Karl Denninger on the Market Ticker:
There are millions of Americans who are extraordinarily pissed off right now. Some of them, like me, write scathing columns on The Internet or we rant on Talk Radio and Television (such as Judge Napolitano)
But some just smolder. Some remember the other founding document of our Republic, The Declaration of Indpendence, which says, in part:
That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
That doesn’t sound so good. What has tempered these people is largely what always has in all nations, that is:
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
Indeed.
Neither you or I know where the line is for that cross-section of the citizens in this land. I cannot speak for them, for I am not inclined toward the sort of actions that they are, nor do I countenance them. As such I’m not exactly on those folks’ “A list”.
In fact I fear the day they decide to express their disgust, for while in singular number those expressions are horrifying, as a group such actions harken to a time I hope we would never revisit in this nation.
But I do understand, and see, that they are seething in anger at what has befallen this once-great country.
They have watched as thirty years of corruption in Washington DC has turned our economy and government into a bad joke.
They have watched their jobs go overseas to a Communist Nation for the benefit of a handful of corporate oligarchs, while Washington chortles.
They have watched banksters do everything in their power to imprison them in debt, including bribing Congress to remove usury laws, “reform” bankruptcy so as to render a significant percentage of the population under effective indentured servitude (allegedly prohibited by the Constitution) while the very same banksters declare bankruptcy at the drop of a hat and stick lenders with losses, and while these very same banksters peddle fraudulent securities, cook their balance sheets and generally defraud everyone in the nation – then force the taxpayers, at gunpoint (quite literally, if you remember the fall of 2008 – you were in the room with Bernanke and Paulson when they threatened tanks in the streets) to bail them out.
…
But all of this, while it has been outrageous and even criminal, has been, for the most part, Constitutional. It may be the stuff of a Banana Republic, and it may violate equal protection of the law (a founding principle and in fact a guaranteed right), but Congress has never cared about any of that in my 47 years on this planet.Witness all the laws you, Madame Speaker and the rest of the Government (including this Health Care plan) do not have to obey while the rest of us do under pain of fine or even imprisonment.
What you propose to do now, however, is not Constitutional.
Rather than negotiate, advance and pass something like my four-point plan that would, along with dropping anti-trust protections and ending the practice of preventing reimportation of drugs and devices, attack the problem at the source, you instead are putting forward the Senate’s 2200-page monstrosity.
You are doing so because this bill is not about Health Care at all. It is about revenue, and you know it.
…In short, this is just another Washington scam.
But this time you’re going too far, and you’re taking a horrific risk.
You must not, Madame Speaker.
You must instead face this nation and tell the truth.
Oh, I’ve gutted the damning thing. Read it all. I don’t agree with every word — for one thing, it’s not about “revenue”, it’s about control — but Denninger has the tone right, and the warning is fair.
I think it’s clear that the Dem leadership is pushing this against public pressure, knowing that they will lose the next election, because they know that in their brave new world, they will be taken care of, given cushy positions as regulators and lobbyists. They have bet their lives on this, and if it fails, they will lose the next election and be pariahs.
They deserve tar and feathers and very rough rails, but the American people they so despise are probably too decent for that.