Dunkin’ Shammy

Apple users around the world upgraded to IOS7 this past week.  9 million people just bought new phones.  Many of them succumbed to the scam that went around the Internet:  that the new operating system would make their iPhone/iPad/iDevice waterproof.   It’s silly, really, to think that people are gullible enough to think that a software update would impact hardware.  I must admit a certain amount of amusement that I had in reading some of the outraged comments from people who upon learning of this feaux-feature prompted took their phone out and dunked it in water to verify.  It shouldn’t however, be surprising that people fell for it – millions of people vote for politicians who promise the same sort of reality-bending premise as the Apple scam.
 

Senator Ted Cruz has been vilified by both the Republican and Democratic establishment for his demagoguery of the Affordable Care Act (aka “ObamaCare”).  He has spent months cruising around the country, leading Town Halls, airing television commercials, extolling the horrors of the law.  To be clear:  I dislike this legislation and I think it doesn’t do what it purports to do and I think the country would be better off if it found a death panel.  That said, I know that it is the law of the land and has been validated by the Supreme Court and it will begin to be implement October 1, 2013.  Despite my own distaste for the policy, much of what Senator Cruz has propagated just isn’t accurate.  Even more than misleading on the facts, the real problem is that he made a promise that couldn’t be delivered.  The entire campaign was a false premise. 

 

People were exhorted to contact their Congressperson, their Senator – and tell them to “defund ObamaCare.”  Millions did.  CNN’s recent poll shows that only 39% of the American public supports the bill.  Polls, as always, are not the holy grail.  When Fox News polled Republicans whether they supported “Obamacare” only 14% did.  In the exact same survey they then asked the same people if they supported the “Affordable Care Act” and 22% did.

Congress last week approved a Continuing Resolution that would fund the Government, but defund the President’s signature legislation.  With the Senate in Democratic hands and President Obama still in the Oval, there’s no way that legislation is ever going to become law.  This reality means that the people who vigilantly made calls, wrote letters and believed that if they took action then they’d get rid of ObamaCare were actually sold a waterproof phone.

 

 

Implementation of the program will happen in fits and starts, and in short order the policies will become part of the Entitlement Culture of the United States.  Along with Social Security, Medicare, the Prescription Drug Program – 35% of the American GDP is spent on an Entitlement program, some 62% of all government spending.   As ObamaCare/Affordable Care Act becomes part of this system, the same people who don’t want the Government to touch their Medicare/Social Security, etc. will be saying that about their health insurance.  Too bad we don’t have a Shammy to sell them to absorb the water from their dunked phone.