PrintFebruary 2, 2011
Judge Vinson Also Smacks Down Crony Capitalists
Judge Vinson's individual mandate ruling is seen -- properly -- as a defeat for ObamaCare and a win for individual freedom. And it is all of that, of course.
But there's more. Perhaps almost as pleasing as the affirmation of individual freedom and the dismissal of a government run-society is the smack-down Judge Vinson's ruling gave to the concept of "crony capitalism." And that may be just as important in the long run.
After all, no government-run society is even possible without corporatists and crony capitalists eager to jump into the sack with the statists who will design laws to force unwilling customers to those corporations. This is something the statists will do under threat of sending IRS and other bureaucrats to harass every unwilling business or individual. You do remember that it was sixteen thousand new IRS agents -- not sixteen thousand new doctors -- that ObamaCare has plans to employ, don't you?
Gee, you think maybe ObamaCare was about control and not health care?
And you can believe that the resulting threats from bureaucrats are indeed scary to those entrepreneurs who put it all on the line daily. Business owners successful enough to be targets -- yet too small to be crony capitalists with Beltway connections -- know full well that unelected and unaccountable and incompetent bureaucrats can wipe out a life's work with mindless and asinine regulations and rulings. You know, like ObamaCare. Or OSHA. Or the EPA. Or an EEOC ruling. And so on.
Now, in the case of ObamaCare, the chief crony capitalists were the shortsighted health insurers who backed a program that would end capitalism as we know it -- even as it temporarily swelled their customer base. What a bargain. Of course, I guess by the time the free market collapses, the CEOs of these companies will have their own private temperate-zone islands paid for by a huge one- or two-year spike in stock options -- what with 35 million new customers paying premiums but not yet dying.
A true free market advocate does not think this way. If free enterprise is a faithful, sexy, and loving wife who is in it for the long run, then crony capitalists are skanky prostitutes out for a one-nighter.
And let's not overlook the media impact of crony capitalism. It gives the illusion of free-market respectability to insidious socialist government programs because there is "public support" by so-called "private companies." This spoonful of sugar helps the sour medicine go down to an electorate that all too often pays scant attention. It is classic liberal political cross-dressing.
The truth is, crony capitalism is not capitalism at all. It is the opposite. Free enterprise means just that -- the freedom to buy and sell as one sees fit for his or her situation. The individual mandate is totally opposed to that on every side of the equation. If fact, most of ObamaCare is.
The insurers -- for some reason that must have been taught by some clueless professor -- thought that they could come out ahead in a world where every person would have to buy from them -- while on the other hand, every person sitting on top of a million-dollar cancer or failing heart could force them to sell.
And for some reason, it was acceptable in their calculus that in this win-lose-win scenario, the nanny state would make all of those decisions for all of us -- and that they would do so on huge blank slates handed over to Kathleen Sebelius and legions of her bureaucrats. Why they refused to believe that some of those blanks would be filled in with what amounts to death sentences for their entire industry is beyond comprehension.
This was the ultimate Faustian bargain playing out in front of all of us. And I say ultimate because it threatens to take down one seventh -- or is it one sixth? -- of a free-market economy in one fell swoop. So devastating to our economy and to our notions of freedom and a free market would be this huge "hope and change" that it could indeed be a death knell for the nation as we have known it.
Supposed capitalists in the health industry were more than willing to destroy the entire free-market system for their chance to profit from it for a very short period of time. This cannot be allowed to happen -- in this industry or any other -- and that's why Vinson's ruling could really have positive ramifications down the road.
These deals with the Devil are all over the place, thanks to this administration. We have the Chevy Volt. We have Archer Daniels Midland and the entire ethanol scam. And we have global warming crony capitalists like Jeff Immelt of GE all over the place. None of these products -- the Volt, ethanol, windmills -- can survive the genius of the free market. None of them entices the real entrepreneur producer because none of them has a willing customer base.
And yet crony capitalists are getting rich off all of these failing products every day because government is perverting the market with mandates and subsidies and regulations that strangle legitimate decisions about allocation of capital, production, and purchasing. Crony capitalism is the ultimate insiders' game of government-anointed winners and losers. And the biggest loser of all is the economic system that made America what it is.
ObamaCare was going to be more of this than any other industry. And there are chilling implications to those who would stand in the way -- be it by their independent spirit or their advanced age. That's why we owe such a debt of gratitude to Judge Vinson. At this early stage, he has stood in the way.
And by doing so, he has insured that the debate will continue. And during this time, the dark nature and consequences of crony capitalism must be brought to light...and maybe in time to save Granny from a death panel riding around in a Chevy Volt burning corn in the tank while seeing Brazilian and Russian oil rigs off Pensacola Beach.
