Govt Watch: Health Care, Cap-and-Trade, Millennium Development Goals

The pitch for a bad, unconstitutional program continues in the health care reform arena, Heritage Foundation’s Robert Moffitt wrote …

In his address to Congress, President Obama made clear that he and his allies know how to spend your health-care money better than you do. It’s a matter, you see, of ’shared responsibility’: You share your dollars with the feds, and the feds are responsible for making your decisions. … On ’shared responsibility,’ the president brooks no dissent. ‘Unless everybody does their part, many of the insurance reforms we seek — especially requiring insurance companies to cover preexisting conditions — just can’t be achieved,’ he said. ‘That’s why under my plan, individuals will be required to carry basic health insurance.’ This requirement is known as the ‘individual mandate.’ The president’s proposal is historic — though not in a good way. Never before has Congress forced Americans to buy a private good or service. In fact, for those with a traditional understanding of the Constitution as a charter of liberty (as opposed to the ‘living’ version), the list of Congress’s powers in Article I, Section 8, grants it no authority to require any such thing. … Requiring everyone to buy government-specified health insurance, whether they need it or not, is an unacceptable violation of personal liberty. It is a way of taxing healthy people without calling it a tax. Since that is an irresistible temptation to politicians, the list of required benefits would be certain to keep expanding. The choice between freedom and responsibility, as the president and his congressional allies portray it, is a false choice. We can and should have both.

Isn’t it strange that a Roman statesman/philosopher, Marcus Tullius Cicero in the 1st Century BC would understand better the dangers of the Obama Nation administration and associates? …

Do not blame Caesar, blame the people of Rome who have so enthusiastically acclaimed and adored him and rejoiced in their loss of freedom and danced in his path and gave him triumphal processions. … Blame the people who hail him when he speaks in the Forum of the ‘new, wonderful good society’ which shall now be Rome’s, interpreted to mean ‘more money, more ease, more security, more living fatly at the expense of the industrious.

Mr. Obama’s ego was deflated when believing that Chicago would be chosen for the 2016 Olympic Games found that Rio de Janeiro, Brazil was chosen instead. As Rich Galen put it:

This was not an embarrassment for Chicago — only one city was going to get the 2016 Olympics. It was not an embarrassment for the United States — Brazil is still a pretty good ally. … It is a personal embarrassment for Barack Obama because he truly believed, or was told, or both, that if he showed up personally to make the final pitch, the IOC would not be able to deny Chicago the Games. Because he is B-A-R-A-C-K O-B-A-M-A the President of All the World! … The Myth of Obama met the Reality of Obama. Obama lost.

Cap-and-Trade Coming Soon to Your Pocket Book

Heritage Foundation, article If You Enjoyed This Year’s Recession, Just Wait for Cap and Trade …

Senators Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) introduced draft legislation of a cap and trade bill with slightly more stringent near-term carbon reduction targets and Kerry’s message was simple: The recession worked so well to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, let’s keep it going. Senators from both sides of the aisle expressed concerns about the target but Kerry argued since the recession gave us a head start on greenhouse gas reduction, we can kill the economy some more. … It took a solid year for the United States to reach 10 percent unemployment through the financial meltdown and the housing crisis, let’s keep it there, or make it worse, with cap and trade. Why not be even more aggressive? If the trade off is a 6 percent reduction in emissions for a 3.5 percent reduction in unemployment in one year alone, we could get to a 20 percent reduction in carbon dioxide by October 2011 and push the unemployment rate to 18 percent. Look on the bright side; we’d still be below Spain’s 19.3 percent. Make no mistake, this bill is a jobs destroyer. Despite attempts to market cap and trade as a “clean energy jobs” bill, net job losses approach 1.9 million in 2012 and could approach 2.5 million by 2035. Particularly hit hard is the energy-intensive manufacturing sector, which according to The Heritage Foundation economists, would lose 1.4 million jobs by 2035. For the record, you won’t hear proponents of cap and trade calling it a “green” jobs bill anymore. That doesn’t poll well. It’s “clean energy” jobs now. … If Obama administration and Congress wants us to be more like Western Europe, we’re sure to be on our way if cap and trade passes.

Millennium Development Goals

David Limbaugh wrote:

Though barely reported, Obama made this statement in his U.N. speech: ‘We have fully embraced the Millennium Development Goals.’ I’m not sure where he got the authority to make that unilateral declaration, but he nonetheless made it. I guess now that he’s president, he can sometimes just issue fiats instead of having to deal with the cumbersome legislative process…. So why do you suppose the evil Bush administration opposed the innocuous-sounding ‘Millennium Development Goals’? Well, how about its multi-pronged assault on America’s national sovereignty? It commits participating nations to be bound by the International Criminal Court treaty; support regional disarmament measures for small arms and light weapons; and press for the full implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity, which Wikipedia describes as ‘an international legally binding treaty’ that includes among its goals a ‘fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from genetic resources,’ the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, described as ‘an international bill of rights for women,’ and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which purports to be a ‘legally binding international instrument’ that gives children the right to express their own opinions ‘freely in all matters affecting the child’ and requires those opinions be given ‘due weight.’ The Millennium Declaration also affirms the U.N. as ‘the indispensable common house of the entire human family, through which we will seek to realize our universal aspirations for peace, cooperation and development.’ Indeed, under President Obama, ‘We Are the World.’