Ann Coulter goes Mad
Timothy Birdnow
Ann Coulter loses her mind. http://www.wnd.com/2012/02/3-cheers-for-romneycare/
Ann has lately had a tendency towards blind allegiance these days, but she has gone overboard in this
defense of Romney's Rampage aka healthcare reform in Massachussetts.
For instance, she says;
"It’s not as if we had a beautifully functioning free market in health care until Gov. Mitt Romney came
along and wrecked it by requiring that Massachusetts residents purchase their own health insurance. In
2007, when Romneycare became law, the federal government alone was already picking up the tab for 45.4
percent of all health-care expenditures in the country.
Until Obamacare, mandatory private health insurance was considered the free-market alternative to the
Democrats’ piecemeal socialization of the entire medical industry."
End excerpt.
First, what good does a commercial for socialized medicine do anyone (other than Obama?) This is the
classic argument FOR Obamacare! And it's a false argument; it presupposes that, since the Federal
government was already involved in something it had no business being involved with then that somehow
justifies even more involvement on national and state levels. Instead of arguing for market reforms that
would get government out of the healthcare business Ann, and the Establishmentarians who support her
darling Mitt, are promoting "market socialism" as the answer. I do not care if the Heritage Foundation
cooked up this particular scheme; the gigantic brains at Heritage had fallen in love with themselves and
their own ideas, and this, much like some of Newt Gingrich's crazier ideas, is an act of intellectual
narcissism on a grand scale. It surrendered the fundamental premise to the Left that socialized medicine
was coming and we should shape it more to our liking, rather than fight it. It was government involvement
in this matter that has driven the price of health care up as it is.
One need but look at the history of health care over the last seventy years to understand what happened;
health "insurance" started being offered as a way around Franklin Roosevelt's pay caps. Once this
"insurance" was in place prices began to rise, slowly at first, but inexorably. Medicare, Medicaid, and
all manner of social welfare programs pushed at the market rates for treatment and medicines, and as the
situation grew worse the government became more active. It was Ted Kennedy who created the H.M.O., for
instance, as the final solution, and he then turned on his own creation much like Viktor Frankenstein
turned on the pathetic horror he himself had created.
Ann knows these things, yet defends Romney and Heritage for more government as the solution. There is
nothing free market about compulsory anything. That's why it's called a FREE market! And Romneycare did
nothing to address the insurance regulations on cross-state purchasing and whatnot.
Ann continues;
"Romneycare was also supported by Regina Herzlinger, Harvard Business School professor and health policy
analyst for the conservative Manhattan Institute. Herzlinger praised Romneycare for making consumers, not
business or government, the primary purchasers of health care.
The bill passed by 154-2 in the Massachusetts House and unanimously, 37-0, in the Massachusetts Senate –
including the vote of Sen. Scott Brown, who won Teddy Kennedy’s seat in the U.S. Senate in January 2010 by
pledging to be the “41st vote against Obamacare.”'
End excerpt.
Oh, that's comforting! A Harvard professor supported it! And the state congress of perhaps the most
liberal state in the union voted for it! Gee, that really puts a conservative stamp on it!
More from Coulter;
"But because both Obamacare and Romneycare concern the same general topic area – health care – and can be
nicknamed (politician’s name plus “care”), Romney’s health-care bill is suddenly perceived as virtually
the same thing as the widely detested Obamacare. (How about “Romneycare-gate”?)
As the New York Times put it, “Mr. Romney’s bellicose opposition to ‘Obamacare’ is an almost comical
contradiction to his support for the same idea in Massachusetts when he was governor there.” This is like
saying state school-choice plans are “the same idea” as the Department of Education."
End excerpt.
Uh, Ann; Romney's reform was the model for Obamacare http://blog.american.com/2012/01/study-romneycare-
was-template-for-obamacare/. Even the architect for Obamacare admits to looking to Romney's reform.
http://michellemalkin.com/2011/10/11/obamacare/
"The Obama administration may have relied much more heavily on Romney’s Massachusetts healthcare
legislation as a blueprint for Obamacare than was previously believed.
White House visitor logs obtained by NBC News revealed that three of Romney’s healthcare advisers had up
to a dozen meetings with senior administration officials, including one in the Oval Office presided over
by President Barack Obama.
“They really wanted to know how we can take that same approach we used in Massachusetts and turn that into
a national model,” MIT economist and Romney healthcare adviser Jon Gruber told NBC."
End excerpt.
And just because coverage improved since the 2007 signing of Romneycare into law does not mean it will
STAY improved; it was expected that more people would be covered. It was also understandable that private
insurance would weather the storm at the state level, since they could write off loses by making more in
other places I.e. by raising rates and reducing coverage over the whole pool. But where do you go when the
whole country is under the same stupid law?
How can Ann not grasp that the New York Times is making a credible point? As Rick Santorum himself pointed
out, we (the GOP) can't afford to give this issue away, which is precisely what we will do if we nominate
Romney.
Speaking of Santorum, she makes the following observations;
"One difference between the health-care bills is that Romneycare is constitutional and Obamacare is not.
True, Obamacare’s unconstitutional provisions are the least of its horrors, but the Constitution still
matters to some Americans. (Oh, to be there when someone at the Times discovers this document called “the
Constitution”!)
As Rick Santorum has pointed out, states can enact all sorts of laws – including laws banning
contraception – without violating the Constitution."
End excerpt.
I don't know how Constitutional Romney's bill was; it may be that federal courts do not want to involve
itself due to jurisdiction, and a leftist judge in Massachussetts isn't going to interfere (and how many
federal judges rediscover Federalism when it's their ox that may be gored) but let's leave that for a
moment. I need but refer to the fact that Santorum warned against giving this issue away. (Oh, and what
kind of conservative believes that government usurping an entire industry and forcing people to obey and
oopen their wallets is somehow a legitimate exercise in constitutional governance? Ann is out of her mind
here.)
And here she REALLY loses her mind!
"No one is claiming that the Constitution gives each person an unalienable right not to buy insurance.
States have been forcing people to do things from the beginning of the republic: drilling for the militia,
taking blood tests before marriage, paying for public schools, registering property titles and waiting in
line for six hours at the Department of Motor Vehicles in order to drive.
There’s no obvious constitutional difference between a state forcing militia-age males to equip themselves
with guns and a state forcing adults in today’s world to equip themselves with health insurance."
End excerpt.
The Constitition doesn't give me an unalienable right not to buy a Big Mac, but I don't have to buy one
anyway! And Ann is wrong; the Constitution is not a document that grants rights, but rather a document
that enumerates what POWERS government may exercise. Nowhere is the power to force commerce granted to
government. Perhaps she needs to reread Article 1, Section 8, or perhaps she should review the 10th
Amendment.
Her argument here is one presupposing an all-powerful state that grants privileges to the citizenry,
rather than a citizenry that grants limited powers to the State. Hers is the most onerous of leftist views
of our system.
There are other clauses that bear looking at here. For instance:
Amendment IV:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable
searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause,
supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or
things to be seized."
Doesn't making health insurance mandatory violate this? If you have to prove you have it, doesn't that
mean you are not secure in your persons, houses, papers, and effects?
Amendment VIII:
"Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments
inflicted."
Aren't the fines imposed for NOT having health insurance excessive?
And, of course, Amendments 9 and 10:
Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others
retained by the people.
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are
reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Yet Ann argues that there is no inherent right to not be compelled (at the point of a gun) to purchase a
financial product!
There is another amendment that is pertinent here:
AMENDMENT XIII
Passed by Congress January 31, 1865. Ratified December 6, 1865.
Note: A portion of Article IV, section 2, of the Constitution was superseded by the 13th amendment.
Section 1.
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have
been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
End
Isn't labor performed involuntarily slavery? If we must PURCHASE a product or be penalized by our
government, isn't that involuntary labor, since we have to work to obtain the money needed to purchase it?
It is easy to argue that a health insurance mandate is slavery in a modest fashion.
And, like it or not, the Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution has an inherent right to privacy
assumed. It was this "right" that SCOTUS used to justify mandating abortion across the entire country. I
say like it or not because it is the law of the land, and it is applicable here; if there is an inherent
right to privacy then there is an inherent right to freedom from government interference over your body.
Romneycare and Obamacare deny this, placing the government in a position of authority over your body. If a
woman can kill her unborn child because "it's her body" how can the State make that same woman pay to keep
her body cared for otherwise? So, it's o.k. to kill a baby, but you must receive medical care!
Preposterous!
Ann Coulter seems to believe that all of this is immaterial to the discussion.
Her main problem with Obamacare seems to be that it is too long and convoluted. Does she really believe
that we will repeal a law for being too long? That isn't the point anyway; the point is that a mandate
assumes at it's root unlimited power for the State. I don't care if the Heritage Foundation hatched this
particular hydrogen-sulfide smelling egg, it was still an egg they laid. We are Americans, free, and we
have a right, nay, a duty, to be free of such intrusive tyrannical usurpation.
She cannot even argue that it is a matter of State's Rigths: Read the Massachusetts Constitution, which
mirrors the U.S. in many of these particulars
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_Commonwealth_of_Massachusetts_(1780) , and the U.S.
Supreme Court has ruled that the Bill of Rights is applicable in the individual States as well.
She concludes her mad diatribe with the following words;
"The problem isn’t health insurance mandates. The problem isn’t Romneycare. The problem isn’t welfare
reform. The problem is Democrats."
No, Ann; the problem is with Progressivism, with Liberalism, with socialism, with the culture of statism,
materialism, and utopianism. The Democrats are the purer of the two parties where Leftism is concerned,
but in some ways our erstwhile friends in the GOP are the more dangerous, because they hollow out the core
of the opposition. Mitt Romney, through his creation of a fascist abomination (and it IS fascist
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/national-health-care-medicine-in-germany-1918-1945/) has made
himself more than their equal. We at least can trust the Democrats to do wrong; we have to hope our own
side does what is right.
THAT is why so many good conservatives are so bitterly opposed to Mitt Romney.
Ann Coulter loses her mind. http://www.wnd.com/2012/02/3-cheers-for-romneycare/
Ann has lately had a tendency towards blind allegiance these days, but she has gone overboard in this
defense of Romney's Rampage aka healthcare reform in Massachussetts.
For instance, she says;
"It’s not as if we had a beautifully functioning free market in health care until Gov. Mitt Romney came
along and wrecked it by requiring that Massachusetts residents purchase their own health insurance. In
2007, when Romneycare became law, the federal government alone was already picking up the tab for 45.4
percent of all health-care expenditures in the country.
Until Obamacare, mandatory private health insurance was considered the free-market alternative to the
Democrats’ piecemeal socialization of the entire medical industry."
End excerpt.
First, what good does a commercial for socialized medicine do anyone (other than Obama?) This is the
classic argument FOR Obamacare! And it's a false argument; it presupposes that, since the Federal
government was already involved in something it had no business being involved with then that somehow
justifies even more involvement on national and state levels. Instead of arguing for market reforms that
would get government out of the healthcare business Ann, and the Establishmentarians who support her
darling Mitt, are promoting "market socialism" as the answer. I do not care if the Heritage Foundation
cooked up this particular scheme; the gigantic brains at Heritage had fallen in love with themselves and
their own ideas, and this, much like some of Newt Gingrich's crazier ideas, is an act of intellectual
narcissism on a grand scale. It surrendered the fundamental premise to the Left that socialized medicine
was coming and we should shape it more to our liking, rather than fight it. It was government involvement
in this matter that has driven the price of health care up as it is.
One need but look at the history of health care over the last seventy years to understand what happened;
health "insurance" started being offered as a way around Franklin Roosevelt's pay caps. Once this
"insurance" was in place prices began to rise, slowly at first, but inexorably. Medicare, Medicaid, and
all manner of social welfare programs pushed at the market rates for treatment and medicines, and as the
situation grew worse the government became more active. It was Ted Kennedy who created the H.M.O., for
instance, as the final solution, and he then turned on his own creation much like Viktor Frankenstein
turned on the pathetic horror he himself had created.
Ann knows these things, yet defends Romney and Heritage for more government as the solution. There is
nothing free market about compulsory anything. That's why it's called a FREE market! And Romneycare did
nothing to address the insurance regulations on cross-state purchasing and whatnot.
Ann continues;
"Romneycare was also supported by Regina Herzlinger, Harvard Business School professor and health policy
analyst for the conservative Manhattan Institute. Herzlinger praised Romneycare for making consumers, not
business or government, the primary purchasers of health care.
The bill passed by 154-2 in the Massachusetts House and unanimously, 37-0, in the Massachusetts Senate –
including the vote of Sen. Scott Brown, who won Teddy Kennedy’s seat in the U.S. Senate in January 2010 by
pledging to be the “41st vote against Obamacare.”'
End excerpt.
Oh, that's comforting! A Harvard professor supported it! And the state congress of perhaps the most
liberal state in the union voted for it! Gee, that really puts a conservative stamp on it!
More from Coulter;
"But because both Obamacare and Romneycare concern the same general topic area – health care – and can be
nicknamed (politician’s name plus “care”), Romney’s health-care bill is suddenly perceived as virtually
the same thing as the widely detested Obamacare. (How about “Romneycare-gate”?)
As the New York Times put it, “Mr. Romney’s bellicose opposition to ‘Obamacare’ is an almost comical
contradiction to his support for the same idea in Massachusetts when he was governor there.” This is like
saying state school-choice plans are “the same idea” as the Department of Education."
End excerpt.
Uh, Ann; Romney's reform was the model for Obamacare http://blog.american.com/2012/01/study-romneycare-
was-template-for-obamacare/. Even the architect for Obamacare admits to looking to Romney's reform.
http://michellemalkin.com/2011/10/11/obamacare/
"The Obama administration may have relied much more heavily on Romney’s Massachusetts healthcare
legislation as a blueprint for Obamacare than was previously believed.
White House visitor logs obtained by NBC News revealed that three of Romney’s healthcare advisers had up
to a dozen meetings with senior administration officials, including one in the Oval Office presided over
by President Barack Obama.
“They really wanted to know how we can take that same approach we used in Massachusetts and turn that into
a national model,” MIT economist and Romney healthcare adviser Jon Gruber told NBC."
End excerpt.
And just because coverage improved since the 2007 signing of Romneycare into law does not mean it will
STAY improved; it was expected that more people would be covered. It was also understandable that private
insurance would weather the storm at the state level, since they could write off loses by making more in
other places I.e. by raising rates and reducing coverage over the whole pool. But where do you go when the
whole country is under the same stupid law?
How can Ann not grasp that the New York Times is making a credible point? As Rick Santorum himself pointed
out, we (the GOP) can't afford to give this issue away, which is precisely what we will do if we nominate
Romney.
Speaking of Santorum, she makes the following observations;
"One difference between the health-care bills is that Romneycare is constitutional and Obamacare is not.
True, Obamacare’s unconstitutional provisions are the least of its horrors, but the Constitution still
matters to some Americans. (Oh, to be there when someone at the Times discovers this document called “the
Constitution”!)
As Rick Santorum has pointed out, states can enact all sorts of laws – including laws banning
contraception – without violating the Constitution."
End excerpt.
I don't know how Constitutional Romney's bill was; it may be that federal courts do not want to involve
itself due to jurisdiction, and a leftist judge in Massachussetts isn't going to interfere (and how many
federal judges rediscover Federalism when it's their ox that may be gored) but let's leave that for a
moment. I need but refer to the fact that Santorum warned against giving this issue away. (Oh, and what
kind of conservative believes that government usurping an entire industry and forcing people to obey and
oopen their wallets is somehow a legitimate exercise in constitutional governance? Ann is out of her mind
here.)
And here she REALLY loses her mind!
"No one is claiming that the Constitution gives each person an unalienable right not to buy insurance.
States have been forcing people to do things from the beginning of the republic: drilling for the militia,
taking blood tests before marriage, paying for public schools, registering property titles and waiting in
line for six hours at the Department of Motor Vehicles in order to drive.
There’s no obvious constitutional difference between a state forcing militia-age males to equip themselves
with guns and a state forcing adults in today’s world to equip themselves with health insurance."
End excerpt.
The Constitition doesn't give me an unalienable right not to buy a Big Mac, but I don't have to buy one
anyway! And Ann is wrong; the Constitution is not a document that grants rights, but rather a document
that enumerates what POWERS government may exercise. Nowhere is the power to force commerce granted to
government. Perhaps she needs to reread Article 1, Section 8, or perhaps she should review the 10th
Amendment.
Her argument here is one presupposing an all-powerful state that grants privileges to the citizenry,
rather than a citizenry that grants limited powers to the State. Hers is the most onerous of leftist views
of our system.
There are other clauses that bear looking at here. For instance:
Amendment IV:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable
searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause,
supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or
things to be seized."
Doesn't making health insurance mandatory violate this? If you have to prove you have it, doesn't that
mean you are not secure in your persons, houses, papers, and effects?
Amendment VIII:
"Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments
inflicted."
Aren't the fines imposed for NOT having health insurance excessive?
And, of course, Amendments 9 and 10:
Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others
retained by the people.
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are
reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Yet Ann argues that there is no inherent right to not be compelled (at the point of a gun) to purchase a
financial product!
There is another amendment that is pertinent here:
AMENDMENT XIII
Passed by Congress January 31, 1865. Ratified December 6, 1865.
Note: A portion of Article IV, section 2, of the Constitution was superseded by the 13th amendment.
Section 1.
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have
been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2.
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
End
Isn't labor performed involuntarily slavery? If we must PURCHASE a product or be penalized by our
government, isn't that involuntary labor, since we have to work to obtain the money needed to purchase it?
It is easy to argue that a health insurance mandate is slavery in a modest fashion.
And, like it or not, the Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution has an inherent right to privacy
assumed. It was this "right" that SCOTUS used to justify mandating abortion across the entire country. I
say like it or not because it is the law of the land, and it is applicable here; if there is an inherent
right to privacy then there is an inherent right to freedom from government interference over your body.
Romneycare and Obamacare deny this, placing the government in a position of authority over your body. If a
woman can kill her unborn child because "it's her body" how can the State make that same woman pay to keep
her body cared for otherwise? So, it's o.k. to kill a baby, but you must receive medical care!
Preposterous!
Ann Coulter seems to believe that all of this is immaterial to the discussion.
Her main problem with Obamacare seems to be that it is too long and convoluted. Does she really believe
that we will repeal a law for being too long? That isn't the point anyway; the point is that a mandate
assumes at it's root unlimited power for the State. I don't care if the Heritage Foundation hatched this
particular hydrogen-sulfide smelling egg, it was still an egg they laid. We are Americans, free, and we
have a right, nay, a duty, to be free of such intrusive tyrannical usurpation.
She cannot even argue that it is a matter of State's Rigths: Read the Massachusetts Constitution, which
mirrors the U.S. in many of these particulars
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_Commonwealth_of_Massachusetts_(1780) , and the U.S.
Supreme Court has ruled that the Bill of Rights is applicable in the individual States as well.
She concludes her mad diatribe with the following words;
"The problem isn’t health insurance mandates. The problem isn’t Romneycare. The problem isn’t welfare
reform. The problem is Democrats."
No, Ann; the problem is with Progressivism, with Liberalism, with socialism, with the culture of statism,
materialism, and utopianism. The Democrats are the purer of the two parties where Leftism is concerned,
but in some ways our erstwhile friends in the GOP are the more dangerous, because they hollow out the core
of the opposition. Mitt Romney, through his creation of a fascist abomination (and it IS fascist
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/national-health-care-medicine-in-germany-1918-1945/) has made
himself more than their equal. We at least can trust the Democrats to do wrong; we have to hope our own
side does what is right.
THAT is why so many good conservatives are so bitterly opposed to Mitt Romney.
posted by Timothy Birdnow | 10:18 AM
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