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An open letter to Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi

By Lady Liberty
web posted November 16, 2009

Dear Speaker Pelosi:

Please be advised I use the word "dear" in my salutation solely because it is a fairly standardized thing to do and largely a habit on my part. "Dear" is among the last words I would use when referring to you, particularly after your tireless efforts to interfere, and to my detriment, with my life.

I've said for years that Democrats are really good at two things: Making pie-in-the-sky promises to help poor people (and effectively buy their votes), and making more poor people. Congratulations. With your efforts toward health care reform, you've managed to do more for both causes than any politician I can recall. Unfortunately, I know that promises from politicians typically mean nothing, and that more poor people won't do anybody any good since crime, disease, and despair also grow with those numbers (something liberal Democrats couldn't care less about since poor people are often ignorant or desperate enough to keep voting for them in exchange for still more broken promises).

It seems to me that your every waking moment since the election of Barack Obama has been dedicated to hurting me and people like me on just about every front imaginable. The rich will, as always, survive, albeit with just a little less money. The poor will, as usual, survive on the government dole, albeit not necessarily happily or easily. But me?

I didn't buy a house beyond my means, yet you've used my tax dollars to rescue those who did. I didn't demand that banks loan money to bad risks; you and many others in Congress did that. Now my tax dollars have had to bail them out, too, and what have you done to ensure it doesn't happen again? Nothing of material value. In fact, I understand you're interested in giving still more money to financial institutions. Why aren't you telling banks they can stop giving money to people who are unqualified instead? I suppose you want to pretend withholding money from certain applicants would be racist when in fact it's just good business sense.

You've bragged that there are government funds available to people who would like to improve their homes, to make them more energy efficient. I'll be honest with you: I wouldn't apply because I'm not about to condone the effective theft of money from other Americans' pockets for my own benefit. But I've looked into it as a matter of curiosity, and do you know what's really curious? I couldn't get any of that help even if I did apply. It seems instead of making a new roof something people like me can afford, some rebate money is only available to people who can spend about triple the cost on a certain type of roof. New furnace? I'm not qualified because I can't afford—and frankly don't really want—the only kind of system that's eligible. Are there people who have benefitted? I'm sure that there are, but I'll also bet that not a one of them was the kind of person who really needed the help.

Cap and Trade, more appropriately called "Cap and Tax" will raise utility rates across the country by a substantial amount (as much as 300% according to some projections). I don't have that kind of extra money, Mrs. Pelosi. You and the Obama administration have suggested those increases will encourage people to conserve. That's all well and good from your point of view, but from where I sit, things are different. I live in a home where the thermostat is already kept at temperatures low enough to make you and your California-thin blood cry, and where lights are already turned out in unused rooms. You've left me to wonder where else I might conserve, and to worry how I'll ever be able to pay bills that double or triple if you get your way. You suggest such legislation will encourage utilities to develop cleaner alternative power sources, yet you won't even consider bolstering construction for a clean, well understood and very efficient power source: nuclear. You're too busy focusing on clean but extraordinarily inefficient—and notoriously expensive—notions like solar and wind power. Frankly, given that your focus is so skewed, I'm of the impression you're once again more concentrated on your own power than you are on power of a different kind which actually runs our homes and our economy.

"Cash for Clunkers" was a debacle, no matter how loudly you choose to crow about its "success." Experts suggest that most of those cars sold would have been purchased anyway. The statistics are clear that the program made no dent whatsoever in pollution amounts (in fact, some imply that the program made it even worse). Used car sales and "you pull it" junk yard businesses have been decimated. People who couldn't afford the cars they bought because the rebates made them think it was a good idea are going to get their fuel-efficient new vehicles repossessed (sort of like the banks loaning money for mortgages people had no business thinking they should get, if you'll recall) and will have a hard time finding a used vehicle they can afford. And after all of this, some dealers are still waiting for their money because whether a given program is good, bad, or indifferent, government inefficiencies are stunning.

And that brings me to the notion of health care reform. What you have done is appalling in so many ways that I scarcely know where to begin.

Perhaps I should start by pointing out that a current government health program is looking substantially less than well-managed. The H1N1 vaccination program, managed by the federal government, is largely a joke. Vaccine production is dramatically behind schedule. Distribution is slipshod (perhaps you heard the news reports indicating that various Wall Street corporations in New York City got vaccines before area hospitals did) at best. And despite the shortages and the problems, some in government are still talking about sending substantial amounts of vaccine overseas.

It's patently obvious that you cannot manage even a single program efficiently, yet you are under the impression that somehow, some way, you can manage health care as a whole even better than those people who actually know what they're doing and who are the best at it in the world. What do you do towards those ends?

You set up a system wherein you would eliminate private insurance. But on your way to that elimination, you will first raise the premiums of those who happen to have policies through such insurors. You will impose significant penalties on those who cannot afford those premiums and who do not wish to become a part of a badly mismanaged (doubtless from the start) government program, penalties which they may also find unaffordable, and then what will they do?

You will drive doctors out of business because they will not want to deal with government red tape, or because after dealing with the government red tape, they'll be paid far too little for their time, trouble, and expertise. You will stifle research and innovation with an impenetrable wrapper of taxes, penalties, regulations, and a smothering lack of incentive. You will grievously harm the quality of whatever health care we have the time and the wherewithal to stand in line and wait our turn to get. And those are the things that will happen before the system collapses into a single payor program, the likes of which has been your goal all along!

To pay for all of these things, you will tax us both directly and indirectly. Those taxes will be in addition to the premiums or the fines that we're forced to pay, quite literally at the point of a government gun. Insurance companies will begin going out of business because you intend to force them to accept greater risk without greater compensation (once again, remember those banks) even as you demand they compete with the government itself. As a result, more of us will land on your government insurance, and taxes will go up again and again. The waits for treatment will lengthen, and many procedures will be effectively rationed in an effort to keep costs down, and then as a simple reflection of availability. The vicious circle won't end until the health care system collapses, and likely the entire economy with it. And this will happen even if you don't offer government health benefits to large numbers of illegal aliens—but that's something which you also intend to do despite it being in direct conflict with your oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States.

What's the final insult? You claim this will help those who are unable to afford insurance to become insured. Well, unlike too many of the people who voted for you, I actually did a little checking. And you know what I found? I can buy a high deductible insurance plan today for about $240 a month. Under your version of health care reform, including the government assistance to which you say I'll be entitled, my monthly costs will exceed $300 a month. I know you're really busy trying to get still more Americans under your nanny-state control, but could you take just a moment to explain to me how your actions are making insurance more affordable for me, or countless other Americans who are neither rich nor poor and who you apparently thus couldn't care less about?

Perhaps you believe that, because you will be exempt from your own plans, you will escape the worst repercussions of what you do today. I don't believe that for a moment. I believe you will live long enough to see the nightmare you've wrought not because I think you'll live forever but because, with all you've set in motion, it won't be very long before we all begin to see just what terrible things you've set in motion.

I am all too well aware that you think that history will look back on you as a heroine, a compassionate and benevolent ruler who gave much to the citizens of America. But if everything you plan for and are working toward comes to fruition, history is going to be substantially less kind. You will be reviled. Our children, and their children, will look back at you as one of those who was instrumental in destroying what was once the greatest country in the world by overextending its largesse beyond all reason, and they will do so with disgust and a keen sense of betrayal.

Those future Americans will be far less wealthy than the average American of today. Their standard of living will be lower, their dependence on the government higher. Their liberty will be almost entirely usurped by a government intimately involved with almost every aspect of their lives. They will read about the former Soviet Union and the former United States of America, and wonder how the latter could possibly voluntarily emulate the former. If the location is not held a deep, dark secret by then, I imagine that some of them will quite happily spit on your grave.

There are those who suggest that you are merely misguided. Dangerously so, of course, but only mistaken. I disagree. I think you know exactly what you're doing, and that makes you not only a traitor and a wanna-be despot, but just plain evil. There is not, I don't think, any punishment that's truly sufficient for the things you've done and are doing. But I'll settle for one: your removal from office at the next available electoral opportunity. I suspect there's little that would wound you more than anonymity and the loss of authority. Meanwhile, if you weren't on Capitol Hill to cajole and coerce others into following your nefarious agenda, we might, if we're lucky, be able to undo some of the damage you've done before it's completely irreparable.

Most sincerely,

L. Kathryn Jones
(Lady Liberty)

P.S. Know what's just as scary? The fact I could have plugged in any one of several names into this letter and have it ring just as true.

Lady Liberty, a senior writer for ESR, is a graphic designer and pro-freedom activist currently residing in the Midwest. More of her writings and other political and educational information is available on her web site, Lady Liberty's Constitution Clearing House, at http://www.ladylibrty.com. E-mail Lady Liberty at ladylibrty@ladylibrty.com.

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