The Swine Flu and Public Policy

We all know that the current administration hates to waste a crisis. Time and again different members of President Obama’s cabinet have gone on record stating that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste because it allows legislation and policies to be implemented that otherwise would not stand up to careful, public scrutiny. We have seen how they exploited fears over our financial institutions and auto manufacturers to facilitate nationalization of those two industries all the while stoking the fires of public hysteria by claiming that those institutions were “too big to fail”. This template has proven effective for them and I find myself wondering, “What next?”

Indeed, what next? I believe that our president and his handlers will fan the fires of public fear using their lackeys in the network news media to exploit the current swine flu scare to push for nationalization of our health care system. After all, a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. Following the established template, the current administration will correctly conclude that a flu epidemic is a threat to the national welfare, however they will come to the erroneous conclusion that our current system is ill equipped to deal with a flu epidemic and a comprehensive, nationalized health care system is the only answer to the problem. This ignores the fact that there are already contingency plans in place at the CDC for dealing with a virulent public health threat and that our PRIVATE health care system is clearly superior to the nationalized health care systems used by Canada and Mexico. In fact, I suspect that the reason the mortality rate for this flu in Mexico is so high is due to their inferior health care system.

I urge you all the be highly critical of a solution this administration offers for the flu; especially if that solution is radically different from normal policy or if that solution entails radically expanding the Federal Government’s power over our personal lives. Few things are more personal than your own health care. We should all be highly suspicious of any program or policy that will involve more people in those very private decisions especially if the people being brought in are bureaucrats.

An Explanation

I apologize for not posting anything for the last two weeks, but between being sick and being insanely busy at work I have had difficulty getting anything written that meets my standards of content and quality. I have a couple of posts in the works, unfortunately they aren't quite ready yet. So instead of a full length post I'll just throw out a couple of thoughts about the news of the day.

From the news I have gathered, it appears that the ideas of secession and Texas' sovereignty are not dead as once thought and more surprisingly they seem to be gaining some wider ranging support.

When B. Hussein Obama starts talking about how home owners in jeopardy of losing their homes can visit a government website and possibly get their mortgage payment lowered, he really sounds like late night paid programming.

My mother met an 18 year old American girl who proudly wore a bright red shirt with the Soviet hammer and sickle on it. When my mother questioned her about it, the young women stated that she wanted to live in a socialist country. When my mother asked "Why don't you move to Cuba?" the young woman wasn't enthused. Why is it that American socialists can't move to Cuba or China or Sweden etc, etc, and let those of us who love freedom and Independence have America?

More Somali pirates need to be introduced to Navy Snipers.

Historically pirates have been treated like rabid dogs; excellent to avoid, but if you run into one kill it. By following that assumption, piracy was driven from the oceans, but now that we are going to be treating them as mere criminals I think we'll win this war on piracy about as well as we've won the war on drugs.

The movie "The Day the Earth Stood Still" is an annoying propaganda piece about how we are all destroying the planet. At the end of the movie I had to laugh though. The aliens destroyed all electronics. I guess people will just go back to burning wood and coal to heat and cook with and how big a carbon foot print will 6 billion coal cooking fires make every day?

Ok, enough random thoughts for now. I will try and get a proper post up in the next day or two. Sorry about the delay.