Maggie's Farm

The coming boom in tax shelters

What is wrong with AARP?

Southern Baptists take on New England. Welcome, friends. We are tired of the UCC and the Episcopalians. They do not seem to focus on God any more.

Does the O represent a new template? neoneo

Re our cold summer, from Surber:

Remember: Everything proves global warming.

And the only way to stop global warming is to tax the hell out of the American people.

It is intended to be stimulating

Why no medical tort reform?

What's up with all the czars? h/t, Doug Ross

Why you do not want to get cancer in Europe

If Bush had an economy this bad, would he get this headline?

What does "Let me be clear" mean?

Revisiting Liar's Poker, with some thoughts about military officers. Volokh

Via Riehl, a blog by a few Marine Corps officer candidates. Cool. The responsibility they take on is mind-boggling.

Really good post on news, reporting blogs, Cronkite, etc., at Driscoll

Ten reasons why America’s health care system is in better condition than you might suppose.

Quoted at Viking:

...New Jersey created only 6,800 private sector jobs from 2000 to 2007 - while public sector jobs grew by more than 55,800. Big Government is the reason New Jersey ranks as the worst of 50 states on the Small Business Survival Index.

Generations of debt. Human Events

Dems re-do their sales pitch

Related: Families and Small Businesses to be Taxed to Pay for Health Reform

The obesity brouhaha: at WSJ, Obesity costs taxpayers. Freedom needs to include being fat, even if it is sometimes more offensive than free speech. Yes, one of the problems with getting government involved in medical care is that the State then has a financial interest in your life, and an excuse to try to control it. Thus checking kids' lunchboxes in the UK. Therefore,

thank you for saying this, Mr. Steyn:

...if you think I’m being frivolous in positing bureaucratic regulation of doughnuts and vacations, consider that under the all-purpose umbrellas of “health” and “the environment,” governments of supposedly free nations are increasingly comfortable straying into areas of diet and leisure. Last year, a British bill attempted to ban Tony the Tiger, longtime pitchman for Frosties, from children’s TV because of his malign influence on young persons. Why not just ban Frosties? Or permit it by prescription only? Or make kids stand outside on the sidewalk to eat it? It was also proposed — by the Conservative party, alas — that, in the interests of saving the planet, each citizen should be permitted to fly a certain number of miles a year, after which he would be subject to punitive eco-surtaxes. Isn’t restricting freedom of movement kind of, you know . . . totalitarian?

Freedom is messy. In free societies, people will fall through the cracks — drink too much, eat too much, buy unaffordable homes, fail to make prudent provision for health care, and much else. But the price of being relieved of all those tiresome choices by a benign paternal government is far too high.

Government health care would be wrong even if it “controlled costs.” It’s a liberty issue. I’d rather be free to choose, even if I make the wrong choices.

Is medical care a zero-sum game? From Pajamas:

Obama’s command seizure of one-sixth of the American economy is based on the assumption that medicine is a zero-sum game. The trouble is that Obama’s assumption is false — and destructive.  It has been falsified by every single advance in human health since the Industrial Revolution. It’s simply not true that there is a fixed supply of medical care, one that cannot grow, become more effective, cost less, and make our lives better and longer. It is not true that my gain must be your loss.

Obama thinks the way Thomas Malthus did in 1798. But Malthus was wrong then, just like Obama is now. So here’s the question for every American. Under ObamaCare, when we really will have to divide up a Malthusian lockbox of federal money, how much will your life be worth?

Brussels Journal begins:

These are not happy days for Americans, particularly if raised on traditional American values of Northern European provenance. Conscientious work as redemptive virtue, thrift, self-reliance, self-restraint, Biblical ethical principles, modesty, high-minded civic culture, love of liberty, distrust of centralized power.

America’s ruling elite – once the embodiment of such values and now a putrid trench running from Wall Street to Madison Avenue to Washington DC to Hollywood -- has debauched and upended them as thoroughly as though it has been teleported directly from 3rd century Rome.

Photo: The Briar Bowl Tobacconist, 1950s. Maggie's Farm supports the responsible use and enjoyment of tobacco.