Now where did I put that sickle...

Okay, when I started this blog I didn't really think I'd be writing about weighty matters all the time and especially not on a Friday. But this is too fresh in my mind and too outrageous to let go without comment.

Yesterday, in Wisconsin, President Obama gave a speech about health care reform and uttered this, "If the private insurance companies have to compete with a public option, it will keep them honest and help keep prices down."

Are you kidding me?! Set aside the wonderful care our veterans get through the VA and the stellar financial shape of Medicare , the administration is going to, yet again, pick winners and losers in Corporate America.

Just to recap in the last two weeks we have:

• the New GM and Chrysler backed by tax dollars competing with Ford (and Honda and Toyota, etc.)
• a new Czar that is going to start with limiting the compensation of executives working in the bailout funded section of the financial industry (he'll get to the rest of the financial industry soon and then see if you are making too much money after that)
• and now a proposal to use the backing of law and the largess of the US Treasury to compete against the health insurance industry

This isn't tinkering around the edges of economy. This is evidence of supreme mistrust of our capitalist system. Obama even explicitly says he doesn't trust the market. "If the private insurance companies have to compete with a public option, it will keep them honest and help keep prices down." Do you really think this desire to keep private companies honest through competition with a "public option" is limited to the health insurance industry? Why not all insurance companies? Or health care providers for that matter? Government doctors wouldn't have any incentive to order unnecessary tests. Maybe credit card companies? Reasonable rates, the Treasury makes a bit of a profit and if you don't pay up, Uncle Sam just takes it out of your tax refund...

All its going to cost you is some liberty. Don't get me wrong. I'm not some kook that thinks Obama is trying to take over and become a dictator. But capitalism is the manifestation of our freedom and independence from the government. It's vital that we protect it and reject the steps toward central planning and socialism.

We don't have to go ask our lords and masters to give us anything. We make it. We buy it. We sell it. We trade it. We make a profit and use that profit to enrich our lives. We make mistakes and we fail. We innovate and improve. This is what has made our country the richest and most free in all the world.

-Jay