As George Bush has demonstrated, you can pretty much destroy an entire country and more than a quarter of the public will still insist you did an O.K. job.

The target of Collins' comparison is New York's accidental governor, David Paterson, who — thanks to his wide, broad and deep incompetence — is setting new records for "drops in approval ratings."

But Paterson is not the target of this blogpost:

Meanwhile, the 32 Democrats who control the [New York] State Senate by one vote have discovered that a party with a one-vote majority is exactly as good as its weakest, dumbest and most venal member. This in a group where one guy is about to stand trial for beating up his girlfriend and several others give the impression of being willing to trade their vote for a television someone handed them from the back of a stolen truck.

Gay New Yorkers could have told you that.

And not just gay New Yorkers. Gay Californians had the state legislature, the governor and the attorney general on their side. Oops, they forgot to check with the "weakest, dumbest and most venal" element of their governing process — bigot voters. Outcome: Not exactly as planned.

Or gay Vermonters. State legislature on their side. Oops, they forgot to check with the "weakest, dumbest and most venal" member of their governing process — a bigot governor. Outcome: Not exactly as planned.

Of course, this phenomenon of "weakest, dumbest and most venal" is non-partisan. Remember how Republicans briefly exhaled a sigh of relief upon learning that they still had a filibuster-enabling bloc in the Senate? Well, the three "weakest" members of the Republican caucus promptly put that wishful thinking in its place.

As for the Democrats in Congress (and remember, there are an awful lot of them now), they still can't come up with the votes to repeal DOMA or DADT. Why? Three reasons: weak, dumb, venal.

Or maybe not. Maybe to be weak is to be powerful and to be dumb is to be smart. (Since all politicians are by definition venal, we'll leave that one aside for the moment.) The least Democratic members of the New York State Senate essentially captured the entire legislative agenda. So did the three New England pseudo-Republicans in the U.S. Senate. And who could possibly forget Joe Lieberman?

Sometimes "weak as strong" goes Mobius Strip and becomes "weak as strong as weak as …" See, e.g., Arlen Specter, who is either the strongest weak Republican, or the weakest strong Republican, in the Senate. Or maybe he's not even a Republican anymore — hard to tell these days. But card check still hinges on his weak-strength/strong-weakness.

The idea of "weak as strong" even transcends the legislative branch. Recently, a silly woman wrote a silly book espousing a silly idea: That Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy is a ("modest") libertarian. Um, no. The best way to describe Kennedy (or at least post-O'Connor Kennedy), as I have explained previously, is as the perennial chaser of the swing vote. Because on the Supreme Court, the swing vote — whether as "weakest conservative," "weakest liberal" or "weakest whatever" — is of course the strongest voice: the one who gets to write the controlling opinion.

Democracy fetishists (and their incestuous siblings, the political fetishists) tend to forget that "politics" is nothing more than "politicians" — all of whom seek, to the greatest extent possible, to maximize their own power, prestige and influence. If being (or acting) "weak, dumb and venal" works to that end, then few if any politicians will hesitate to do so.

Furthermore, a system that is rigged to pull both partisan extremes to the political center will inevitably maximize the power at the center. But what is "the center" but the weakest partisans? The system encourages weakness; the system rewards weakness. To be weak can be extraordinarily powerful.

So stop acting surprised when you see "weak, dumb and venal" politicians all around you casting "weak, dumb and venal" votes.

(Part One here.)

When he goes before a Congressional panel Tuesday morning, Timothy F. Geithner, the Treasury secretary, is expected to call for the Treasury Department to be granted greater powers to seize troubled financial institutions that aren't banks.
…
In his opening statement, Mr. Geithner calls for the Treasury Department to have the kind of tools for winding down nonbanks, such as A.I.G., that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation has to seize failed banks.

Well.

A few pesky details about the FDIC:

• It's actually voluntary, at least nominally. People often forget that. The FDIC cannot seize any bank that does not participate in the deposit insurance system.
• The FDIC only seizes insolvent banks, not "troubled" banks. FDIC seizure is, literally, the remedy of last resort. Is Geithner really seeking an open-ended power to seize "troubled" non-banks? Who gets to decide what constitutes "troubled? Geithner, under an unsupervised regulatory mandate? Congress, subsequent to legislation? The President, subsequent to some Bush-like theory of "emergency economic powers"?
• FDIC's "seizure" power does not exist in a vacuum, and is technically not even a regulatory power in the literal sense. Whether strictly voluntary or of a more "Luca Brasi" nature, a bank's relationship with the FDIC is contractual: the bank pays insurance premiums (and, perhaps more important, pledges not to mismanage itself into insolvency), and in return the FDIC guarantees deposits (up to a point) and agrees, as a beneficial service, to take over a distressed bank's operations in anticipation of restructuring, sale or orderly liquidation.

Whatever Geithner is seeking, it is not "like the FDIC." The FDIC at least goes through the motions, however disingenuous, of being independent and voluntary. Geithner is simply slicing through the pretense and going stright to "a gun at your head and a contract on the table."

Previously:
–When Did Luca Brasi Become Deputy Treasury Secretary?
–FDIC for Dummies (and Politicians)

Proudhon Sightings™ are any utterances, typically but not exclusively by politicians, that celebrate (or lament) the ability of government to indirectly control people's lives.

State-imposed coercion by weapons is easy — just ask China's Communist thugs, Hugo Chavez or any Sharia goatherder. But it takes far greater sophistication and nuance for the state to coerce with the guns tucked away in the closet (the guns are still there, of course — just not displayed, or used — as frequently).

I tweeted a quick Proudhon Sighting™ earlier today: a financial executive who warned that today's TALF announcement will only work if the new private investors are exempted from the current AIG torch-and-pitchfork rabidity:

"The deal is good, but it's not worth it if I'm buying myself into a retroactive tax or a congressional hearing," the chief executive of a major investment firm said, insisting on anonymity because he did not want to seem at odds with the Treasury Department in the event that his firm ends up participating.

Perfectly reasonable perspective. Look where "seeming at odds with the Treasury Department" got AIG.

But that was a pre-season, warm-up Proudhon Sighting™. The real debut goes to one of the most disingenuous, finger-to-the-wind politicians in America today: Pennsylvania Governor Ed ("some of my constituents are racists who will never vote for Obama") Rendell:

There's so many innovative ways to use the tax code to get private investment involved in this. There are innovative ways. We don't have a capital budget, a federal capital budget. We're the only governmental subdivision in the country without one. You could finance — for $30 billion a year, which these days is not a lot of money, you could finance almost $400 billion to put up front in an infrastructure repair program administered through something like the infrastructure bank.

So not only can government force taxpayers to pay for "infrastructure" that they don't want (remember when they were called, not "shovel-ready projects," but simply "bridges to nowhere"?). Not only can government coax private investment funds away from their original (i.e., economically preferred) destination to some other (i.e., politically preferred) alternative. But now you can also boast about the fact that you're being "innovative" about it — by substituting the direct looting of guns with the indirect looting of the tax code (which itself is of course backed by guns).

That is surely a good inaugural Proudhon Sighting™.

To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so.

To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished.

It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored.

That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality.

–Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century, translated by John Beverly Robinson

Previously:
–Forget "Going Galt" — How About Just "Going Proudhon"?

That in and of itself is not especially problematic, in my opinion. (For background on Supreme Court precedent regarding such displays, see this post.) For better or worse, the book is part of American political history and should be afforded the recognition it deserves as a public, historical and strictly secular icon.

Yeah, right — in your dreams…

Whereas each one of the 43 presidents of the United States since George Washington on April 30, 1789, has commenced his term of office by placing his hand upon the Holy Bible and solemnly swearing the Constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States;

Whereas the Holy Bible is God's Word;

Whereas each President, after taking the oath of office, has repeated President Washington's petition prayer seeking divine help by saying, 'So help me God';

Behold the "wizened statecraft" of this pathetic simpleton. First and third, he simply butchers history.

It is simply not true that every president took the constitutional oath upon a Bible. If the illiterate cretin (or any member of his no doubt numerous staff) had spent more than two minutes on Google, then he would know that at least two presidents — John Quincy Adams and Theodore Roosevelt — refused to use a Bible at inauguration; Franklin Pierce affirmed rather than swore.

As for the Lie That Won't Die — that George Washington added "so help me God…" to the constitutional oath of office — suffice it to recall that the Lie was begun, knowingly and maliciously, by a Christian cleric. A lying Christian? It wasn't the first time, and it wasn't the last time.

But we must not let our shock and disgust that a Member of Congress flunked basic American history distract us from that second quoted "Whereas" — the one that seeks to declare definitively, as a matter of federal law, that the one of the countless versions of the "Holy Bible is God's Word."

I'm usually able to divine at least some part of the argument that the other side makes. Even Ken Starr's embarrassing blather during the Prop 8 oral arguments had some kernel of not-pure-insanity — something to which I could start my assault with, "Okay, I see where he's coming from and going to here…"

But this? It's "1 + 1 = 3" again. How do you refute someone proposing such a "Whereas" except to slap him upside the head? What could possibly work except to strap Forbes down and tattoo the text of the Establishment Clause backwards on his forehead — so that every time he looks at himself in the mirror he'll be reminded of his total and absolute failure as an intellectual, a politician, and an American?

Remember: Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty…

(Via Religion Clause.)

Previously:
–In Honor of President's Day: On Washington's Religion
–One Nation, Under A Generic Monotheistic Deity
–From the Archives: On Roy Moore on the Motto

So who is going to eventually pay for this accelerating debt, temporarily held by the Chinese and others? As the national debt's percentage of GDP moves from about 40 percent to perhaps 70 percent, there will not be enough wealthy people left to bleed. Once the economy recovers, broad tax increases will be unavoidable. Or Obama's "once-in-a-generation chance" will actually involve the imposition of massive burdens on the next generation.

While hardly irrelevant, the question of "paying off the debt" is not the truly urgent issue. If one assumes, foolhardily or otherwise, that the United States Government is what accountants call a "going concern," then all that Treasury debt can be refinanced by new borrowing as it comes due. Businesses do that all the time.

The truly urgent issue is the interest on that debt. Now at almost half a trillion dollars every year and doomed to rise stratospherically as Washington commits to trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see and the spreadsheet can add new columns.

Unlike, say, the Social Security "trust fund," the interest on the federal debt is not some empty accounting gimmick in a binder in a file cabinet in West Virginia. That is real cash money that must be paid, on time and in full, to whoever happens to own Treasury debt.

And who owns all that debt and collects all that cash interest? Maybe the Chinese and other foreigners. Maybe rich Americans. But this much is certain: Not the poor, and for the most part not even the middle class that Obama & Co. are so eager to buy off. They just get to pay the taxes.

That is what now passes as "enlightened" post-laissez-faire progressive macroeconomic policy.

Previously:
–On Budget Deficit Obliviousness (Or: "Trillions All the Way Down")
–CRS Recommendation: The National Debt
–CRS Recommendation: Foreign Holdings of Public Debt
–Government Bringing Back 30-Year Bond
–Defining "Balanced Budget" Down

The Vice President today commended the new owners of Republic Windows and Doors, a Chicago window manufacturing plant that was shuttered late last year, resulting in the lay-off of its 250 union workers. Republic was purchased in bankruptcy court last week by Serious Materials, a California-based company that makes energy efficient windows. Serious Materials has announced plans to reopen the Republic factory and to eventually rehire all 250 of its laid-off workers at their former pay levels. Serious Materials said it purchased Republic because the Recovery Act will increase demand for its products.

That which is not seen: The jobs lost elsewhere in the economy because of: higher taxes, crowding out of private investment by government deficits, entrepreneurial paralysis in the midst of never-ending and always-changing regulation, rent-seeking, government waste, political corruption, and the perpetual font of self-congratulatory hubris from politicians, bureaucrats, their pundit apologists, and all the other central-planning fetishists.

Enjoy the windows…

Previously:
–Maybe We'll Be Really Fortunate and Mount St. Helens Will Erupt
–Obama's Broken Window Fallacy

And what, exactly, is the "it" that Ms. Kelley "unfairly" can't take advantage of now?

The Obama administration rushed to include a health care safety net for laid-off workers in the recently signed stimulus bill, but has not told employers exactly how to make it work.

As a result, tens of thousands of jobless people could wait months before getting help paying for health insurance that their employers previously had covered.
…
Employers are waiting for instructions from the Labor Department and the Internal Revenue Service on how to put the program into place. Both agencies posted some information online Thursday.

Until employers get the guidance they need and notify potentially eligible ex-employees, most workers will not apply for the new benefit. Many probably will not know it exists.
…
An IRS spokesman said the agency is moving as fast as it can.

Put aside the precedent questions of whether COBRA subsidies are a legitimate function of government (or, for that matter, whether COBRA itself is even constitutional). Put aside the question of whether it's fair to require employers to bear the added costs of trying to track down former employees, calculate their new entitlements and administer an entire new benefit regime for them.

Just focus for a moment on Ms. Kelley. She brings an understandable sense of urgency to the issue as a result of her financial situation and lengthy litany of ailments. Point conceded. But does she also get to hurl such an indignant attitude back at those trying to help her (with other people's money, of course)?

This is an entirely new entitlement, requiring an entirely new bureaucratic apparatus impacting multiple government departments, and an entirely new administrative burden on private employers. President Obama signed the stimulus package a mere 12 days ago.

And what does Ms. Kelley have to say about it? Not "thank you." But "it's totally unfair."

This is the entitlement mentality: Be offered an inch, demand a yard. Receive an entitlement, demand that it be immediately increased. Receive an increase, complain that it's all happening too slow. Too much is never enough.

Here's another quote(*) of the day — or of a somewhat longer period:

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the Public Treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the Public Treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy always followed by dictatorship.

The passage goes on to note that the average duration of great civilizations has been around 200 years. The Framers had hoped to exceed that limit precisely by not exceeding the limits of legitimate government in the first place, and by trying to ensure that their new nation would not be a true (i.e., mob-controlled) democracy.

As Ms. Kelley so succinctly notes: in more ways than one, Americans are living not just on borrowed money but also on borrowed time.

Full Disclosure: I myself will likely qualify for this program, and unapologetically intend to take full advantage of it. Accepting a modest entitlement clawback, after paying well over $400,000 in federal taxes over the past ten years, is hardly hypocritical. I have never considered martyrdom to be a libertarian virtue.

Which raises the entirely understandable question, the legacy of Buck v. Bell notwithstanding, of what if anything the government can or ought do about her.

Some observers, for instance, have no problem whatsoever with a Holmesian tax-based eugenics solution:

On the Internet, bloggers rained insults on Suleman, calling her an "idiot," criticizing her decision to have more children when she couldn't afford the ones she had, and suggesting she be sterilized.

"It's my opinion that a woman's right to reproduce should be limited to a number which the parents can pay for," Charles Murray [not the American Enterprise Institute scholar] wrote in a letter to the Los Angeles Daily News. "Why should my wife and I, as taxpayers, pay child support for 14 Suleman kids?"

That reasoning almost sounds downright libertarian — there is never a right to mooch off others, and a child is hardly a legitimate "public good" warranting government financing.

But the Cato Institute's Michael Cannon stands athwart:

Those responses are a predictable consequence of government charity. They reflect the same selfish rationale that the Church of Universal Coverage uses to argue for eliminating your right to choose health insurance. If somebody is abusing generosity, the appropriate response is not to take away their rights but to take away the generosity.

I'm sympathetic to Cannon's point, but I don't think socialized medicine is the best analogy.

The problem with socialized medicine is precisely that it is not "generosity." A person who pays Medicare and other taxes over an entire working career and then tries to recoup those extractions via government health care is hardly the recipient of "generosity" (cf., my flagship post on the subject).

The better analogy for Suleman isn't Medicare but Medicaid, which is the truly "generous" (i.e., humane, classical liberal) safety net program. There is no contradiction whatsoever in simultaneously demanding that Medicare have relatively few restrictions but that Medicaid can have far more, since only the latter can truly be called "generous."

A key component of the obfuscation machine undergirding the entitlement state is the relentless quest to confuse a truly social safety net and omnipresent government control for its own sake, a/k/a Kip's Law. Libertarians must be ever vigilant and avoid getting lost in the fog of "who pays for whom."

—

Going back to Suleman, there is another basis for government intervention in her case, one that is truly libertarian: protecting the rights of the children.

One more time: Children are not chattel, and there is no such thing — even in Libertopia — as a plenary right to raise children in a negligent, dangerous or unhealthy manner or environment. Libertarianism is all about protecting rights, especially rights that one cannot defend oneself. Surely that extends to rescuing children from incompetent, dangerous or abusive parents.

The devil is undeniably in the details — what, exactly, constitutes "negligent, dangerous or unhealthy"? Tough question. No dispute there.

But there are certain easy cases, certain asymptotic extremes that, when viewed properly, prove not only the viability but the exclusive viability of the "kiddie libertarianism" model of governemnt interventionism in childrearing.

Banning (medically unnecessary) infant circumcision, which no true libertarian can rationally oppose, is one example. Rescuing the FLDS/YFZ children from their incestuous, psychopathic custodians was another.

And, yes, the Octo-Bimbo is, sadly, yet another.

Previously:
–Children's Rights versus Parents' Rights: Case Studies

GEORGE: When did you leave the message?

GEORGE: Will that be cash, or check?

–Seinfeld, "The Kiss Hello"

More absurd blather from one of my favorite recurring Kip's Law exemplars, New York Times' "Ethicist" Randy Cohen:

Q: A few hours before a dentist appointment, I had to cancel because my baby sitter was ill. The dentist charged me $25 for canceling within 24 hours. Days later, just two hours before my rescheduled appointment, the dentist’s office called: because of an emergency, my appointment had to be rescheduled. This is hypocrisy on their part, but should I accept that "policy is policy" or demand "an eye for an eye?"
…
A: For a precept to be fair, it must apply no matter who transgresses. Here this means that whether dentist or patient cancels at the last moment, the same penalty should apply.

This is, of course, utter nonsense.

Cohen's argument collapses after just three words. "Precept" is an insolent gobbledygook term that drops all context entirely — which Cohen must of course do in order for his strained conclusion to appear viable.

It is entirely correct (and entirely libertarian) to say that, "for a law to be fair, it must apply no matter who transgresses." But Cohen can't use the word "law," because no law is at issue. The scenario is simply a mundane contract — an entirely voluntary agreement between two competent consenting adults.

Cohen, realizing the inherent ludicrousness of his argument, decides to proceed anyway and embrace the absurdity:

That you could, of course, find a different dentist does not justify an asymmetrical, and hence unjust, rule.

But of course, the voluntary nature of the contract most definitely does justify the asymmetrical "rule" (another gobbledygook term meant to overstate the issue — contracts don't have "rules," they have terms). But Cohen's argument would lose its luster and drama if he tried to blast an "unjust term," which is of course an oxymoron in the context of a voluntary contract anyway.

One more time: Any voluntary contract among competent consenting adults is, by definition, "fair." This is true for the simple reason that the only legitimate context by which "fair" can be measured is the subjective evaluation of the parties to the contract.

Just as all tastes and preferences are subjective, so too are all standards of contractual fairness. The fact that a third party might consider the contract "unfair" is utterly irrelevant beyond the choice not to enter the contract herself.

That rule applies — or in a sane society ought to apply — not only to a single third party observer (such as you, me, or Randy Cohen), but also to any number of third parties, no matter how large, as well as to the legislators whom they elect.

Democracy should be more than two wolves and a sheep voting on whether a dentist is being "asymmetrically unjust."

Kip's Law: Every advocate of central planning always — always — envisions himself as the central planner.

—

As an aside, Cohen appends an economic efficiency argument to try to defend his preposterous assertion that all asymmetrical contracts are inherently "unjust" —

To cancel precipitously can harm, or at least inconvenience, another person. If you do it, the dentist might miss an opportunity to treat another patient. If the dentist does it, you can lose the baby sitter’s fee or the chance to make other plans. The $25 charge both compensates for and, even more, deters the unwanted conduct.

This is a common fallacy often invoked to rail against adhesion contracts. In fact, such contracts — asymmetrical or otherwise — are highly efficient and reduce transaction costs for all who enter into them.

How much more expensive would a cruise or airline flight be if the carrier had to draft separate contracts with each passenger? Would sophisticated software ever be developed if each EULA had to be individually negotiated? And would a trip to the dentist be more or less expensive if the dentist had to hire a full-time "contract drafter" to accommodate each patient's notions of "asymmetrical injustice"?

The single best way to achieve economic efficiency is simply to leave people alone to pursue it themselves.

Previously:
–We Killed Off Lochner for This?
–On Narcissistic Altruism

Since it was created more than 10 years ago, the Children's Health Insurance Program has been a lifeline for millions of children whose parents work full time and don't qualify for Medicaid, but through no fault of their own don't have — and can't afford — private insurance. For millions of children who fall into that gap, CHIP has provided care when they're sick and preventive services to help them stay well. This legislation will allow us to continue and build on these successes.

Of course, even if one takes as a given that it is either proper or moral to do good works with funds you seize from others by force, the subsequent question still remains: If there is a "Medicaid gap," then why not just expand Medicaid? Why establish an entirely new entitlement and bureaucracy?

The answer of course is one of perception, and delusion. SCHIP is packaged and marketed as a middle-class entitlement. Lower middle class, perhaps, but middle class nonetheless.

Medicaid, on the other hand, is the dole. And the Prime Taboo of Politics is that no middle class entitlement must ever be allowed to hint of being the dole (cf., Social Security).

So instead of the simple and straightforward approach — expand Medicaid — the politicians craft an entire new middle class entitlement, that it can expand without any fear of stigma from those voters whose support the politicians are trying to buy.

I exposed this fraudulent packaging of SCHIP expansion back in September 2007:

—

No wonder class warriors such as John Edwards and Barack Obama are so incensed. Just look at the absolute squalor now spreading across America:

Lori and Steven Siravo earn $56,000 a year and say they can't afford health insurance.

They consider themselves lucky to live in New Jersey, where the family's income isn't too high to qualify their 16-year-old daughter, Carlie, for U.S. government-subsidized coverage under the State Children's Health Insurance Program.
…
Steven, 49, drives a Chevrolet Caprice Classic that's almost 20 years old, and she drives a 5-year-old Chevy Monte Carlo. The above-ground pool out back is 17 years old, bought when "we had money" before Carlie was born, Lori said.

The one luxury is a full-size pinball machine Steven bought for his wife on her 40th birthday.

The family's monthly bills consume most of their take-home income. Pulling out her checkbook, Lori said there's the mortgage ($1,500), utilities ($743), phones and Internet service ($200), car insurance and gasoline ($205), property taxes ($230), basic cable television ($48), food ($600) and credit-card payments ($325) on an outstanding $11,000 balance. That's $46,212 a year, not including clothes, school books and extra-curricular activities for Carlie.
…
There's also $352 a month on a home-equity loan the Siravos took out to send Carlie to a private Catholic high school.

Read that again: Apparently "poverty in America" now means having "only" two cars, "only" basic cable, "only" an above-ground pool and "only" a private education. Oh, and "only" one pinball machine.

If that's your (deprived) lifestyle, then you are, to SCHIP apologists, "poor" and in need of health insurance welfare underwritten by other people's taxes.

This is what Democrats decry as "poverty in America." These are the people to whom President Bush is being "cruel" by threatening a veto of SCHIP expansion. These are the miserable, contemptible, utterly hopeless forty-something whiner-brats who lay claim to other people's income, insisting that — their words — "life is stressful enough without worrying about your health."

Or, apparently, worrying about being middle-class leeches on other taxpayers.

Just to be clear, this family is not "uninsurable." They have access to typical, ordinary private health insurance. They choose, however, to opt — immorally if not irrationally — to enroll in SCHIP for less than one-third the cost of private, middle-class health insurance. Behold "enlightened" socialized medicine schemes — corrupting otherwise reasonable people into becoming welfare bums.

Madness. Sheer madness.

—

Back to the present, Tax Policy Blog explains how the SCHIP expansion: (1) entices families who do in fact have private health insurance to abandon it for "not the dole" government health insurance, and (2) reflects a unapologetically broken campaign promise by President Obama not to raise taxes on anyone making under $250,000 per year. "Change we can believe in"?

Previously:
–Should We Worry About SCHIP Mission Creep?
–Is SCHIP Analogous to Public Schools?