WHEN PENGUINS FLEW AND WATER BURNED This is the true memoir of one US Air Force navigator’s journey from the schoolhouses of Air Training Command to the nuclear alerts of the Cold War to combat in a 35-year-old anachronism called the B-52. It is a first-hand account of life during the last days of Strategic Air Command, the early days of Air Combat Command and the ensuing military drawdown of the 1990s. From peacetime training exercises across the globe to combat operations in Desert Storm, Jim Clonts takes the reader inside the cockpit where life and death are seconds apart. Often comical, sometimes heart-pounding, other times tragic, WHEN PENGUINS FLEW AND WATER BURNED takes you into the world of military aviation, a crucible where warriors learn the true nature of character, conscience and mortality.

Friends of Liberty VOL 38
by Jim Clonts, 2010

01/17/2010

The US Senate passed their version of the healthcare bill on Christmas Eve, when no one was watching. Not a single Republican cast a vote in favor of this bill. The Dems got their vote through the most expensive act of prostitution the world has ever known. Hold out Democrat senators from Nebraska, Massachusetts, Vermont and Louisiana received huge pay-offs. (ie. Louisiana received $300 million for "special health programs" and Nebraska was promised the Federal Government would pay all Medicaid costs for the state---forever.) The rest of the States will make up the difference.

The bill should be called "The Death of the Insurance Industry and Increase in Healthcare Spending Bill of 2009." In case you're not totally up to snuff on what this bill does, I'll try to simplify it for you. Since only 36% of the public support Government-run healthcare, the purpose of this bill is to destroy the private sector insurance industry and turn you against it, an industry with a 2-3% profit margin.

A key provision of this bill forces private insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions. As much as I feel for someone with a pre-existing condition, what they need is not medical insurance, but medical care. If the Government really cared for these people, they would allow them coverage under Medicare, but getting them treatment is not the goal. The goal is to force insurance companies to pay for illnesses rather than sell insurance. It's like having your house catch fire and, as its burning, an insurance company is forced to write a policy on it...oh, and they can't discriminate against you just because your house is on fire.

Essentially, this means insurance companies will no longer be in the business of insurance. Insurance is based on actuarial science, risk-analysis. Premiums are charged based on risk-analysis. If the risk is already at 100% on day one, as it would be with a pre-existing condition, it's not insurance, it's simply payment. Private insurance companies will pay for healthcare for people who have never paid premiums. This means insurance companies will have to charge you more for your coverage to offset the losses of paying directly for someone who has not paid before. The public will complain about the increased rates and the Government will blame private insurance.

Another key provision of the bill is to force everyone to buy health insurance or pay a fine. Aside from being totally unconstitutional, the fine you pay is far less than the cost of a real insurance policy. So why buy a policy at all? Just pay the fine to the Government, who will pocket the cash, then wait until you get ill and call the insurance company. They have to take you and they can't discriminate against you for a pre-existing condition.

Other provisions of the bill create a massive new Government bureaucracy to watchdog the health insurance industry, paid for by massive new taxes. It is critical to have this bureaucracy in place for when the private insurance industry falls apart. The bill also mandates massive, new, state-funded Medicaid commitments, paid for out of state tax dollars (unless you are one of the lucky states whose Senator got you a deal, and un-constitutional deal, by the way).

The entire purpose of the bill is to make you (and your employers) furious at the insurance industry for raising your rates drastically for no additional benefits. If Government can get the people sufficiently angry at insurance companies, the People will cry out for a single-payer Government program within a couple years. Once again the Obama Administration and Democrat Congress is not creating anything. They are destroying it. Once the health insurance industry is flat on its back, they will take it over, just like the banks, just like the auto industry, just like they are going to do with utilities after Cap and Trade goes into effect.

Friends, we are literally on the verge of benevolent totalitarianism, with a Government that will rule every aspect of your life. This is not theory anymore. They are doing it. They are creating a society where the average citizen is not an asset to the country, but a liability, a society where we will compete for scarce Government resources, a society where choices will have to be made and we won't be the deciders, a society where you will be angry with your neighbor whose daughter got the operation while your son's was deemed not essential to society. Indeed, some in the Obama Administration (ie. John Holdren, Science Czar) have suggested force sterilization and limiting families to one child only as a way to cut down on social costs and environmental impact. When a nation no longer considers its children as assets, that nation is doomed.

President Obama, in defending Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, this past week, said Senator Reid was "expending considerable political capital" to ensure healthcare reform passes. Think about what that statement actually says. You don't expend political capital doing something with overwhelming public support. Political capital is spent when you are doing something vastly unpopular with the people. Why is Senator Reid and, frankly, many other Democrats, willing to lose their seats in Congress over this bill? Polls say this will happen. Given the political realities of this one has to ask: what are the real motives of this Congress and this President?

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