Either elwood, over at the Boo-Hoo Hamsters (aka Blue Hampshire), either is not conversant with the various political systems or dares not bring up that which really describes what is going on here in America – and one which Maggie “The Red” Hassan literally tried to do legislatively. He’s whining about a statement from Charlie Bass:
He is running ads claiming that Annie Kuster, who supports the Affordable Care Act, is endorsing a “government takeover of health care.”
Far be it for me to defend good ole’ self-described Progressive Republican Charlie Bass – I’m not going to even paper veneer anything positive for him given that he LIED about only running one more time – and now he’s running again. A pox on his political future (which may well happen this time around). However, that aside, elwood is STILL wrong:
The fact checkers rate this as Untrue. I think that’s because the health insurance industry, the hospitals, the clinics – the whole medical industry – are all still under the same ownership as they were five years ago. Doctors are in private medical practice, they are not collecting government paychecks. Nothing was taken over. So the fact checkers said, WRONG.
Socialism (and its harder left kissing cousin, Communism) is where the State takes over the means of production (think all business is belong to me!). ONLY in that case is elweed right – ownership has not changed at all. But what if the owners really do not have full (or mostly) control of their own companies?
As to that other Govt /political model? Here’s a few examples that proves Bass right, elwood wrong, and that the FACT Checkers are unwilling to name:
- GM, where the bondholders lost big time and their assets passing over to the Unions thanks to the Obama Administration
- Doctors who owned their doctor owned hospitals are in the process of losing their businesses thanks to Obamacare
- Energy companies are losing their business as the Obama administration (EPA) rachet up the regs that are shutting down their coal fired electricity plants
- Let’s not forget the industry that supplied those now closing plants – the mines that supply them. Artifically and drastically lower the demand for the mine’s supply indirectly controls that marketplace.
- Back to the auto industry – the CAFE standards, arbitrarily jacked up to double with no exceptions is going to radically change that marketplace.
- Farming – so many new regs are coming down the pike that a local, well known farmer admitted to me that they are ready to throw in the towel – it’s like Obama hates family owned farms!
- Frank / Dodd is chasing an entire financial marketplace offshore – IPOs. And with it, innovation, via legislation and regulations.
That’s just a few off the top of my head in 2 seconds – and the Obamanauts, just last week, created new regulations of consequence at the rate of about one every 3 hours. And this has been happening every week for almost 4 years.
Elwood, you do not have to OWN a company to control its products and services. All one has to do is have the mindset of controlling it in the ways described above. In the end, you only have to make it illegal for a company’s owners to operate a company in a way contrary to what Government wants.
When a Government has decided that it is well within its purview to do just that, history returns to the fore – because this was the path that Italy followed in the decade before WW II. And Mussolini called it FASCISM:
Fascism advocates a state-controlled and regulated mixed economy; the principal economic goal of fascism is to achieve national autarky to secure national independence, through protectionist and interventionist economic policies.[22] It promotes regulated private enterprise and private property contingent whenever beneficial to the nation and state enterprise and state property whenever necessary to protect its interests.
So Elwood, when Maggie “The Red” Hassan tried to pass her MaggieCare, with an unelected, unaccountable, unassailable, and financially independent (able to set its own tax regime without oversight of the Legislature – which is supposed to be how citizens can have oversight of the Govt that is supposed to serve them) board that would tell the hospitals in NH how they were to do their business, is that not a takeover-without-ownership?
In my mind, and with the CORRECT definition of Fascism in play (as opposed to those of the Left hurling it at the Right without knowing what the heck it means), Bass is right – and you are just plain idiotic for not doing your homework better.
How’s it feel to be left holding the bag?
