Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   4/15/2014

Obama’s health care law at 4 years old

With the April 15 tax day upon us, we have the recent 4-year anniversary of President Obama signing the mis-named Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), or Obamacare, Obamacare, Obamacare (to mock Nancy Pelosi mindlessly repeating “Affordable, affordable, affordable”). Tax day itself is a reminder that mentally robotic Democrats were in full spin mode trying to refute the idea that the now-Orwellian-phrased “Shared Responsibility Fee” was a tax.

Remember Obama’s “Well, George (Stephenopoulos), the fact that you had to use a dictionary …” in a shameless attempt to dispute that a penalty/fine written into the tax code and enforced by the IRS is a dictionary-defined “tax.” To paraphrase the standard liars line: “Who you gonna believe, me or your lying dictionary.” Irony and hypocrisy oozed over the Supreme Court ultimately calling it a “tax” in order to bestow their judicial blessing, when it was never called a “tax” in the 2,000+ pages of the Obamacare bill.

Witness the lemming-like way Democrats turned on a rhetorical dime to embrace the full weight of the tax code and the IRS to advertise, promote, threaten and guilt-trip young people into a program that undermines their own financial best interests. What’s worse is that it inculcates the idea that when the government imposes a burden on you against your free will choices, but you can access other taxpayers’ money to ease the burden, it’s all ok. Just “spreading the wealth around,” no harm done. Free money, hooray!

Let’s recall that the overwhelming weight of public opinion has opposed Obamacare, from its legislative inception and passage, to its pathetic implementation, to current phony triumphalism. Don’t take my word for it—go to RealClearPolitics.com and click on “Polls” tab. Click on “Health Care Law” on the far right to display 10 or so recent surveys of “Public Approval of Health Care Law.” Not only is the current RCP average (as of 4/12) a dismal 12.5 percent Against/Oppose (39.8 For/52.3 Against), but also that gap has been in double digits almost continuously since November 2009.

Individual polls present arguable results—4+ years worth of polling shows an irrefutable, undeniable negative public opinion. The leftist ideologues believe that Republicans saying bad things about Obamacare causes unpopularity. Their attitude: “People don’t know how good it is for them so we need to enforce Obamacare; eventually people will accept either the wisdom of their overlords, or political ‘quiet desperation.’” That and “Just shut up!” It’s their all-purpose dialogue-stopper on any issue where they claim the final word. You’re being disagreeable, so…just shut up.

Regarding Obamacare polling, the “for/against” results are not changing (Rasmussen poll, 4/7: 58% of voters view it unfavorably; just 39% favorably). Some media pollsters have taken the approach that “it’s the law so it’s irrelevant that most Americans oppose it.” They’re now shifting opinion questions to “repeal or not,” “leave as is, fix or repeal,” and so on. To them, it’s inevitable that another massive, redistributionist benefit program will end up as permanent and popular as Social Security or Medicare (Never mind that there are too few workers and taxes to sustain either program).

So, when the New York Times found 50 percent choosing “change the law” and only 42 percent for “repeal,” Democrats crowed about apparently declining “repeal” sentiment. However, just 6 percent want to “leave it as written;” only 1 in 20 thinks it was a good law.

Remember, everything about Obamacare, from the endless lies, misrepresentations and broken promises, to the corrupt deal-making by Democrats to get votes, to the 20,000 pages of regulations (Obamacare: “the Secretary shall write rules”), to the disastrous web site rollout, to conscience-violating rules forcing Christian business-owners to pay for abortion-inducing drugs, to the fudged, phony, numbers touted by Obama as he and his media sycophants proclaim a “victory lap”—it is a failing Democrat program for which no Republican ever voted.

Surrounded by this kind of self-created “train wreck,” there is no business that would tell the same folks who made the disaster to fix it. Obsolete failures disappear. Remember Edsel, DeLorean, New Coke, Pepsi Crystal, 8-tracks, Betamax, floppy disks or Coors Spring Water? How about that senior program, the “Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act of 1988” with new taxes on Medicare recipients? It was passed, signed and implemented with great Democrat hubris until angry silver haired protesters started pounding on the cars carrying Democrats like Dan Rostenkowski—that turkey got repealed in full the very next year.

Etched in stone? More like Exhibit A in the “Epic Fail” wing of the Big Gov Museum.

Media bias note: AP reporter Juliet Williams connected Democrat dots in “Scandals plague California capital, Dems succumb to ‘dirty dealings” (3/28 DN). However, the party ID of state Sen. Leland Yee, “Democrat,” was not in either Mercury News writer Howard Mintz’s (“Yee pleads not guilty to gun trafficking, corruption charges,” 4/9 DN), or AP reporter Paul Elias’ (“Yee’s lawyer questions FBI probe,” 4/1 DN) story; certainly not the fact that an anti-gun Democrat was arrested for attempted gun trafficking.