Government to the Rescue!!!

I'm confused about the current health care reform debate, and what I'm confused about is why is there a debate at all. The last couple of weeks our President, and other pro-health care reform folk, have been on a tear against the health insurance companies. Yet...

• Has there ever been a military program that came in on budget? Take a look at the skyrocketing cost of our latest generation fighter jets.
  
• The US Treasury department is run by a man who didn't pay his taxes, until he was nominated to the post.
  
• The US Postal Service operates as a protected monopoly yet operates at a loss; UPS and FedEx turn a profit.
• Amtrak receives $1,000,000,000+ annual subsidy from you and me the taxpayers, yet operates at a loss.
• Social Security is expected be broke by the year 2037, that's our federal government managing our retirement funds. I'll be 64 then! Lucky me!
• Medicare is projected to be broke by the year 2017.
  

It seems to me that if what you want is failure - put the federal government either in charge of it, or squarely in middle of it. My point is that we can not expect or trust our federal government to make wise decisions regarding our health - they have demonstrated that they our incapable of handling our money in issues related to our retirement, our transportation, our mail delivery, our military programs, and everything else for that matter. Yet they, and many Americans, expect an improvement in our health care system as a result of expanded government involvement, or outright takeover.

Past behavior is the key predictor for future behavior. Past behavior by our federal government predicts less service, less availability and less quality of health care - for everyone. Yet it will invariably cost more. More money for less output - the government way!!! Government saves the day again!!!

The U.S. Census & My Fair Share

Today I received a letter from the U.S. Census Bureau. I opened it, expecting to find my census form. I was excited to get it because I wanted to see if they asked me important things, you know, like how many toilets I have. So anyway, it's actually a letter from the census people letting me know that my census form would arrive in the mail next week. The front of the envelope says "POSTAGE PAID". So these clowns wrote me a letter & paid postage to tell me that I would get another letter in the mail next week. Well, how else would I get my census form? FedEx? UPS? Hand delivery? Pigeon? And this cost how much? I'll do the math, as best as I can anyway.

The Census Bureau projects there are 115,000,000 households in the U.S. After doing a little research it looks like postage for a one ounce bulk mail for a non-profit would be between 11 and 17 cents, so I'll split the difference and go with 14 cents postage per letter. Figure probably 4 cents for the custom printed window envelope and another 4 cents for the letter itself. 22 cents x 115,000,000 households = $25,300,000.00 to send this letter out to every household in the U.S. $25 million is a lot of money to me, especially since this letter accomplishes NOTHING!!!! I wonder how many gazillions were paid to consultants and lawyers and lobbyists to write this 2 paragraph work of literary brilliance.

But I digress, what really pissed me off was this line:
"...the 2010 Census will be used to help each community get its fair share of government funds..."
The term "fair share" makes me want to puke all by itself, and these clowns managed to work it into this letter, not once, but twice in one paragraph! Good for them! But, again I digress, Article 1 Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution states that the census must be conducted to determine the number of Representatives and for the apportionment of direct taxes. So, the census is used to

1) determine the number of Representatives that each state has in the House of Representatives - the more people in a state the more Representatives in the House of Representatives - makes sense to me! and

2) The other part about apportionment of direct taxes seems to deal with the levying of taxes, not the redistribution of them.

But this letter references neither of these two items, it states that the Census will be used to determine who gets government funds, which brings me to my next spot of bother and that is the term "government funds". Hello! But where doth our government get these wonderful "government funds"? That's right - from me and you (assuming you pay taxes). There are no "government funds" that aren't created through someone's effort in the private sector. So don't give me this happy feely line about getting my "fair share" of "government funds", tell it like it is, which would be something like this:

"The census will be used to determine how much of other people's income will be redistributed to you."

Which sounds vaguely familiar to the "I just want to spread the wealth around a little bit" line that Barack gave Joe the Plumber.

And in case you haven't noticed our Federal Government is BROKE!!! There's nothing left to distribute, except IOU's.