La Muerte del Camelot (Updated 1/24/10)
On January 19th, 2010 and event occurred that changed the political landscape of the United States and caused the country to take notice regardless of political beliefs or party affiliation. Of course I am referring to the defeat of Democrat Martha Coakley by Republican Scott Brown to take the senate seat of deceased senator Edward Kennedy. For the first time in over thirty years we can say “The republican senator from Massachusetts.” Last night also saw the door closing on the last remnants of the Camelot legacy. By Camelot if you are not familiar I am referring to the political legacy that began with John F. Kennedy and ended with the passing of Edward Kennedy and the loss of his seat. How could a seat so entrenched in the grasps of liberal democrats go republican? Well, the people woke up. The state that in our founding played so heavily with the Boston Tea Party and the shot heard round the world at Concord woke up and said enough is enough. I watched a focus group last night after the election was called on Fox News. Every single person in the group was a Massachusetts voter. Almost all of them voted for President Obama. A little over half of them voted for Scott Brown for Senate. Almost all of them said that they were not happy with the President’s performance and wanted the government to slow down on changing our health care system. You can see this poll from Rasmussen that further backs this up. (http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections2/election_2010/election_2010_senate_elections/massachusetts/a_final_look_at_massachusetts_election_night_poll)
Massachusetts is in a unique position to understand the need to take health reform at a guarded pace. They already have a government option. So far it has cost a lot more then projected and given many citizens less health care then they had beforehand. Their projections were for the state health care system to cost $715 million and cover 215,000 residents. As of 2008 it covered 169,000 people at a cost of $618 million and by June 2011 projections are 215,000 residents at a cost of 1.35 billion. There is also evidence that this system and the taxes and fees involved have led to a 16 percent decline in new business starts in Massachusetts with a corresponding surge of business starts in neighboring New Hampshire. So the citizens of Massachusetts are well aware of the potential problems government run health care can lead to. Scott Brown ran on the platform of being the 41st vote to prevent the current health care bills from succeeding. Scott Brown won. Martha Coakley ran on a platform of supporting the current national health care legislation, she lost. In the process she lost a senate seat that has been held by the Democrats since it was first won by John F. Kennedy in 1960. Massachusetts woke up and said enough is enough. Hopefully just as the Boston Tea Party, the Boston Massacre, and Lexington and Concord were wake up moments for the first Americans, may this political uprising in Massachusetts wake up the country today. Just read what JFK said about tax cuts and consider how different the Kennedy legacy has become under his brother.
“Our true choice is not between ta reduction, on the one hand, and the avoidance of large Federal deficits on the other. It is increasingly clearthat no matter what party is in power, so long as our national security needs keep rising, an eonomy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough revenues to balance our budget just as it will never produce enough jobs or enough profits…..In short, it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now.”
As a final note I will say that a lot of the state of Massachusetts did support their own health care plan and it was signed into law by Republican governor Mit Romney. There are cases where government run health care work well, but they are always on a small scale. Luxembourg is often touted as proof of government run health care that works. Well, according to the CIA world fact book the nation of Luxembourg has a population of just under 500,000. With those small numbers they are able to do government run health care pretty well. Now take into consideration the United Kingdom with a population of just over 61,000,000. According to the Times Online, to provide this service the NHS employs almost 1.3 million people. This makes them third largest employer in the world behind Indian Rail and the Chinese Army. This is a huge bureaucracy that has issues such as having to spend over 1.7 billion pounds (over 3 billion dollars) on employee sick leave. How much worse would a similar system in the United States with a population of over 300,000,000 be? The voters of Massachusetts just spoke up to say that we should at least take our time finding out.
Camelot
1960-2010
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