What do righties consider "BIG Government"?

[lakhota]

I assume they mean BIG enough to administer social programs and regulate predatory businesses.

[henryclay]

".......What do righties consider "BIG Government"?...."

Well, let's start with government suing a state that only wants to enforce federal laws that the federals won't enforce.

Then we can move to the federal government telling the ONLY aircraft manufacturer with a footprint left that it cannot build its plants where it can survive in the international market.

We can leave the social programs out for now, because when they cause the government to go out of business because it is broke the social programs will go with it.

[privateinvestor]

Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.
Ronald Reagan

[pappyjohn99]

We can leave the social programs out for now, because when they cause the government to go out of business because it is broke the social programs will go with it.

[lakhota]

Single-Payer National Health Insurance

www.pnhp.org/facts/single-payer-resources

[formerexpat]

Single-Payer National Health Insurance

www.pnhp.org/facts/single-payer-resources

And the inevitable decline of such systems:

Back in the 1960s, Castonguay chaired a Canadian government committee studying health reform and recommended that his home province of Quebec — then the largest and most affluent in the country — adopt government-administered health care, covering all citizens through tax levies.

The government followed his advice, leading to his modern-day moniker: “the father of Quebec medicare.” Even this title seems modest; Castonguay’s work triggered a domino effect across the country, until eventually his ideas were implemented from coast to coast.

Four decades later, as the chairman of a government committee reviewing Quebec health care this year, Castonguay concluded that the system is in “crisis.”

“We thought we could resolve the system’s problems by rationing services or injecting massive amounts of new money into it,” says Castonguay. But now he prescribes a radical overhaul: “We are proposing to give a greater role to the private sector so that people can exercise freedom of choice.”

Castonguay advocates contracting out services to the private sector, going so far as suggesting that public hospitals rent space during off-hours to entrepreneurial doctors. He supports co-pays for patients who want to see physicians. Castonguay, the man who championed public health insurance in Canada, now urges for the legalization of private health insurance.

What would drive a man like Castonguay to reconsider his long-held beliefs? Try a health care system so overburdened that hundreds of thousands in need of medical attention wait for care, any care; a system where people in towns like Norwalk, Ontario, participate in lotteries to win appointments with the local family doctor.
…
Sick with ovarian cancer, Sylvia de Vires, an Ontario woman afflicted with a 13-inch, fluid-filled tumor weighing 40 pounds, was unable to get timely care in Canada. She crossed the American border to Pontiac, Mich., where a surgeon removed the tumor, estimating she could not have lived longer than a few weeks more.
…
De Vires is far from unusual in seeking medical treatment in the U.S. Even Canadian government officials send patients across the border, increasingly looking to American medicine to deal with their overload of patients and chronic shortage of care.

Since the spring of 2006, Ontario’s government has sent at least 164 patients to New York and Michigan for neurosurgery emergencies — defined by the Globe and Mail newspaper as “broken necks, burst aneurysms and other types of bleeding in or around the brain.” Other provinces have followed Ontario’s example. …

However the candidates choose to proceed, Americans should know that one of the founding fathers of Canada’s government-run health care system has turned against his own creation. If Claude Castonguay is abandoning ship, why should Americans bother climbing on board?

A failure in every country it has been implemented in that has any type of sizable population. The system can't reliably handle scale. It also can't handle populations that have an unhealthy lifestyle.

In other words, we'd be f***ed if it came here.

[deziloooooo]

Jun 5, 2011 19:40:34 GMT -5 henryclay said:

".......What do righties consider "BIG Government"?...."

Well, let's start with government suing a state that only wants to enforce federal laws that the federals won't enforce.

Then we can move to the federal government telling the ONLY aircraft manufacturer with a footprint left that it cannot build its plants where it can survive in the international market.

We can leave the social programs out for now, because when they cause the government to go out of business because it is broke the social programs will go with it.

If the federal feels the State is infringing on the jurisdiction of the federal then they have a perfect right to sue and see how the courts decide.

The point here , as I see it, I may be wrong, so it's a IMHO, is the laws are on the books but since it is a Federal Jurisdiction, so it is up to the Federal as to how draconian they will enforce it, and the emphasis would probably be coming from the sitting POTUS.
He would be concerned about foreign complaints, relationships of the country's the nationals would be sent back to, possible need of temporary workers here all the little things that such a move would entail, and thus to have a State arbitrarily meddle in what might be thought of as Federal jurisdiction, thus the law suit.

Possible in a Draconian way, with the correct POTUS in office who felt it was a national emergency to deport any and all not here legally, due to manpower realities, they could nationalize the worst thought of States in violation with Illegals, National Guard and under the supervision of trained Immigration officials, do a massive round up of Illegals, having the justices needed and prosecutors handy, a place to put them and after swift hearings, would be needed by the way.
I am sure many lawyers , ACLU, would be representing these folks, we are a land of law and order. Yes Krickett, AZ would probably be one of the states, have the buses hired and back over the border they would go.

The aircraft plant, think it's Boeing wanting to build in the South, right to work state, Seattle unions seem to be objecting as a union busting tactic by Boeing. I thought that Boeing was doing just fine with competitive battles with air bus and other international competition, winning some losing some.

I was a little surprised over the ability to have a injunction, I was thinking when all the clothing mills of New England were closing their plants and moving South no one seemed to care, except the workers who suddenly after 30/40 years of working for these places , lost those jobs. Most of those job in the South are now over seas now, never to come back but it's the thought that counts I think.

Is it the Federal Government say they can't build that plant or a injunction by a court? Big difference, law suit filed, court hears the case.

[AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP]

Jun 5, 2011 19:32:00 GMT -5 @lakhota said:

I assume they mean BIG enough to administer social programs and regulate predatory businesses.

Big government is unaccountable government. It is unmanageable government. It is government that has become our master, rather than one in which everyone in it remembers who the boss is-- it's US.

America is the only country in human history that recognizes that the individual human being has unalienable rights that come from our Creator, and that we have loaned our sovereignty in a limited number of areas to government for the primary purpose of protecting our life, liberty, and property.

BIG government exceeds its legal authority. It usurps power reserved for the people.

The real question is why after more than two centuries of trying it both ways-- liberty, and tyranny-- and well after the verdict of history has been rendered, liberals still don't "get it".

[fairlycrazy23]

I don't know that all rights feel the same way, there are many 'righties' who want the government to do quite a bit if regulating.
But to me big government in the context of the Federal Government, is anything beyond it's true Constitutional authority, and yes that means all social programs at the Federal level are 'big government'

[safeharbor37]

Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have ... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.

On the other hand, who doesn't want someone or something to give them every thing they need [want]? It's a trade off. How big is "too big"? What do I really "need"? As opposed to want.
The current governments just about everywhere are "too big" to allow optimum freedom. It seems that whenever we get a good thing, we demand too much of it and ultimately destroy it.
Remember. Half of the people [any people] are below average and those who are above average aren't necessarily all that bright.
Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool ~ and we have no shortage of those. So our liberties rest on the edge of the precipice.