Domitian and White Castle
A Volokh Conspiracy post puts me in mind of Suetonius. Jonathan H. Adler reports that the White Castle hamburger chain says that “a single provision” of the recently-passed health insurance reform bill “will eat up roughly 55 percent of its yearly net income after 2014”. In the comments many people sneer at the claim, insisting that White Castle is run by greedy plutocrats who could easily afford the new expenses and are simply lying about the costs of the bill.
That reminded me of a favorite saying of the emperor Domitian. As Suetonius put is (Life of Domitian 21):
He used to say that the lot of princes was most unhappy, since when they discovered a conspiracy, no one believed them unless they had been killed.
Let’s hope we don’t find out how bad the health reform bill is only after it has killed off White Castle and other useful corporations, large and small.