- Monday, June 5, 2017

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Elizabeth Warren: Can you hear the truth?

No, hell has not frozen over. And no, Elizabeth Warren has not suddenly embraced the free market.

The Massachusetts senator, known as “Fauxcahontas” because of her famous lie about being part American Indian, introduced a bill in the Senate that would introduce an over-the-counter category for personal sound amplification devices. 

These devices are seen on cable TV ads and in American retail stores.  They do just what the are advertised to do.  They amplify sound. They are not hearing aides.  What Senator “Fauxcahontas” claims is that by creating this new category, it will expand the free market and bring down prices for, get ready for this, hearing aids.

Elizabeth Warren is not suddenly a born-again free-market adherent.  She remains somewhere to the left of Karl Marx and as always, she is wrong.  When Elizabeth Warren supports an issue, any sane person can reflexively simply take the opposite position and be guaranteed they are right.  In fact, the odds of someone winning the lottery are greater than being wrong for simply and automatically opposing Mrs. Warren. 

The problem with Elizabeth Warren’s idea is that it will do just the opposite of what she and its backers claim.  It will expand the power of unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the other litany of alphabet soup agencies.  President Trump has the right idea when he calls for draining the D.C. swamp.  Increasing the power of bureaucrats is the last thing America needs to be doing. 

One of the left’s favorite tactics is to strip power away from the states and bestow it on an ever-bloating, inefficient and uncaring federal government.  President Trump won because, among other things, he ran against Washington. The Republicans run every two years against Washington.  Granted once they are in office, their track record for protecting Americans against Washington power grabs is spotty at best. Why on earth would any sane Republican go along with any proposal in Washington that strips power away from the states and gives it to D.C.?

One of the biggest problems Washington has is that it allows people who are complete screw-ups, like Elizabeth Warren, to make policy.  In 2010, she was the lead advocate for the Obama regime and the creation of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau as a part of the Dodd-Frank bill.  Anyone who supported Dodd-Frank should be driven from public office and forced to complete 50 years of public penance. 

The Warren bill does nothing but increase the role of government in the market place. What happened the last time the government did something like that?

Oh yes, it was called Obamacare.

Prices for insurance coverage skyrocketed as did out of pocket medical expenses for real Americans. 

This is the problem that Comrade Warren and those in the far left have. Every time they try to intervene in the free market, it ends badly.  Prices go up and supply goes down or is completely eliminated.  Meanwhile, in Elizabeth Warren’s favorite nation, Venezuela, the very policies she advocates have been put into practice with the predictable result of poverty.

Hopefully, the Republicans who control the Senate will not allow this bill to see the light of day.

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