I expect political hardball on any legislation as important as the health care bill.

I just didn’t expect it from the United States Council of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

Who elected them to Congress?

The role the bishops played in the pushing the Stupak amendment, which unfairly restricts access for low-income women to insurance coverage for abortions, was more than mere advocacy.

Via Ace (who makes a very good point about her claim–further down in the piece–that churches are being subsidized because they are tax exempt).

That is, these were bureaucrats who just weren’t adding much to the bottom line. Today, we are looking at a possible enormous expansion of middle-management–in government this time. With that context, Chris Chantrill examines government bureaucracies and finds them wanting:

When they fall, or rather fail, according to the implacable Law of Unintended Consequences, politicians and activists just demand another bureaucracy to supervise the first one.

But why does anyone think that a vast bureaucratic health system is going to deliver good health care? Bureaucracies are not instituted among men to provide service. They are immovable intermediaries between a powerful sovereign and a powerless people. They are created to control people. This is obvious if you study the origins of the modern bureaucracy.

[Emphasis mine.]

Is that not true? Bureaucracies exist to protect the head of an organization/country (and in the end, to protect themselves).

Government bureaucracy really got its start in western culture when the monarchs of Europe wanted to extract more taxes from their peoples. They needed the money to finance their armies and to copy the extravagant lifestyle of Louis XIV in France. Thus 18th century Prussian kings like Frederick the Great worked overtime to smash the traditional social structures and local power elites so they could extract more taxes.

In those days, society was organized locally. People in the cities belonged to guilds and other corporate groups. They owed their loyalty and paid their taxes to their local leaders rather than to kings. To get around the local power centers, the kings created tax-collection bureaucracies to identify potential sources of revenue and extract directly from the people the taxes needed for the army and the royal palace.

Go, read it all and consider how this security blanket of universal health care is a poor trade for the burden which more regulation, red tape, and taxation will bring. In short, isn’t it time to get rid of a few desks, instead of adding more of them?

Darleen at Protein Wisdom remembers:

Oh. BUT WAIT!!!

Pfizer abandons site of infamous Kelo eminent domain taking

The private homes that New London, Conn., took away from Suzette Kelo and her neighbors have been torn down. Their former site is a wasteland of fields of weeds, a monument to the power of eminent domain.

But now Pfizer, the drug company whose neighboring research facility had been the original cause of the homes’ seizure, has just announced that it is closing up shop in New London.

Oops. Nevermind.

You say that this is just one case, I’m sure we could turn up others. Bottom line is that government taking of private property for the purpose of increasing tax revenues is absolutely wrong and indefensible to a free people.

People tend to discriminate against whatever groups are available. I’m sure Alaskans have epithets for Eskimos that no one in the lower 48 ever heard of. Black inner-city residents do not hesitate to employ racial language against Asian merchants in their communities. And people who live in relatively homogeneous communities often think of themselves as free from etnocentrism — until the homogeneity is threatened by some sudden influx of outsiders (e.g., the Hmong in Wisconsin and Minnesota, Arabs in Michigan, Somalis in Maine).

[...]

The biggest reason that America nowadays has as much ethnic friction as it does is that there are so many incentives against assimilation.

Forty or 50 years ago, the newly-landed immigrant encountered a mainstream American culture that was almost triumphantly self-assured, so that to become an American was certainly a step upward. Now, we’re so busy celebrating “diversity” that it’s more rewarding to stay outside the mainstream, to form your own particular identity-group, to play the victimhood card and demand recognition in terms of “civil rights.”

Immigration was once a means of rapidly adding those people to our citizenry who were looking for opportunities that they did not have in the nations from which they came. The particular reasons they immigrated were as numerous as their last names–but the bottom line was that they saw inclusion in this thing called The United States of America as a way to move beyond, to get a fresh start in an environment where they could achieve through diligence and application to labor.

There are still immigrants who look at the United States this way, but there are many others who simply want to show up to the buffet and eat without concerning themselves with the fact that they have contributed nothing to the meal, nor do they plan to. There is nothing wrong with celebrating the place from which one (or one’s forebears) came, but that celebration should be handled within the context of where one is now. Nor is there anything necessarily wrong with celebrating one’s subgroup identity (left-handedness, Jets fan, etc). However, such celebrations should fit into the picture, not become it.

KSFY thinks book by Palin is called “Going Rouge” — nice slip of the keyboard (or not).

State pension plan trying to stay solvent long-term.

Judge rules for second time that donor to anti-abortion campaign may remain anonymous.

Lisa Long was driving through Cass County farm country Tuesday when somebody — maybe a mile or more away — pulled the trigger on a high-powered rifle.

The bullet zipped over fields and pasture from the south as Long’s car traveled west from her aunt’s house. The two would meet at a point on 307th Street at precisely the same instant.

Not only that, Long’s driver-side window was down six inches or so and the bullet was at the perfect trajectory to enter the opening as she drove past that point at 40 mph.

The slug tore through her cheek, exited her mouth, then plopped onto the floorboard of the 1998 Ford Taurus.

Coincidence? Some might think so. I’ve a feeling that people on both ends of that ballistics event might be thinking more seriously about matters than previously. I’m glad no one was killed.

Again, please be careful.

I was notified by dispatch that there were several shots fired and potentially several victims. The scene was not safe so we were instructed to “stage” close to the scene. While staging I was approached by a police officer that their was an “officer down!”…I told him I had not gotten a “code 4″, our code that the scene was safe for emergency responders to enter the scene. The officer left and came back again to me to tell me again there was an officer down and needed EMS NOW!

Go read it all.

Betsy McCaughey gives us an idea of what is to be expected of us, should this bill be passed as it now stands. Here are a few items which stood out from her list:

Sec. 224 (p. 118) provides that 18 months after the bill becomes law, the Secretary of Health and Human Services will decide what a “qualified plan” covers and how much you’ll be legally required to pay for it. That’s like a banker telling you to sign the loan agreement now, then filling in the interest rate and repayment terms 18 months later.

[...]

Sec. 303 (pp. 167-168) makes it clear that, although the “qualified plan” is not yet designed, it will be of the “one size fits all” variety. The bill claims to offer choice—basic, enhanced and premium levels—but the benefits are the same. Only the co-pays and deductibles differ. You will have to enroll in the same plan, whether the government is paying for it or you and your employer are footing the bill.

[...]

Secs. 2521 and 2533 (pp. 1379 and 1437) establishes racial and ethnic preferences in awarding grants for training nurses and creating secondary-school health science programs. For example, grants for nursing schools should “give preference to programs that provide for improving the diversity of new nurse graduates to reflect changes in the demographics of the patient population.” And secondary-school grants should go to schools “graduating students from disadvantaged backgrounds including racial and ethnic minorities.”

There are many more things (as one might imagine for a roughly 2,000 page legal document, but even these three are enough to give one indigestion. None of us would sign a loan document which leaves everything up to the bank. None of us is happy with one-size-fits-all approaches to schooling, housing, automobiling (or a host of other things). None of us care about the ethnicity of people being trained for anything.

I’m going to be reading as much of the bill as I can. Ignorance and a belief that those who run this country (no matter who they may be at any given time) are just going to “do the right thing” will only cause more problems down the road.

SD salmon looking for home.

Still loving the principle of punitive taxation: Herseth Sandlin on the health care bill.