As a conservative I do appreciate one thing about the Obama administration: it makes the argument as to the evils of big government far more effectively than ten thousand free market sermons. Tom Bevan at Real Clear Politics takes a look at the Obamacare roll out, and the unbelievable level of incompetence it betokens:
Sebelius’ department had 3½ years to prepare to implement the Affordable Care Act. No one ever suggested that commandeering one-sixth of the American economy would be an easy task. (Many Republicans suggested the opposite and were dismissed as killjoys for their efforts.) But after the debacle of the last two weeks, liberals and Democrats—not conservatives or Republicans—should be calling for Sebelius’s head.
The administration’s handling of the implementation of Obamacare over the past three years has been a slow-moving train wreck: a mixture of embarrassing delays, hard-to-justify waivers, and assorted bad news about the unintended consequences of the law. Some of this was Sebelius’s fault, some of it was not.
The crowning blunder came 10 days ago with the rollout of healthcare.gov website, the centerpiece of the administration’s effort to sign individuals up for coverage through the government-run health care exchanges that are at the heart of the legislation. To say this was vitally important to the overall success of the law is an understatement. It is the aspect of Obamacare that the president himself has said is utterly essential—and backed up those words by letting the federal government shut down rather that give in to Republican demands to gut it. Nonetheless, its premiere was a giant flop – and Kathleen Sebelius is responsible.
The government’s website apparently cost more than $500 million to build—and counting. This is more than LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or Spotify, and yet it has been a disaster from the get-go, freezing, crashing, and locking people out.
The administration’s line is that the website was overwhelmed by surprisingly strong demand, which they cast as a good thing. Programmers who peeked under the hood of the website scoffed at that assertion, saying that the site was so poorly constructed, so full of glitches and buggy code that it could never have supported even the most modest traffic levels. Some of that code was actually caused by spelling errors in Javascript.
Go here to read the damning rest. Big government thrives on the illusion that people need a nanny state to take care of them, to smooth out the rough edges of life. As the Obamacare rollout debacle indicates, this is so much Wizard of Oz flim flammery. In exchange for tax dollars, government, at best, tends to be expensive, inefficient and clumsy. At worst, complete incompetence is the order of the day, and even a competent computer system for health care exchanges is simply beyond the fools currently in power in Washington, even when half a billion dollars is poured down the rathole for the web design. The truth is that with government we have a level of incompetence we rarely find in the private sector, because such enterprises tend to quickly go out of business. The nanny state is bad for any of number of reasons, but what will ultimately destroy it is sheer mind boggling incompetence.
So, I understand you to be saying you have no better, more effective, argument against big government than our government, of which President Obama is the elected executive. I would ask you simply to witness to that deficiency by keeping quiet. On the other hand, speak and prove your point!
Oh I have endless arguments against big government FK, as detailed in many of the thousands of posts that I have made on this blog since its inception five years ago. However, Obama has been a godsend for those opposing big government with his gross incompetence, his pettiness and his malevolence. If I were a champion of the nanny state I would curse his name each day.
There is money in incompetence if you know who to bill. Much of the shrillness of the Democratic banshees, is attributable to their grim will to protect their own rice bowls.
Ivan
Of course, democratic government is always a contest between the friends of corruption and the friends of sedition; those who profit from existing abuses and those who look to profit from the disaffection that corruption naturally produces.
As the world around us goes to hell faster than you can say “twerk”, barbed humor may be one way to cope with secular machine and its surrounding chaos. Great video.
How does our faux constitutional professor in chief get around the Equal Protection Clause when he grants exemptions to persons of certain classes or categories? While the language thereof applies to the states, it says, ” No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” This appears to apply to state exchanges established under Obamacare. I am not a lawyer, just merely Irish. Nonetheless I see a constitutional issue here.
One of many constitutional issues of great moment William which still await to be decided by the courts. I think the Equal Protection Violation is clear, especially when, as in the case of Obamacare, a penalty is provided under the law for those who are not granted an exemption or waiver.