E-Newsletter No. 61 ____ January 2019
As of January 3, 2019, we now have a “divided” federal government, with the Democrats becoming the majority party in the US House of Representatives. But our Editorial Board is more concerned about a bigger issue – – the widening division among our country’s citizens between the Left and the Right, because the Democratic party has shifted radically to the Left. A number of pundits now say that our country has not been this divided since the mid-1800s prior to the Civil War. On the Left, you not only have the hard-core “resisters” who do not accept the results of the 2016 election, along with the people who act in an uncivil manner, but you also have a growing number of people who have begun to reject many of our country’s Founding principles (self-reliance, personal responsibility, limited government, Common Sense, etc.).
Our Editorial Board believes that we now stand at a definitive fork in the road. We can either choose to continue to go down the Socialists’ path of an ever-expanding, more-intrusive, coercive (mandating) federal government, or we can choose to go down the “Right” fork and figure out a way to restore and maintain a Free Market economy and minimize the amount of dollars flowing into the federal government swamp. Those funds would be much more effective if they went to Civil Society organizations instead. This change in the use of our citizens’ tax dollars is the primary objective of The 2020 Initiative.
We believe that most of our society’s economic woes can be directly attributed to the Socialists’ agenda and the marketplace distortions those types of policies cause. We find it interesting that the issues that seem to be the most vexing to our country’s citizens are those areas where the ever-expanding federal government has caused the problem and the associated price distortions – housing, education, and healthcare. Our Editorial Board has much more faith in individuals, Civil Society, Not for Profit organizations, private commercial enterprises, and the Free Market.
The 2018 midterm elections for the House of Representatives seemed to turn on the Left’s obsession with the issue of healthcare. Unfortunately, the Left was very effective in disseminating a lie that “The GOP was trying to take away people’s healthcare”. Healthcare is not the same thing as a health insurance policy. Yes, conservatives still want to repeal the Obamacare legislation that has disrupted and distorted the health insurance marketplace. What the Democrats failed to mention is that the GOP’s proposal to replace Obamacare included provisions to assist citizens who have a pre-existing condition or other affordability issues.
It is true that conservatives have a different view on the role of government versus the marketplace. Conservatives have more confidence in the Free Market (non-distorted) as being a better solution to health insurance issues. Our Editorial Board abhors the idea of the federal government’s involvement (at all) in our country’s healthcare system. We do not believe in a Socialist solution. Contrary to Senator Bernie Sanders, we do not believe that healthcare is a “right” that can be bestowed by the federal government. This line of thinking will continue to push our country down a slippery slope (down a bad fork in the road), because we do not believe that food, or housing, or education, or healthcare, or welfare, or any other “non-Constitutional” use of our citizens’ tax dollars should be used to fund these new, ever-expanding “rights”. These aspects of daily life are Personal Responsibilities, and if any of our country’s citizens need assistance, this assistance should be provided by Civil Society (families, supported by Not for Profit organizations) – – not the federal government.
Obamacare has been an abject failure, and our country should not “double-down” on the next bad (worse) “solution” that is being proposed by the Left – “Medicare for All”. There are much better ways to help address those situations where an individual has a pre-existing condition. Our coercive, bureaucratic federal government is the last entity on earth that should be involved in trying to resolve an individual’s pre-existing condition.
We have posted a new Conversation Piece on our website entitled Healthcare Re-Visited (Again), where we put forward a number of Common Sense solutions to these healthcare issues –
http://www.f2ppr.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Healthcare-Revisited-Again.pdf
US Debt Clock – – December 1st – $66,237 per citizen / January 1st – $66,739