What's in a name?

The flood of sweeping legislation making tortuous headway through the houses of Congress is enough to make a citizen legislator's head spin.  But what about his or her constituents?  It would be very difficult to oppose any recent Democrat proposals if we just looked at the names given them.

For example, how about "America's Affordable Health Care Choices Act?"  Doesn't that sound wonderful?  Nevermind that it will cost in excess of $2 trillion that we don't have.

You undoubtedly heard about Cap and Trade.  Well its formal name is the "American Clean Energy and Security Act."  Who doesn't like clean and secure?  Forget the economic ruin that it will inflict on American business.  As Stephen Moore of the Wall Street Journal has said, the bill should be called the “full employment act for India and China.”

Card check is the cryptic name given to the "Employee Free Choice Act," which would eliminate a worker's right to vote on unionization with a secret ballot.  That doesn't really sound like free choice to me.

The Obama/Pelosi/Reid economic stimulus bill ($787 billion, remember?) is affectionately known as the "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act."  Since its passage in February, unemployment has risen to 10% and higher in some states, and homes are foreclosing at a rate of one million per quarter.

My favorite is an old throwback from the Reagan years, the "Fairness Doctine," which Reagan dissolved in the 1980's.  This FCC regulation keeps raising its head, and I'm sure it will again if Pelosi has anything to say about it.  Its purpose is to kill conservative talk radio.  We members of the vast right wing conspiracy call it "Hush Rush."

And finally, this week the FCC decided it's time for government to regulate the internet to preserve "Net Neutrality."  This means that the government will set prices that content sites pay to internet service providers.  What's so neutral about that?

Perhaps Lewis Carroll's  Mad Hatter said it best:

If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?