Individual Liberty — Individual Responsibility 

She runs!

Three and a half weeks ago I wrote about cars, the street rod I want to build, the Mustang I’m still trying to get titled, and my Corvette. If you recall, I had just pushed the car out of the garage and washed it. The car had been sitting in the garage for five years, and there was a lot that needed to be done to get it ready to drive again. One of the first things I did was wash the car. Well, after sitting in the driveway for three weeks, I need to wash it again. I also need to clean out the interior again. There are a few minor leaks, and the interior has gotten musty – not to mention the other reasons for cleaning it out. So, tomorrow it’s time to get out the upholstery cleaner and clean the carpet, and to dust off the dashboard and wash the interior glass. I’ll also need to freshen the air a bit, but I don’t think I’ll use one of those pine scented cardboard trees.

The exterior needs another wash too. It’s time to take the clay bar to the paint and strip off the old wax as well as some of the more stubborn dirt. I need to apply a bit of rubbing compound in a couple of places too and polish away a couple of minor scratches. And then I get to apply the wax.

All of that though is merely cosmetic work. Sitting in the garage for five years has resulted in the need for other work too. For example, the battery was completely discharged. It had been drained to the point where it wouldn’t even hold a charge overnight. I replaced that last week.

I changed the oil and the oil filter a couple of days ago. That’s trivial work – except that I broke my filter wrench when I tried to remove the old oil filter, so I had to go get another one. One new filter wrench, a new filter, and five quarts of fresh oil later and I was ready to try starting the car. Or so I thought.

Of course the gasoline in the tank was bad. I expected that though. Instead of siphoning it off, I put some additives into it to stabilize it and remove the water. Since the tank was between half full and three quarters full, I put some fresh gasoline in to add some of the more volatile chemicals back in and bought a can of starting fluid (ether). This isn’t the best way to start a car after that long, but disposing of eleven gallons of old gasoline isn’t exactly straightforward. You can’t dump it down the drain, and even if it’s lost most of the volatile compounds you still can’t just set fire to it either. I have no idea where to recycle it.

Anyway, the car just wouldn’t start. Oh the motor would crank over, but it wouldn’t run. With the starting fluid the engine would run – but only so long as someone kept spraying it into the carburetor. The fact that the car would run at all was proof to me that the ignition system was working, and with the air cleaner removed so that the starting fluid could be applied it was clear that the engine was getting air. That left just one component of the combustion triangle missing – fuel.

So yesterday I went to look it over again. The fuel hose between the hard line and the pump was old and brittle, and there were obvious cracks in the smaller hose leading to the evaporative emissions canister. There weren’t any obvious cracks in the supply line, but it too was hard and unyielding. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought I had found the problem.

So tonight I went and bought some fresh fuel hose. I took off the old hose and it was dry as a bone on the inside. There was no fuel in it at all – of course there wasn’t any getting to the carburetor, the fuel pump was sucking air. I noticed a lot of cracks in the old supply hose, but none that looked like they went all the way through the rubber. I replaced the hose anyway, since I had a fresh one.

Once the car was off of the jack stands, I fired it up. At first it only ran for a second or two. I wasn’t sure it was going to keep running. The second time it fired right up and ran independently. I put the starting fluid away, and waited. It kept running. I put the air cleaner back on and sealed it up, got in and kicked the idle down with the accelerator. The idle dropped to 800 RPM, right where it was supposed to be and it sounded good. I looked, and there are no fuel leaks.

I wish I could say the same about how it smelled and looked. Ugly white clouds and foul smells were emanating from the exhaust pipes. Happily though the white clouds cleared up after only a few minutes of idling. I think that most of that was moisture in the exhaust pipes. The smell is still bad, but I don’t think that will change much until I burn through this tank of gas.

I let the car sit there and idle for about twenty minutes, warming up. Then, I checked the transmission and added a bottle of transmission fluid treatment. This stuff basically replaces the additives in the old fluid and re-conditions the seals and bands. I’ve used it before and it really works.

I still haven’t quite got the car ready to drive though. After sitting in the garage for five years, the brake fluid needs replacing. I’ll be replacing that and bleeding the brakes tomorrow afternoon. Then I’ll drain the old coolant and replace it with new coolant and take the old fluids down to the parts store for recycling. By Saturday it will finally be time for a shakedown cruise. The car is already tagged and insured.

By next Saturday, the car will be ready to see some regular use. After five years it’s about time.

Yes, I know the picture is dark. What can I say? It’s late. I’ll have something better to show once the brakes have been taken care of and she’s been around the block.

We’re having the wrong debate

If you read this blog at all, you know that I’m absolutely against government funded healthcare programs – at least at the federal level. The Constitution doesn’t authorize them so we shouldn’t even be having the debate about whose plan is better, or whether the program will be cost neutral or not.

The power to create a government funded healthcare program lies with the States. That’s if they want to do it and if their own constitutions allow it. So instead of having a national debate on the issue we ought to be able to focus on the merits and deficiencies of such plans at a local level.

It’s not as if any of that matters in modern day America. The so called “Obamacare” program won’t be the first federally mandated and funded entitlement program that isn’t authorized by the Constitution yet still created by the federal government, and it probably won’t be the last. We may see this one go down in flames, but it’s a sure bet that if we do we’ll see something like it proposed again and again until the federal government controls our health care decisions for us.

That is after all the nature of political “progress” in this country – the people that want bigger government and more government control over the lives and pocketbooks of the citizenry don’t stop just because they’ve been beaten once. The opposition to the expansion of government is portrayed as cold-hearted and evil. They’re trying to keep you from having what you need – they’re blocking progress!

Giving a reasoned analysis of the pros and cons of an unconstitutional measure is the wrong approach to blocking it, and yet that’s what the Republicans have been doing for decades. The first question we ask shouldn’t be “Will this work?” or “How much is it going to cost?” or even “Who supports it and who opposes it?” but rather “Is it permissible?”. If the answer to that question is “No” then we shouldn’t even need further debate – Congress should drop the matter entirely.

You and I know good and well that that’s not going to happen. Our Constitution is nothing more than a piece of parchment with plain words and fancy writing on it. Those words are fading and becoming less legible as time passes and the parchment and ink age. It’s a good bet that many of the politicians that swear to uphold it haven’t even read it. How else to explain their poor showing on the ISI civics literacy quiz?

And so it is that asking the question “Is it permissible?” is likely to get a Congressman shouted down by his peers. Asking the question “Is it permissible?” results in attacks on the questioner’s character – they’ll be accused of racism, of ageism, of sexism, even of homophobia. They’ll be painted as a NAZI (Remember the Bush = Hitler bumper stickers?), or caricatured as a chimpanzee (Yes, I’m aware of the Democratic outrage over the comparison of President Obama to a chimpanzee. Where was that outrage when liberals painted President Bush as a chimpanzee?). Marginalized and demonized while our government violates its own laws to spread propaganda in support of – more government.

Thanks to the way that the various bills have been crafted the so called “non partisan” Congressional Budget Office has declared them to be “revenue neutral” over ten years. That’s an amazing thing for a program that is estimated to cost trillions of dollars. I have to ask – how is that possible? But then I find out that costs go up after ten years according to some estimates, and the CBO doesn’t look past ten years.

Look at the history of such programs in the United States for a moment. Has the cost of the Medicare program met projections? I think it’s pretty clear that it has not. In fact, by any measure the costs of the program have far exceeded the estimated costs.

Is this program really about health care or is it about getting more government control over our health care decisions? On the surface it’s about health care, but behind the scenes it’s about getting more government involvement. Yesterday the Senate voted on a bill to increase payments to Doctors serving Medicare patients.

Mr. Reid said the bill, by averting big cuts in physician fees, guaranteed that doctors would continue accepting Medicare patients.

The bill went down in flames – despite the “good intentions” of those using it as a way to ease support for the major health care “reform” bills. Was it rejected because federal entitlement programs aren’t authorized by the Constitution? No. It was rejected because it didn’t include any funding sources for those payments, and Republicans couldn’t support it – even a few Democrats wouldn’t support it. The bill failed 53 to 47.

By addressing doctors’ fees in a separate bill, Senate Democrats could hold down the cost of the broader health legislation, keeping it within the limits set by President Obama. House Democrats are considering a similar tactic. Republicans said it was a transparent ploy to hide the cost of a health care overhaul.

Even the New York Times (the source of the quotes above) recognizes these tactics for what they are – nothing but a shell game. With games like this, can we really trust the CBO’s statement that this “reform” will be revenue neutral? I don’t think so. But – even if these programs are revenue neutral the question we should be asking isn’t “How much will it cost?” but rather “Is it permissible?”. As far as I can tell from a plain reading of the Constitution and all of its amendments the answer to that question is “NO”. That won’t stop our politicians though.

It doesn’t matter which side of the political argument you’re on anymore it seems. Both sides of just about every argument use the same tired playbook. Even the Heritage Foundation seems to have gotten into the act. When I began writing this post, it was because of something I read in today’s “Morning Bell”, a newsletter sent by email about the issues of the day.

Yesterday’s vote marks a significant failure of the Left’s special interest approach to passing Obamacare. From the beginning, the White House thought that if it bought off all of the business interests involved (the American Medical Association, the drug industry, health insurers, hospitals, etc.) opposition to the plan would whither. In one sense, the plan worked. USA Today reports PhRMA, Pfizer, America’s Health Insurance Plans, and the Federation of American Hospitals have all ponied up millions of dollars for lobbying and television ads in support of Obamacare.

That quote comes directly from the email they sent. This statement… “USA Today reports PhRMA, Phizer, America’s Health Insurance Plans, and the Federation of American Hospitals have all ponied up millions of dolors for lobbying and television ads in support of Obamacare” had me wondering “Do they support it or not?”

I was going to title the post “Do they support it or not?” based on Heritage’s statement that these organizations were reportedly lobbying for Obamacare while Speaker Pelosi and others demonize them as opposing it. That is, I was until I actually followed the link to the USA Today story. The actual story does talk about the record pace of expenditures by these groups on lobbying efforts. But… the article says those lobbying efforts are against the proposals in the various bills.

The first link – the one that says “if it bought off all of the business interests involved” – actually supports the point of view that the Heritage Foundation is presenting. The second one though directly contradicts the statement that they make.

The insurance industry opposes efforts to create a government-run insurance plan to compete with private firms and leveled attacks against a bill approved last week by a key Senate committee.

Or does it? From the same article…

"We're now at a critical moment in this debate," said Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for the health insurance trade group. Insurers, he said, will "continue to talk to the American people about what these reforms mean to them and what it will take to achieve bipartisan, comprehensive health care reform."

So the question here isn’t “Do they support it or not?” but rather “Who do you believe?” (Is it “Who” or “Whom” do you believe? I always have trouble with that one, and modern usage seems to go both ways.)

I don’t support the current form of the health care reform package being considered by Congress. My antipathy toward it has nothing whatsoever to do with the merits or demerits of the proposal. I could care less whether the insurance companies are for or against it. I’m not really worried about whether some people will get more or less coverage. I don’t even care whether it’s true that there will be “death panels” making decisions about end of life care for senior citizens or whether illegal immigrants will get care.

Yes, all of those things are important. Any health care plan should be managed in a cost effective way. Any health care plan should consider the patient and the health care provider above and beyond the needs of the insurance industry. People who have lived long lives and paid into the system for most of them should continue to receive care without having to worry that someone else will make quality of life decisions for them. A person’s immigration status doesn’t really have anything to do with their need for care. People should be responsible for paying their fair share for health care, and failing to get coverage when it’s available is irresponsible.

Even so, none of those issues is really relevant to me. By focusing our attention on them rather than on the simple question of Constitutional authority, both Democrats and Republicans have agreed on one thing. That’s that someday in the future, maybe sooner maybe later, we’re going to have a federal health care program – the rule of law be damned.

We’re having the wrong debate folks. The debate we should be having is over whether we want to continue under the Constitution, or continue outside of it as we’ve been doing for over a century and a half.

The Constitution of the United States of America. Do you support it? Or not?