George Rebane

Barney Frank almost surprised me tonight.  He actually said he was against appending “unrelated issues” to bills going through Congress.  But then I forgot, the sumbich is a liar.  He proceeded to tell Bill O’Reilly that he plans to pay for Obamacare by 1) reducing the DOD budgets, 2) eliminating our military presence in the EU, 3) reducing NASA budgets – forget the Mars trip for the next couple of generations, and maybe even 4) reduce (eliminate?) the farm subsidies.

Even though I abhor the European attitude about milking the US taxpayer to keep their peace, we have to remember that we’re there to protect our own hide.  We should look at them as the expendable buffer we have to maintain, and nothing more – which is exactly what they think we are thinking.  However, as a careful perusal of RR reveals, I would back ol’ Barney if he ever did get serious about ditching farm subsidies.  The family farm is an expensive relic, and the large corporate farmers have learned to bribe politicians – a task simpler than it looks.

The Congressman and Chairman of the House Finance Committee finished in ‘vintage Barney’ style by declaring that Obama was not doing anything more to promote anti-capitalist policies than did Bush – only Obama and his congressional chorus are now going to do it right. Right.

Dick Morris, former Clinton adviser, had another cut on how we all will pay for Obamacare.  It’s called ‘Denial of Service’.  The stats on how socialist policies, in countries starting with Canada and sweeping through the EU, affect quality of life and disease survival rates are pretty grim (see Catastrophe).  Basically, there you simply die instead of wasting all that money during the last six months of your life.  Daschle told us to brace ourselves for just that in the coming years.

[update] A retired banker and RR reader just forwarded this link to a database of government employees in California drawing pensions of over $100,000 a year.  And the Sierra Bravos in Sacramento and elsewhere are still trying to raise our taxes to cover the state and local deficits.  I noted that we even have a couple of modest prize winners here in Nevada County.