Posted by
Patrick Henry on Friday, October 23, 2009 2:40:04 PM
Even as liberal Democrats cling desperately to hopes of passing a "public option," wherein the same
government that regulates healthcare would enter into "competition" with private sector companies
selling healthcare insurance, I am writing my congressman and asking him to submit companion
legislation that extends the "public option" concept to banking. After all, isn't it a fundamental right
of every American to be able to keep safe what little of our money the government allows us to
keep?
Under such legislation, the federal governent would get into the banking business. (Oh, darn, they've
already done that). But they could actually open branches of a U.S. Federal Bank in every community,
charging lower interest rates, backing all deposits with the full faith and credit of the government, reducing
overdraft charges to a maxiumum of $5, extending long grace periods for late payments on credit cards they
issue and zero late fees, free checking and high interest on savings. Then they could give a check for $250
to everyone who opens an account. Meanwhile they could squeeze competition by tightening regulations
to force them into the same practices. If those businesses then bacame unprofitable they could either
bail them out (tisk) or let them fail. It would be kind of a "single banker" system. That way everyone could
have an account even if they were broke, by using the $250 giveaway as an initial deposit, and since most
services would be free, everyone could afford it. That way, the feds could mandate that every American
have such an account. It could even have a "trigger" in case silly banks seeking a profit don't play ball.
It could also be extended into the real estate market because, if you believe the Democrats, every American
has a fundamental right to home ownership. The feds could open a federal real estate brokerage in every
community, charging sales commissions that are a fraction of current practice, selling Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac mortgages directly to citizens without going through mortgage banks and federally guaranteeing
that whether you can afford the home you're buying or not you can never be foreclosed. Excellent!
Then perhaps the same plan could be extended to American automakers (whoops), because everyone has
a fundamental right to get around. Or maybe to laundries and drycleaners, because every citizen needs clean
clothes, and to grocers, for everyone has the right to eat. You see how it goes -- AND HOW UTTERLY
RIDICULOUS IT IS.
One must ask, then, how an idea so preposterous on its face could gain credence with so many elected
officials. Is the air in D.C. really that polluted? The so-called "public option," triggered or otherwise, will
end up running private insurers out of business, leaving American healthcare in the hands of a bumbling
government bureaucracy that has already proven it can't organize an egg on toast and will be forced by
massive shortfalls of cash and medical providers to ration care. Believing the bogus financial calculations
propping it up is dumber than believing in the tooth fairy.
Nevertheless, it is important that grownups in American society DO support a public optiion: the one
we'll have in 2010 and 2012 to send the big-taxing, big-spending Washington liberals packing back to Chicago.
That's the public option worth supporting. While Obama, surrounded by his "Forty Thieves" (the czars) fiddles
away trying to prove that there is, after all a free lunch, those who aren't smoking what they apparently are
need to get to work finding ways to solve current problems that won't bankrupt future generations.