Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Little Children Should Not Have Positions Of Leadership

But they do:
Predictions of cost savings through ObamaCare, like most liberal politics, were based on magical thinking. If they want something to be true with sufficiently intensity, liberals know it must be true.

Small children are natural magical thinkers. Ask any psychologist, pediatrician, or parent. Magical thinkers believe that because they want it or can conceive of it, "it" is so, or will be so. The magically thinking child ties a cape on his back and knows that with it on, he can fly. When he jumps off the roof, he will, of course, fall, not soar like Superman. The usual cure for magical thinking is ToT (tincture of time) and evidence.

People in Congress and in the White House, though not physically small, behave like children: They depend on magical thinking. Because they say it, "it" will be. The latest example is the passage of ObamaCare (HR 3950).

If House Speaker Pelosi says that HR 3590 will save money, it must save money. If President Obama says his health care "reform" will increase care, reduce errors, and improve quality, it will happen (because he said so).

A realistic thinker recognizes that spending a trillion dollars in order to "save money" is like putting on your superhero cape.

The reason most adults do not don capes and jump off roofs is evidence. They may have tried it as a child and have the painful evidence in memory of a broken leg. They may have read in the newspaper or seen on TV the evidence of what happened to a child who tried it. They may simply consider the centuries-old evidence about gravity and deceleration trauma.

Is there any good evidence about health care, evidence that Washington has ignored living in its magical fantasy world? Absolutely!

HR 3590 will "save money"! Practically every entitlement program Congress ever enacted has a) cost more than projected and b) spent money we did not have or do not have. No entitlement program has ever saved money. There is overwhelming evidence to prove this. For instance, there is the GAO report issued 25 years after passage of Medicare showing that it cost 854% of what was projected.

One of my personal favorites is the president's assurance that "HR 3590 will provide care for 30 million uninsured Americans." This is magical thinking in three parts...

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Magical thinking by children can harm them. Magical thinking by Washington can kill us. Those with power in Washington are not children, but they think like children -- magically -- and ignore mountains of evidence.

We tolerate magical thinking by children; that is part of childhood. Why do we tolerate such behavior in our "representatives" in Washington and the White House?

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