But Don’t Call It Fascism

More thuggery from our friendly federal government:

Rarely have we heard a Cabinet official tell Americans to stay out of political debates at the risk of losing their businesses. It points out the danger in having government run industries and holding a position where politicians can actually destroy a business out of spite.

Unfortunately, it hasn’t been as rare as I’d like it lately.

23 thoughts on “But Don’t Call It Fascism”

  1. “Simply stated, we will not stand idly by as insurers blame their premium hikes and increased profits on the requirement that they provide consumers with basic protections,” Sebelius said.

    Uh, who’s blaming what for profits? Did she have too many martini’s at “lunch”?

  2. Go Kathleen! A few more bold statements like this ought to be worth another Republican seat in the House.

    The beauty of Team Obama is how they’re their own worst enemies. The Republicans have essentially nothing to do with their impending massive victory in eight weeks. Team Obama has done it all by themselves, done more to destroy and discredit the Democratic Party in 20 months than 20 years of Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck, Sarah Palin and so on.

    Full speed ahead, Democrats! Into the black hole at Warp 9!

  3. There are a group of students with a vegetable garden giving out food on the Library Mall, and I stood in line for some free tomatoes.

    I guess my bad for queueing up for free tomatoes and not expecting that a young woman would go down the line asking for signatures on “a ballot measure for the City of Madison (Wisconsin) resolving that there should be a Constitutional Amendment that a Corporation is not a Citizen.”

    From farther up in the line, I had heard this was about “Citizens United” — essentially the Supreme Court case that eviscerated McCain-Feingold, and the court case that prompted the scolding from Mr. Obama of the Justices of the Supreme Court at the last State of the Union, with Justice Alito allegedly mouthing “That’s a lie” in reply.

    When asked for my signature, I said, “Oh, those are the people who couldn’t show Hillary the Movie. Funniest movie (I only saw the trailer).” When this elicited a mild scolding from Signature Collector Lady, I replied, “What, and you want to shut down Michael Moore, too? Those are all funny movies, but they also need to be seen.” A “fact sheet” was thrust into my hand, and I vainly called out, “What, you don’t want to debate me?” My parting shot to Signature Lady and the drones in line signing the petition, “This is going to shut down labor unions too — you really want to sign that?”

    I mean, what did I expect — that someone who wants to shut down free speech, is like, against free speech and didn’t want to talk about it?

    But then I surfed the Web and found the full 90-minute version of Hillary the Movie. And listen people, Mr. Obama has his faults, and his unvaried mode of scolding is beginning to sound like a disk drive where the bearings are starting to go, but it was either him or Hillary Clinton, and Hillary Clinton, after seeing the interview of Billy Dale, is the face of Evil.

    The Obama people are really just annoying, nagging scolds, and I include Sibelius lady in all of that. The Clintons are pure Evil for what they did to Billy Dale, something they started just as the last echos of Hail to the Chief died down after the Inaugaration, and the thing that drove Vince Foster to taking his life.

  4. Premiums wont be going up so insurance companies will be making greater than normal profits, they will be going up because they have to provide more services to more people.

  5. The thing I find interesting about this isn’t the legality or the politics. It the truly brainless idiocy of a member of the administration undermining the credibility of future regulatory sanctions by announcing that such sanctions may follow on the heels of political disagreements.

    Doesn’t Sebelius know her boss is trying to achieve policy goals through regulation? Assuming she thinks he’s doing right by America, does she think that once the regulations are in place there will be utopia without enforcement?

    Proclaiming that enforcement will follow on political disagreements undermines the main tool this administration is seeking to apply to just about every single domestic problem it wants to solve.

    If a future administration was trying to make a law unenforceable by cunning, one tactic it could use is to make it easy for parties to declare that the law is being enforced for arbitrary reasons.

    This administration’s acts of stupidity border on performance art.

  6. I guess my bad for queueing up for free tomatoes and not expecting that a young woman would go down the line asking for signatures on “a ballot measure for the City of Madison (Wisconsin) resolving that there should be a Constitutional Amendment that a Corporation is not a Citizen.”

    Aside from the fact that there’s no such thing as free tomatoes on a college campus, this is one of the bizarre manifestations of modern liberalism. Namely, they’re obsessed over non-issues like corporate personhood, which is the idea that organized groups of people (the most general definition of “corporation” not just business corporations with limited liability for the owners) have some of the rights that a person has.

    Somehow, corporate personhood wasn’t a problem for over a century till someone needed to sell some books a few years ago. I guess some people saw it as a cute way to take the freedom of speech and protection of law from people and businesses they don’t like.

  7. Kind of like how the first new “competitive” states’ education grant went to Delaware. The head of the committee in Congress that wrote the guidelines for competition is from… Delaware. It’s probably just a coincidence, though, since we always hear about Delaware is a model for education.

  8. @Karl:
    Corporate “personhood” is a legal principle that says that corporations are “persons” under law. Which means, they can appear in court. Which means, they can be sued or (occasionally) prosecuted.

    An amendment to remove corporate personhood would make it impossible to sue corporations for selling you shoddy goods, or polluting your groundwater, or causing your spouse’s death through negligence. One could sue the corporation’s managers for any of these acts, but the corporation itself (and its assets) would be untouchable.

    The only other way to abolish corporate personhood would be to treat the corporation in the way that regular (non-limited) partnerships are currently treated, which would mean that, for instance, every single shareholder of Citigroup would be personally liable for all of Citigroup’s debts.

    Yes, the “anti-corporate-personhood” movement really is that stupid. But from the sounds of it, Paul’s tomato farmers were even stupider than that. Corporate personhood doesn’t mean that corporations are citizens and never has done. The petition they were signing might as well have been to outlaw jackalope ranching.

  9. The only other way to abolish corporate personhood would be to treat the corporation in the way that regular (non-limited) partnerships are currently treated, which would mean that, for instance, every single shareholder of Citigroup would be personally liable for all of Citigroup’s debts.

    I imagine the people who are against corporate personhood don’t see themselves ever owning part of a business corporation. And maybe they’re right. So they get to both squelch speech they don’t like and pour a huge amount of liability on people they don’t like. And when society falls apart due to their actions, <sarcasm>they’ll no doubt move on to a better society that hasn’t become wholly corrupted by corporatist influence.<\sarcasm>

  10. Ask them if they have an IRA. The explain to them calmly that they are part owners of eeeeeevil corporations.

    Would be nice if an explanation were all it took. My take is that they’ll eventually grow up to be the people they currently loath. In the meantime, we’ll have to keep hearing this sort of noise.

  11. It would be nice if adulthood affected more people. Sadly that’s not the case for many.

    It isn’t hard to understand. We’ve become a nation of children (maturity wise, not age) by making it possible the survival and comfort of millions of people who never have to grow up. Being an adult means taking responsibility for your actions and accepting the consequences. It means making your own way in the world without expecting others to provide for you. Being an adult means accepting there are many things more important than your own comfort and happiness and being willing to sacrifice. Given the size of our “safety nets,” millions of Americans no longer become adults because they don’t have to and their vote counts the same as ours. They have a vested interest in voting for politicians who’ll give them more “free stuff.” Given the IRS data, they almost outnumber the rest of us. When that day arrives (and it’ll be here within a few years at most), America will be finished as a nation.

  12. Several thousand years ago the Greeks knew that democracy leads to tyranny. Our founders knew it. Today they talk of democracy as if it were a good thing. The point of a republic is to put the adults in charge, making them be responsible for the safety of the nation.

    Expanding the vote beyond landowners has had the result of diluting the influence of adult responsibility in our elected leaders.

    No, I’m not against women and children (teenagers are children) voting. I just think we must acknowledge the consequences.

    The founders might have assumed we would know to elect adult presidents and not made a minimum age requirement. Imagine electing a 20 year old president and the consequences of that (wait, we don’t have to imagine do we? Our current president seems to have much in common with many of that age.)

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