Jakemate Blog

“Life is much more manageable when thought of as a scavenger hunt as opposed to a surprise party.” – Jimmy Buffett

Hours before sunrise,
The soul is most untethered
from the man’s body.

My stride aligns with
The rhythm of the chamber,
All in slow motion.

“Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everyone you meet.” -Marine Saying

“Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grandchildren are once more slaves.” – D.H. Lawrence

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/03/the_obamacare_acceptance_strat.html

March 24, 2010

By Richard J. Little

There is a huge new public relations offensive being unleashed by the Democrats and their allies in the progressive left, one designed to limit their short term election losses and defeat any significant ObamaCare repeal efforts. It is imperative that all conservatives and opponents of government-run health care understand the Democrats’ and progressive left’s short-term political strategy so that we do not inadvertently aid them or fall victim to the new health care myths that they will be propagating.

The new plan is designed to accelerate the public through a mass analogue of the “seven stages of grief” (shock, denial, anger, etc.) and quickly get to “acceptance” of their federal government health care takeover and looming European-style, cradle-to-grave social welfare state.

The Democrat/progressive spin machine is going to mount a massive disinformation campaign with assistance from their surrogates in the MSM, unions, and “community groups” designed to change the subject. They are counting on getting you cooled down about the unconstitutional takeover of the health care system and usurpation of your personal freedom and individual liberty. And they will constantly hammer that this takeover is “the law of the land” that will “never be repealed” and must be accepted as a fait accompli. Anyone who disagrees with them will be portrayed as “dangerously angry” and a potential threat for “violence” in order to paint dissenters as “extremists”.

Obama is going to hit the road this week. Yes, he will be selling the supposed “benefits” of taxpayer-funded and government-run health care. But mainly he and his surrogates will also be trying to “dispel fear and myths” in order to get you to “calm down” and accept your new transition from citizen to subject.

Here are the DNC main talking points (all false, of course):

• It is not government-run health care because it’s not a single-payer system, nor is there a government option insurance; it’s “private” insurance of your choice.
• This bill is “no big deal,” and it’s “very moderate and watered-down.”
• This is a “giveaway to insurance companies” because of the $2.5 trillion in government medical welfare subsides to purchase “private” insurance.

While all of these statements may have a small grain of truth or are technically correct in a very narrow sense, they are in no way accurate descriptions of how this government health care takeover works.

ObamaCare is essentially the same compulsory insurance scheme that has been foisted on the public in the states of Vermont, Maine, and Massachusetts. When you peel back the veneer of supposedly “private” insurance coverage, you discover that for all practical purposes, compulsory insurance is every bit a government-run health care system and functionally amounts to being a cleverly disguised version of a single-payer system.

This is the second part of the progressives’ “acceptance” strategy: Simply confuse and misdirect the public about how their new governmental control structure works. There are hundreds of confusing structures, programs, and financing mechanism included. All are designed to divert people into discussion about ancillary components or into wonkish analysis of the monetary aspects. All of this is designed to obstruct people from a real-world understanding of how the system works in practice.

ObamaCare amounts to a de facto federal takeover of the entire medical and health insurance system through regulation, forced participation, and financial control over individual citizens and the major health care interests. At best, the ObamaCare structure will function as a shadow single-payer system. In the worst case, the massive amount of government control can be unleashed at any time to destroy the entire health care system in this country in a few short years.

Functionally, ObamaCare gives the federal government three major powers that are characteristic of all government-run health care plans (single-payer or fully socialized medicine).

First, there will be forced participation in the new health care system for all individuals and employers. The individual and employer mandates force participation in what in practice amounts to a nationalized, “one-size-fits all” health insurance plan, with little hope of “opting out” for the average citizen. This is the universal coverage aspect of government-run health care.

Second, there will be massive government subsidies to individual citizens (available to people who have incomes up to 400% of the poverty level) to fund their insurance coverage. This is medical welfare for the middle class. This is designed to create massive dependency in a huge voting bloc in order to buy future complicity for further “progressive” reforms in health care and other areas.

Third, there will be over 150 new agencies established to implement federal regulatory control over every aspect of the health care system. There will be boards to ration care in the overtly government-controlled programs (Medicare, Medicaid, VA, TRICOR, and SCHIP). Rationing will occur for private insurance through powers delegated to the new “czar” (Health Choices Commissioner) for the government-controlled insurance market euphemistically dubbed the “exchange.” Doctors will be “guided” into providing only the government-approved treatments by “Comparative Outcome Boards.” Finally, the HHS Secretary is given power to regulate health insurance companies out of existence at any time. And this power is huge.

Simply put, the federal government will be controlling the health insurance industry just as it controls the banks and auto companies who received bailout money. While it will still technically be true that health insurance companies will be “private” in the sense that there is private management and for-profit operation, they will be so constrained and controlled by government that they are quasi-public. Politicians and technocrats will really be calling the shots. There are few practical distinctions between a true single-payer system and a compulsory insurance scheme funded through a very small number (only the very largest of the insurance firms will be able to survive under the massive regulatory structure; in Maine, a similar plan reduced the number of insurance firms in the state from twenty-one down to two in less than ten years!) of pseudo-private insurance companies.

The bottom line for the individual citizen is that control over your own health care choices is gone. All significant medical, insurance, or cost questions will now be matters of politics. Groups that have significant political influence and can deliver votes or money will hold sway (think unions like the NEA and SEIU, big interests like Big Pharma, and pressure groups) over unorganized individuals .

The weakest citizens who cannot easily speak out come out the worst: the unborn, the elderly, veterans, and the disabled.

The stealth nature of the control of the health care system benefits the progressive politician in many ways. The Democrats can keep up the fiction that “this is not government-run health care” as a campaign selling point while at the same time creating a huge new shakedown source for campaign cash in the captive insurance industry. And if things get ugly with costs or medical care, they can still blame “greedy and evil” insurance firms and “the free market” when nothing of the sort was allowed to exist.

The level of control provided by all the regulations, mandates, and other features of ObamaCare will allow them to either continue the fiction or change a few regulations and push us into single-payer by default at any moment.

The cleverly crafted timing of implementation significantly reinforces this message. The public will see exactly nothing of tangible meaning happen for the near future. The supposed “benefits” of mandated insurance and the accompanying skyrocketing premiums (in Maine and Massachusetts, they are currently twice as high as the national average and are increasing at twice the rate of national medical inflation), higher taxes, longer waiting lines, and rationed care will not be happening until 2013 through 2018. This is the final trump card for the Democrats and the progressives. Since nothing overtly onerous will happen to the vast majority of Americans, they are counting on everyone settling back into their individual “comfort zones” of working, watching TV, and acclimating to the regime of health care.

Richard J. Little is a resident of Lawton, Oklahoma.

“It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not entirely strangled the curiosity of inquiry.” – Albert Einstein

“As I looked at my two young sons, each with his gun, and considered how much the safety of the party depended on these little fellows, I felt grateful to you, dear husband, for having acquainted them in childhood with the use of firearms.” – Elisabeth Robinson, narrating in “The Swiss Family Robinson” by Johann David Wyss

“I believe that Islam is not compatible with our Western way of life. Islam is a threat to Western values. The equality of men and women, the equality of homosexuals and heterosexuals, the separation of church and state, freedom of speech, they are all under pressure because of islamization. Ladies and gentlemen: Islam and freedom, Islam and democracy are not compatible. They are opposite values.” -Geert Wilders, In the House of Lords on March 5, 2010.

I hate tree hugging liberals who think they’re saving the environment by driving a hybrid or using compact fluorescent lightbulbs.  The truth is, hunters appreciate the environment and do more for the environment than just about any other group of people.  A portion of hunting license fees are actually used to preserve wildlife areas, instead of plowing them over to create another car dealership for more hybrid vehicles.  Do these fake environmentalists know that the process used to manufacture the batteries for their “green” car is worse for the environment than just driving an efficient gasoline powered car?

How many hybrid drivers have actually enjoyed nature’s beauty by sitting silently in the woods for hours on end?  How many know that you can actually hear an insect crawl up a tree trunk ten feet away from you?  How many have watched a squirrel go about his business and fall from a tree into a creek, only to swim out, dry off, and continue about his business like nothing happened?  I’ll bet most are too busy driving their hybrid to one of their elitist friend’s wine parties, while wearing their green recycle shirt woven from hemp fibers.

While I’ll appreciate the desire to spend less money and leave a small pollution footprint, I despise the attempt to fit the “green” image with the latest Al Gore propaganda.  I also hate that many liberal, so called “environmentalists” paint conservatives as being carefree about preserving the environment.  I’m a conservative, and I’ll take on any liberal environmentalist with my contributions to the planet any day of the week.  I’ll even fight them if they want, too.

Here’s a good article showing how hunting can be good for the environment.

-JakeMate

By Dr. R. Larry Marchinton and Dr. Karl V. Miller

QDMA

There are those of us who prefer to live the life of the hunter/gatherer-taking at least some of our sustenance in the natural way our ancestors did over the 100,000 years prior to the agricultural and industrial revolutions. Is this wrong? Is this something to be discouraged in our modern society? We do not think so.

At current harvest rates, use of the renewable products of natural plant and animal communities is much less damaging to the ecosystem than it would be to change these natural communities into agricultural fields or factories to produce the food we need.

In the United States roughly 3 million whitetail deer are harvested each year from a still-growing population of approximately 19 million. This translates to about 150 million pounds of meat. Add to this the amount of elk, turkey, squirrel, rabbit and other game as well as wild fruits, nuts, and vegetables that is consumed.

To produce this amount of beef, chicken, or vegetable crops in addition to that which is already produced would be ecologically devastating. Acres and acres of wild places would have to be destroyed to accommodate this increased agricultural production. More wildlife habitat would have to be plowed under. More pesticides would be applied. More soil erosion would occur. More waterways would become lifeless drainage ditches. Isn’t it better that some of us reap a sustained harvest from natural systems, rather than destroy these systems?

Some may argue that producing the gasoline, shells, etc., necessary to hunt is more environmentally damaging than just buying our meat, fruits, and vegetables in the store. To this we would say — maybe, but we all will do some kind of recreation whether it is going to a movie, playing golf, attending football games, or bird watching. These require as much or more gasoline and other environmentally expensive and/or damaging products as hunting.

Golf appears to be an environmentally benign sport, but consider the wildlife habitat destroyed for 18 holes. Consider also that golf courses are among the most heavily pesticided lands — fertilizers, herbicides, fungicides, insecticides.

Our recreation uses the natural environment, while other recreational activities replace it, often with a man-made environment that can never be restored to its original condition. We as hunters may use it, but they destroy it. And, since our recreation requires a natural environment, we are, and always have been, one of the primary agents responsible for preserving the natural environment from those who would convert it to a man-made environment.

The world’s population has gone far too high to allow all or even most of its people the option of being hunter/gatherers, but those that can and prefer to use renewable, naturally produced resources in a sustainable manner certainly should be encouraged.

Is it not better to participate in the natural system, rather than destroy it completely? When we obtain both our recreation and some of our sustenance from natural (i.e., non-agricultural) systems we believe the environment comes out the clear winner in most cases. What do you think?

Material from the Quality Deer Management Association.
Visit the web site at www.qdma.com