"Third party payments are the main source of dysfunction in the American health system. "The devil systematically built our health insurance system," once suggested Princeton University health economist Uwe Reinhardt. As evidence, Reinhardt pointed out that it "has the feature that when you're down on your luck, you're unemployed, you lose your insurance. Only the devil could ever have invented such a system.""No kidding.
Reason exposes the myth that America has a free market health care system.
"America's health care system is like a free market in the same way that Madonna is like a virgin—i.e. in fiction only."Good line.
"[T]he U.S. system has many more similarities than differences with France and Germany. The only big outlier among European nations is England, which, even in a post-communist world, has managed the impressive feat of hanging on to a socialized, single-payer model. This means that the U.K. government doesn't just pays for medical services but actually owns and operates the hospitals that provide them. English doctors are government employees!"Look how well turning teachers into government employees has worked for our education system. Our socialized education system fails over 50 percent of students in 17 of the 50 biggest school systems in the country. Obamacare would fail a similar percentage of patients. This article highlights how similar the US system is to the European system except for Britain's system, which is unusually terrible because it's full socialized medicine.
Mark Steyn is right when he explains that even a watered down version of Obamacare will shift the country to the left. We need to kill this plan, not compromise on it.
"As we've seen this past week in the House of Representatives, put not your trust in "Blue Dog Democrats." And, as we'll no doubt see in the weeks ahead in the Senate, put not your trust in "moderate Republicans" whose urge to "reach across the aisle" is so reflexive it ought to be covered by the Americans With Disabilities Act."How funny. How true.
This essay offering more free market solutions to our health care problems also offers a concise, effective argument for legalizing all drugs:
"End the War on Drugs. This would reduce the amount of addiction and health problems associated with recreational drugs. During alcohol prohibition, the softer versions of alcohol – beer and wine – vanished from the market, since producers and smugglers only wanted to deal in the highest-profit product, liquor. In 19th-century America, when there was a free market in drugs, there were no epidemics of drug addiction. People drank small amounts of cocaine in soft drinks, rather than smoking crack; they smoked opium rather than injecting heroin. With softer version of recreational drugs available, experimenters are less likely to develop a deep addiction, and addicts are less likely to develop a high tolerance that drives them to take ever-larger quantities of the most dangerous version of their drugs. Additionally, if drug use is not criminal, addicts will be much more willing to admit to their problems and seek treatment, without fear of law enforcement issues."
Reason tries to explain the Obama birth certificate controversy by grouping it with typical conspiracy theories. That's a cop out. The birth certificate controversy stems from several things. We know Obama didn't grow up in America, and there's good reason to suspect he wasn't born in America. Obama has yet to provide the certified birth certificate that every natural born American Obama's age should be able to produce that shows he was born in America. The anecdotal evidence and the non-certified document he posted on the web instead of allowing experts to review look like a smoke screen. And finally, it's obvious to Americans that Obama is a Manchurian candidate working on behalf of somebody besides the American people. He's not ignorant like Carter. Obama is harming us on purpose and to an unprecedented extent. Many American people understand Obama is hiding something that would disqualify him from office, and they want to know what it is. The focal point of that search is his birth certificate. Until Obama produces a certified copy of his birth certificate, this movement will not go away. I expect it will only grow in power as Obama does more damage and eventually the people ridiculing the birthers will change their tune.
Reason is half right about the media's and liberals' response to the birthers. As the author points out, liberals recognize the same things about Obama that the rest of us recognize, but liberals don't care. What the author doesn't point out is liberals recognize the birthers as a real threat to uncover whatever Obama is hiding. Because they're a threat, liberals are attacking them. We all know if the birthers were not a threat to Obama and his radical leftist agenda, the media wouldn't be talking about them. This guy is right about the fear of foreign influence though, and I agree with him that that's not an issue. Obama is working for ACORN, Ayers and Wright, or more accurately, their ideology. That's a homegrown destructive force. He's pushing their agenda, not some foreign country's. He just hates America, and that's why he's changing it just like he told us he would. While I'm sure some birthers are somewhat motivated by what's in these articles, it's irresponsible for both articles to fail to mention the very real concerns I mentioned above. Those real concerns are the most powerful motivators of the birther movement, imo.
Comparing birthers to truthers without pointing out the tremendous contrasts is also irresponsible. The truther conspiracy would require quite a few people to be involved and stay silent. The birther conspiracy doesn't need anybody alive except Obama to know about it. The one guy in Hawaii who said he saw Obama's certified birth certificate doesn't have to know anything. He just needs to have been bribed. Also, there's no way to prove the truther conspiracy wrong. It can't be falsified, which makes it like a religion. Obama (supposedly) could prove the birther conspiracy wrong just by producing that certified birth certificate, but he refuses (or can't). I had to produce my birth certificate for every job I ever had, and there was no constitutional requirement that I be a native born American for those jobs. Why should we demand less of the president?
It's kind of dumb of Bill Maher to compare the birther conspiracy to Whitewater and Swift boats. The Whitewater scandal uncovered tremendous Clinton corruption, put a dozen corrupt Clinton partners in jail and presaged the pervasive corruption of Clinton's persidency. the Swift boat captains exposed Kerry's lie about being in Cambodia in 1968 when Nixon was president (he wasn't). Both those exposed real lies and real character flaws of their targets. Maher must fear the birther conspiracy will turn up damaging information about Obama too.
John Stossel exposes the hidden costs of the minumum wage.
Glenn Beck exposes the Apollo Alliance is an alliance of Marxists using environmentalism to push Marxism in America. This is a nice analysis.
Reason essay exposes embattled Ben Bernanke as a political hack, exposes the Fed as anything but an independent agency and informs us that Bernanke is campaigning on TV and in Congress to be reappointed to his job in January. I certainly hope not, but whomever Obama picks, we can be certain he will be destructive to our economy. I think Obama will pick somebody who will inflate our money supply until our economy collapses. Bernanke at least pays lip service to fighting inflation in the future, so it may not be him.
Gary North reports that, "For the first time since 1914, there is a public debate in Congress over the Federal Reserve's power." No wonder Bernanke is spooked. He deserves to be spooked. He should fear that in a few years he'll be investigated for dereliction of duty or abuse of power or something for all the damage he's done to us. This essay exposes lies in Bernanke's statements in the town hall video I posted a few days ago in which I exposed a number of lies.
"What has Bernanke panicked is this: the Federal Reserve has bailed out the biggest banks and has let almost 100 little ones die. This is crony capitalism at its most notorious."This is why interference in the marketplace always spirals into economic collapse. Every intervention fails to solve the problems used as an excuse and makes more problems. A mixed economy, by definition, means government is picking winners and loser based on political expediency. That kind of system is unsustainable. In the end, the people have no confidence in their government, and their government runs everything.
"This thought of depositors finding out which banks are at risk is what the Federal Reserve was created in 1913 to prevent. The banking cartel must prevent bank runs from spreading. If the public had explicit information on what the FED did and why, the public would be in a position to pull their money out of illiquid, economically insolvent large banks."And the whole banking charade would collapse.
Peter Schiff, the highest profile person who predicted the housing bust, the financial crisis and this recession, tells us how the economy is, and he predicts a depression.
"Have you heard the great news? The recession is over! It’s true; I saw it on TV. Why fret about growing unemployment lines when banks are paying big-time bonuses again."Don't believe what you read in the newspaper or see on TV. That info comes from the same people who predicted the US economy would just continue growing and ridiculed the people who predicted this recession.
"In truth, because of the continued profligacy of the government and Federal Reserve, the imbalances that caused the current recession have actually worsened. We are now in an even deeper hole than when the crisis began. Rather than wrapping up a recession, we are actually sinking into a depression. If things look better now, it’s just because we are in the eye of the storm."It's going to be ugly, just like Obama plans. Bernanke wants to go down in history as the man who saves us from depression. Instead, he's going to go down in history as the man who caused the second depression. This essay does a fabulous job of explaining what was wrong with our economy, what it takes to fix it, and why it's getting worse, not better.
"By interfering with the unpleasant forces of the recession, we simply trade short-term gain for long-term pain. By propping up inefficient companies that should fail, we deprive more effective companies of the capital they need to grow. By holding up over-valued asset prices, we prevent the prudent or less well-off from snatching them up and, in doing so, creating a new price equilibrium based upon reality. By maintaining artificially low interest rates, we discourage the very savings that are so critical to capital formation and future economic growth. In addition, the false economic signals the Fed sends the market prevent a more efficient re-allocation of resources from taking place and leads to even more bad economic decision being made. By running such huge deficits, we further crowd-out private enterprise by making it harder for businesses to invest or hire."Barack Obama understands this. He's intentionally looting us and giving our wealth to his allies to spark a Marxist revolution. I bet you Obama already has his speech blaming the CEOs, Wall Street, greed, the marketplace and everybody but government written. In the same speech, he will demand we surrender more of our freedom, more of our power and more of our wealth so he can use it further harm our economy until he succeeds at sparking the revolution he wants.
The Great Depression was really a series of three recessions. The first recession came from the loose monetary policy of the 20s, the second came from Hoover's protectionism and big government policies, and the third came from FDR's expansion of those policies into the New Deal. As I've pointed out before, we're following the same pattern, but Obama and Bernanke have made it tremendously larger in scope.
I had never heard of the Iron Triangle before, but it's a great description of the corrupt vote buying system in Washington.
Chilling story of how Homeland security, police and the military infiltrated an anti-war movement in Seattle. These guys aren't al Qaeda wannabes that security should be watching out for. In fact, wasting resources on American movements like this means they aren't doing everything they should to ferret out real homegrown terrorists.
November 29, 2001 speech by Ron Paul on the House floor criticizing the abuses of the war on terror at that time and predicting many others including the Iraq war is amazing. Everything he says is still true today. It's unconscionable that we're still fighting the war on terror with our military. I used to say we should have finished the war in Afghanistan. I was wrong then. In the last year I've realized we won the war in Afghanistan as soon as we forced al Qaeda out of Afghanistan. The war on terror should have ended then. This is the first I learned that the US was trying to build a pipeline in northern Afghanistan, but that certainly explains why we're still there fighting what now is an illegal war. Man, I wish I had heard this speech when it was given. It's like a road map for everything that's happened in the war on terror since, and I would have realized then we should end the war.
One thing that comes across in this speech is the separation of powers between Congress and the president. The president very little power to harm us. Congress has to pass the laws that impact Americans. And Congress did pass the laws. Both parties. And we're all far worse off for them. But the president has the power to wage war, and Congress has very little power influence that. But it does have the ultimate war powers - the power to declare and end wars. Congress should have ended the war on terror around the time of this speech, but they still won't do it to this day. Our anger at Bush and/or Obama over the war on terror is misplaced. Congress should have ended it and should end it now.
Great essay from Mark Steyn about elitism and global warming:
"But when an hereditary prince [Prince Charles] starts attacking capitalism and pining for the days when a benign sovereign knew what was best for the masses he gives the real game away. Capitalism is liberating: You're born a peasant but you don't have to die one. You can work hard and get a nice place in the suburbs. If you were a 19th century Russian peasant, and you got to Ellis Island, you'd be living in a tenement on the Lower East Side, but your kids would get an education and move uptown, and your grandkids would be doctors and accountants in Westchester County. And your great-grandchild would be a Harvard-educated environmental activist demanding an end to all this electricity and indoor toilets.No kidding.
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Beginning with FDR, wily statists justified the massive expansion of federal power under ever more elastic definitions of the Constitution's commerce clause. For Obama-era control freaks, the environment and health care are the commerce clause supersized. They establish the pretext for the regulation of everything: If the government is obligated to cure you of illness, it has an interest in preventing you getting ill in the first place – by regulating what you eat, how you live, the choices you make from the moment you get up in the morning. Likewise, if everything you do impacts "the environment," then the environment is an all-purpose umbrella for regulating everything you do. It's the most convenient and romantic justification for what the title of Paul Rahe's new book rightly identifies as "Soft Despotism.""
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