. Some of us even remember when the maximum Medicare deduction was $43.00 per year. The combined unfunded liability of both programs is now around $60 trillion.
There is a growing opposition to the health care plan that is being proposed in Washington right now. Maybe because a lot of people realize it is too expensive right now. Maybe because a lot of people realize it is going to be even more expensive in the future.

Thomas Jefferson warned that it is the natural tendency of government to grow. It’s also the natural tendency of government to turn up the heat.

I think even Harold knew that.

It's not like we couldn't see it coming...

"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it." - Frederic Bastiat

Bastiat saw it coming over 150 years ago.

There are a lot of people justifying the push for a national health care system by claiming health care is a right. I suppose in one respect it is. Certainly every person has the right to seek health care, and we would hard-pressed to justify a reason to forcibly prevent a person from receiving it.

Every person also has the right to own property, but they don't have the right to forcibly take it from another person. It's the same with health care. You don't have the right to force someone else to pay for yours.

As Bastiat predicted, we have created a tax system that uses force, or the threat of force, to take the property of one person and give it to another person, and we pretend that taking another persons property is morally acceptable as long as a majority of our elected officials think it will be used for a good cause.

Rights exist for individuals, and they would exist even if the government didn't define them. It doesn't create a conflict to claim that health care is a right, but it does when we claim that free health care is a right. If the government doesn't provide free health care, do you have the right to forcibly take it from someone else? I would maintain no one has that right.

An argument could certainly be made that we have a moral obligation to help those less fortunate among us. I would agree that we do.

But we don't need a government that tries to legislate morals, anymore than we need a government that tries to redefine rights.

Or authorizes plunder.