My View

Random thoughts from a warped and fevered mind...


Do you recall from your civics classes (if you had them) what a "bill of attainder" was? This was a serious point of contention for colonial Americans with England. A bill of attainder was a fairly common practice at that time where the state could declare a person to be in violation of a law or regulation and therefore seize their property without the benefit of a proper trial. One can see the possibility for egregious abuse by the state- declaring someone in violation of the law and taking their property without due process. Bills of attainder are expressly prohibited under Article 1, Section 9 of our Constitution. Why bring this up? Under the now sanctioned socialized healthcare program approved by Congress and signed into law by the President, the state is authorized to seize your property- in this case in the form of financial penalties- from citizens that decline to purchase private health insurance. All without due process. Without the citizen being given a right to state their case in court. The problem with this aspect of the socialized healthcare system that has been passed into law is that the Congress of the United States has assigned to a bureaucracy, in this case the Internal Revenue Service, the right to make determinations of guilt without involving due process and the judicial system. This is just one of many problems that will be unearthed once the details of this bill are made public.

I saw a turtle without a shell. I didn't know if he was naked or homeless.

One of the dangerous aspects of the socialization of our healthcare system is the fact that the government can now compel citizens to buy a certain product- health insurance specifically. Never before in the history of our country has the government had the power to compel its citizens to buy a product as a condition of lawful residency. This begs the question, what's next? How about being forced to buy a General Motors product? The taxpayers own the company anyway, so it would be good to own a Chevy, right? The precedent established under this bill is dangerous and provides a heretofore unheard of invasion of our individual rights. Providing quality healthcare for all our citizens is something we should strive to accomplish. Forced government mandates are not the way to solve the problem, and will create many more problems than they will solve.

If a man with no arms has a gun, is he armed?

It was projected that the Social Security system in this country would begin to pay out more in benefits than it was taking in through taxes on wages in the year 2017. Guess what? This year, 2010, that will happen, as benefit payouts have increased faster than revenues coming in through taxes. Oops. This is understandable since the level of benefits increases as more people retire and begin to draw Social Security payments. More people are retiring, and with a real unemployment rate in this country of approximately 17%, fewer people are paying in to the system. Furthermore, people are living longer, which means that the payments to a recipient are being paid over a longer period of time. This 800 pound gorilla is sitting in the room with us, and up to now, our legislators have not had the courage or political will to address this problem. It gets worse every year, and we will eventually be forced to deal with a problem of gigantic proportions. And it will be ugly. Look for taxes to go up and benefits to be cut to continue to support this legalized Ponzi scheme.

A friend of mine who is a scientist has been working on a time travel project. I told him there was no future in it.

And that, my friends, is my view.