In a recent Wall Street Journal article, Daniel Henninger describes the data behind Mr. Obama’s budget. Two economists showed that in 2004, the “top 1% of taxpayers "took home" more than 22% of total national income.” The Obama administration advances the argument, saying that “the top 10% of households "held" 70% of total wealth.

These wealth-holding households are now the new enemies of the middle class families, who apparently are the only ones who work hard and deserve tax relief. The Obama administration has determined how many assets are too many. Up to their threshold, all is well: the middle class taxpayer will be rewarded and encouraged. Cross the threshold, whether it is $200,000 or a quarter of a million a year, and suddenly the slightly-harder working, slightly more successful citizen finds himself an enemy of the people, one of the “wealthy and well-connected” who received tax breaks at the expense of “investments in education, clean energy, health care and infrastructure.”

Stalin, in his drive to nationalize agriculture, used the same strategy. The poor peasants were told they had been exploited by kulaks, the wealthier peasants. How was the class of kulaks defined? Anyone who employed any farm workers, even just one helper, anyone with more than one cow, or owned a horse. A tiny margin separated the enemy kulaks from their neighbors. We are hearing the same rhetoric today.

Quotes from The Obama Rosetta Stone, by Daniel Henninger, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123681860305802821.html

 

The president’s forum on health care was touted as “a major step in the monumental, transparent, imperative process to reform America's health care system.” Buried in his plan that supposedly is an alternative to “national health care with high taxes” he outlines the provision of a “National Health Insurance Exchange to help individuals purchase new affordable health care options if they are uninsured or want new health insurance.” This scheme will create a public plan similar to what members of Congress have, will be accessible to all.

A Google search readily turns up a few articles about the trials of British dental patients, who have suffered until their National Health Insurance for decades:

In a Dentist Shortage, British (Ouch) Do It Themselves (New York Times, May 7, 2006) recounts how patients opt to extract their own teeth rather than endure the wait, which for some has been years, to see a dentist employed by the National Health Service.

Many 'cannot get NHS dental care,’ reported the BBC October 15, 2007, stating that people are being forced to pay for private care, go without treatment, or even pull out their own teeth. Many dentists, unhappy with the changes the NHS made to their contracts, have pulled out the NHS and became private practitioners, causing a severe shortage of dentists in the country.

Daily Mail Online reported on January 10, 2008 in British Dental Care is the most expensive in Europe that the charges for private dentists are up to 19 times other European countries

We can only assume that the British experience will soon become ours. There is no reason to believe that our government, faced with rising costs of caring for an aging population, will not similarly ration care by reducing payments to providers and, in effect, limiting the supply of dentists or other practitioners. Who can blame the British dentists for leaving the system that unilaterally reduces the payments they will receive while increasing their workload?

More frightening is the experience faced by patients in the former Soviet Union. In 1994, a friend of mine had a root canal performed by a Russian dentist. She told of the limited anesthesia, outdated equipment, and the old bucket with blood and pieces of other patient’s teeth she was given to spit into. Quality and technology in a government run system failed to keep up with the advances of the free market. The danger of nationalizing health care is by putting it in the government’s control, the government is then free to reduce benefits or access or funds for technology upgrades or research as it sees fits, leaving no choice to consumers or providers.

Lenin’s system of health care provided minimal care to all, quality care to the privileged. Twenty years from now, we don’t want the majority of the citizens of this country settling for the equivalent of bucket-of-old-teeth technology. That’s not a reform we need.

Yesterday about 1000 people braved the chilly wind blowing off the Mississippi River to gather under the Arch in St Louis to protest to "stimulus" bill.  Most had never demonstrated against anything before; most never thought that our republic would be in such danger from within.  People emptied teabags into the river as a symbolic protest, stimulating the catfish, but the small size of the tea slick showed that the protest, at this point, may be too little, too late.  If we really are going to turn back the onslaught of socialism, all who are outraged over the course our country is taking need to speak up and be heard.  Lenin conquered Russia with only a handle of associates and a multitude who believed his promised of utopia on earth.  Let this not happen here.

“It is inconceivable that the Soviet Republic should continue to exist for a long period side by side with imperialist states-ultimately one or the other must conquer," declared Stalin.