"Bloated Bureaucracy: The bill establishes a myriad of new federal agencies intertwined between at least 21established agencies with the mission of reallocating trillions of taxpayer dollars in a supposedly fair and efficient manor. According the U.S Chamber of Commerce (PDF), the bill will impose 397 new federal regulations that require traditional agency rulemakings."

Western civilization now stands on the brink of repeating the experience of the Xhosa. Since the advent of the Industrial Revolution in the late eighteenth century, Europe and North America have enjoyed the greatest prosperity ever known on earth. Life expectancy has doubled. In a little more than two hundred years, every objective measure of human welfare has increased more than in all of previous human history. But Western Civilization is coasting on an impetus provided by our ancestors. There is scarcely anyone alive in Europe or America today who believes in the superiority of Western society. Guilt and shame hang around our necks like millstones, dragging our emasculated culture to the verge of self-immolation. Whatever faults the British Empire-builders may have had, they were certain of themselves. Our forefathers built a technological civilization based on energy provided by carbon-based fossil fuels. Without the inexpensive and reliable energy provided by coal, oil, and gas, our civilization would quickly collapse. The prophets of global warming now want us to do precisely that.

Like the prophet Mhlakaza, Al Gore promises that if we stop using carbon-based energy, new energy technologies will magically appear. The laws of physics and chemistry will be repealed by political will power. We will achieve prosperity by destroying the very means by which prosperity is created.

How’s that for change you can believe in? Depending on how the public plan is designed in Congress, millions of Americans would lose their existing coverage. By opening the public plan to all employees and using Medicare rates, the Lewin Group, a nationally prominent econometrics firm, has said that the public plan could result in 119.1 million Americans being transitioned out of private coverage, including employer based coverage, into a public plan. With employers making the key decision, millions of Americans could lose their private coverage, regardless of their personal preferences in this matter.

The proposal was well-received among Democrats on Capitol Hill, who said it would prevent another round of bank bailouts and protect consumers from predatory lending practices. "We regard this as very pro-market," said Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., who chairs the House Financial Services Committee. "Unless you have investors that are well-protected, you don't have a market." Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd said there would be "some debate," but "I think we're all seeking the same results."

Sources: Senate Health Overhaul Costs Hit $1.6 Trillion - Political News - FOXNews.com Jolted by cost estimates as high as $1.6 trillion, Senate Democrats agreed Tuesday to scale back planned subsidies for the uninsured and sought concessions totaling hundreds of billions of dollars from private industry to defray the cost of sweeping health care legislation. At the same time, key Democrats disagreed openly among themselves over a proposed tax on health insurance benefits to pay for expanding coverage to the uninsured.