Tonight the president is meeting with 10 of the Democratic Congressmen and women who have opposed his health care bill in an effort to either buy them off or twist their arms in order to gain crucial support. The brother of Congressman Scott Matheson was nominated to a Federal judgeship this afternoon. It is an amazing act of political graft.The real crime is that he is using a technique, reconciliation, that even he has been quoted as saying is illegal, in order to pass his legislation. The man who wrote the legislation, Robert Byrd, has said exactly the same thing. It could not be any clearer.
The president has been using every trick in the book, including ones we don’t know about, to try to achieve his aim of taking over the country’s health care system. He bought off the pharmaceutical companies. Many insurance companies are now selling the rope by which he will hang them to him in the interest of short term profits. He bought off the leaderships of AMA and AARP with shiny objects despite a $300 Billion/year hit to Medicaid which directly and negatively affects their memberships. And his accounting numbers, according to the Congressional Budget Office, are lies despite his calling Lamar Alexander, the man who disputed these numbers the other day, a liar on national television.
But it just doesn’t matter. For this is the Super Bowl and World Cup and World Series and Olympics rolled into one for the left wing of the Democratic Party. Once the camel’s nose is under the tent they can the use incrementalism and executive orders and the bureaucracy to shape their policy. This is a long range plan for establishing the party as a permanent ruling party as they dole out jobs and benefits.
Our country is now run under crony capitalism. If you’re in, you win. On Wall Street, in corporate America, in State and Federal politics, and in the unions it’s an insiders game. If you’re close to the action, the benefits are real and substantial. But if you’re a working stiff, you’re out of luck. Ask a Chrysler retiree who first took it on the chin when the government took away their pensions and who is now facing a loss of medicare benefits for their opinion.
The last time the level of corruption was even mentionable in the same sentence was when Benjamin Harrison was president, and back then, the government had not elbowed its way into a controlling position on Wall Street and in our largest industries. The hell of it is that this is being done in the name of the little guy. The leadership class has become a ruling class drunk on its own power.
To the Democratic left in this country, the Constitution is an obstacle to be overcome. Woodrow Wilson started this trend and it continues to this day. And yet the founders of our country and our Constitution were explicit. The arguments in the Federalist Papers and correspondence between them and the Constitution itself are explicit. They argued about the ways and means to enact major legislation. The Equal Rights Amendment is in limbo today for exactly that reason. It did not meet the test of passage by a majority of the 50 state legislatures. Health care affects all of us and is even more important, and yet the president wants to use parlor tricks and bribery to ram it through.
For if he achieves this, he will have gutted our civil rights. We will no longer have the right to choose except as the government dictates. And therein lies the rub.
The term “high crimes and misdemeanors” was first used in England in 1386 to impeach the Chancellor for lying to Parliament when he failed to pay a ransom for the city of Ghent as he had promised. It was next used in the conviction of one of his descendants for obstructing justice, cronyism, and corruption. It has been repeatedly used to prosecute negligence, abuse of power, and violations of the public trust at the highest levels. The most controversial use of the term was in the impeachment of Bill Clinton not because of his adultery, but rather for his perjury before a grand jury. If one reads the history of the term, William Jefferson Clinton has nothing on the current occupant of the White House.
This isn’t simply about health care. It is about the basic conduct of our government. 52% of the public adamantly oppose the president’s proposal. His policies on many issues are highly unpopular not only on the right but the left as well. He is taking away much of what it means to be an American; those inalienable rights bestowed upon not by a ruler, but by God. For what he is doing is ripping up the Constitution with his actions. He knows it. We know it. And he doesn’t care. Legally, the grounds will exist for impeachment. And it doesn’t look as if his supporters are going to do very well in the next election. Something he may want to consider.
There is an anger and a fear for our future abroad in the land that has not existed since December 7, 1941. This is existential fear. And this fear is rational. Our government’s spending and irresponsibility and poor policy have put us into a very difficult position which will take years to resolve. During such times it would behoove all of us to act with courage and conviction. But what we are seeing instead is a craven act of political self interest and lust for power. One that we and our children will be paying for as long as the Republic remains. If ever there were high crimes and misdemeanors, these actions fit the bill.
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