The Control of OPM

Margaret Thatcher in speaking about the problem with socialists said, "They always run out of other people's money." Take a quick look at our national debt and I think you would agree that it seems as if we have reached that point. The government is borrowing at record rates to finance what it cannot confiscate. Why? Because liberals, who are in reality socialists, don't ever want to put their money where their mouth is; they always want to put your money where their mouth is.

Many have said that Ted Kennedy dedicated his life to seeing that the poor could get health insurance. If that is true, then why did he become a senator? He should have taken part of the Kennedy fortune and started a charitable foundation dedicated to that purpose. Then he could have gone to the Hollywood liberals and browbeat them into contributing to his cause. But instead of that, he dedicated his life to the control of OPM using health care as the mechanism.

Liberals said we must have this health care bill because Americans spend more on health care than anybody else in the world. That is such an irrelevant statistic as to be laughable. I would imagine that we spend more on pretty much everything than anybody else in the world. We are, after all, the most prosperous people on the planet or at least used to be. If you live in a hut in Nigeria on $20 per month, like a certain President's brother, you are not spending any money on health care; your problem is trying to eat.

So, what we spend on health care is really not the issue. The liberals want to force people to buy a government approved health insurance plan (even if it is from a private insurer). While the government may not spend the money directly, it will control how it is spent. Once again, the issue is the control of OPM.

The lust for controlling OPM is not limited to health care. The Record (Hackensack, NJ) reports that Rev. Jesse Jackson wants large banks to help churches, homeowners and students, who are facing foreclosure, to refinance their loans. He threatened to protest banks saying, "We are going to begin to march on banks, and we are going to challenge banks to do the right thing." He called the issue of lending a "civil rights" issue. No one has a "right" to borrow money from anyone, banks or otherwise. Lending and borrowing is a contractual agreement.

There is a reason that banks are not willing to refinance these loans. They have gotten burned once and are unwilling to shoulder further risk. Again, if Rev. Jackson was serious, he could, though his philanthropic organizations help these people out of foreclosure. But no, he would rather protest banks. So we see that lending is only a civil rights issue when it's OPM at risk.

The liberals talk about poverty as though it is an incurable condition. To a liberal, if you are born poor, you are destined to remain poor. However, the history of the United States is filled with countless stories of people who have pulled themselves out of poverty through hard work, ingenuity and/or education. I know I will be thought of a heartless and cruel for saying this, but at some point we must realize that the poor bear some responsibility for their station in life. Unlike liberals, I have great confidence in people. I know that people are capable of extraordinary accomplishments…when they have to.

I watched William Shatner interview Gene Simmons, bassist for the rock band KISS. Simmons, born Chaim Witz in Israel in 1949, immigrated to the United States with his mother, a holocaust survivor, at the age of eight. He recalled the first supermarket he had ever seen. He described it as "skyscrapers of food." Growing up in the beginning years of Israel, Simmons had never seen anything like it; never imagined anything like it.

As he related in the interview, we take all this for granted. Mr. Simmons is correct and unfortunately, since we take it for granted, we think it will always be this way, no matter what happens, socially, politically or economically. Three things have provided the bounty we enjoy, our reverence for God, our respect for the rule of law and capitalism. All three are under assault by the left. Every person has the God given right to life, liberty and property. We must defend a person's right to use their wealth as they see fit as vigorously as we would defend life or liberty.