The authorities securing the G–20 meeting in Toronto appear to have been caught off guard when peaceful social activists, community organizers and assorted leftists set fire to police cruisers, smashed windows and attacked the hotel where the meeting was held.
Toronto police arrested 900 people.
Unfortunately, this failure to prevent may be our fault here in Virginia.
There is a possibility that crack civil disturbance teams were in Manassas last week to monitor the Tea Party Rally and found themselves unable to relocate to Toronto in time.
But you cannot fault the authorities. I was at that Tea Party rally and it was filled with tough customers.
First of all, you couldn’t throw a rock without hitting a Christian.
Plus, these were the most dangerous kind of Christian: white and unafraid to pray in public. Sure there were some black and brown people in the crowd of over 500, but I’m thinking they were undercover Homeland Security agents.
Thank goodness it didn’t require a show of force to keep these Constitution–toting radicals in their place.
The Tea Party rally was my first time to hear VA Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli speak and it was something of a letdown. I expected — based on what I’ve read in The Washington Post — to find a grim, human wrecking ball that would incite the crowd to burn any autos sporting a rainbow sticker and then use the resulting illumination to lead an assault on a natural food store.
Instead, the AG displayed a mischievous sense of humor while discussing a federal government that’s no laughing matter. Cuccinelli emphasized that his suit questioning the constitutionality of Obamacare is not about health care, but instead about liberty.
He makes a good point, but I wish he would turn his attention to the Commonwealth, because when it comes to health care interference, Virginia is not without sin.
Recently the Virginia Department of health refused to issue a “Certificate of Public Need” (COPN) for the construction of a new hospital in nearby Haymarket. Both Sentara Healthcare and Prince William Heath System had submitted applications.
Richmond bureaucrats ruled there are already adequate health care services in the county, so neither firm can build.
The question taxpayers should be asking is what right do these bureaucrats have to issue a decree that says the county doesn’t need a new hospital? There is already a mechanism in place that evaluates need. It’s called the market; and the market can efficiently determine the viability of any enterprise without the expenditure of a single tax dollar or the hiring of a bureaucrat.
The entire COPN process is a scam designed to protect the profits of existing healthcare providers, at the expense of healthcare consumers, by preventing new competitors from entering the market.
COPN is another reason government keeps healthcare costs high.
For example, one of my clients wanted to open a new MRI center here. The COPN roadblock meant he couldn’t just build the facility and attract customers. Instead we had to make a case that a new facility would not diminish the market share and revenue stream of existing MRI owners.
(I’ve always wondered why auto dealers don’t try the same market–fixing gambit. With their clout in Richmond, they could support legislation to determine how many auto dealers a county needs. Just imagine what it would do to the price of a new car and repairs if you could only have a single car dealer in each 15 or 20 mile radius?)
Our MRI facility was designed for more powerful machines boasting the latest technology. These were “open” MRIs built for morbidly obese patients who oftentimes literally would not fit into the torpedo tube–sized openings of older units. The advanced MRIs contained stronger magnets needed to penetrate the additional tissue obese patients have surrounding internal organs.
Nothing like it existed in the county at that time and nothing like it exists today, because the Health Department vetoed his application.
As a result patients were denied access to newer technology and the potential savings of competition, while existing MRI facilities dodged a potential threat to their profits. A typical lose–win, market–distorting government decision.
A free market works to keep prices competitive by rewarding efficient, customer–oriented businesses. Think Lasik eye surgery — not regulated by bureaucrats — where prices have gone down as technology advanced. A fixed market — think health care — rewards lobbyists and cartel members while penalizing the customer.
Fights for liberty on the national level are just as valuable on the state level.
The irony is the organization that fought hardest against my client’s MRI application was Prince William Health System. The same people who just had their application for a new hospital denied, presumably because it would compete with nearby hospitals in Fauquier County.
Pardon me while I gloat.
Michael R. Shannon (The Whole Shebang (mostly)) is a Virginia-based public relations and media consultant with MANDATE: Message, Media & Public Relations who has worked in over 75 elections on three continents and a handful of islands.
