From Down Under:

A British man who moved to New Zealand has been told by officials that his wife is too fat to join him.

Why, you might ask?  Because New Zealand has a fantastic government health care system.

Richie Trezise, 35, a rugby-playing Welshman, lost weight to gain entry to New Zealand after initially being rejected for being overweight and a potential burden on the health care system.

His wife, Rowan, 33, a photographer, has been battling for months to shed the pounds so they can be reunited and live Down Under but has so far been unable to overcome New Zealand’s weight regulations.

This is the kind of story that should set off alarms in your head when you hear some modern day socialist talking about the “common good” and demanding “universal health care.”

BTW, “universal” health care is a stupid phrase.  Any politician elected in this country could, at most, impose a national health care plan.  He/she couldn’t even thrust upon us an international plan and most certainly not a “universal” plan, which would presumably cover all life forms in the universe that we haven’t even discovered yet (or should I say that haven’t discovered us yet?).

Take a look at this article from the BBC.

More than 10,000 campaigners have held a march and rally in a last-ditch effort to save services at the Vale of Leven Hospital.

That is what we have to look forward to if the Democrats impose their socialized medicine plans on us.  We’ll have to take off of work (those of us who actually work, that is) to carry around friggin’ signs so that some bureaucrat doesn’t close one of our clinics.

This really gets to the heart of the issue: control.  With socialized health care the government controls your health care, leaving you to beg and plead with those in power for things we now take for granted as choices.  I’m sure they will be more than happy to lavish us with health care pork from time to time to secure our continued support of their lordship over us.

This guy is out of his gourd.

Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards said on Sunday that his universal health care proposal would require that Americans go to the doctor for preventive care.
 
“It requires that everybody be covered. It requires that everybody get preventive care,” he told a crowd sitting in lawn chairs in front of the Cedar County Courthouse. “If you are going to be in the system, you can’t choose not to go to the doctor for 20 years. You have to go in and be checked and make sure that you are OK.”

I guess Edwards will have to create a new enforcement bureaucracy (job program!) to force citizens at gun point in to see their government appointed doctors.  Don’t worry; I’m sure there will also be fines and other punitive taxes.  I know - Edwards will stick it to the employers for your noncompliance and levy an additional tax on their profits.  Never mind that the money comes out of your pocket in the long run.

I don’t know what scares me more: John Edwards or the fact that people actually subscribe to his B.S.

… somewhere else.  Like Wisconsin.

The land of cheese is on the precipice of passing a socialized health care plan for all residents under the age of 65.  I guess the older folks are covered by Mother Washington.  Their plan will initially result in a tax increase of $510 per month for every worker and could eat up about 20% of family incomes.  But they will have a 16 person panel charged with lording over the health of an entire state.

Since Wisconsin is lucky enough to be run by progressives socialists they will impose a hefty portion of the new taxes on businesses.  How nice of them!  Good thing they aren’t taxing regular people.  Those businesses will respond in a number of predictable ways: passing costs on to consumers (real people), depressing profits of owners (real people), or maybe simply relocating out of state (leaving real people unemployed).  Those newly employed people will continue to get their free health care - which will be provided by the shrinking number of actual workers who will begin to carry an even larger tax burden.  Think of it this way, the state of Wisconsin is putting every business within its borders at a nearly 15% cost disadvantage compared to businesses in other states.  And you thought NAFTA was going to make a big sucking sound.

John Stossel pretty much sums up my feelings on the matter:

America needs “Healthy Wisconsin.” The fall of the Soviet Union deprived us of the biggest example of how socialism works. We need laboratories of failure to demonstrate what socialism is like. All we have now is Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, the U.S. Post Office, and state motor-vehicle departments.

It’s not enough. Wisconsin can show the other 49 states what “universal” coverage is like.

Let’s just hop they can crash and burn before such onerous mandates get imposed on the country at large.  Maybe when they encounter a financial crisis as they become a mecca for the infirmed and unemployable, lose businesses, and tax their residents to death Americans will see the folly of socialism.

Hillary Rodham Clinton has proposed yet another welfare program meant to reward the dullards of society and punish the balance who exercise good judgment.  Her new plan?  Give $1 billion of taxpayer money to people who voluntarily took out mortgages they could not repay.

Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday called for penalties against mortgage brokers who engage in predatory lending and a $1 billion federal fund to help homeowners avoid foreclosure.

The New York senator has been critical of subprime mortgages, loans given to people with blemished credit histories or low incomes. Weak home prices and rising interest rates have made it increasingly difficult for borrowers to keep up with their payments; delinquencies and foreclosures are rising sharply. 

The New York senator’s proposal includes a $1 billion federal fund to help homeowners avoid foreclosure, an end to prepayment penalties and more affordable housing options.

“It’s a combination now, of economic conditions that are not working for the majority of Americans, and unsavory practices that are undermining the dream of home ownership,” Clinton said.

This plan is beyond asinine.  Typical, predicable, liberal socialism.  Clinton focuses the blame on one of the three parties who share responsibility.  The two she ignores?  The buyers and the government.  Other than outright fraud, which can be dealt with through legal proceedings or collective bargaining, the buyers bear the brunt of the responsibility.  They either knowingly took an unacceptable risk - maybe they foolishly banked on the housing market rising at a break neck pace forever - or unwittingly signed up for a loan they didn’t understand.  Either way they need to suffer the consequences of their actions so they don’t make equally stupid decisions in the future due to their belief that the federal government will simply confiscate money from taxpayers and bail them out.  I’ve discussed the government’s culpability before.

Kudos to Degree of Madness.

Here’s another must read from John Stossel.  It yields some interesting, if not somewhat predictable, insight into how the socialists regard freedom.

[Moore:] “I gotta believe that, even though I know you’re very much for the individual determining his own destiny, you also have a heart.”

Notice his smuggled premise in the words “even though.” In Moore’s mind, someone who favors individual freedom doesn’t care about his fellow human beings. If I have a heart, it’s in spite of my belief in freedom and autonomy for everyone.

Doesn’t it stand to reason that someone who wants everyone to be free of tyranny does so partly because he cares about others? Wishing freedom to one’s fellow human beings strikes me as a sign of benevolence. But Moore and the left don’t see it that way.

Hillary Rodham Clinton must be channeling Karl Marx.

Presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton outlined a broad economic vision Tuesday, saying it’s time to replace an “on your own” society with one based on shared responsibility and prosperity.

The Democratic senator said what the Bush administration touts as an ownership society really is an “on your own” society that has widened the gap between rich and poor.

“I prefer a ‘we’re all in it together’ society,” she said. “I believe our government can once again work for all Americans. It can promote the great American tradition of opportunity for all and special privileges for none.”

Actually, she saddens me.  H-Rod thinks that the best way to improve our country is to confiscate more money from those who have the acumen to earn it and redistribute it to those who don’t.  All that will do is make the “beneficiaries” complacent with their meager government hand outs and the innovative American spirit will die a slow death as they no longer strive for excellence because the financial incentive has been stripped away.  Just think of France.

Robert Samuelson has a very good diagnosis of our country as a welfare state.

Spend a moment studying the adjacent table. It illuminates why another of our annual budget battles — begun last week, when President Bush submitted his fiscal 2008 proposal — seems so fruitless and (yes) repetitious.

The table shows the rise of the American welfare state. In 1956, defense dominated the budget; the Cold War buildup was in full swing. The welfare state, which is what “payments to individuals” signifies, was modest. Now everything is reversed. Despite the war in Iraq, defense spending is only a fifth of the budget; so-called entitlement payments to individuals are almost 60 percent — and rising. In fiscal 2006, the federal government spent almost $2.7 trillion. Social Security ($544 billion), Medicare ($374 billion) and Medicaid ($181 billion) dominated. There was $199 billion more for payments to the poor, including the earned-income tax credit and food stamps.

The welfare state has made budgeting an exercise in futility. Both liberals and conservatives, in their own ways, peddle phony solutions. Cut waste, say conservatives. Well, network news reports of $20 million federal programs that don’t work may seem — and be — scandalous, but like Amtrak they’re usually mere blips in the total budget. For its 2008 budget, the Bush administration brags it would end or sharply reduce 141 programs. But most are microscopic; total savings would be $12 billion, or 0.4 percent of spending. Worse, Congress has previously rejected some of these cuts.

Liberals have their own cures. Cut defense, some say. Okay. In 2006, military spending (including the war in Iraq) totaled $520 billion, slightly less than Social Security. If it had been halved, the savings would have just covered the deficit ($248 billion). Little would be left for new programs. Raise taxes on the richest 1 percent, say some. Okay. The richest 1 percent pay about a quarter of all federal taxes. In 2006, that was about $600 billion. To cover the deficit would require about a 40 percent tax increase. Needless to say, neither proposal is politically plausible.

Annual budget debates are sterile — long on rhetoric, short on action — because each side blames the other for a situation that neither chooses to change. To cut spending significantly, conservatives would have to go after popular welfare programs, including Social Security and Medicare. To raise taxes significantly, liberals would have to go after the upper middle class, a constituency they covet (two-thirds of all federal taxes come from the richest fifth). Deficits persist, because neither side risks its popularity, and, indeed, both sides pursue popularity with new spending programs and tax breaks.

It might help if Americans called welfare programs — current benefits for select populations, paid for by current taxes — by their proper name, rather than by the soothing (and misleading) labels of “entitlements” and “social insurance.” That way, we might ask ourselves who deserves welfare and why.

If that isn’t depressing, I don’t know what is.  The only solution is clear: cut the damn entitlements.  However, our politicians derive their power from such programs, using them to create a stable base of voters who can be drawn back into line with a well timed benefit increase.

Hillary Rodham Clinton is not a dumb woman by anyone’s definition and she usually measures her words carefully, but what she said in the following speech suggests that she holds capitalism in the lowest of regards.

I’m really quite shocked that she would say that because one would assume that she at least accepts the basic premise that profit is the incentive that encourages us to engage in commerce.  If Exxon, or any other company, had their profits confiscated by the government, even for the most altruistic seeming of reasons, then investment in that company would be diverted elsewhere.  The company would die.

I suppose Hillary would rather see the profits made by Exxon go into the coffers of Middle Eastern or Venezuelan governments.

From the Guardian:

Google’s decision to censor its search engine in China was bad for the company, its founders admitted yesterday.

Google, launched in 1998 by two Stanford University dropouts, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, was accused of selling out and reneging on its “Don’t be evil” motto when it launched in China in 2005. The company modified the version of its search engine in China to exclude controversial topics such as the Tiananmen Square massacre or the Falun Gong movement, provoking a backlash in its core western markets.