Salt

If you want to see the future of our country should Congress pass universal healthcare legislation, look no further than the bill introduced by Brooklyn, NY state assemblyman Felix Ortiz. According to the NY Daily News, Ortiz has proposed legislation "that would ban the use of salt in New York restaurants - and violators would be smacked with a $1,000 fine for every salty dish." It would be easy to dismiss Mr. Ortiz as an idiot since at face value this proposal is even dumber than Mayor Bloomberg's trans-fat ban, but the Brooklyn Democrat is not stupid. In fact, his proposal is part of an overall strategy designed to increasingly encroach on the personal lives of Americans.

Politicians crave power and believe they are entitled to it. (Money is a corollary of this power) They view the masses with disdain, as little more than automatons that must be properly programmed. The greatest weapon government possesses to force this programming is money. Make Americans more dependent on government money and the more you will be able to bend their wills and their actions. This is the true motivation of universal "anything" proposed by the government.

There is no doubt that our healthcare system needs fixing. It is inexcusable that many American adults cannot afford basic healthcare. The problem is that should Congress pass a universal healthcare plan, the government will have even greater say over how we live our lives. Think I am being paranoid? Here is Rep Ortiz's justification for his salt bill: "It's time for us to take a giant step. We need to talk about two ingredients of salt: health care costs and deaths."

Bingo. Healthcare costs. In other words, if "we" foot the bill, "we" decide what you can and cannot do.

How long will it be before government bans sugar because of its role in obesity, heart disease, and diabetes? And alcohol? Get rid of it. It damages the liver and can be addicting. The actions Big Brother can prohibit under the guise of safety are endless. And as long as "he" is paying, what recourse will we have?

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Are The French Fortune Tellers?

Maybe it’s because they’re French. Maybe it’s because they come from an intellectual tradition preoccupied with misery. After all, Victor Hugo wrote Les Miserables; Jean-Paul Sartre wrote Being and Nothingness and Nausea; and let’s not forget Albert Camus’ masterpiece The Plague. Hope doesn’t exactly spring eternal within the borders of our European ally. Could it be this mindset that is responsible for Societe Generale‘s recent actions? Or is the French bank two steps ahead of the rest of the world with respect to the economic fate that awaits us all?

According to the London daily The Telegraph, Societe Generale “has advised clients to be ready for a possible ‘global economic collapse’ over the next two years.” In its report (Worst-Case Debt Scenario) the French bank warns its clients that “as yet, nobody can say with any certainty whether we have in fact escaped the prospect of a global economic collapse.” When one of Europe’s most powerful banks institutes contingency plans to help its clients survive losses from a worldwide economic devastation, it is time to recognize that our financial health is in even worse condition than we thought.

President Obama and Congress are desperately trying to convince Americans that things are slowly improving. They cite recent gains in the stock market and four consecutive months of increased U.S. Industrial Production. But those positive indicators are overwhelmed by the bleaker and more numerous negative indicators, such as a 10.2% unemployment rate and the possibility of a second round of home foreclosures. With its “things are getting better” PR campaign already taking a beating, the last thing the federal government needs is the release of a report like the one produced by Societe Generale.

That is the problem with public relations: it is only as good as the subject it is promoting. If that subject is without substance it will collapse eventually like a house of cards . . . sort of like what the French believe is the destiny awaiting the global economic community.

Welcome to the Land of Oz

Perhaps www.recovery.org exists in a parallel universe, one where jobs can be created in districts that don’t exist. How else can federal stimulus money be credited with increasing jobs in phantom locales? Then again all things are possible in the Land of Oz—otherwise known as Washington, D.C.

An ABC News exclusive has exposed data errors on www.recovery.gov, a website created by the Obama administration to “foster greater accountability and transparency in the use of money spent through the stimulus program”. According to the site Puerto Rico’s 99th congressional district logged an increase of 291 jobs after receiving a whopping $47.7 million in federal stimulus money. Arizona’s 15th congressional district reports 30 jobs saved or created thanks to an infusion of $761,420 in federal money. Similar job growth has been reported in various Oklahoma and Iowa districts. The problem is that many of these districts, including the two just mentioned, don’t exist. So where are the hundreds of millions of dollars that are said to have been spent in these districts?

The Recovery Board was created to keep tabs on the federal stimulus money. The Board’s communication director claims that the mistakes on www.recovery.org are nothing more than accounting errors caused by recipients who don’t know their congressional districts. Ok, that’s possible. I confess that when I vote I have to be reminded by election workers of what district I reside in. So maybe the federal money has been spent legitimately and maybe those created/saved jobs are not figments of the imagination. In that case once the accounting discrepancies are resolved, the data will line up properly. Sounds reasonable.

However, considering the track record of Congress and the Obama administration’s convoluted explanations of where the stimulus was being spent, would anyone be surprised if much of the recovery.org data was merely smoke-and-mirrors? Would anybody be shocked to discover that the money allocated to these “districts” is in actuality unaccounted for? And how will an American populace that is confronting a 10.2% unemployment rate respond when it discovers that the federal government is boasting about creating/saving jobs that may not even exist?

“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain”.