U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski on Tuesday told an Anchorage crowd that critics of health care reform, the summer's hottest political topic, aren't helping the debate by throwing out highly charged assertions not based in fact.Ordinarily I would agree with Senator Murkowski's statements, but the context changes normal rules of logic. The context is the federal government operating in the liberal mode.
"It does us no good to incite fear in people by saying that there's these end-of-life provisions, these death panels," Murkowski, a Republican, said. "Quite honestly, I'm so offended at that terminology because it absolutely isn't (in the bill). There is no reason to gin up fear in the American public by saying things that are not included in the bill."
Pundette sums it up well:
And if the Dems pass some watered-down version they'll make sure that it morphs into a monster over time."Mighty oaks from tiny acorns grow."
Regardless of the specific language, one can better judge the scope of legislation from the history of the genre. Federal income tax legislation began as 1%-7% tax on income. Social security started at 2% of the first $3,000 of income, but like Medicare and Medicaid morphed into a pyramid scheme. SCHIP was expanded to cover far beyond the scope of its original language. The Fourteenth Amendment's due process clause morphed into the right to privacy and therefore right to abort one's own child.
So, while it is true that pending legislation in ObamaCare doesn't specifically name death panels, history legitimizes any concern that it is genetically within H.R. 3200's acorn.
1 comment:
It only takes logic and extrapolation to see what Sarah Palin meant by "death panels." The terminology she used was certainly controversial, but I think she used it to make people think about what the actual wording of the bill would translate into in real life.
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