Sunday, September 13. 2009
What good is democracy if it doesn't give us the stuff I want? Sort-of from Thomas Friedman. A quote:
That's what you get with one-party democracy: a country run by a bunch of screaming, arguing Appalachian retards, all of whom get the same vote as Pulitzer Prize-winning opinion leaders. Say what you want about China, but they have sensible pre-screening rules to keep these divisive morons away from voting booths in the first place.
Saturday, September 5. 2009
 Our hero Ted Dalrymple (photo) encounters some PC censorship, and is not pleased about it. But his annoyance does not interfere with his ability to think about it intelligently. One quote:
...who, after all, is this ‘per’ whose son has given his name to everyone in the world? Surely, to be absolutely egalitarian between the sexes, it should be ‘peroffspring’?
Monday, August 24. 2009
 The "health care" war - and it is a war - attests to the extent to which Americans are divided on the proper role of government in their lives, not to mention in the most personal and sensitive areas of their lives.
For example, Coyote in a piece titled US Medicine - The best in the world, he said this:
I had a professor that used to poll his class — he would ask them if they would prefer a society where the gap between rich and poor was narrower but where the poor were, on an absolute basis, worse off than in the less equal society. He reported the vote almost always split about 50/50. (of course the is a purely utilitarian formulation of the question. Adding in individual liberties issues makes the question far more stark, as to achieve an egalitarian society one must give up both wealth and liberty.)
As a more-or-less Conservative person who was raised in the heart of the American Revolution, my instincts are to distrust centralized power (power is a zero-sum game, unlike money and wealth) and the wisdom and trustworthiness of politicians - and to trust the people to figure out their own lives as best they can (while providing the abundant safety nets we have now for those who stumble and fall).
I know that Lyndon Johnson's Medicaid and Medicare (for the poor, the chronically disabled and the old - imagine considering 65 to be old!), were viewed as first steps towards universal government medical care. Those measure took care of those people that everybody felt badly about.
The Left, which pretends to see "market failures" everywhere as an excuse to place as much as possible under the control of the State (see Dr. Clouthier: Simply put, the government needs to relearn its place, who notes the Left's tendency to promise the sun, moon and stars for free, for all.)
Does Government Know Best? I doubt it very much. There are few people in government, I believe, who are as educated, honest, informed, or thoughtful as I am (and that's not saying much). Regan at American Thinker asks Does Government Know Best?. One quote:
Frighteningly, team Obama and the Democratically-controlled Congress -- who have taken on the role of the prudent parents of juvenile Americans -- have proven to be more than occasionally wrong for the country. In their desire to completely control American lives, they have progressed from losing their tempers to losing their way. Americans are now living in a nanny state in which the Democrats in power are implementing policy after policy designed to reduce freedom of choice and increase government control. Big government, socialized institutions, and sharing the wealth are policies supported by the Democrats - the party whose membership includes academics, Hollywood pseudo-intellectuals, and community organizers. The members of the Democratic Party are those who believe that they are smarter and wiser than the average American and that government intervention in all aspects of our lives is necessary in order to prevent social and economic catastrophe.
William Anderson at Weekly Standard says what I wish to say much better than I can in his Who Owns Your Body? One quote (my bold):
We are berated, ad nauseam, with imprecations that America is the only advanced nation that fails to have universal health care. This statement is often followed by the rueful remark that the debate over government controlled health care has been going on without progress for 60 years and, ipso facto, it is time to settle it.
All right, let's do that. Let's look a little deeper. Why is there no settlement of the issue, and why is America unique in its obstinate reluctance to follow the example of our older cultural brothers in Europe?
When a debate continues for decades without resolution, it is prudent to consider the deeper underlying assumptions. Principles which underpin the arguments are likely being ignored and marginalized rather than addressed in a forthright manner.
America is the only advanced country whose founding assumption is popular sovereignty. This is a proposition that stands with hardly a seconding voice throughout the contemporary international community. Yet it is the taproot of American exceptionalism.
Even here, however, the principle of government subordination to the people is by no means universally accepted. It has never been firmly ratified by our political class, those spiritual descendants of Europe's nobility. Our soi-disant elite appear to view with dismay their countrymen's continuing preference for self-rule.
Thus arises the question of corporal ownership. For Americans, the answer has been settled. Since the terrible bloodletting of the Civil War, and now excepting military service, ownership of one's body is a matter between the individual and God, with no intermediation by government.
Yet assertions are now being made that government should have responsibility for, and thus authority over, the maintenance of our bodies. It necessarily follows that government must have the power to approve or withhold care. This concept collides destructively with the founding principles of individual responsibility and autonomy upon which popular sovereignty depends.
This is the reason that the debate never ends. It is also the reason that any resolution of the question will necessarily either confirm or deny the original intent of the Founders.
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I have occasionally posted here about the sad, if not pathetic, willingness of some to sell their American birthright of individual sovereignty and freedom for a bowl of lentils. This is especially sad for a shrink because part of our job is to help people emotionally mature. It is no help to a shrink's job for government to be an enabler of perpetual childhood and dependency. Read Anderson's whole good essay (link above).
Sunday, August 23. 2009
John McAfee of the famous software company has seen his net worth go from $100 million to $4 million. He is just one of many of the wealthy who have experienced similar things over the past couple of years.
The NYT recounts some of these stories. (h/t, Mankiw). I have seen quite a bit of this happening in clients at the firm - none on the scale of McAfee, but plenty of folks who have dropped from, say, $4 million to $700,000 or $1 million. A few folks who were heavy in Citibank, for example, and a couple of families in Madoff. That hurts if you are 70 and thought you were all set for a comfortable retirement.
The collapse of the value of stocks, real estate, and other investments has led to greater "equality." Achieving greater financial equality in this way doubtless evokes schadenfreude in the envious, happiness in the hate-the-rich populists, and delight in those who erroneously believe that money and wealth are zero-sum games.
But does it do any good for anybody? Probably not. When the rich lose money, government revenues drop, requiring higher taxes on the middle class. When the rich lose money, those who provide the goods and services they enjoy end up in trouble too - like boatmakers, travel companies, landscaping businesses, interior decorators, masseuses, restaurants, furniture-makers, hospital employees, government employees - and lawyers (our firm's income is down 27% thus far this year).
I believe that the Lefty notion of economic equality is insane. If anything, we need more rich people - the more, the better. I want everybody to be rich - if that is what they want in life.
Wednesday, August 19. 2009
If you like it, feel free to borrow or steal parts or all this email which I am sending (all Senate and House addresses here). It's just my first draft -
To my President, my Senators and my Congressman:
I strongly urge you not to support anything that would, could, or is covertly designed (which has been obvious) to lead to a government-controlled medical system. The idea of a government bureaucracy and government "experts" making decisions about my body is horrifying to me. But if government pays for it, they will have the ultimate control.
Everybody knows that the Dem goal is government rationing and control. Why Dems want that in a country that stands for individual freedom is beyond my comprehension. Furthermore, everybody knows that Pres. Obama is lying in his salesmanship. (If it's such a good thing, why lie?) As Rick Moran puts it:
...establishing a system that is deliberately designed to eventually replace private insurance with a single payer government program would never fly in a million years in this country and the left knows it. Hence, the lies about the public option.
The reality that Veterinary care in England and Canada is better, prompter, and more caring than human care is a cautionary tale about government control.
There must be a problem when I see a far-Left Liberal like Nat Hentoff getting worried:
Nat Hentoff: "I am finally scared of a White House administration" [Andy McCarthy]
After all the battles over all these decades, it took Obamacare to scare the daylights out of the renowned libertarian lefty (whom I read in the Village Voice as a kid, debated on Iraq and the Patriot Act, and have always admired for his honesty). His column in the Jewish World Review is here.
The problem is the nationalization of a person's body, ultimately. I want the government's hands off my body and out of my personal life as much as possible. People like Dr. Zeke Emanuel (who does not practice medicine) are the sort of arrogant "We know what's best for you" types that disturb me the most.
Only I know what is best for me and my family. I want to be able to make the choices, to buy whatever insurance I want, to pay medical bills out of pocket if I want the services. And I do not want to see a politicized medical system where the loudest whiners get the money.
Let's step back from the ideological issues (I know the powerful Dems always want more government control of everything and rarely include personal freedom in their political calculus, while Conservatives want government to have less power), and look at the real problems.
The real problems, I think, are these:
1. People equate insurance with medical care. Wrong. That has been an unfortunate accident of history, and it was the fatal error of Medicare. We need much more Major Medical available for people. It is affordable, and it is true insurance.
2. Medical insurance businesses ought to be able to compete across state borders.
3. Portability. People ought to be able to keep a coverage they have.
4. Pre-existing conditions. Insurance regulations ought to require companies to pool those with pre-existing conditions, same as is done with multiple-claim drivers with auto insurance.
5. The costs of the Medicare program. It's almost free to the beneficiaries, regardless of their wealth or poverty. Government created that mess, so fix it, if you can, over time. (I think it should have been means-tested, but too late for that now. How about inching up the age? People in their 60s still work, nowadays. In their 70s too, and plenty of them longer than that.)
6. The uninsured. Let's think a bit about who they are, and what, if anything, ought to be done about them. Medicaid already covers the poor. I know that when I pay a hospital bill it includes a charge for the uninsured, the illegals, etc., just the same as my kids' tuition bill includes an additional charge for the scholarship kids, and just as the price of something at the store includes an additional charge for theft and pilferage. I quote from this essay:
As Steve Chapman argues in the Chicago Tribune, Obama and his allies are proposing way too big a hammer to address the nail representing what is wrong with American health care. The great majority of Americans are happy with their health care. Despite the propaganda, there are not 46 million uninsured Americans who cannot obtain health care or insurance. If you are here illegally, that might explain why you don't have health insurance (nearly 10 million of the 46 million). If you earn over $75,000 a year, and have no insurance (10 million of the 46 million), it isn't, except in very rare cases, because you cannot afford to buy a policy. You have made a choice on how to spend your money, and in essence, have chosen to self-insure . If you qualify for Medicaid or some other government program and don't sign up (another roughly 4.5 million, if not more), whose fault is that? Another 6.5 million of the so-called uninsured are actually insured by Medicaid or S-Chip, but the census taker does not know it. Sally Pipes argues that the number of "uninsured" who would qualify for existing programs is much higher -- as many as 14 million people.
7. Malpractice tort reform. All physicians admit to unnecessary expenses for CYA purposes. Legal concerns rather than medical judgement plays a far larger role in American medicine than people realize.
8. The money spent on medical care in America. I happen to think it's great. We spend more money on medical things because that is what people in wealthy nations do. Dental implants, new knees and hips, physical therapy, psychotherapy, arterial stents, antidepressants, Alzheimer treatments, lazer vision treatment, cornea transplants, etc. That's why Americans at age 70 are so active and in such good shape compared to anywhere else in the world. It's a good thing for medical care to be such a big driver of the economy: what better use of money is there? It only becomes a "problem" when government has to pick up the tab.
In conclusion, I ask that you folks in government please stop doing things "for us." We Americans can figure it out ourselves. We always have, through good times and bad.
Best regards,
Bird Dog
PS: If you wish to respond, please do not respond with the standard talking points. I do not buy them.
Monday, August 17. 2009
Well, it appears they closed down the manifestly un-American and unconstitutional flag@whitehouse.org. Don't worry, though, you can still get your Stasi jollies telling the executive branch hall monitors at whitehouse.gov/realitycheck that someone you don't like is chewing gum in class and is hiding a pack of smokes in their gym locker.
 My plan, after today, is to stay away from the news until Labor Day. Not other interesting subjects, just news.
I'd never read the news if my American freedoms were not under daily threat by government (of any or either political party).
I need a short sabbatical (sitting by the pool hallucinating by watching the mermaids in my pool and letting my blood pressure return to normal) from my active membership in the highly-organized mob, from our secret cabal of hate-spewing, un-American evil ones who worry about too much Federal government power over our lives and who have the intolerable audacity of hope to say so, and to question our Dear Leaders.
(As I said the other day, in a mixed economy as the US has (if we can keep it), government becomes just one more special interest with their own goals and agendas, their own desires for money and power and chicks, their careerists, their criminals, their corruption, their cupidity, their influence-peddling, and their hordes of dependent bureacratic employees. Their only difference from most other organizations is that they do not have to show a profit and they do not have to be smart.)
However, given the attempted government take-over of medical care in the US (see list of their tactics, and dig this about how much they are spending on ads), this seemed an important cautionary tale:
Canadian Health Care "Imploding"-- Doctors Meet & Discuss Private Options
What a genius idea! A private option! As in freedom to pay for the medical care you want, and to buy whatever insurance you might want? Like in America?
Maybe the government-centric view of life isn't all it's cracked up to be. I am an adult. I am a man, I spell M-A-N. If government is supposed to be my parent, I prefer to be an orphan. Nor do I want a Philosopher-King. I am my own Philosopher-King of my own life, thank you very much. That's the whole point of America.
Our friend Ace has a remarkably serious post on the topic of medical insurance. I wish I had written it, but I was too busy having fun with the horses. He says - and I totally agree -
The reason that employees at companies that pay for insurance get most of this paid for is that their employer is merely paying them wages in a different form; i.e., rather than pay you an extra $10 a week or $500 per year, they'll pay $500 of medical expenses you would otherwise have to pay yourself.
They're not "insuring" you. You cannot be "insured" against a "risk" 100% guaranteed to occur.
They're just delivering wages in a roundabout fashion.
and
Individual mandates, for one.
To be perfectly honest with you, I personally am not completely opposed to this one, in principle, assuming it would take a tolerable form.
But I don't assume that. It will take an intolerable form. I assume it will take the form of the stupidest, vote-buyingest, most socialistic scheme possible, so I oppose it in fact.
So long as it's not greatly socialist -- e.g., young people, with barely any need for insurance at all (which is why they skip it) are overcharged ludicrously so they are forced to subsidize the elderly, who use a lot of insurance dollars. Or rich people are forced to pay money for the poor. In that case, I could kinda get behind it, or at least not bother myself to oppose it strenuously.
Or it covers anything except unpredictable, rare, catastrophic health crises.
This idea that taxpayers ought to pay for someone's eyeglasses or routine visits to the doctor or utterly-predictable need of antibiotics or flu immunizations is, well, two words; In. Sane.
As my final point on the topic for a few weeks, I see the WSJ is repeating what I always say: Who has a better use for their money than to treat their disease or to keep their health? It's what prosperous people do. One quote:
Though it hasn't been widely realized, the desire for shelter was a major driver of the U.S. economy during the second half of the 20th century and the first several years of the 21st. About one-third of the new jobs created during the latter period were directly or indirectly related to housing, as the stupendous ripple effect of the bursting housing bubble should make painfully obvious.
Once these material needs are substantially met, desire for health care—without which there can be no enjoyment of food, clothing or shelter—becomes a significant, perhaps a principal, driver of the economy. A little-noticed feature of the current recession is the role of the health-care industry as a resilient driver of the general economy.
Yes, spending on medical treatment is a wonderful thing and a great privilege. People should want to spend more on it. Just check out my dental implants, or read my (stainless steel) left hip. Good stuff, but not cheap - but worth every penny, and only easily available in the good old USA.
Saturday, August 15. 2009
Government is the most powerful and dangerous "special interest" that exists. Everybody knows that. George Washington predicted it.
Government power is the flaw of democracy. That's why they wanted a Constitutional Republic, but Lincoln and FDR erased that ideal for most purposes. What "Constitution"?
It's the businesses, poverty pimps, and unions (so they do not have to fuss about it) that support government medical care (but the poor already have Medicaid). It's the people who do not support a government take-over. They are not impressed by how government runs things, for good reason.
I heard on the radio today that the Prez admitted that he has never read the latest medical care bill. Well, a good salesman can sell ice to Eskimos.
It is wonderful to see that Americans still want freedom from government control, aka "government help." Kudlow points out today that, in Georgia, you can get good medical insurance (including Major Dental - wow! My teeth are a mess) for $120/month. Of course, federal law forbids interstate medical insurance.
Why? It's supporting some friends of some politicians. Government is the most insidious and potent "special interest."
Toon via S,C &A;
Monday, August 10. 2009
 We have frequently opined here that too many Americans go to college, wasting time and money and extending adolescence in those who could and should be doing real things in the real world, and getting life experience instead of mastering beer pong and Leftist theory about how to remain a dependent throughout life on the effort of others. A solid high school education was good enough for Bill Gates, and ought to be a good platform for lifetime learning for them as wants it.
Anybody can go to the library and find a free book to guide them through Aristotle, Plato, Aquinus, Locke, Burke, and Hume. Anybody who doesn't feel moved to do so does not belong in college anyway: for them, it's just expensive day care as it was for Sebastian Flight.
Knowledge is cheap and readily accessible these days for all (thank God) - but learning is never easy.
The smart people I know just used their silly academic credentials so they could get a good apprenticeship in some useful and profitable line of work. That's what I had to do. My fancy law degree (which cost me lots of money) just gave me the chance to learn law afterwards. It is a dumb and/or corrupt system in which academic credentials, however empty or enriching, are required. Monopolistic, I believe, on the part of the Big Academia industry/cartel.
I have no trust in Big Academia. Like the tort bar, Big Academia is bought off and in the pocket of the Lefties. Follow the money...
Reason agrees (with a Reason video).
Photo: Harvard Yard. They can give you a pricey credential, but what you can do with it or chose to do with it, in the end, depends on you.
Saturday, August 8. 2009
 Well, it's not all bla bla bla.
As in this case: Most women are not, in my view, angry bitch psychotic academic victimized mini-monsters. The Retriever's Grandma, for instance (image on right from that post).
Here at Maggie's (Maggie is herself a tough old broad with a sense of humor and doesn't mind getting her hands dirty), we hold strong, cheerful, independent, humorous, tender, gutsy, intelligent, loving women in the highest regard.
More re women: our hero Charles puts Palin in perspective. I think he is right. Nothing to do with her charisma or gender. We like her very much, and hate the contempt she receives for having a non-elite life style.
Disney accused of defending heteronormativity. Not a joke. It does sound perverted, doesn't it? Not by accident.
American women have it worse than any women in the world. Just ask any wife: she'll tell ya all about it if you can get her off the computer for a minute. Always shopping for the latest new colors in burkhas to get stoned in, you know?
How do our neopuritanical Sociologist types discuss such things? Bruce found this, about social stratification on the internet. I learned a new word: homophily. It also sounds like a perversion, but it means that people often tend to hang out with people they feel comfortable with.
Well, golly gee! Smack me with a mackeral and call me Edna! Thank God for the science of sociology to inform us of that. Maybe I am an exception, but I very much enjoy people who are different too, if they bring something to the table. Still, family is family, a paisan is a paisan, and a tribe is a tribe.
Thursday, July 23. 2009
At last night’s press conference, President Obama epitomized what’s gone wrong among our country’s elites.
Without respect for the facts already known and in prejudgment President Obama declared his friend Harvard University professor Henry Gates innocent and that the police “acted stupidly” in arresting him for creating a public disturbance in the street in the middle of the night. (See ABC’s coverage.) Gates is director of the Institute for African and African-American Research named after radical W.E.B. DuBois who in 1953 eulogized Joseph Stalin as “simple, calm and courageous…he knew the common man, felt his problems, followed his fate….He [Stalin] was attacked and slandered as few men of power have been…” Gates is another of President Obama’s unique friends with a chip on their shoulder about America.
In our democracy, the elites are not supposed to be anointed by God or hereditary, nor allowed any special governmental privileges, rights or exceptions from the laws that govern everyone else. Elites in America should earn respect for their character, accomplishments and contributions alone.
Consider how far we’ve gone in another direction, toward self-selected groups flaunting their disregard of common morality and sense, and even the law, as if immune or above the obligations and restrictions necessary to maintaining a society and government of free peoples working in comity and decency toward individual and national advancements above personal benefits and pelf.
Even another liberal and racially defensive Black professor, who (in my opinion) was treated unfairly by blustering, bullying Bill O’Reilly, says of Gates and Obama’s behavior:
I might be kicked out of "The Black scholars club" for saying this, but the truth is that I don't feel sorry for Henry Louis Gates. America is far more capitalist than it is racist, so a distinguished Harvard University Professor like Gates is likely to get more respect than the average White American. The idea that he is somehow the victim of the same racism that sends poor Black men to prison simply doesn't fly with me, and Gates should be careful about appearing to exploit the plight of Black men across America to win his battle of egos with the Cambridge Police Department.
There is no doubt in this professor’s knowledge and experience, nor in mine, that the poor and disheveled, and especially Blacks, are often profiled unequally and unfairly compared to well-dressed, articulate Whites. There is, also, no doubt in this professor’s, nor in mine, that our police work hard under difficult and even life-threatening circumstances to enforce laws in hazy conditions in which they must act quickly and decisively. When called out to investigate what may be a breach of the law, for those questioned to verbally or physically attack the officer is clearly unacceptable and illegal.
Yet, President Obama, as with the local Congressional wannabe whose host and guest did so and whom the local hack defends by waging a media campaign to diss the police, we see from high to low a behavior by a genre of political elite that defies the very basis of our democracy, and gravely undermines it.
This press conference comment by President Obama should not be seen as extraordinary or exceptional but as directly indicative of what’s off base generally with much of our newer elites in politics, education, business who believe they are above the law or morality, and when one examines their acts one too often finds that they have manipulated laws and programs to insulate themselves from the ravages they visit upon other citizens.
BTW, he’s not a racist cop. And, there was a Hispanic and a Black policemen at the scene.
Also BTW, compare to former President Bush's respect for the law.
Monday, July 20. 2009
Dr. Bob has penned a definitive essay on the topic of preventive medicine. It's all true, and all docs know it. One quote:
One big-picture aspect of this huge transformation in American health care which seems to be receiving little or no attention is its heavy emphasis on preventive medicine. We have been hearing for some time about how preventive medicine will save substantial sums of money and thereby make the overall health care system far less costly. Of course, such rhetoric has an enormous appeal at a surface level — after all, if you can prevent diseases, you certainly don’t need to spend money to cure them.
Who could argue with this?
But this innocent-sounding, simplistic Trojan horse will prove deadly for American health care, and end up empowering the bureaucrats and politicians who will, in fact, gain the most from this change in direction.
Read the whole thing.
Sunday, July 19. 2009
A bit cornball, but true - and good for kids: The American Trinity, from Prager (h/t Moonbattery):
The rarest thing on the Internet is an author thinking deeply and then writing simply and elegantly. So rare as to be practically non-existent. Practically, but not completely. Gerard at American Digest is such a person:
The History of your browser tells me where you have been and what you have seen, but your Bookmarks tell me who you are and what you believe.
Mark Twain remarked, "You tell me whar a man gits his corn pone, en I'll tell you what his 'pinions is." Bookmarks are the corn pone from which your 'pinions are baked, but if you have the kind of soul that has run "Clear History" on your life your 'pinions are not likely to have any foundation in the long history of Freedom, but only yearn towards a Utopian tomorrow that never knows.
Much of the current disunity seen in our politics arises between those who ran "Clear History" in November of 2000 and those who saw History return with a vengeance in September of 2001.
One group is determined to deny History expunge the Declaration and shred the Constitution in pursuit of a utopia that's buried in a global network of mass graves. Another group are those who believe in the American idea and are determined let this new birth of freedom work its way across the world. Absent a defining historical event of global significance, this twain shall not meet. There is, of course, a third group of people who want to merely get on with their happy world untroubled by History, either cleared or present as a clear and present danger.
It's three years old and rerun, so you know it's not 20/20 hindsight talking.
Clear History at American Digest.
Saturday, July 18. 2009
 It looks like we are on the subject of health freedom today. What I have observed over the past ten years is that people increasingly equate insurance coverage with medical care. That's sad.
In my view, it's a pathologically infantile sense of entitlement when people expect others to take care of them. Sad, indeed when Americans can afford their cars and car insurance and computers and iPods and cell phones etc. but expect somebody else to pay their bills if they get sick.
My view is that every responsible adult needs cheap catastrophic medical coverage - what used to be called Major Medical, with the deductible of your choice. Budget into your life the costs of your kid's broken arm and annual $120 camp physical - or don't have kids. If there's a big problem, the Major Medical will cover you. Like if you have a heart attack, break your back falling off a ladder, or if your kid gets shot in the eye with a BB gun.
I want to know what the Dems want to cover with their grand plan to "reduce" medical costs:
Will they cover Reike, massage therapy, homeopathy, acupuncture, chiropractic, crystal therapy, therapeutic touch, late-term abortion, breast enhancement, plastic and cosmetic surgery, hopeless chemotherapy and radiation therapy, eye movement therapy, light therapy, Chinese herbal medicine, hypnosis, social workers, bunion removal, in vitro fertilization, elective Psychoanalysis, alcohol rehab, penile implants, heart transplants, high colonic cleansings, liposuction, ingrown toenails and toenail fungus, Native Indian Soul Renewal, and liver transplants?
And do you want politicians making these decisions for you?
Me? I want the government 100% out of medical care and medical choices, because they have no idea what they are doing. No more of a clue than they know how to run GM - or the corner candy shop. I know what my private family policy covers. I chose it, I pay for it, and it's cheaper than the family's car insurance.
What the heck does the government have to do with these decisions, anyway?
Thursday, July 16. 2009
Myron Magnet on The Obsolete New York Model at City Journal. One quote:
Struggling under the accumulated burden of eight decades of “progressive” government, we New Yorkers can serve as a warning to our fellow Americans as President Obama, following the New Deal playbook, seeks to use the current financial crisis to provide a new rationale and legitimacy for the gargantuan machinery of the federal government. Our economic ills, the president contends, require expanding the welfare state to include the majority of Americans not just in Medicare and Social Security but also in government-subsidized and -controlled health care and higher education—all paid for by an ever smaller percentage of the citizens, in the name of European-style redistributionist “fairness.” Logically, this plan is a non sequitur (in the process of turning, by constant repetition, into a Big Lie), since health care and education have nothing to do with the causes or cure of our present economic woes. But logic aside, consider New York’s government-controlled services and ask if they are worth taking to nationwide scale. Take a good look at the president’s tax plans, too, which will end up with many more Americans paying nothing and many fewer paying most of the bills. Once the tax eaters outnumber the taxpayers and can vote themselves an income, you have arrived at elective despotism.
Wednesday, July 15. 2009
"Universal health care isn't worth our freedom." From Dr. Tom Szasz in the WSJ this morning:
Henry David Thoreau famously remarked, "If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life." Thoreau feared a single, unarmed man approaching him with such a passion in his heart. Too many people now embrace the coercive apparatus of the modern state professing the same design.
and
Our national conversation about curbing the cost of health care is crippled by the vocabulary in which we conduct it. We must stop talking about "health care" as if it were some kind of collective public service, like fire protection, provided equally to everyone who needs it. No government can provide the same high quality body repair services to everyone. Not all doctors are equally good physicians, and not all sick persons are equally good patients.
If we persevere in our quixotic quest for a fetishized medical equality we will sacrifice personal freedom as its price. We will become the voluntary slaves of a "compassionate" government that will provide the same low quality health care to everyone.
Monday, July 13. 2009
Booker in The Telegraph begins:
The moves now being made by the world's political establishment to lock us into December's Copenhagen treaty to halt global warming are as alarming as anything that has happened in our lifetimes. Last week in Italy, the various branches of our emerging world government, G8 and G20, agreed in principle that the world must by 2050 cut its CO2 emissions in half. Britain and the US are already committed to cutting their use of fossil fuels by more than 80 per cent. Short of an unimaginable technological revolution, this could only be achieved by closing down virtually all our economic activity: no electricity, no transport, no industry. All this is being egged on by a gigantic publicity machine, by the UN, by serried ranks of government-funded scientists, by cheerleaders such as Al Gore, last week comparing the fight against global warming to that against Hitler's Nazis, and by politicians who have no idea what they are setting in train.
What makes this even odder is that the runaway warming predicted by their computer models simply isn't happening. Last week one of the four official sources of temperature measurement, compiled from satellite data by the University of Huntsville, Alabama, showed that temperatures have now fallen to their average level since satellite data began 30 years ago.
Whole thing here. (h/t, Mr. Free Market)
Saturday, July 11. 2009
Story at Never Yet Melted.
My familiarity with Ubuntu is limited indeed, but I am familiar enough with Christianity to suspect that the Bishop is proposing to invent a new religion based on communitarian political principles rather than on the search for a sustaining personal relationship with Christ and God.
Most of us can figure out our relationships with other humans relatively well on our own, without the Bishop's instructions. It's God that we need help with.
Thursday, July 9. 2009
Mark Steyn quoting De Toqueville in his review of Soft Despotism, Democracy's Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and the Modern Prospect by Paul Anthony Rahe:
I see an innumerable crowd of like and equal men who revolve on themselves without repose, procuring the small and vulgar pleasures with which they fill their souls.
He didn’t foresee “Dancing with the Stars” or “American Idol” but, details aside, that’s pretty much on the money. He continues:
Over these is elevated an immense, tutelary power, which takes sole charge of assuring their enjoyment and of watching over their fate. It is absolute, attentive to detail, regular, provident, and gentle. It would resemble the paternal power if, like that power, it had as its object to prepare men for manhood, but it seeks, to the contrary, to keep them irrevocably fixed in childhood … it provides for their security, foresees and supplies their needs, guides them in their principal affairs…
The sovereign extends its arms about the society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of petty regulations—complicated, minute, and uniform—through which even the most original minds and the most vigorous souls know not how to make their way… it does not break wills; it softens them, bends them, and directs them; rarely does it force one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one’s acting on one’s own … it does not tyrannize, it gets in the way: it curtails, it enervates, it extinguishes, it stupefies, and finally reduces each nation to being nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.
Welcome to the twenty-first century.
Appleton at Spiked wants to take a stand against hyper-regulation of life by government. One quote:
It is not so much that the state is remoulding civil society. Instead, the state is demanding that we live our everyday lives through it. We are invited for a walk with the state; we are invited to eat with the state. More and more of social life is now lived through the state as an intermediary. Our everyday actions are supervised – and authorised – by an official bureaucracy.
Wednesday, July 8. 2009
I shared a lunch table at Jimbos – great vegetarian dishes -- the other day with a young Israeli mother, living in the US now, her career being the dancing styles of India. We discussed our younger adventurous feelings of immortality when traveling to places we wouldn’t now, and how we naturally as parents protectively shelter our children from following – even knowing too much about – our younger selves. She’d served in the Israeli Defense Force, as most Israelis do, and wasn’t startled, as most American Jews are, when I told her I’d volunteered for the US Marine Corps and served in Vietnam.
At my, of course politically liberal, synagogue, to my knowledge there’s only one other former Marine, a Naval Academy grad, who served in Iraq. Otherwise, there’s a very small group who send packages to our troops serving in combat zones. There’s organizations within our faith who foster support for Jews currently serving, such as this one. But, the oldest veterans organization in America, the Jewish War Veterans, is primarily composed of ancient WWII vets. Jews who served of my generation haven’t joined the JWV, still stung by its turning against support during Vietnam, and otherwise feeling we have better things to do with our time.
Yet, this stirring site detailing of the over 1-million Jews who have served in our military, many earning the highest medals and commendations for valor (for example: General Douglas MacArthur in one of his speeches said, “I am proud to join in saluting the memory of fallen American heroes of Jewish faith.”), doesn’t mention how relatively few Jews serve today. An estimate has fewer than 15,000 Jews serving today in our 1.4-million armed services (about 1% versus our 2.1% of Americans who are Jewish), out of our US population of about 5.3-million. I think the number is an underestimate, but in order of magnitude not far off. Compare this photo of Jews in our WWI American Expeditionary Force celebrating the Passover Seder in Paris in 1919, with the size of this grouping at a Seder in Fallujah, Iraq.
Less the case here in San Diego than elsewhere, the ultra-liberal droning of most Rabbis from the Bimah (elevated platform) and anti-military/anti-war attitudes of most congregations alienates many Jews, about 25% of whom are politically conservative. Most American Jews, who once were one or two steps removed from knowing first-hand the need to fight oppressions abroad, are now risen to prominence and relative well-being and comforts. They vote overwhelmingly for candidates opposed to US efforts and sacrifices to fight the same jihadist and Iranian and Saudi funded existential enemies of the US and of Israel. They have little clue of the tough Jews who excelled, even as leading mobsters.
In Israel, where extraordinary concentrations of hard work and brilliance has created one of the world’s most advanced miracles, still our brothers and sisters serve for survival, even excelling at practicing heightened moral sensitivities in war (see this excellent review of the performance and issues by a British commander in Afghanistan speaking last month at Jerusalem’s Center for International Affairs on “Hamas, The Gaza War And Accountability Under International Law”). Yet, supposed guardians of international law practice a one-sided view when it comes to Israel, waging a “legal war” against Israel, Human Rights Watch even touting it to gain funding from Saudi Arabia. Today, in America, although a small minority among Jews, there’s well-funded Jewish “peace” groups, like J-Street, very secular but of Jewish heritage, who echo such slanderous and disastrous memes. Even Obama-endorsing Mort Zuckerman called it the “J Street Jive” and our most liberal Reform movement president Eric Yoffe, who says “I am a dove myself,” called its posture on the Gaza operations “morally deficient, profoundly out of touch with Jewish sentiment and also appallingly naïve.”
In 1967’s deepest worry during the initial reversals in the then latest seemingly overwhelming attack upon Israel, at the heavily Jewish Brooklyn College, where anti-Vietnam sentiment was as widespread as elsewhere on American campuses, there was a long line at Hillel to volunteer to fight in the IDF. We were rejected as untrained and a likely hindrance. To my knowledge, I’m the only one who upon graduation the next year volunteered and joined the USMC and served in Vietnam.
Today, even among the staunchest American Christian allies of Israel, there’s increasingly widespread dismay, even sometimes oozing into disgust, at the unwillingness of so many prominent Jews and of so many Jewish voters to stand up to the weaker-willed and hostile within Obama’s administration who jeopardize Israel as willingly as they excuse Iran’s oppressors.
So, back to my lunch the other day. In my dotage, I have two young sons, who will ultimately make their own decisions in life, including whether to serve in our armed forces. My luncheon companion’s young daughter will not have that choice, should they return to Israel, and must serve in the IDF. In either case, whether here or there, Jews cannot avoid facing up to whether we will live up to the painful lessons of our forebears, and fight for what’s not only right but the survival and triumph of our deepest roots – now too often relegated by comforts earned and won by the blood of our older members of the faith – as Rabbi Hillel famously said, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” Or, are we to be “out to lunch”?
At the very least, when next lunching at a sports bar or such, if you see a young soldier, Marine or sailor, buy him a beer and say “thanks for serving.”
Monday, July 6. 2009
From VDH on Our Chrysalis Stage, sounding like a number of our recent posts:
Obama has surrounded himself with legions of ‘fixers.’ Bright men and women who have Ivy League law degrees, business school credentials, PhDs in the social sciences, and academic pedigrees in science, humanities, and engineering. Quite impressive, these Platonic Guardians of the soon to be perfect state. But most of their careers in finance, government, business, and academia have been well paid jobs critiquing, administering, regulating, nuancing, writing about, and hectoring those who create things–builders, developers, industrialists, farmers, truckers, transportation execs, retailers, lenders and investors.
We are being run now by film critics not directors, book reviewers not writers, music columnists, not musicians. And it is far easier to fault than to birth, nuance rather than build. The irony is that the muscular classes carry the regulating and talking classes on their backs. They don’t mind being whipped occasionally and even bridled, but like any good mule will suddenly stop and no longer move when they feel the rider either does not know where he is going, or is going to kill the mule with his switch, spurs, and yanking on the bit.
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A friend recommends a book about the Kelo case -