I'm Not Invested In Spaghetti

Dear President can't help himself. Yesterday he blamed his political foes, who gave it not a single vote, whose proposed amendments, one after another, were voted down or squelched by arcane rules of the Senate and the House, for the Democratic contrived spaghetti mess otherwise known as Obamacare.

Obama said that fixes to the HealthCare.gov Web portal are underway and that the exchange will function for a majority of people by the end of November. But the president said staunch opposition from congressional Republicans is inhibiting the law’s implementation. 

“One of the problems we’ve had is one side of Capitol Hill is invested in failure,” Obama said at the Wall Street Journal’s CEO Council meeting in Washington. “We obviously are going to have to remarket and rebrand, and that will be challenging in this political environment.” 

The president also voiced frustration with the toxic political atmosphere endangering his signature legislative achievement. He said Washington needs to “break through the stubborn cycle of crisis politics and start working together.” 

“You know, people call me a socialist sometimes,” Obama said. “But no, you’ve got to meet real socialists. You’ll have a sense of what a socialist is.”

Remarket and rebrand? This guy is an effing nut. Mr. President you don't fix a spaghetti mess by intertwining new strands. You don't correct incompetence by repackaging it. And you don't cure fraud by advertising it.

Mr. President, many of us who who opposed your promised to be all things to all people "transformative" health care legislation, while supposedly (if YOU were to be believed) not upsetting current beneficial relationships, just happen to know that is impossible.  We aren't dense. We don't fall for lies, deceptions and half truths. Your contradictory claims and representations never had a a chance of being true. You have been purveying a fraud since day 1 of the horribly misnamed Affordable Care Act.

Though I now am very happily on the outside, I spent 34 years inside the Beltway observing the operation and failure of these spaghetti mess contraptions, which became all too common as the years passed on. The schemes depend on the impossibility of executing mutually exclusive promises. The schemes are creatures of the Democratic Party or Democrats collaborating with RINO's. I've seen entangled legislative and regulatory spaghetti strands strangle the host, again and again.

At the same time, in the earlier years, I observed the extraordinary impacts of smart de-regulation, effective anti-monopoly policy and reforms that untangled government messes. Paul Volcker and Ronald Reagan put an end to monetary system induced hyper inflation. Real competition and real choice were introduced to interstate trucking, rail transport, air transport, telecommunications, computer and software development and (until the repeal of Glass Steagal in 1999) financial services. The linguine infused tax code was cleared out in the 1986 tax reform. Health care costs actually declined for a couple years in the aftermath of the Hillarycare debacle. All the affected sectors of the economy thrived as a result. At the same time, over the years the so-called rust-belt industries have been regulated to near death; in recent years broad swaths of the economy are being re-politicized, re-regulated, re-controlled and re-monopolized half to death.

I have seen simple and straightforward government initiatives succeed when the providers and sponsors have been held to account, and we've seen complex and confusing initiatives fail with lousy leadership, lousy management and fragmented to non-existent accountability. Economic soundness succeeds; economic ineptitude fails.        

It will not be forgotten that during your budget non-negotiations the Republican led House of Representatives voted to do exactly what needed to be done if your law is to be given a chance to proceed -- that is delay its implementation for a year. Go stick it Mr. President, stick it where the sun don't shine.