Welcome to The Vomiting Brain, a blog about nothing and everything headquartered in the remote syrupy northern enclave known as "Vermont".

Monday, February 8, 2016

Random Acts of Socialism: 1798 An Act for the Relief of Sick and Disabled Seaman

By Gilbert Stuart - http://www.cowboybooks.com.au/pictures/JohnAdams.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=91133 (With my socialist addition)

Back at the founding of our country, those great Jesus-like men like John Adams determined that it was in the common good that we provide medical care to sailors coming into port.  Congress mandated a tax on shipping companies of $.20 per-month per-seaman.  With this money, the government set up hospitals at ports and treated those nasty sailors for scurvy, syphilis, and whatever other conditions they had acquired.

This was a blatant act of government interference with free enterprise, setting the stage for many acts of socialism to come.  It starts with treating a few sailors and ends with us all marching to a gulag.

Read the act here:  https://history.nih.gov/research/downloads/1StatL605.pdf

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