PRE-brief: Politics, Religion, Economics - All Discussed Briefly

Back from the Dead - Into The Radio

2010-07-08T18:19:00.001-04:00

I'm back from the dead after yet another blog break. The quick update on the Maurice Brubaker brouhaha is that Maurice lost the election fairly handily. A few weeks later an investigator showed up on my doorstep to go over the complaint. We should have the results of the hearing in a few weeks. It will probably involve a fine of both Maurice and his Dad somewhere north of $1000 each.

In other news . . .

I had the opportunity today to be on the On The Mark live radio program again. They had me on as a guest to talk about my views on property rights and zoning. It was a pleasant forum and I really appreciate their willingness to hear me out on what are no doubt minority viewpoints. In today's world, the eradication of liberty and property rights is almost complete. The American liberty experiment is almost over. My township isn't going down without a fight.

If you would like to listen to the audio, you may find it here. I am introduced at the 28 minute mark and begin talking about property rights at the 40 minute mark.

Big Vote Tomorrow & Who I'm Supporting

2010-05-17T16:42:00.002-04:00

Every election is important, some are critical. With our state and country accelerating out of control in the wrong direction, I sincerely hope you plan on voting tomorrow. If you haven't yet decided who to vote for, here's a list of candidates I think best exemplify a firm commitment to the Constitution, to Life, to honesty and integrity, and to liberty. They should have your vote in tomorrow's election.

Governor: Sam Rohrer
Hands down, no contest, this guy is the real deal. He's been a leader and a statesmen in the PA Legislature for many years and he's the best gubernatorial candidate for this state - ever. He also has a really good chance at winning, so vote for the lesser known guy who has principles.

Lieutenant Governor: Chet Beiler
Chet has a solid conservative message, but I get a little concerned with some of the people who surround him from time to time. There are so many candidates in this race, I'm supporting him because I think he has the best chance to beat Cawley, the liberal. Take this support for what it's worth and make your own decision.

Congress, CD10: David Madeira
Again, this guy is also a consistent authentic conservative who has demonstrated he is not afraid to tell the voters the truth rather than what they want to hear.

Legislature, 85th: Fred Keller
This was a little tougher. Fred is running against Betsy Snook and I can't tell which one is more conservative. They probably could both be a little more conservative as far as my far-right politics go, but I've known Fred for 12 years and I trust him to do what he says and listen to the right people.

Legislature, 108th: Chuck Erdman
Chuck supported open government, accountability and transparency before it was popular. He knows how to cut spending and he's shown he has the guts to do it.

State Committee, Snyder County: Mark Harris
He's the more conservative candidate, not perfect, but better.

State Committee, Union County: Dick Rodgers
I designed the mailers he sent out to supervoters. What does that tell you? He's running unopposed.

Union County Committee, Union Township: Billy Allred and Jeremy Duke(write-in)
I would like to continue the work we have done to clean up the GOP in Union County and hold elected Republicans accountable for their actions and honesty. If you happen to live in Union Township, please vote for me and write Jeremy Duke in for the second slot.

Now Go Vote!

Latest On 'Titlegate'

2010-05-07T06:12:00.007-04:00

Yesterday was a busy day.

First there was the two front page-top fold articles in the Milton Standard Journal and the Daily Item about my complaint against 85th District Legislative Candidate Maurice Brubaker. Then the day got interesting.

Newsradio WKOK was reporting the story on their On The Mark talk radio program invited me and Maurice to call in to the show. I was still deciding whether or not to call when Maurice called, so I called in as well. He made some interesting claims. He said there was an error by a campaign staffer early in the campaign. He said he never told anyone verbally that he was a public accountant. Then he said the first time he heard about the problem was yesterday(Wednesday).

That's when they told him I was on the other line and asked if he would be willing to talk to me live - the tone changed; he had to go . . . appointments to keep, you know. So I went on for about 10 minutes and made clear that Maurice was the one perpetuating the myths. I talked about the Republican Spring Fling and the Union Township Meeting which I blogged about previously. With recorded audio proving that Maurice not only did verbally claim to be a public accountant in a public meeting as well as the fact that he knew about the "error" Tuesday night, I think his goose may be cooked.

I found out also that the press release he sent out to correct the "error" also stated that he never said verbally that he was a public accountant. Maurice could have just come clean and apologized, but instead he continues to blame campaign staff, and lie about what he has said. You can listen to the radio exchange here. (right-click and select 'save target as' to save the audio to your computer)

After the radio exchange several radio stations of various types began broadcasting snippets of our comments on the radio during all their local newscasts. I have since emailed copies of the audio and transcript to local media. Who knows what today will bring?

Maurice Brubaker Distorts The Truth Again

2010-05-06T06:46:00.006-04:00

Today's Daily Item article covers the complaint I filed on Tuesday regarding 85th District Candidate Maurice Brubaker's illegal use of the title "Public Accountant." The title of the article is "Job title error stumps pol -Brubaker puzzled why job title in campaign went unchanged." After a brief description of the complaint, the article explains the nature of Brubaker's puzzlement:

"Brubaker said he did not intentionally try to mislead the public. A campaign volunteer mistakenly listed him as a public accountant on Brubaker's Web site and an early press release repeated the inaccuracy, he said. 'I have never intentionally misled anyone about my status,' Brubaker said. 'If there is any misconception in the public mind, let me be clear. I am a senior accountant, not a public accountant. If I or my campaign caused any confusion otherwise, I apologize. I look forward to using my professional experience as a senior accountant when serving as state representative.' . . . He disputes Allred's claims that he has publicly called himself a public accountant on numerous occasions. "

Well Maurice, let me clear it up for you. Your job title in the campaign went unchanged because it wasn't a mistake by your campaign staff, it wasn't an early error that went unnoticed, it was a deliberate attempt by you to deceive the public. Maurice would like the voters to believe that he has not "publicly called himself a public accountant." That's ironic to me because I personally heard him say that in public meetings on numerous occasions and twice in the last week.

Last Thursday, I attended a Republican Spring Fling at La Primavera in Lewisburg. In attendance were State Representative Russ Fairchild and State Senator Jake Corman, CD10 candidates David Madeira and Malcolm Derk, former candidate Dan Meuser, and all three 85th district candidates along with about 75 others. Each candidate was allotted time at the podium to present to the attendees. During his time, Maurice stated unequivocally before the entire crowd that he has been a Public Accountant in Union County for 15 years.

Ironically, after filing my complaint on Tuesday, I attended the regular monthly Union Township Supervisor's Meeting. Maurice attended along with some members of the public. At the beginning of the meeting, as is customary, we gave Maurice a few minutes to officially introduce himself, state his case for the election and answer any questions. During the question and answer session, the following discourse occurred.

Allred: "Are you a Public Accountant?"
Brubaker: "Yes"
Allred: "I noticed you listed that on your website, but when I do a search at the Department of State website, it doesn't list your name as a Public Accountant."
Brubaker: "It is Public Accountant, Senior Public Accountant. That's all I am."
Allred: "Right, but a Public Accountant is an official . . ."
Brubaker: "No, it's not, no."
Allred: "Well you need to read Pennsylvania Code Title 49 . . ."
Brubaker: *I will."
Allred: " . . . Section 11.7"
Brubaker: "We did . . . We are . . . I appreciate that. We did check it out with the Pennsylvania . . . but we can do that. That's not a problem."
Allred: "Ok. I just think it's a, if you're using that term Public Accountant . . ."
Brubaker: "There's a difference . . ."
Allred: ". . . it's a slam to other professional recognized . . ."
Brubaker: "No, It's been verified, so."
Allred: " Well, I think you need to check the law."
Brubaker: "We'll definitely check that for you, that's not a problem."

So, I've presented my evidence, but Maurice "disputes Allred's claims that he has publicly called himself a public accountant." Maurice wants you to believe that this was an early campaign error perpetuated in print over and over, but never noticed by him. The law is below. You be the judge.

PA Title 49 Section 11.7
11.7. Use of the designation ‘‘public accountant’’ and the abbreviation ‘‘PA.’’
(a) Only the following individuals and entities may use the designation ‘‘public accountant,’’ the abbreviation ‘‘PA,’’ or any other title, designation, words, letters or abbreviation tending to indicate that the user is a public accountant or is composed of public accountants:
(1) An individual who holds a public accountant registration and a current license from the Board.
(2) An individual who holds a certificate of certified public accountant from the Board or who has received written notification from the Board that he is qualified to receive a certificate of certified public accountant.
(3) A qualified association that holds a current license from the Board.
(b) An individual or qualified association engaged in the practice of public accounting may not use the designation ‘‘public accountant,’’ the abbreviation ‘‘PA’’ or any other title, designation, words, letters or abbreviation tending to indicate that the user is a public accountant or composed of public accountants unless the user holds a current license from the Board.
(c) The following are examples of unlawful use under this section:
(1) An individual who is registered by the Board as a public accountant but who does not hold a current license uses a business card bearing the designation ‘‘public accountant.’’ Explanation: The individual shall obtain a current license to use the designation ‘‘public accountant.’’
(2) An individual who is certified by the Board as a CPA but who does not hold a current license signs tax returns that he prepares for clients as ‘‘John Doe, PA.’’ Explanation: The individual shall obtain a current license to use the abbreviation ‘‘PA’’ because the preparation of tax returns while using such an abbreviation constitutes the practice of public accounting.
(d) An individual or entity that violates this section shall be subject to disciplinary action, as appropriate, under sections 9.1, 12, 14 and 16 of the act (63 P. S. § § 9.9a, 9.9c, 9.14 and 9.16).

DOS Complaint Filed over Illegal Claims by 85th Candidate Maurice Brubaker

2010-05-05T00:46:00.001-04:00

Today I filed an official complaint with the Professional Compliance Office
within the Pennsylvania Department of State. The full complaint and supporting evidence is here.

The complaint focuses on the fact that 85th District Candidate Maurice Brubaker
has repeatedly referred to himself in print and verbally as a "Public
Accountant." Although, Maurice’s father Robert is listed by the Department of
State as a public accountant, Maurice is not listed. Similar to the licensing
required for a Lawyer or Medical Doctor, the state of Pennsylvania has strict
laws (Title 49, Chapter 11.7) forbidding anyone without a license from referring
to themselves as a "Public Accountant" or a "Certified Public Accountant."

Maurice has repeatedly used this designation to overstate his qualifications for
the State House. By listing this falsehood on his website, in campaign speeches
and campaign press releases, he has deceived the local press into repeating it.
It is degrading to true professional engineers, lawyers, medical doctors,
accountants, etc. who have achieved this official license from the state.

I am choosing to publicize this complaint because the Department of State may
take up to 14 days to begin its investigation. By that time, the primary
election will be over and this will be fodder for the Democratic Party. As a
conservative Republican, I believe we need to properly vet our own candidates
and deal with those who are untruthful or unethical. For too long we have been
unwilling to call out our own for their misdeeds and as a result we end up as
part of the corrupt machine that continues to produce poor candidates. As a
Union County Republican Committeeman, it is my responsibility to make sure the
candidates our party lists on the ballot are honest and upright. The voters
deserve candidates they can trust.

I call upon Maurice and his campaign to publicly acknowledge that Maurice is NOT
a "Public Accountant” and to apologize to the voters for overstating his
qualifications and diluting the seriousness of the licensing of professional
occupations.

Most Republican Politicians Are Not Pro-Life

2010-04-28T22:34:00.005-04:00

Most Republican politicians are not Pro-Life, they are pro-reelection. They use and abuse the Pro-Life label throughout their election campaigns to shake up the voters, raise funds and get votes, but as soon as the election is over . . . They do absolutely nothing to promote life.

Writes Laurence Vance, "I have seen it reported in several places that Planned Parenthood, one of the world’s leading abortion providers, received government grants and contracts of $350 million for fiscal year 2007-2008 and $337 million for fiscal year 2006-2007. I verified this information for myself on the Planned Parenthood website. I also discovered that Planned Parenthood’s fiscal year ends on June 30. This means that Bush the Republican was the president during this time. But after doing a little digging, I also found out that Planned Parenthood received government grants and contracts of $305 million (34%) during fiscal year 2005-2006. During this time we not only had Bush the Republican president but also a Republican majority in Congress. Yet, Planned Parenthood was still funded. And we are supposed to take Republicans seriously when they complain that Obama isn’t likely to appoint an anti-abortion judge to the Supreme Court? Why wasn’t the Republican Party that concerned about abortion when clinics affiliated with Planned Parenthood performed 264,943 abortions in 2005?"

What we hear over and over again from these same Republicans and parroted by leaders within the movement is that since 1972 the only remedy to all these murders is to elect Republican candidates who will send Pro-Life justices to the court.

That is pure hogwash. Here are five things truly Pro-Life politicians can start doing now, without waiting for the Supreme Court:

1. Cosponsor the Sanctity of Life Act defining life's beginning at conception.

2. Cosponsor legislation using their Constitutionally-granted ability to limit the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court on this issue.

3. Refuse to vote yes on any/every spending bill containing funds for population control.

4. Repeal roadblocks to quick, painless and cheap adoptions.

5. Expose and refuse to work with Republicans who will not take steps 1-4.

For a more lengthy explanation of steps 1-3, why these will work to end abortion in this country, and how very few Republicans are willing to take these steps, read Vance's article entitled, The Pro-Life Assault on Ron Paul and the Constitution.

"Raise Our Taxes" - Leaves Me Speechless

2010-04-22T10:18:00.003-04:00

I'll report; you decide. I'm left speechless over this news report from the Illinois Capitol. Perhaps they should have taken up a collection at the rally . . .

Thousands of protesters at Illinois Capitol to press for tax increase
Posted by Michelle Manchir and Ray Long at 11:50 a.m.; last updated at 3:12 p.m.

SPRINGFIELD --- Thousands of protesters bused down by labor unions and social service advocates rallied at the Capitol today in an attempt to pressure state lawmakers into raising the income tax to avoid more budget cuts.

A spokesman for Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White estimated the rally crowd at 15,000, with more than 12,000 marching around the building. That would appear to make it the largest Capitol protest since the Equal Rights Amendment crowds a quarter-century ago.

Bus after bus pulled up on streets surrounding the Capitol complex and dumped sign-waving protesters clad in purple, green, red and blue shirts that represented a show of strength from a variety of public employee unions and dozens of groups that formed what they named the “Responsible Budget Coalition.” (You can see a photo gallery by clicking here.)

"Raise my taxes! Raise my taxes! Raise my taxes!" they chanted, lined up shoulder to shoulder for a few hundred yards stretching a street in front of the Capitol.

"These 177 people who have a job don't want to do their job," said Henry Bayer, head of the Illinois chapter of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, referring to the number of lawmakers in the House and Senate. "Yes people are hurting, that's why we need a tax increase....If you try to leave town without doing your job we're going to chase you."

Gov. Pat Quinn is pushing a 33 percent increase in the state income tax rate --- taking it from 3 percent to 4 percent --- to prevent cuts in state spending. Quinn has suggested that education will bear the brunt of the cuts, although that would have to be negotiated with the General Assembly.

Lawmakers, however, are leery about voting to raise taxes during a sluggish economy with an election less than seven months away. At the Capitol, it's thought that the earliest a tax increase vote will come is after the November election.

So organized labor showed up in force at the Capitol today to pressure lawmakers to change their minds.

Among the protesters is Terrie Monaghan, who took a hit last year when her choice was to have no fourth-grade teaching job in Grayslake or share the position with another teacher. She chose the latter, and also works as a substitute teacher and tutors students after school “to make ends meet.

“Half the salary, half the benefits … half of everything,” said Monaghan, 39.

A group of more than 60 teachers, staff and students from downstate Bloomington and Normal wore bright pink shirts and jackets to symbolize the thousands of pink slips circulating statewide. They carried bottled water and signs that read “SOS” that stood for “save our schools.”

Camille Taylor, a guidance counselor nearing retirement, said the district did away with field trips to state parks and the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum this year. “We can’t afford to pay for buses,” she said.

She said she hopped on a charter bus this morning to Springfield “to raise hell, basically.”

Jennifer Ritchason, a middle school social students teacher in Bloomington, came armed with hundreds of letters from her students asking legislators for more money for schools. She said she hopes the children’s words will resonate with the governor and House Speaker Michael Madigan, among other legislators the letters are addressed to.

“If you don’t care about your future, I don’t know what you can truly care about,” she said.

So You Say You Support The 2nd Amendment . . .

2010-04-20T00:36:00.003-04:00

Well then, is it ok for those rights to be abrogated during emergencies like Hurricane Katrina? Which of our other rights can be suspended whenever the government deems it necessary?

Tom Corbett won't say for sure.

"What The Country Really Needs Is More Government Spending" - Florida Tea Partiers

2010-04-16T07:46:00.005-04:00

NPR is not a reliable news source. But . . . The truth is probably in here somewhere.

I don't have any problem believing this report about a Florida Tea Party group that showed up on Tax Day to protest cuts in NASA spending.

These are the types of inconsistencies within the tea party movement that make me wary to identify myself with them. Either we cut spending, or we don't. Either we have smaller government, or we don't. Either we have private capitalism, or we don't.

C'mon Partiers, we need consistency!

Tea Party Protesters Criticize Obama's Space Plan
by Greg Allen

MICHELE NORRIS, host: President Obama's NASA address comes, as it happens, on April 15th, tax day. It's an important day for the Tea Party movement. Members are holding demonstrations today across the country. One of those demonstrations took place today outside the main gates of the Kennedy Space Center. But as NPR's Greg Allen reports, the Tea Partiers were focused more on NASAs future and jobs than they were on the issue of taxes.

GREG ALLEN: They were lined up on both sides of the highway leading into the Kennedy Space Center, with their own disc jockey and sound system. People in passing cars honked and waved. Don Forward(ph) of the Titusville Patriot Group wouldnt guess how many Tea Partiers were expected.

Mr. DON FARWARD (Titusville Patriot Group): Oh, I dont know. We got them all the way from the Villages to Tri-County. Weve got space coast, weve got Malburn(ph), weve got people from the Edgewater group. So, weve got pretty good representation down here today.

ALLEN: The target of their demonstration, President Obama, didnt come this way. He arrived on Air Force One on the shuttle landing strip inside the space center. Nearly every demonstrator carried a sign, sometimes two. And there were a variety of messages. There were the impassioned but generic Tea Party slogans: our liberty and freedom at stake. There were birthers, some holding signs questioning Mr. Obamas U.S. citizenship. But Forward said he was trying to get his group to focus today on a single message.

Mr. FORWARD: Today its about saving space coast job.

ALLEN: Sign said: stop the war on success. And: NASA takes us up, Obama takes us down. Connie Smith(ph) with Space Coast Patriots, said she was mad at the president and at Congress for not providing NASA with a clear direction and a specific mission. She said she didnt have a problem reconciling her Tea Party beliefs with her support for more NASA spending.

Ms. CONNIE SMITH (Space Coast Patriots): Now, some people might say this is an entitlement program. But the space center provides so many more benefits than any entitlement program. We get tons of technology, tons and the high paying jobs that come out of here. What high paying jobs are we getting from Cash For Clunkers?

ALLEN: Although hes scaled back, all but canceled the Constellation manned mission program, President Obama has actually increased the NASA budget. And after the outcry about the Constellation, Mr. Obama has proposed pumping more money into the Kennedy Space Center, with programs that the White House says will add some 4,500 jobs. Like much the president says, Don Forward says he doesnt believe it.

Mr. FORWARD: Im skeptical. I dont think its going to be theyre virtual jobs, you know, its nothing. And this is not going to help the people its going to be a lot of engineers and stuff like that, its not going to help the day to day person who works out at the cape, actually making the cape run, I dont think it is.

ALLEN: Connie Smith said she hoped Democrats in Congress and others here wouldnt be swayed by a few extra dollars, what she called bribes, that may ultimately not help workers or the economy.

Ms. SMITH: This area is a Republican area. You know, I can be conspiratorial and say, is he trying to crush this area? You know, you can look at it like that.

ALLEN: There were certainly no supporters of President Obama to be found among the Tea Partiers outside the Kennedy Space Center today. But I found one person, retired space worker John Schnieder(ph), who had this admission to make.

Mr. JOHN SCHNIEDER (Retired space worker): I dont completely disagree with what hes done. I dont completely.

ALLEN: Schnieder said the president is right to outsource low-orbit manned space travel to the private sector and begin looking to missions beyond the moon. But thats something he says President Obamas plan lacks: a clear mission with a destination.

Mr. SCHNIEDER: We need a target. We need, you know, when John Kennedy said well be on the Moon in 10 years, we were. I mean, we did it. But it took a bunch of money. They, you know, they did not spare the horses when it came to money.

ALLEN: You heard it right in this case, Florida Tea Party members say what the country really needs is more government spending.

Greg Allen, NPR News, at the Kennedy Space Center.

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Where In The World Do You Find Angels Who Are Going To Organize Society For Us?

2010-04-15T03:54:00.003-04:00

Milton Friedman teaches Phil Donahue a few things about greed and capitalism.

Drudge Reports Ron Paul In Dead Heat With Obama

2010-04-14T17:18:00.004-04:00

Rasmussen's latest survey shows Ron Paul 1 point behind Obama in the 2012 election.

I immediately thought of this question from one of the presidential debates. You know, the one hosted by Fox "Fair and Balanced, Defender of the Constitution" News.

Dylan Ratigan Gets It. Do You?

2010-04-08T11:03:00.006-04:00

One Comment: Alan Grayson understands the problem, but as a watchdog style liberal, he sees the answer as reduction of liberty, namely campaign finance reform. Limiting speech is similiar to gun control, it takes things from the good guys while the bad guys retain them. The answer is an informed electorate who will . . .
1. Throw the bums out.
2. Audit the Fed.
3. End the Fed

Thought-Provoking Article Challenges Our Need Of Traffic Government

2010-04-07T10:41:00.005-04:00

Anarchy in the Streets
by Butler Shaffer
April 7, 2010

Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit. ~ Henry Adams

How often do discussions on the prospects of a stateless society produce the response that, without government, there would be "anarchy in the streets"? To many people, the streets are symbolic of society, and with good reason: they are the most visible networks through which we interact with one another. They are much like the major arteries (we even use that word to describe streets), veins, and capillaries that transport blood throughout our bodies. Each can be thought of as the carrier of both food and waste to and from individual cells.

The thought that city streets – upon which we depend for daily functioning – could ever become disorderly, leads most people to accept a governmental policing function of such avenues without much question. We imagine that without speed limits, traffic lights at busy intersections, and all of the varied warnings plastered on tens of thousands of signs that encumber streets in our cities, driving would become a turbulent and destructive undertaking.

For a number of years now, a number of cities in Europe have been experimenting with the removal of all traffic signs – including traffic lights, stop signs, speed limit directives – and with surprising results. Various towns in the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, New Zealand – even the UK! – have joined in the experiment. Contrary to the expectations of those who might expect multi-car pileups throughout the cities, traffic accidents have been dramatically reduced (in one town, dropping from about eight per year to fewer than two). Part of the reason for the increased safety relates to the fact that, without the worry of offending traffic sign mandates, or watching for police speed-traps, or checking the rear-view mirror for police motorcycles, drivers have more time to pay attention to other cars and pedestrians.

The architect of this experiment, the late Hans Monderman, attributed its success to the fact that "it is dangerous, which is exactly what we want." "Unsafe is safe" was the title of a conference held on this practice. Monderman added that this effort "shifts the emphasis away from the Government taking the risk, to the driver being responsible for his or her own risk." Equally significant, drivers now focus more of their attention on other motorists – taking visual cues from one another, informally negotiating for space, turning into an intersection, etc. – instead of mechanistically responding to signs and electronic machines. Monderman stated: "When you don’t know exactly who has right of way, you tend to seek eye contact with other road users. You automatically reduce your speed, you have contact with other people and you take greater care." He added: "The many rules strip us of the most important thing: the ability to be considerate. We’re losing our capacity for socially responsible behavior." In words so applicable to the rest of our politically-structured lives, he declared: "The greater the number of prescriptions, the more people’s sense of personal responsibility dwindles." Monderman expressed the matter more succinctly in saying: "When you treat people like idiots, they’ll behave like idiots."

Formal rules divide us from one another; the more rules that are imposed upon our conduct, the greater the distances among us. Of course, this is the logic upon which the state always acts: to insinuate itself into our relationships with others, substituting its coercively-enforced edicts for our interpersonal bargaining. We become conditioned to look upon strangers as threats, and to regard political intervention as our only means of looking after our own interests.

One sees this mindset of social impotence expressed throughout our lives. I am fond of asking my students why they do not negotiate with retailers for groceries, clothing, and other consumer items. They look at me as though I had suggested they attend movies in the nude. "You can’t do that," they instinctively respond. I then offer examples of persons I have known who make a habit of such bargaining, managing to save themselves hundreds or more dollars each year. Incredulity still prevails. On one occasion, a student raised his hand to inform the class that he had been an assistant manager of a major retail store in Los Angeles, adding "we did this all the time."

How easily we give up on our own social skills, and at what costs. These experiments with traffic-sign abandonment remind us how much we rely upon informal methods of negotiating with other drivers, and the socially-harmonious benefits of our doing so. My own freeway driving experiences provide an example: if another driver signals to move into my lane, or I signal to move into his, more than a simple lane-change takes place. From that point on, there is nothing this other motorist can do – short of intentionally crashing into my car – that will cause me to feel anger toward him. He’s "my guy," and I will feel a sense of neighborliness to him that will generate feelings of protectiveness toward him. "Neighborliness" is a good word to use here: how many of us could honk our horn or make angry hand-gestures at another driver we recognized to be someone that we know?

This is one of the unintended consequences of taking the state out of the business of directing our traffic: we regain our sense of society with others; strangers lose their abstractness, and become more like neighbors to us. If you doubt the pragmatic and social benefits of these experiments, try recalling those occasions in which a traffic light goes out at a major intersection. Motorists immediately – and without any external direction – begin a "round-robin" system of taking turns proceeding through the intersection. One of my seminar students related her experience in this connection. She was parked at the curb, waiting to pick up her mother. She noted that traffic was flowing quite smoothly, and without any significant delays. Then a police officer showed up to direct the traffic, with gridlock quickly ensuing.

A number of years ago, someone wrote an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles newspaper, reporting on a major Beverly Hills intersection where some six lanes of traffic converge. There were no traffic lights governing the situation, with motorists relying on the informal methods of negotiating with one another. The writer – who lives in the area – commented upon the resulting orderliness, going so far as to check police records to confirm just how free of accidents this intersection was.

How counter-intuitive so much of this is to those who have become conditioned to think that the state is the creator of order in our lives. In much the same way that people are discovering how widespread gun ownership reduces violent crime in society, putting power back into the hands of individuals is the most effective way of fostering both the responsible and harmonious relationships we have so childishly expected to arise from our dependence upon, and obedience to, external authorities.

What if the idea of living without coercively imposed rules was to spread from the streets into all phases of our lives? What if we abandoned our habits of looking to others to civilize us and bring us to order, and understood that obedience to others makes us irresponsible? As government people-pushers continue their efforts to micro-manage the details of our lives – what foods and drugs we may ingest; how we are to raise and educate our children; the kinds of cars we may drive and light bulbs we may use; the health-care we are to receive; our optimal weight levels; how we are to provide for our retirement; ad nauseam – might we summon the courage to end our neurotic fixations on "security?"

Might the quality of our lives be greatly enhanced by the transformation in thinking implicit in these traffic experiments? Might they offer flashes of insight into how the individual liberty to assess our own risks and freely act upon the choices we make provide the necessary basis for a life that is both materially and spiritually meaningful? As our institutionalized subservience and dependency continues to destroy us, can we learn that what we and our neighbors have in common is our need to negotiate with and to support one another as autonomous and changing people in a changing and uncertain world?

(Those interested in reading more about this experiment, can google "european cities remove traffic signs," and find links to many articles on the subject.)

Butler Shaffer teaches at the Southwestern University School of Law. He is the author of the newly-released In Restraint of Trade: The Business Campaign Against Competition, 1918–1938 and of Calculated Chaos: Institutional Threats to Peace and Human Survival. His latest book is Boundaries of Order.

Tea Party Activists Are Not As "Homogeneous" As They May Seem

2010-04-06T11:24:00.004-04:00

Survey: Four in 10 Tea Party members are Democrats or independents
By Sean J. Miller - 04/04/10 03:29 PM ET

Four in 10 Tea Party members are either Democrats or Independents, according to a new national survey.

The findings provide one of the most detailed portraits to date of the grassroots movement that started last year.

The national breakdown of the Tea Party composition is 57 percent Republican, 28 percent Independent and 13 percent Democratic, according to three national polls by the Winston Group, a Republican-leaning firm that conducted the surveys on behalf of an education advocacy group. Two-thirds of the group call themselves conservative, 26 are moderate and 8 percent say they are liberal.

The Winston Group conducted three national telephone surveys of 1,000 registered voters between December and February. Of those polled, 17 percent – more than 500 people -- said they were “part of the Tea Party movement.”

“It’s a good sample size,” said David Winston, the polling firm’s director. “It will certainly give us an initial base to follow where these folks are.”

The group is united around two issues – the economy/jobs and reducing the deficit. They believe that cutting spending is the key to job creation and favor tax cuts as the best way to stimulate the economy. That said 61 percent of Tea Party members believe infrastructure spending creates jobs. Moreover, given the choice Tea Party members favor 63-32 reducing unemployment to 5 percent over balancing the budget.

It isn’t a “purely homogeneous” group, said Winston.

The group has a favorable view of Republicans generally but that drops from 71 to 57 percent if they’re asked about Congressional Republicans. Congressional Democrats are viewed very unfavorably by 75 percent of Tea Party members – a uniquely strong antipathy. An overwhelming 95 percent said “Democrats are taxing, spending, and borrowing too much.”

The group also vehemently dislikes President Barack Obama – even more so than those who called themselves Republicans in the survey. Over 80 percent of Tea Party members disapprove of the job he’s doing as president, whereas 77 percent of Republican respondents said they disapprove of Obama. The Tea Party members are also strongly opposed to the Democrats’ healthcare plan, with 82 percent saying they oppose it -- only 48 percent of respondents overall were opposed.

Tea Party members are more likely to be male, slightly older and middle income. Almost half the members of the group reported getting their news about national issues from Fox News, 10 percent of respondents said that talk radio is one of their top two sources, which is seven-points higher than the average voter.

Things Could Be More Peaceful, You Know

2010-04-01T00:44:00.003-04:00

Conflict or Cooperation?

by Walter Williams

Different Americans have different and often intense preferences for all kinds of goods and services. Some of us have strong preferences for beer and distaste for wine while others have the opposite preference -- strong preferences for wine and distaste for beer. Some of us hate three-piece suits and love blue jeans while others love three-piece suits and hate blue jeans. When's the last time you heard of beer drinkers in conflict with wine drinkers, or three-piece suit lovers in conflict with lovers of blue jeans? It seldom if ever happens because beer and blue jean lovers get what they want. Wine and three-piece suit lovers get what they want and they all can live in peace with one another.

It would be easy to create conflict among these people. Instead of free choice and private decision-making, clothing and beverage decisions could be made in the political arena. In other words, have a democratic majority-rule process to decide what drinks and clothing that would be allowed. Then we would see wine lovers organized against beer lovers, and blue jean lovers organized against three-piece suit lovers. Conflict would emerge solely because the decision was made in the political arena. Why? The prime feature of political decision-making is that it's a zero-sum game. One person's gain is of necessity another person's loss. That is if wine lovers won, beer lovers lose. As such, political decision-making and allocation of resources is conflict enhancing while market decision-making and allocation is conflict reducing. The greater the number of decisions made in the political arena, the greater the potential for conflict.

Take the issue of prayers in school as an example. I think that everyone, except a maniacal tyrant, would agree that a parent has the right to decide whether his child will recite a morning prayer in school. Similarly, a parent has a right to decide that his child will not recite a morning prayer. Conflict arises because schools are government owned. That means it is a political decision whether prayers will be permitted or not. A win for one parent means a loss for another parent. The losing parent, in order to get what he wants, would have to muster up private school tuition while continuing to pay taxes for a school for which he has no use. If education were only government financed, as opposed to being government financed and produced, say through education vouchers, the conflict would be reduced. Both parents could have their wishes fulfilled by enrolling their child in a private school of their choice and instead of being enemies, they could be friends.

Conflict in education is just one minor example of how government allocation can raise the potential for conflict. Others would include government-backed allocation of jobs and education slots by race and sex, plus the current large conflict over government allocation of health services. Interestingly enough, the very people in our society who protest the loudest against human conflict and violence are the very ones calling for increased government resource allocation. These people fail to recognize or even wonder why our nation, with people of every race, ethnic group and religious group, has managed to live together relatively harmoniously. In their countries of origin, the same ethnic, racial and religious groups have been trying to slaughter one another for centuries. A good part of the answer is that in the United States, there was little to be gained from being a Frenchman, a German, a Jew, a Protestant or a Catholic. The reason it did not pay was because for most of our history, government played a small part in our lives. When there's significant government allocation of resources, the most effective means of organizing for the gains are those proven most divisive, such as race, ethnicity, religion and region.

As our nation forsakes our founders' wisdom of constitutional limitations placed on Washington, we raise the potential for conflict.

COPYRIGHT 2010 CREATORS.COM

Supporting Soldiers Is Most Needed After They Come Back

2010-03-31T14:49:00.004-04:00

Bitter Laugh

Death the great deceiver
Whispers to the soldier
That the love he bears his comrade
Is the greatest he will know
It sets a mist around him
A force field of emotion
A cloud of blood and hormones
That makes monstrous the foe

And when his friend is wounded
When his life pours out in battle
And his spirit leaves his body
Like smoke rising from a flame
The soldier's gripped by madness
The berserker rage of Ares
And he swoops down like a fury
To savage all within his aim

Then falls the grieving mother
Then falls the aged father
Then fall the little children
Who cannot escape the blast
And when the fever's broken
And the soldier stares in horror
He can hear the ghostly echo
Of the Deceiver's bitter laugh

Now far-off stand the leaders
The commanders in their glory
With the profiteers who ply them
With the gold they wring from blood
But alone you'll find the soldier
In a labyrinth of sorrow
In a never-ending darkness
That has drowned him in its flood

© Chris Floyd

Dick Cheney Is Part of The Problem, Go Away Dick!

2010-03-30T18:37:00.004-04:00

Dangerous Rand Paul
by Jack Hunter

Rand Paul’s race for US Senate in Kentucky has quickly come to exemplify everything that is right — and wrong — with the mainstream conservative movement. Let’s start with what’s right: as the son of the outspoken, anti-establishment Republican Congressman Ron Paul, eye surgeon Rand Paul entered a daunting GOP senate race promising to shake things up on Capitol Hill, quickly won the support of grassroots conservatives with his earnest limited government message, and now has a substantial lead in the polls over his more established opponent, Trey Grayson.

Now for what’s wrong with the mainstream conservative movement — or as former Vice President Dick Cheney announced earlier this month: “I’m a lifelong conservative, and I can tell the real thing when I see it. I have looked at the records of both candidates in the race, and it is clear to me that Trey Grayson is right on the issues that matter.”

Cheney is a Bush Republican and as such, it might be first worth noting what issues don’t matter to him — exorbitant government spending, TARP bailouts, amnesty for illegal aliens, massive entitlement expansions of Medicare and increasing federal control of public education through programs like No Child Left Behind. Bush grew government more than any president since Lyndon Johnson, doubling the national debt, something Cheney famously dismissed by saying “deficits don’t matter.” Trey Grayson, whom Cheney considers the “real thing,” is a former Democrat who voted for and supported Bill Clinton in 1992, and though his former party affiliation has been of some concern to Republican voters in Kentucky, it doesn’t seem to faze Cheney, who still insists Grayson is right on the “issues that matter.” What the former vice president neglects to mention is that for “conservatives” of his stripe only one issue matters.

Reported The Politico earlier this month: “a well-connected former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney convened a conference call last week between Grayson and a group of leading national security conservatives to sound the alarm about Paul. ‘On foreign policy, [global war on terror], Gitmo, Afghanistan, Rand Paul is NOT one of us … It is our hope that you can help us get the word out about Rand Paul’s troubling and dangerous views on foreign policy.’ ”

What are Paul’s “troubling” and “dangerous” views on foreign policy? Like Republican Congressman Walter Jones; GOP Senator Tom Coburn; the late editor of National Review, William F. Buckley; and a majority of Americans, Paul regrets the U.S.’s decision to invade Iraq. Like conservative pundits Pat Buchanan and the late Robert Novak, Paul says he would have opposed going into Iraq in 2003. Like John McCain, Paul has concerns about Gitmo, but unlike his father Ron, son Rand does not believe its prisoners should be tried in civilian courts. Like conservative columnist George Will, Paul has serious reservations about President Obama’s escalation of the war in Afghanistan. Like Dwight Eisenhower, Paul fears government waste, particularly as it relates to what Ike called the “military-industrial complex.” Paul also believes all wars should be declared by Congress, that the most important task of the federal government is national security and that defense should be the largest part of the national budget-albeit a much smaller national budget.

A foreign policy that costs as much in lives and dollars as that of the United States deserves serious scrutiny, and Paul, the traditional conservative, believes in scrutinizing government as a whole. Cheney, the neoconservative, has never been concerned with fiscal issues, something his record reflects, and on his one “issue that matters” — foreign policy — Cheney apparently believes no questions should ever be permitted, hence his attacks on Paul. Yes, much to Cheney’s chagrin, Paul has raised practical questions about the effectiveness of our methods in fighting the war on terror, whether we are using our soldiers properly, and has even applied a cost/benefit analysis to our foreign policy, much like a conservative accountant seeking to protect his client’s resources. For his practicality, Paul has caused panic amongst the GOP leadership, or as The American Conservative’s Daniel McCarthy noted, their conference call “is all about Rand Paul and says little about Trey Grayson. The neoconservative establishment is terrified of the prospect of a Senator Paul.”

Most of the Tea Partiers I’ve encountered are indeed horrified by Obama’s spending, but also now regret that they didn’t speak out when Bush was doing his fiscal worst. A fresh-faced young Republican senator willing to question wasteful spending, domestic and abroad, is anathema to an old Republican guard used to spending trillions anywhere they like, without any pesky questions. Establishment men like Cheney will no doubt see “trouble” in any candidate who encourages reflection, second-guessing, or the slightest criticism toward Republican mistakes of the past, primarily because the GOP leadership doesn’t consider those actions mistakes and has every intention of committing more in the future. And a former Bill Clinton Democrat who tows the establishment line on foreign policy is far less “dangerous” to someone like Dick Cheney, than any conservative Republican who would dare lead other Republicans to finally question whether our foreign policy might be more trouble than it’s worth.

Is The Census Constitutional?

2010-03-20T21:29:00.003-04:00

Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution defines the legitimate need of the enumeration(census). That need covers the apportionment of congressional representatives; nothing else is mentioned. Here is the page from the Census Bureau website telling us what the information is used for. I also included the commercial that been airing during NCAA basketball games which pretty well covers it - they need the census for central planning and wealth redistribution.

How Our Data are Used
◦to determine the distribution of Congressional seats to states--
■mandated by the U.S. Constitution
■used to apportion seats in the U.S. House of Representatives
■used to define legislature districts, school district assignment areas and other
important functional areas of government
◦to make decisions about what community services to provide
Changes in your community are crucial to many planning decisions, such as where to:
■provide services for the elderly
■where to build new roads and schools
■or where to locate job training centers
◦to distribute more than $400 billion in federal funds to local, state and tribal governments each year. Census data affects how funding is allocated to communities for:
■neighborhood improvements
■public health
■education
■transportation
■and much more
◦to provide Age Search information for:
■Qualifying for Social Security and other retirement benefits
■Passport applications
■Proving relationship in settling estates
■Researching family history or a historical topic

More Government Won't Help

2010-03-18T10:51:00.002-04:00

by Congressman Ron Paul

Before the US House of Representatives, September 23, 2009

Government has been mismanaging medical care for more than 45 years; for every problem it has created it has responded by exponentially expanding the role of government.

Points to consider:

1. No one has a right to medical care. If one assumes such a right, it endorses the notion that some individuals have a right to someone else’s life and property. This totally contradicts the principles of liberty.

2. If medical care is provided by government, this can only be achieved by an authoritarian government unconcerned about the rights of the individual.

3. Economic fallacies accepted for more than 100 years in the United States have deceived policy makers into believing that quality medical care can only be achieved by government force, taxation, regulations, and bowing to a system of special interests that creates a system of corporatism.

4. More dollars into any monopoly run by government never increases quality but it always results in higher costs and prices.

5. Government does have an important role to play in facilitating the delivery of all goods and services in an ethical and efficient manner.

6. First, government should do no harm. It should get out of the way and repeal all the laws that have contributed to the mess we have.

7. The costs are obviously too high but in solving this problem one cannot ignore the debasement of the currency as a major factor.

8. Bureaucrats and other third parties must never be allowed to interfere in the doctor/patient relationship.

9. The tax code, including the ERISA laws, must be changed to give everyone equal treatment by allowing a 100% tax credit for all medical expenses.

10. Laws dealing with bad outcomes and prohibiting doctors from entering into voluntary agreements with their patients must be repealed. Tort laws play a significant role in pushing costs higher, prompting unnecessary treatment and excessive testing. Patients deserve the compensation; the attorneys do not.

11. Insurance sales should be legalized nationally across state lines to increase competition among the insurance companies.

12. Long-term insurance policies should be available to young people similar to term-life insurances that offer fixed prices for long periods of time.

13. The principle of insurance should be remembered. Its purpose in a free market is to measure risk, not to be used synonymously with social welfare programs. Any program that provides for first-dollar payment is no longer insurance. This would be similar to giving coverage for gasoline and repair bills to those who buy car insurance or providing food insurance for people to go to the grocery store. Obviously, that could not work.

14. The cozy relationship between organized medicine and government must be reversed. Early on, medical insurance was promoted by the medical community in order to boost re-imbursements to doctors and hospitals. That partnership has morphed into the government/insurance industry still being promoted by the current administration.

15. Threatening individuals with huge fines by forcing them to buy insurance is a boon to the insurance companies.

16. There must be more competition for individuals entering into the medical field. Licensing strictly limits the number of individuals who can provide patient care. A lot of problems were created in 20th century as a consequence the Flexner Report (1910), which was financed by the Carnegie Foundation and strongly supported by the AMA. Many medical schools were closed and the number of doctors was drastically reduced. The motivation was to close down medical schools that catered to women, minorities and especially homeopathy. We continue to suffer from these changes, which were designed to protect physician’s income and promote allopathic medicine over the more natural cures and prevention of homeopathic medicine.

17. We must remove any obstacles for people seeking holistic and nutritional alternatives to current medical care. We must remove the threat of further regulations pushed by the drug companies now working worldwide to limit these alternatives.

True competition in the delivery of medical care is what is needed, not more government meddling.

Is Healthcare A Right? Absolutely NOT!

2010-03-18T08:05:00.002-04:00

Health Care Is Not A Right
by Leonard Peikoff (August 14, 2009)

In today's proposals for sweeping changes in the field of medicine, the term "socialized medicine" is never used. Instead we hear demands for "universal," "mandatory," "single-payer," and/or "comprehensive" systems. These demands aim to force one healthcare plan (sometimes with options) onto all Americans; it is a plan under which all medical services are paid for, and thus controlled, by government agencies. Sometimes, proponents call this "nationalized financing" or "nationalized health insurance." In a more honest day, it was called socialized medicine. -- Lin Zinser
The following was delivered under the auspices of Americans for Free Choice in Medicine at a Town Hall Meeting on Health Care in Costa Mesa, California, on December 11, 1993.
Most people who oppose socialized medicine do so on the grounds that it is moral and well-intentioned, but impractical; i.e., it is a noble idea—which just somehow does not work. I do not agree that socialized medicine is moral and well-intentioned, but impractical. Of course, it is impractical—it does not work—but I hold that it is impractical because it is immoral. This is not a case of noble in theory but a failure in practice; it is a case of vicious in theory and therefore a disaster in practice. I want to focus on the moral issue at stake. So long as people believe that socialized medicine is a noble plan, there is no way to fight it. You cannot stop a noble plan—not if it really is noble. The only way you can defeat it is to unmask it—to show that it is the very opposite of noble. Then at least you have a fighting chance.
What is morality in this context? The American concept of it is officially stated in the Declaration of Independence. It upholds man's unalienable, individual rights. The term "rights," note, is a moral (not just a political) term; it tells us that a certain course of behavior is right, sanctioned, proper, a prerogative to be respected by others, not interfered with—and that anyone who violates a man's rights is: wrong, morally wrong, unsanctioned, evil.
Now our only rights, the American viewpoint continues, are the rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. That's all. According to the Founding Fathers, we are not born with a right to a trip to Disneyland, or a meal at McDonald's, or a kidney dialysis (nor with the 18th-century equivalent of these things). We have certain specific rights—and only these.
Why only these? Observe that all legitimate rights have one thing in common: they are rights to action, not to rewards from other people. The American rights impose no obligations on other people, merely the negative obligation to leave you alone. The system guarantees you the chance to work for what you want—not to be given it without effort by somebody else.
The right to life, e.g., does not mean that your neighbors have to feed and clothe you; it means you have the right to earn your food and clothes yourself, if necessary by a hard struggle, and that no one can forcibly stop your struggle for these things or steal them from you if and when you have achieved them. In other words: you have the right to act, and to keep the results of your actions, the products you make, to keep them or to trade them with others, if you wish. But you have no right to the actions or products of others, except on terms to which they voluntarily agree.
To take one more example: the right to the pursuit of happiness is precisely that: the right to the pursuit—to a certain type of action on your part and its result—not to any guarantee that other people will make you happy or even try to do so. Otherwise, there would be no liberty in the country: if your mere desire for something, anything, imposes a duty on other people to satisfy you, then they have no choice in their lives, no say in what they do, they have no liberty, they cannot pursue their happiness. Your "right" to happiness at their expense means that they become rightless serfs, i.e., your slaves. Your right to anything at others' expense means that they become rightless.
That is why the U.S. system defines rights as it does, strictly as the rights to action. This was the approach that made the U.S. the first truly free country in all world history—and, soon afterwards, as a result, the greatest country in history, the richest and the most powerful. It became the most powerful because its view of rights made it the most moral. It was the country of individualism and personal independence.
Today, however, we are seeing the rise of principled immorality in this country. We are seeing a total abandonment by the intellectuals and the politicians of the moral principles on which the U.S. was founded. We are seeing the complete destruction of the concept of rights. The original American idea has been virtually wiped out, ignored as if it had never existed. The rule now is for politicians to ignore and violate men's actual rights, while arguing about a whole list of rights never dreamed of in this country's founding documents—rights which require no earning, no effort, no action at all on the part of the recipient.
You are entitled to something, the politicians say, simply because it exists and you want or need it—period. You are entitled to be given it by the government. Where does the government get it from? What does the government have to do to private citizens—to their individual rights—to their real rights—in order to carry out the promise of showering free services on the people?
The answers are obvious. The newfangled rights wipe out real rights—and turn the people who actually create the goods and services involved into servants of the state. The Russians tried this exact system for many decades. Unfortunately, we have not learned from their experience. Yet the meaning of socialism is clearly evident in any field at all—you don't need to think of health care as a special case; it is just as apparent if the government were to proclaim a universal right to food, or to a vacation, or to a haircut. I mean: a right in the new sense: not that you are free to earn these things by your own effort and trade, but that you have a moral claim to be given these things free of charge, with no action on your part, simply as handouts from a benevolent government.
How would these alleged new rights be fulfilled? Take the simplest case: you are born with a moral right to hair care, let us say, provided by a loving government free of charge to all who want or need it. What would happen under such a moral theory?
Haircuts are free, like the air we breathe, so some people show up every day for an expensive new styling, the government pays out more and more, barbers revel in their huge new incomes, and the profession starts to grow ravenously, bald men start to come in droves for free hair implantations, a school of fancy, specialized eyebrow pluckers develops—it's all free, the government pays. The dishonest barbers are having a field day, of course—but so are the honest ones; they are working and spending like mad, trying to give every customer his heart's desire, which is a millionaire's worth of special hair care and services—the government starts to scream, the budget is out of control. Suddenly directives erupt: we must limit the number of barbers, we must limit the time spent on haircuts, we must limit the permissible type of hair styles; bureaucrats begin to split hairs about how many hairs a barber should be allowed to split. A new computerized office of records filled with inspectors and red tape shoots up; some barbers, it seems, are still getting too rich, they must be getting more than their fair share of the national hair, so barbers have to start applying for Certificates of Need in order to buy razors, while peer review boards are established to assess every stylist's work, both the dishonest and the overly honest alike, to make sure that no one is too bad or too good or too busy or too unbusy. Etc. In the end, there are lines of wretched customers waiting for their chance to be routinely scalped by bored, hog-tied haircutters, some of whom remember dreamily the old days when somehow everything was so much better.
Do you think the situation would be improved by having hair-care cooperatives organized by the government?—having them engage in managed competition, managed by the government, in order to buy haircut insurance from companies controlled by the government?
If this is what would happen under government-managed hair care, what else can possibly happen—it is already starting to happen—under the idea of health care as a right? Health care in the modern world is a complex, scientific, technological service. How can anybody be born with a right to such a thing?
Under the American system you have a right to health care if you can pay for it, i.e., if you can earn it by your own action and effort. But nobody has the right to the services of any professional individual or group simply because he wants them and desperately needs them. The very fact that he needs these services so desperately is the proof that he had better respect the freedom, the integrity, and the rights of the people who provide them.
You have a right to work, not to rob others of the fruits of their work, not to turn others into sacrificial, rightless animals laboring to fulfill your needs.
Some of you may ask here: But can people afford health care on their own? Even leaving aside the present government-inflated medical prices, the answer is: Certainly people can afford it. Where do you think the money is coming from right now to pay for it all—where does the government get its fabled unlimited money? Government is not a productive organization; it has no source of wealth other than confiscation of the citizens' wealth, through taxation, deficit financing or the like.
But, you may say, isn't it the "rich" who are really paying the costs of medical care now—the rich, not the broad bulk of the people? As has been proved time and again, there are not enough rich anywhere to make a dent in the government's costs; it is the vast middle class in the U.S. that is the only source of the kind of money that national programs like government health care require. A simple example of this is the fact that all of these new programs rest squarely on the backs not of Big Business, but of small businessmen who are struggling in today's economy merely to stay alive and in existence. Under any socialized regime, it is the "little people" who do most of the paying for it—under the senseless pretext that "the people" can't afford such and such, so the government must take over. If the people of a country truly couldn't afford a certain service—as e.g. in Somalia—neither, for that very reason, could any government in that country afford it, either.
Some people can't afford medical care in the U.S. But they are necessarily a small minority in a free or even semi-free country. If they were the majority, the country would be an utter bankrupt and could not even think of a national medical program. As to this small minority, in a free country they have to rely solely on private, voluntary charity. Yes, charity, the kindness of the doctors or of the better off—charity, not right, i.e. not their right to the lives or work of others. And such charity, I may say, was always forthcoming in the past in America. The advocates of Medicaid and Medicare under LBJ did not claim that the poor or old in the '60's got bad care; they claimed that it was an affront for anyone to have to depend on charity.
But the fact is: You don't abolish charity by calling it something else. If a person is getting health care for nothing, simply because he is breathing, he is still getting charity, whether or not any politician, lobbyist or activist calls it a "right." To call it a Right when the recipient did not earn it is merely to compound the evil. It is charity still—though now extorted by criminal tactics of force, while hiding under a dishonest name.
As with any good or service that is provided by some specific group of men, if you try to make its possession by all a right, you thereby enslave the providers of the service, wreck the service, and end up depriving the very consumers you are supposed to be helping. To call "medical care" a right will merely enslave the doctors and thus destroy the quality of medical care in this country, as socialized medicine has done around the world, wherever it has been tried, including Canada (I was born in Canada and I know a bit about that system first hand).
I would like to clarify the point about socialized medicine enslaving the doctors. Let me quote here from an article I wrote a few years ago: "Medicine: The Death of a Profession."
"In medicine, above all, the mind must be left free. Medical treatment involves countless variables and options that must be taken into account, weighed, and summed up by the doctor's mind and subconscious. Your life depends on the private, inner essence of the doctor's function: it depends on the input that enters his brain, and on the processing such input receives from him. What is being thrust now into the equation? It is not only objective medical facts any longer. Today, in one form or another, the following also has to enter that brain: 'The DRG administrator [in effect, the hospital or HMO man trying to control costs] will raise hell if I operate, but the malpractice attorney will have a field day if I don't—and my rival down the street, who heads the local PRO [Peer Review Organization], favors a CAT scan in these cases, I can't afford to antagonize him, but the CON boys disagree and they won't authorize a CAT scanner for our hospital—and besides the FDA prohibits the drug I should be prescribing, even though it is widely used in Europe, and the IRS might not allow the patient a tax deduction for it, anyhow, and I can't get a specialist's advice because the latest Medicare rules prohibit a consultation with this diagnosis, and maybe I shouldn't even take this patient, he's so sick—after all, some doctors are manipulating their slate of patients, they accept only the healthiest ones, so their average costs are coming in lower than mine, and it looks bad for my staff privileges.' Would you like your case to be treated this way—by a doctor who takes into account your objective medical needs and the contradictory, unintelligible demands of some ninety different state and Federal government agencies? If you were a doctor could you comply with all of it? Could you plan or work around or deal with the unknowable? But how could you not? Those agencies are real and they are rapidly gaining total power over you and your mind and your patients.
In this kind of nightmare world, if and when it takes hold fully, thought is helpless; no one can decide by rational means what to do. A doctor either obeys the loudest authority—or he tries to sneak by unnoticed, bootlegging some good health care occasionally or, as so many are doing now, he simply gives up and quits the field." (The Voice of Reason: Essays in Objectivist Thought, NAL Books, 1988, pp. 306-307)
Any mandatory and comprehensive plan will finish off quality medicine in this country—because it will finish off the medical profession. It will deliver doctors bound hands and feet to the mercies of the bureaucracy.
The only hope—for the doctors, for their patients, for all of us—is for the doctors to assert a moral principle. I mean: to assert their own personal individual rights—their real rights in this issue—their right to their lives, their liberty, their property, their pursuit of happiness. The Declaration of Independence applies to the medical profession too. We must reject the idea that doctors are slaves destined to serve others at the behest of the state.
Doctors, Ayn Rand wrote, are not servants of their patients. They are "traders, like everyone else in a free society, and they should bear that title proudly, considering the crucial importance of the services they offer."
The battle against socialized medicine depends on the doctors speaking out against it—not only on practical grounds, but, first of all, on moral grounds. The doctors must defend themselves and their own interests as a matter of solemn justice, upholding a moral principle, the first moral principle: self-preservation.
Dr. Peikoff was associate editor, with Ayn Rand, of The Objectivist and The Ayn Rand Letter (1971-76). He is author of Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand. He is founder of the Ayn Rand Institute.

Obamacare is Romneycare

2010-03-17T07:39:00.001-04:00

Obamacare is Romneycare

by Jack Hunter

When newly elected Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts attacked the Democrats healthcare plan during this week’s Republican address, Senior White House adviser David Axelrod said on ABC’s This Week:

“Let me note that Senator Brown comes from a state that has a health care format in his state that is similar to the one we’re trying to enact here. He voted for it and said he wouldn’t repeal it. So we’re just trying to give the people in America the same opportunities that the people in Massachusetts have.”

Visibly agitated when appearing on the same program, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said of Axelrod’s comments:

“The American people are getting tired of this crap. No way in the world is what they did in Massachusetts like what we’re about to do in Washington. To suggest that Scott Brown is basically campaigning against the bill in Washington that is like the one in Massachusetts is complete spin.”

Americans are indeed tired of lying politicians, but the only crap being put forth here is by Graham. And it’s not just Axelrod pointing out the similarities between the Democrats’ healthcare plan and Mitt Romney’s Republican model-everyone is.

Let’s start with the liberals, or as the popular blog Think Progress notes:

“In fact, the plan implemented by former Republican Gov. Mitt Romney in Massachusetts is very similar to the Democratic proposal. Both plans require people to purchase coverage and both provide affordability credits to those who can’t afford insurance. Both create insurance exchanges, both establish minimum creditable coverage standards for insurers, and both require employers to contribute towards reform.”

Making similar observations from a conservative perspective, The American Spectator’s Philip Klein writes:

“Politico’s Ben Smith asks, ‘At this point, how is current proposal substantially different from Romneycare?’ The answer is, it ain’t… if Obamacare passes, Romney will be left telling angry primary voters that the only real difference between the two plans is that he implemented his policies at the state level, while Obama did it through the federal government. It’s sort of like saying, ‘As governor, I raised state income taxes, but the thought of raising federal income taxes — that’s an outrage!’… as Smith notes, ‘in the end, Romney does seem to have helped set the model for the national plan.”

Hell, even neoconservatives can see the similarities, or as the headline read at former Bush speechwriter David Frum’s blog, FrumForum.com: “Romneycare Sure Looks Like Obamacare.” Writes Frum:

“(T)he federal plan bears a closer family resemblance than ever to Romney’s idea: regulated health insurance exchanges, mandates to buy insurance for those who can afford it, subsidies for those who cannot.”

So how can Graham claim that on healthcare, there’s “No way in the world is what they did in Massachusetts like what we’re about to do in Washington,” and yet so many from across the political spectrum are claiming just that?

Graham’s display of anger and ignorance on this issue says more about the Republican Party than healthcare, per se. A GOP that assails Obama’s foreign policy when it’s not much different from Bush’s, or criticizes Obama’s growth of government while pretending Bush didn’t do the same, or attacks the Democrats’ healthcare plan while defending a similar Republican plan, reveals a party that revels in partisanship but lacks any serious, conservative principle.

Consider this: One of conservatives’ greatest fears continues to be the government takeover of healthcare. On the surface, Graham’s anger is even being perceived as an example of the deep partisan divide in the healthcare debate. Yet notes Boston.com of the supposedly conservative Romney: “Romney demonstrates a greater confidence than many prominent Republicans in government’s ability to solve big problems. Even though he is critical of the Democrats’ health care plan, he says his experience adjusting the Massachusetts system has led him to share their goal of universal coverage and the belief that only government can expand the number of Americans who are insured.”

While today, Republicans rightly oppose Obama’s version of government healthcare, who’s to say that a President John McCain would not be “reaching across the aisle” to implement his own version, an idea the allegedly more conservative Romney has already embraced? When Graham said that Americans are “tired of this crap” he was bitterly defending the integrity of state run healthcare in Massachusetts, a big government program that tea party hero Scott Brown and talk radio favorite Mitt Romney also proudly defend as their own.

If the tea party people are to be believed, conservatives are hungry for a budget-cutting, government-slashing, Constitution-enforcing leader in the mold of Barry Goldwater. Yet when you look beneath their thin, partisan veneers, most of today’s Republican leadership isn’t substantially different from that of the Democratic Party, whether in the mold of “moderates” like Lindsey Graham or “conservatives” like Scott Brown and Mitt Romney. Would anyone really be surprised if a future President Romney teamed up with GOP senators Graham and Brown to implement their own national healthcare plan? And when Republicans eventually regain power, will anyone be surprised when they offer up the same, old big government crap they pretend to oppose today.

There Are Six American Citizens In My House . . .

2010-03-16T22:28:00.007-04:00

There has been quite a lot of talk about the Census in the last few years by liberty-minded individuals who don't appreciate the excessive personal questions that are asked. At least two Republican Congressmen I respect have stated publicly that they will only provide the information required by the Constitution.

Article 1, Section 2: "The actual Enumeration shall be made within three Years after the first Meeting of the Congress of the United States, and within every subsequent Term of ten Years, in such Manner as they shall by Law direct."

Notice the word used is "enumeration" not census. Enumeration means to count or determine the amount of something. It does not mean to determine all sorts of ethnic and private information about.

The video below explains clearly the problems many have with the census:

As for me, I'm joining Walter Williams, Ron Paul, Michele Bachmann and scores of others in answering the only question required by the Constitution, "There are six American citizens living in this house."

I looked into the penalty for this last year in case I was prosecuted. From the Census website: (a) Whoever, being over eighteen years of age refuses or willfully neglects, when requested by the Secretary, or by any other authorized officer or employee of the Department of Commerce or bureau or agency thereof acting under the instructions of the Secretary or authorized officer, to answer, to the best of his knowledge, any of the questions on any schedule submitted to him in connection with any census or survey provided for by subchapters I, II, IV, and V of chapter 5 of this title, applying to himself or to the family to which he belongs or is related, or to the farm or farms of which he or his family is the occupant, shall be fined not more than $100.

They badgered me for a while, but that was the end of it. I can't find anyone who has ever been prosecuted for refusal to answer; perhaps I'll be the first.

DHS, Reading Minds And Protecting IP Since 2001

2010-03-15T08:28:00.004-04:00

So the Department of Homeland Security is now setting up mobile hands-free lie detector tests in movable trailers. This allows them to mobilize at a moment's notice to begin screening anytime and anywhere they are needed. I love how they ask questions about recording the event, protecting intellectual property, right along with the terrorist stuff.

A few questions . . .

Can we add a judicial module so they can be tried and executed all within the trailer?

Can we set these up at all businesses? "Have you ever been tempted to steal a pack of gum before?" "Are you planning on convincing the salesman to give you a better deal than you deserve?" "Do you really believe you need this hernia operation?" "Do you intend to purchase items which may be used as gifts for which a 1099 tax form will not be filed?"

Can all wrongdoing be eliminated by giving parents the mini module version?

Feel free to jump in and propose questions yourself in the comments section.

A Call To Arms - Citizens, Prepare For Battle

2010-03-13T07:53:00.005-05:00

Citizens, prepare for battle. Not with guns and knives and pitchforks, arm yourself with video recorders, cell phone cameras, mp3 audio recorders and the like.

Some of the most damaging material to an incumbent politician is a recorded campaign promise. Some of the most damaging material to future incumbents, the ones who enter office for the first time this cycle, will be their own words during the campaign.

Remember all the media hubbub over the health care townhall meetings? Much of that was generated because people rose to question and protest, and they recorded it.

The media is not going to do this for us. The media will not create mashup youtube videos of unfulfilled salvos by political candidates. We must do it ourselves. What the media will do is cover the scandal you create when you use the politician's words against them. They aren't interested in holding anyone's feet to the fire. They like scandal.

If you don't blog or post things on youtube, then record it and send it to someone who will. It doesn't have to be professional; it doesn't have to pe perfect. It just needs to show their hypocrisy.

Unleash the power of the internet. Champion the power of the grassroots. This is war. They won't respect us until they fear us.

Five Thomas Sowell Quotes

2010-03-12T13:28:00.004-05:00

"It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, and medication somehow think that we can afford to pay for doctors, hospitals, medication and a government bureaucracy to administer it."

"It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong."

"The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best."

"What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long."

"The real goal should be reduced government spending, rather than balanced budgets achieved by ever rising tax rates to cover ever rising spending."

My First Radio Interview

2010-03-10T00:22:00.009-05:00

As I've mentioned before, I listen and call in regularly to the On The Mark radio show on WKOK. Yesterday, I had the opportunity to appear on the show as a guest for about 45 minutes.

We covered a wide range of issues including local politics, the Union County Republican Committee, Ron Paul, George Bush, abortion, libertarianism, religion, the Bible, capital punishment, the Sermon on the Mount, getting involved, drug legalization, zoning, health care, rights, self-defense and local road improvements. It was an action-packed hour with several callers and a few emails, and I had a blast.

Click here to listen.

Am I More Powerful Than Bill Gates?

2010-03-05T05:52:00.003-05:00

Am I more powerful than Bill Gates? Walter Williams thinks so in his latest article. Constitutionally-limited government doesn't cater to the rich and can't be bought and paid for by them. Unfortunately, we don't have that, so for now, Bill Gates is more powerful than me.

Who Poses the Greater Threat?

By Walter Williams
March 2, 2010

Bill Gates is the world's richest person, but what kind of power does he have over you? Can he force your kid to go to a school you do not want him to attend? Can he deny you the right to braid hair in your home for a living? It turns out that a local politician, who might deny us the right to earn a living and dictates which school our kid attends, has far greater power over our lives than any rich person. Rich people can gain power over us, but to do so, they must get permission from our elected representatives at the federal, state or local levels. For example, I might wish to purchase sugar from a Caribbean producer, but America's sugar lobby pays congressmen hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions to impose sugar import tariffs and quotas, forcing me and every other American to purchase their more expensive sugar.

Politicians love pitting us against the rich. All by themselves, the rich have absolutely no power over us. To rip us off, they need the might of Congress to rig the economic game. It's a slick political sleight-of-hand where politicians and their allies amongst the intellectuals, talking heads and the news media get us caught up in the politics of envy as part of their agenda for greater control over our lives.

The sugar lobby is just one example among thousands. Just ask yourself: Who were the major recipients of the billions of taxpayer bailout dollars, the so-called Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP)? The top recipients of TARP handouts included companies such as Citibank, AIG, Goldman Sachs and General Motors. Their top management are paid tens of millions dollars to run companies that were on the verge of bankruptcy, were it not for billions of dollars in taxpayer money. Politicians preach the politics of envy whilst reaching into the ordinary man's pockets, through the IRS, and handing it over to their favorite rich people and others who make large contributions to their election efforts.

The bottom line is that it is politicians first and their supporters amongst intellectuals who pose the greatest threat to liberty. Dr. Thomas Sowell amply demonstrates this in his brand-new book, "Intellectuals and Society," in which he points out that: "Scarcely a mass-murdering dictator of the twentieth century was without his intellectual supporters, not simply in his own country, but also in foreign democracies . . . Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Hitler all had their admirers, defenders and apologists among the intelligentsia in Western democratic nations, despite the fact that these dictators each ended up killing people of their own country on a scale unprecedented even by despotic regimes that preceded them."

While American politicians and intellectuals have not reached the depths of tyrants such as Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Hitler, they share a common vision. Tyrants denounce free markets and voluntary exchange. They are the chief supporters of reduced private property rights, reduced rights to profits, and they are anti-competition and pro-monopoly. They are pro-control and coercion, by the state. These Americans who run Washington, and their intellectual supporters, believe they have superior wisdom and greater intelligence than the masses. They believe they have been ordained to forcibly impose that wisdom on the rest of us. Like any other tyrant, they have what they consider good reasons for restricting the freedom of others. A tyrant's primary agenda calls for the elimination or attenuation of the market. Why? Markets imply voluntary exchange and tyrants do trust that people behaving voluntarily will do what the tyrant thinks they should do. Therefore, they seek to replace the market with economic planning and regulation, which is little more than the forcible superseding of other people's plans by the powerful elite.

We Americans have forgotten founder Thomas Paine's warning that "Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one."

Wyoming Legislature Passes the Firearms Freedom Act

2010-03-04T07:50:00.012-05:00

Wyoming Legislature Passes

the Firearms Freedom Act

by Michael Boldin

Today, on its 3rd reading, the Wyoming Senate passed HB95, the Firearms Freedom Act, by a vote of 30–0. (h/t Kristy Tyrney, Wyoming10A.org)

The bill states:

A personal firearm, a firearm action or receiver, a firearm accessory, or ammunition that is manufactured commercially or privately in the state to be used or sold within the state is not subject to federal law or federal regulation, including registration, under the authority of congress to regulate interstate commerce.

The Wyoming House already passed the bill last week, and it will now be transmitted to Governor Freudenthal’s desk for signature.

In 2009, both Tennessee and Montana passed the Act into state law. Last week, Utah’s Governor Herbert made that state the 3rd.

NULLIFICATION

The principle behind such legislation is nullification, which has a long history in the American tradition. When a state "nullifies" a federal law, it is proclaiming that the law in question is void and inoperative, or "non-effective," within the boundaries of that state; or, in other words, not a law as far as the state is concerned. Implied in such legislation is that the state apparatus will enforce the act against all violations – in order to protect the liberty of the state’s citizens.

Implied in any nullification legislation is enforcement of the state law. In the Virginia Resolution of 1798, James Madison wrote of the principle of interposition:

That this Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the federal government, as resulting from the compact, to which the states are parties; as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting the compact; as no further valid that they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact; and that in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the states who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and liberties appertaining to them.

HB95 includes this principle, and if passed, would impose penalties for violations of the law:

Any official, agent or employee of the United States government who enforces or attempts to enforce any act, order, law, statute, rule or regulation of the United States government upon a personal firearm, a firearm accessory or ammunition that is manufactured commercially or privately in Wyoming and that remains exclusively within the borders of Wyoming shall be guilty of a felony and, upon conviction, shall be subject to imprisonment for not more than two (2) years, a fine of not more than ten thousand dollars ($10,000.00), or both.

All across the country, activists and state-legislators are pressing for similar legislation, to nullify specific federal laws within their states. A proposed Constitutional Amendment to effectively ban national health care will go to a vote in Arizona in 2010, and the Virginia Senate recently passed a similar bill, which now awaits action from the state house. Fourteen states now have some form of medical marijuana laws – in direct contravention to federal laws which state that the plant is illegal in all circumstances. And, massive state nullification of the 2005 Real ID Act has rendered the law nearly void.

Nearly two-dozen states are considering similar legislation.

CLICK HERE to view the Tenth Amendment Center’s printable Firearms Freedom Act Brochure (pdf)

CLICK HERE to view the Tenth Amendment Center’s Firearms Freedom Act Legislative Tracking Page

This is reprinted from the Tenth Amendment Center.

March 4, 2010

Michael Boldin [send him mail] is the founder of the Tenth Amendment Center.

My First Attempt At Cutting Taxes

2010-03-02T23:45:00.007-05:00

The Union Township supervisor's meeting was tonight, as it is the first Tuesday evening of every month. One of the topics that came up was a franchise agreement that we needed to renew with a local cable company. As part of the agreement, the FCC and our township ordinance give us the right to charge a franchise fee to the cable company. This fee is a percentage of the basic cable fee and is passed on directly to consumers.

I asked our solicitor and fellow supervisors what these fees cover. In other words, what services are cable subscribers receiving from the township for their 3% fee. The answer: It covers our solicitor's fees in drawing up the franchise agreements every 5 years for all the communication companies which service our township.

So the FCC rules that we can extract a fee, therefore we do extract a fee. In fact, everyone does - since they can. The fee covers the cost of extracting the fee.

This is so typical of the times in which we live. There are hidden fees and taxes everywhere. Rather than paying one tax bill for all township services, we pay "fees" to government through businesses in the township. These fees are always passed on to the consumer as are the extra clerical costs to the business of extracting them. If you have ever looked closely at a utility or communications bill, you know about the extra fees tacked on at the bottom; it is nothing more than pure bureaucracy.

Rather than go with the flow and just approve the new agreement keeping the percentage the same, I spoke shortly about this duplicitous method of taxation and then tried in earnest to eradicate it from the cable bills in our township - to no avail.

Because we have agreements with multiple providers that each have different end dates, according to FCC rules, we can't change the rates on any of them. The next time they expire simultaneously is 2019. Because our ordinance on franchise agreements governs current agreements, we cannot repeal the ordinance until the agreements no longer exist. Ultimately, legally, our hands were tied. Cable users will continue to pay 3 percent to the cable company and receive nothing in return.

I took my first stab at cutting taxes; I failed - maybe next time!

(I voted no on the motion anyway, just to protest the FCC.)

Five Liberty Quotes 3/1/2010

2010-03-01T23:45:00.005-05:00

“I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.” - Thomas Jefferson

“Russia's experience indicates that freedom cannot be legislated: it has to grow gradually, in close association with property and law. For while acquisitiveness is natural, respect for the property--and the liberty--of others is not. It has to be inculcated until it sinks such deep roots in the people's consciousness that it is able to withstand all efforts to crush it.”—Richard Pipes

“Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of resistance.” —Woodrow Wilson

“No arsenal or no weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women.” - Ronald Reagan

“Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it; no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it.” —Learned Hand

The Money Laundery Machine Is Broke

2010-02-27T10:33:00.004-05:00

Did you know that money laundering laws have only been around for a couple of decades? Like all laws that Congress passes, we should ask how they are working and if they should remain laws. Does the congressman you are supporting in the 2010 election support repeal of these useless and burdensome laws? Why don't you ask him?

We NEED 20 Percent More Military Spending

2010-02-24T18:36:00.003-05:00

We NEED 20 percent more military spending. What Republican do you know who would vote against it? If only we could have it, we could have the proud distinction of spending more on the military than the entire rest of the world combined. That might be helpful if World War 3 is us versus everyone else. As they say, "Freedom ain't Free."

Rush Limbaugh, You're No Ronald Reagan

2010-02-23T22:21:00.002-05:00

Compare these two quotes and ask yourself one question. Who understands conservatism, Rush or Ronald?

If you analyze it I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism. I think conservatism is really a misnomer just as liberalism is a misnomer for the liberals -- if we were back in the days of the Revolution, so-called conservatives today would be the Liberals and the liberals would be the Tories. The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is. - Ronald Reagan

All I'll tell you is that any organization that has a straw poll vote on who the party presidential candidate ought to be and comes up with Ron Paul is not an organization of conservatives. I just tell you. Something's haywire there. I know the Ron Paul people go in there, but they had been attendees to get in there. Ron Paul winning a straw poll at a conservative conference? . . . That's not a conservative conference. . . .This is the Conservative Political Action Committee. It's not some group of Libertarians. I would have defended conservatism and I would have promoted conservatism and I would have reminded people conservatism is the solution. Conservatism is the answer for this country's problems and challenges that we face. Nobody's out there defending bad Republican policies. . . .One year after the inauguration of Barack Obama there is a conservative ascendancy within the Republican Party, and it needs to be encouraged, not beaten down. It needs to be inspired. We need to thank them and join them. - Rush Limbaugh

Pesky Ron Paul People

2010-02-23T07:23:00.005-05:00

Ron Paul People have struck again. Over the weekend, Ron won the CPAC Presidential Straw Poll by a significant margin.

Ron Paul - 31 percent
Mitt Romney -- 22 percent
Sarah Palin -- 7 percent
Tim Pawlenty - 6 percent
Newt Gingrich - 4 percent
Mike Huckabee -- 4 percent
Mike Pence - 5 percent
John Thune -- 2 percent
Mitch Daniels -- 2 percent
Rick Santorum -- 2 percent
Hailey Barbour - 1 percent
Other - 5 percent
Undecided - 6 percent

Despite the fact that Romney and Palin are widely considered to be frontrunners for 2012, even the sum of their votes failed to topple Paul. Romney had won the last three straw polls, and each time that happened, "conservative" talk show hosts put significant stock in the victory. Not this year. Rush, Beck, Hannity, Ingraham, Levin, and Huckabee all had excuses for the victory.

Saturday evening when the results were announced, I went to the major news websites to read about the story. It was front and center on every major news site - except Fox News.

Several have complained that the conference was taken over by young people this year, but looking at last year's poll, which Romney won soundly, I found that an even greater percentage of 18-25 year-olds voted. Only paying conference attendees could vote in the poll, so at least this time we didn't hear that the results were caused by internet geeks and hacks.

Rush and the rest may not like the Ron Paul Movement, or the Ron Paul Conservatism, or the Ron Paul Foreign Policy or the Ron Paul People, but as this video editorial points out, they seem to be the force that just won't go away. Where are the "Palin People" or the "Romney People," and why isn't anyone talking about them?

Five Friday Quotes 2/19/2010

2010-02-19T07:53:00.006-05:00

“I am not well versed in history, but I will submit to your recollection, whether liberty has been destroyed most often by the licentiousness of the people, or by the tyranny of rulers? I imagine, Sir, you will find the balance on the side of tyranny: Happy will you be if you miss the fate of those nations, who, omitting to resist their oppressors, or negligently suffering their liberty to be wrested from them, have groaned under intolerable despotism. Most of the human race are now in this deplorable condition...” —Patrick Henry

“Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.”—Thomas Jefferson

“Those who complain about the high cost of government should be glad we're not getting all the government we're paying for!” —Will Rogers

“The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.” —Thomas Sowell

“We have rights, as individuals, to give as much of our own money as we please to charity; but as members of Congress we have no right so to appropriate a dollar of public money.” —David Crockett

Union County Republican Committee Celebrates Successes

2010-02-17T17:23:00.006-05:00

Anyone who reads this blog regularly knows I think the GOP is in BIG trouble because they have forsaken their conservative heritage. With the rampant disregard for the Constitution in both parties, it's difficult to be a Republican most days.

Any occasion when I can celebrate principled reform, it makes for a good day, so as a member of Union County Republican Committee, it gives me great pleasure to celebrate some of our successes already this year.

First, last evening in our UCRC meeting, we voted unanimously NOT to endorse candidates. Typically, we don't endorse, but because the State Committee does, they require us to abide by their endorsements by not allowing non-endorsed candidates to speak at our events. This year, by voting to not endorse, we are defying them in a sense. All Republican candidates are welcome to speak at our events. This is step in the right direction for those of us who often back the non-establishment(conservative) candidates. For a wonderful synopsis of why I believe in Open Primaries, see this editorial by my friend Michael Harrison.

Second, I understand the Union County Commissioners have sent a letter to the Lewisburg Area Recreation Authority declining their request to have the county take over LARA's Rails to Trails project. Back in December, it became apparent that the two progressive commissioners, John Showers and John Mathias, intended to receive and then accept the request that would entail using taxpayer dollars for a rail trail through the middle of Union County farm country. Preston Boop, the republican commissioner, believed the other commissioners had in mind to take on the project without much fanfare or public input, so he sent an email to our Chairman, Yvonne Morgan, and she called out "the troops." This resulted in a lively public meeting which was heavily attended by those against putting the taxpayers on the hook for this project. Preston told me last evening that he believes the county would own that project today if the committee hadn't responded and helped rally the voters to attend that meeting.

Last and probably least, at this month's state committee meeting, we were selected as the exemplary small county committee. While this honor doesn't say much about our principles, it does speak loudly about our work ethic. Rebuilding this party on true conservative principles takes work and fortunately, we have some real workers - Workers who believe in Open Primaries - Workers who will take stands against bigger government.

There are a lot of problems in the GOP. There are a lot of fakes in the GOP. Hopefully, the times are changing. Let's celebrate some steps in the right direction.

Same Empire, Different Emperor

2010-02-15T11:05:00.004-05:00

Just as Hadrian succeeded Trajan, Domitian succeeded Titus, Nero succeeded Claudius, and Caligula succeeded Tiberius, so Kennedy replaced Eisenhower, Nixon replaced Johnson, Reagan replaced Carter, and Obama replaced Bush.

Same empire, different emperor.

The extent of the U.S. global empire is almost incalculable. We know enough, however, about foreign bases, physical assets, military spending, and foreign troop levels to know that we have an empire in everything but the name.

There are, according to the Department of Defense’s "Base Structure Report" for FY 2009, 716 U.S. military bases on foreign soil in thirty-eight countries. Yet, according to the expert on this subject, Chalmers Johnson, the author of Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire, and Nemesis, that number is far too low: "The official figures omit espionage bases, those located in war zones, including Iraq and Afghanistan, and miscellaneous facilities in places considered too sensitive to discuss or which the Pentagon for its own reasons chooses to exclude – e.g. in Israel, Kosovo, or Jordan." Johnson places the real number of foreign bases closer to 1,000.

This same Base Structure Report states that the DOD’s physical assets consist of "more than 539,000 facilities (buildings, structures and linear structures) located on more than 5,570 sites, on approximately 29 million acres." The 307,295 buildings occupied by the DOD comprise over 2.1 billion square feet. The DOD manages almost 30 million acres of land worldwide.

The latest defense budget (Obama’s first) is almost as much as the rest of the world’s defense spending combined. The U.S. military is the single-largest consumer of oil in the world, officially using 320,000 barrels of oil a day. The U.S. Navy’s battle fleet is larger than the next 13 foreign navies combined. And thanks to the work of economist Robert Higgs, we know that total spending for all defense-related purposes is actually about a trillion dollars. And then there are the supplemental appropriation bills not in the Pentagon’s budget.

In addition to the over 1.1 million U.S. military personnel stationed in the United States and its territories, there are about 262,000 U.S. troops in foreign countries – not counting the 130,000 soldiers in Iraq and the 68,000 soldiers in Afghanistan, and not counting the other troops deployed in Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and in Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. And then there is Obama’s new 30,000-man troop surge for Afghanistan. There would be even more troops in Afghanistan if it were not for the 120,000 contractors there on the payroll of the Defense Department, State Department, and USAID.

According to the latest DOD quarterly report titled "Active Duty Military Personnel Strengths by Regional Area and by Country," there are U.S. troops stationed in 148 countries and 11 territories in every corner of the globe. This the greatest number of countries that the United States has ever had troops in. This also means that U.S. troops occupy over 75 percent of the world’s countries.

The U.S. global empire was well in place soon after World War II with security alliances, bilateral agreements, status of forces agreements, thousands of military installations, and troops in about 100 different counties and territories. When I first wrote about U.S. troop presence around the globe on March 16, 2004, in "The U.S. Global Empire," I documented that the U.S. had troops in 135 countries, plus 14 territories controlled by the United States or some other country. I then showed on October 4, 2004, in "Guarding the Empire," that the U.S. empire had increased to 150 different regions of the world. The third time I reported on the extent of the empire, December 5, 2005, in "Today Iraq, Tomorrow the World," that number had grown to 155. The fourth time I updated the status of the U.S. global empire, on February 19, 2007, in "Update on the Empire," I revealed that U.S. soldiers were stationed in 144 countries and 15 territories. The last time I visited this subject, on April 7, 2008, in "Ninety-Five Years to Go," I detailed that the United States had troops stationed in 157 regions of the world: 147 countries and 10 territories.

Changes from 2008 consist of the addition of U.S. troops to the countries of Eritrea, Fiji, Iran, Libya, and the territories of the Northern Mariana Islands and St. Helena and the removal of troops from Antigua, Belarus, Iceland, and Suriname. Because of the independence of Kosovo on February 17, 2008, which has been recognized by the United States, I am now counting Kosovo as a country instead of a territory. And as I have said on other occasions, these numbers are not the result of Marine embassy guards stationed at U.S. embassies, as I showed in "Guarding the Empire."

Since it has been six years since I gave a complete list of countries occupied by U.S. troops, I will once again list them here:

Afghanistan
Albania
Algeria
Angola
Argentina
Armenia
Australia
Austria
Azerbaijan
Bahamas
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Barbados
Belgium
Belize
Bolivia
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Botswana
Brazil
Bulgaria
Burma
Burundi
Cambodia
Cameroon
Canada
Chad
Chile
China
Colombia
Congo
Costa Rica
Cote D’lvoire
Croatia
Cuba
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark
Djibouti
Dominican Republic
East Timor
Ecuador
Egypt
El Salvador
Eritrea
Estonia
Ethiopia
Fiji
Finland
France

Gabon
Georgia
Germany
Ghana
Greece
Guatemala
Guinea
Guyana
Haiti
Honduras
Hungary
India
Indonesia
Iran
Iraq
Ireland
Israel
Italy
Jamaica
Japan
Jordan
Kazakhstan
Kenya
Kosovo
Kuwait
Kyrgyzstan
Laos
Latvia
Lebanon
Liberia
Libya
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Macedonia
Madagascar
Malaysia
Mali
Malta
Marshall Islands
Mauritania
Mexico
Moldova
Mongolia
Morocco
Mozambique
Nepal
Netherlands
New Zealand
Nicaragua

Niger
Nigeria
Norway
Oman
Pakistan
Panama
Paraguay
Peru
Philippines
Poland
Portugal
Qatar
Romania
Russia
Rwanda
Saudi Arabia
Senegal
Serbia
Sierra Leone
Singapore
Slovakia
Slovenia
Somalia
Spain
South Africa
South Korea
Sri Lanka
Sudan
Sweden
Switzerland
Syria
Tajikistan
Tanzania
Thailand
Togo
Trinidad and Tobago
Tunisia
Turkey
Turkmenistan
Uganda
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates
United Kingdom
Uruguay
Uzbekistan
Venezuela
Vietnam
Yemen
Zambia
Zimbabwe

The ten territories where U.S. troops are stationed are: American Samoa, Bermuda, Diego Garcia, Greenland, Guam, Hong Kong, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, St. Helena, U.S. Virgin Islands, and Wake Island.

President Obama has been in office a year now and the United States is "the world’s sole military superpower" with an inventory of weapons measured in the trillions and a defense budget and global empire of troops and bases that are larger than ever. We are engaged, either openly or covertly, in five fronts in the war on terror (Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen, and Somalia), plus possible future military action against Iran. Additionally, the president maintains that "the struggle against violent extremism will not be finished quickly, and it extends well beyond Afghanistan and Pakistan." He also announced plans to increase spending on America’s arsenal of nuclear weapons – despite saying in his State of the Union speech that he seeks "a world without them." Under commander in chief Obama we have also seen a dramatic escalation of Predator drone strikes, increased arrests and secret detentions of suspected terrorists on the slightest suspicion, and the continuation of the presidential license to order, without judicial oversight, the murder of foreigners and American citizens anywhere in the world based on dubious claims that they are a terrorism threat. And now it has come out that the Army Corps of Engineers has spent more than $4.5 billion on construction projects in Afghanistan, most of it building the nearly 400 U.S. and coalition bases scattered throughout the country.

Obama is the man who, on the campaign trail, on October 27, 2007, pledged: "I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am President, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home. We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank."

Well, Bush didn’t get the troops out, Obama became the new commander in chief, and, after over a year, the troops are still there. And not only are U.S. troops still in Iraq, there are still over 50,000 U.S. troops in Germany, over 35,000 in Japan, and over 24,000 in South Korea – decades after the end of World War II and the Korean War.

Not two months after taking office in January of 2009, Obama ordered an additional 21,000 troops dispatched to Afghanistan. Last summer he signed a $106 billion war supplemental appropriations bill. In October Obama quietly ordered another 13,000 soldiers to deploy to Afghanistan. Now the peace-prize laureate wants an additional $33 billion and 30,000 troops to further expand the war in that graveyard of empires known as Afghanistan. And not only will he get what he wants, he will have bipartisan support. Presidential administrations come and go, but the empire remains the same.

Same empire, different emperor.

Laurence M. Vance
February 11, 2010
Copyright © 2010 by LewRockwell.com.
Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

What Do Unitarian-Universalists Believe?

2010-02-12T18:18:00.002-05:00

After having the chance to ask one on Thursday, I'm still not sure what Unitarians believe.

I listen and call in regularly to the On The Mark radio show on WKOK. Yesterday, they had Ann Evans, the current interim "pastor" at the Unitarian church in Northumberland. Because of their reputation of not believing anything at all, I called in to ask Ann, who has a Masters of Divinity and describes herself as a theologian, to describe the Unitarian worldview from a theological perspective. Click to listen and decide for yourself.

Resisting Tyranny, But From Whom - Robbers or Cops?

2010-02-12T10:10:00.001-05:00

This local police seargant puts into words what many officers believe. Do you believe it too? Any exceptions?

On the Beat: Officers break laws to keep law and order

by SGT. GRAIG HARDING
Feb 03, 2010

Those who serve in law enforcement occupy a special niche in society. They have been called upon to make us safe and step in to take care of situations we either don’t want or are too afraid to address ourselves. In order to do this, they have to break the very laws they are sworn to uphold, and it upsets people when they do this. Let me illustrate.

Our officers have been tasked with making the streets safer and reducing the many crashes that happen daily on our streets. There are very few out there who have not seen a crash at the intersection of Bluff Street and St. George Boulevard. These accidents typically have one cause: failure to yield by someone who turns left in front of a northbound vehicle on Bluff. I had just taken up a position on the sidewalk on the northeast corner, where I had a clear view of the intersection. I made sure I didn’t obstruct any pedestrians who might want to get by.

The light changed once and a vehicle stopped for the red light. The man in the passenger side mouthed something through his window with his brow wrinkled; he seemed upset. I lifted my helmet, and he rolled his window down and said, “Isn’t that illegal? I’d get a ticket if I parked my motorcycle on the sidewalk!” I asked him to pull into the parking lot if he would like me to explain. He did so, and I explained the type of violation I was looking for and the crashes I was trying to prevent. I asked him to give me another, better location to watch for violations. “Smith’s parking lot” was his response. Problem is, an officer can’t see the location of an offender in relation to the stop line from there; when a violation happens, the violator would be so far away by the time the officer got into traffic that apprehension would be impossible.

Ironically, another man called in to complain about an officer who was parked on private property to try and catch speeders. Talk about being between a rock and a hard place. Complaints also come in regarding the motor officers who ride their motorcycles between lines of traffic stopped at a red light. There is no better place for a motor officer to see the cross traffic than when their light turns red. He can see the red light, the location of a violator and the stop line, and he can immediately get to the violator.

Other officers buy drugs to arrest sellers (which would be an illegal act for a citizen). On assault calls, officers often have to commit assaults, themselves, to make the offenders stop and take them into custody. To get to a reckless driver, officers have to drive in a similarly reckless manner (also an illegal act if performed by a civilian). One mother stated that our officers should be the examples of perfect driving, so parents can show their children what driving should be like.

We have taken upon ourselves a sacred trust to protect and to serve you, the public. Any officer who violates this trust will not last in this profession. The bottom line is summed up by a saying from Winston Churchill: “We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men (and women) stand ready to visit violence on those who would do us harm.” These men and women of law enforcement deserve the benefit of the doubt. They have thought this through and know the best and safest ways to accomplish the tasks placed upon them.

Instead of judging them and jumping to conclusions, we owe it to them and to our children to give voice to a positive opinion: “They must be watching for someone, be after somebody, or be en route to a call.” We should have an attitude like the older gentleman who pulled up to me recently at 100 South and River Road. I was again on the sidewalk looking for those who would run the red light. He rolled down his window and waved as he called to me:“Thank you for being here. Thank you for serving us.

Glenn Beck - Conspiracy Theorist or Conspirator?

2010-02-12T08:09:00.003-05:00

So after being off the blog for a while, I gathered a full head of steam yesterday and am ready to charge back into it for this year. Glenn Beck got me started and it rolled on from there. I hadn't listened to his show for a while, but I noticed that Debra Medina, a Republican candidate for Texas Governor, was going to be interviewed at 11am so I tuned in. Medina is a Ron Paul Supporter and a solid candidate whose poll numbers are rising despite running against better known Kay Bailey Hutchinson and incumbent Rick Perry.

The interview was going well, albeit rushed, until the end when Glenn decides to ask her out of the blue if she's a 911 truther. It's fairly obvious she wasn't prepared for that question since she's running for Texas Governor. She could certainly been a more clear in her answer but she did make a clear statement on her website right after the show.

It's days like this that remind me that Glenn Beck is still a neocon - Attacking true conservatives for the sake of status-quo republicans. (I'm using the term neocon loosely, in its most modern usage and as a pejorative.) Beck has consistently gone out of his way to slime those who are further right than him instead of sticking with his criticism of the left which is usually on target.

Medina is not a 911 Truther as she states clearly here and which should be obvious to those who have looked into her background. But instead of exciting himself with her far right limited government ideals, he chooses to rush through the interview to a not so relevant question, put her on the spot and then spend the rest of the hour making a huge deal about her unwillingness to disavow any and all who might question the facts of 911. He said that talking to her made him want to french kiss Rick Perry who is the establishment Republican incumbent. For Glenn, the only true conspiricies are the ones he finds. Everyone else is a kooky nutjob.

Bottom Line- Medina is a strict constitutionalist and a true conservative. If Beck isn't trying to help her, then who is he helping? Answer: The neocons who currently control the republican establishment. I just read that 90 minutes after Medina was on the radio, Rick Perrys campaign started robocalls using the Beck clip. How's that for a conspiracy? Is Beck a conspiritor? Perhaps Rick 'Gardasil' Perry is a little nervous.

For the record, I don't believe 911 was an inside job, but I do believe there are a lot of lesser "conspiracies, inside jobs/corruption/power struggles" going on at all levels of most governments including ours, which ultimately do great collective harm to the value of currency, personal incomes, private property, moral values, children, the future of the country, lives of soldiers, lives of the unborn, lives of foreign civilians, etc. Together this damage far exceeds the crimes of 911.
This is not the first time Beck has attacked someone to his right. Despite the fact that he now has Ron Paul on the show regularly, had Rand on at least once, this tv clip is how the relationship started.

C.S. Lewis - Read Discerningly

2009-12-08T11:17:00.001-05:00

I found the following article by Gary Gilley very informative about Lewis' theological shortcomings. Here are some excerpts. Read the whole thing for the sake of clarity.

He is considered by many to be the greatest apologist for the Christian faith to have ever lived. Whether you agree with this assessment or not, there is no doubt that Lewis was in a league almost by himself in his ability to write great truths in ways that spoke to our hearts and opened our eyes. For this reason, even those who are troubled with much of Lewis’ theology can hardly resist quoting him. There is a danger, however, of all-but-canonizing Lewis, giving more weight to his imaginative explorations and philosophical reasonings than to Scripture. Ruth Tucker writes, “Among Protestants there is only one pope of apologetics…. If C. S. Lewis said it, it must be true. In many circles it seems that the voice of C. S. Lewis is second only to the voice of God.”

In Mere Christianity, Lewis attempted to identify the essential doctrines that would define all Christians of whatever stripe. He claimed to accept the major creeds such as Nicene and Athanasian, yet he championed many unorthodox theological views. He was heavily influenced by Roman Catholics such as J. R. R. Tolkien and G. K. Chesterton and so closely aligned with Catholic theology that “many who read Lewis’ first book after his conversion, The Pilgrim’s Regress, assumed he was a Catholic, and, in fact, the second edition was published by a Catholic publisher.” Today he continues to be accepted by Rome as much as he is by evangelicals. While he was sympathetic toward Catholicism, it was the high Anglican Church of England, the church affiliation of his youth, which he joined after his conversion and remained a member the rest of his life.

Lewis believed in theistic evolution. In the Problem of Pain he wrote,
If by saying that man rose from brutality you mean simply that man is physically descended from animals, I have no objections…. For long centuries God perfected the animal form which was to become the vehicle of humanity and the image of Himself. He gave it hands whose thumbs could be applied to each of its fingers, and jaws and teeth and the throat capable of articulation, and a brain sufficiently complex to execute all material motions whereby rational thought is incarnated. The creature may have existed for ages in this state before it became man…. We do not know how many of these creatures God made, nor how long they continued in the Paradisal state.

Of course such a view will have an influence on one’s understanding of the Fall. Lewis does not believe in the literal accuracy of Adam and Eve sinning in the Garden. In reference to the Fall he says, “I have the deepest respect even for Pagan myths, still more for myths in Holy Scripture…. What exactly happened when Man fell, we do not know; but if it is legitimate to guess, I offer the following picture – a ‘myth’ in the Socratic sense, a not unlikely tale"

Lewis understood the events found in the first three chapters of Genesis as “true myths” (stories that are not literally factual but teach some truth, a view usually held by theological liberals but increasingly by some “evangelicals”). We would expect that this belief would have a major impact on his grasp of other doctrines, especially the next two.

Lewis states, “I disbelieve that doctrine [total depravity], partly on the logical ground that if our depravity were total we should not know ourselves to be depraved and partly because experience shows us much good in human nature.”

In Mere Christianity Lewis was clear that he rejected the substitutionary atonement: Now before I became a Christian I was under the impression that the first thing Christians had to believe was one particular theory as to what the point of this dying [Christ’s] was. According to that theory God wanted to punish men for having deserted and joined the Great Rebel, but Christ volunteered to be punished instead, and so God let us off. Now I admit that even this theory does not seem to me quite so immoral and so silly as it used to…. Theories about Christ’s death are not Christianity: they are explanations about how it works.

J. I. Packer lamented that Lewis never mentioned “justification by faith when speaking of the forgiveness of sins, and his apparent hospitality to baptismal regeneration.” In Mere Christianity Lewis wrote,
"There are three things that spread the Christ-life to us: baptism, belief, and…the Lord’s supper…. And perhaps that explains one or two things. It explains why this new life is spread not only by purely mental acts like belief, but by bodily acts like baptism and Holy Communion…. God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put the new life into us.”

Lewis was an inclusivist believing that some moral non-Christians would be saved: “Though all salvation is through Jesus, we need not conclude that He cannot save those who have not explicitly accepted Him in this life.” In the Last Battle, the final volume in the Narnia series, Aslan (the Christ figure) accepts the service of a follower of the god Tash: “Son, thou art welcome,” Aslan says to this individual. Emeth (the Tash-server) protests, “I am no son of Thine but a servant of Tash.” But Aslan insists, “All the service thou hast done to Tash, I account as service done to me.”

Even more clear, and more shocking, is this statement: There are people who do not accept the full Christian doctrine about Christ but who are so strongly attracted by Him that they are His in a much deeper sense than they themselves understand. There are people in other religions who are being led by God’s secret influence to concentrate on those parts of their religion which are in agreement with Christianity, and who thus belong to Christ without knowing it. For example, a Buddhist of good will may be led to concentrate more and more on the Buddhist teaching about mercy and to leave in the background (though he might still say he believed) the Buddhist teaching on certain other points. Many of the good Pagans long before Christ’s birth may have been in this position.

Lewis expert Wayne Martindale writes, "Lewis believed in Purgatory, both because of tradition and because it appealed to his imagination…. His argument goes like this. We are all sinners. We die with a sin nature. The gap between the holiness of God and the sinfulness of the creature is so unimaginably wide and deep that a profound transformation must happen. And, borrowing from Dante’s view that the soul in Purgatory willingly and even joyfully undertakes the discipline of each step in learning to love properly… Lewis sees Purgatory not as something formed upon us as punishment, but willingly embraced for the good it will do us."

So how should we view Mr. Lewis? His ability to cut through the intellectual clouds and offer insightful analysis of human nature and our relationship with God perhaps has no equal. Most of us have gained much because of the writings of C. S. Lewis. On the other hand, he was no evangelical. His theology is deficient at best in the key areas of Scripture and salvation. He believed in neither sola fide nor sola scriptura, the two battle cries of the Reformation. Those who read him must keep these things in mind, filter his teaching through the grid of Scripture and hold him to the same standards that we are to hold all others. Because Lewis was a man with an incredible ability to package his insights in thought-provoking ways does not mean that what he writes always aligns with God’s Word. He was a man who had keen analytical abilities and incredible writing gifts. But he was a man who rejected or minimized many of the most important truths given to us by God.

Rejoice Republicans! Your New President Embraces the Bush Doctrine

2009-12-03T10:11:00.001-05:00

Rachel Maddow does a masterful job in this monologue of demonstrating how Obama is continuing the Bush Doctrine policies of the last 8 years. I sometimes wonder if the two political parties are in competition for who can be the biggest warmonger.

Ron asks Robert Gates and Hillary Clinton specifically about this. The denial wasn't forthcoming.

(Disclaimer: I disagree with Maddow 97.3% of the time. Since I am over the 97% threshhold, I can't be considered a Communist.)

Why I Don't Respect Bill O'Reilly?

2009-11-17T08:47:00.001-05:00

I don't respect Bill because I have yet to see him espouse and cling to any principles. He's not thorough and he's not consistent. He's just an argumentative blowhard.

This video is an example.

I realize that he used the phrase, "I don't care about the Constitution" to force the argument in his own direction. I know he probably doesn't mean it. It makes one wonder, however, in light of his lack of consistent principles, if in some way he does really mean it.

There are some things you shouldn't say even for the sake of argument because they reveal a lack of respect.
Examples . . . "I don't care about God.", "I don't care about the Bible", "I don't care about my wife", "I don't care if people die", etc. This fits in that category.

By the way, on the issue at hand, I agree wholeheartedly with the Judge.

Government Control - Be Careful What You Wish For

2009-11-06T17:44:00.002-05:00

The other morning on the way to work I was listening to my local talk radio show called On The Mark. They were discussing the gay marriage voter referendum in Maine and the show's left-wing commentator Than Mitchell was upset by the proposition of the voters violating the rights of gay couples.

I wanted to call in, but resisted the urge this time. I am constantly amazed that liberals don't see the downfall of government control. They want the state - the government - their democracy - in control of everything, but they fail to see how that will always lead to a loss of freedom for some if not all of those involved.

When the state assumed the role from the church of licensing marriages, they took control of the governance of marriage. I'm certain that big government types were happy to yield that power at the time, but now in the case of gay marriage they aren't happy with the end product of their democracy. The problem they face is that a majority of Americans still "suffer" from a stigma against homosexuals calling their relationships a marriage. When the churches were in charge, you may have received sanction from some non bible-believing church to marry a person of the same sex. Now that government licenses marriages, you are at their mercy.

The article below appeared on a blog today and it seemed to describe the problem well.

Marriage License & Registration, Please

By Steve Bierfeldt

Published 11/06/09

A Necessary Question
At some point in your life you asked the government's permission for something you should never need approval for in the first place. Though you have a God given right protected by the Constitution, you swallowed your pride, took your marching orders and got in lock step with the government. Don't be embarrassed, you're not alone.

Today the government has its hand in every taxpayer's pocket. From starting a business to building a house, to going fishing with a family member, people obtain licenses for almost everything. The idea of government "licensing" us has become so commonplace most fail to give it a second thought. It is not pertaining to fishing or starting a business that the most curious aspect of licensing arises however. Instead it is the practice which the vast majority of Americans take part in at some point in their lives, the institution of marriage.

The idea of submitting yourself to your spouse, pledging your faithfulness and planning for a future together is about as old a custom as exists today. And yet curiously so many individuals have never considered the implications behind granting the state jurisdiction over their marriage. Without a hunting license you are not permitted to legally hunt. Without a fishing license you may not go fishing. And without a driver's license you cannot legally drive a car. Should it then seem that foreign the same logic applies to a license declaring marriage? What if you applied for a marriage license, and the government said, "No"?

According to the Ohio State Bar Association, you do not have the right to get married on your own terms and instead your marriage is a legal contract with three equal parties. A marriage in Ohio is a creation of the state with the government taking the reigns of that union. They claim, "Marriage is a legal as well as a spiritual and personal relationship. When you state your marriage vows, you enter into a legal contract. There are three parties to that legal contract: 1) you; 2) your spouse; and 3) the state of Ohio. The state is a party to the contract because under its laws, you have certain obligations and responsibilities to each other, to any children you may have, and to Ohio."

Some believe marriage is a God given right, some a natural born right, and others a personal liberty that exists outside of religion and morality. Yet many submit to an entity that should have no authority to determine the details of their family. When urged to forgo a marriage license, the response received is often one of half-hearted protest. Many cite tax benefits; others do not want to deal with the hassle, and some still believe the worst-case scenario is grossly exaggerated. When asked what they would do if they sought the government's approval to get married and were denied, the response is often a variation of, "that could never happen."

Within the past month however an intriguing story splashed across the news wire. A small town in Louisiana gained a great deal of media coverage due to a man and woman who had asked the government for permission to get married and were told, "No." The man and woman, of different racial backgrounds were refused a marriage license by their local justice of the peace. The justice stated he had no feelings of discrimination or resentment, rather personal aversion to granting a marriage license to a couple whose children he felt would face difficulties down the road.

While a fair amount of disdain came against the justice and he has since resigned, his logic and motives for denying the marriage are not important or especially relevant to the story. What is relevant is that government has gotten into the business of deciding who should be allowed to marry and who should not. As the state has ordained itself with this power, the people have meekly submitted themselves in hopes of attaining its seal of approval.

The Idea of a "License."
The definition of a license as per Black's law dictionary is, "The permission by competent authority to do an act which without such permission, would be illegal." The idea of a license does not often get people riled up despite the obedience to the state it implies. A license confers a right to do something that would otherwise be illegal. We do not need the government's approval to get married and we should certainly never grovel before state bureaucrats in order to obtain it. Yet we give the government power to decide if we can hunt for our dinner or own a pet. The state of Alabama even requires individuals to submit their social security number to obtain a fishing license. When we acknowledge the state has the authority to license, we likewise acknowledge the state has the authority to prohibit. The Pandora's box this opens pertaining to marriage is frightening.

In the American colonies and the subsequent Republic, the idea of the government holding preeminence over a marriage is a relatively new concept. Historically the "requirement"to get married had more to do with obtaining parents' approval, making a public announcement, and finding a willing church official to perform the ceremony. State supreme courts often ruled public cohabitation was sufficient evidence the marriage was valid and referred to the couple as having been married under "Common Law." A couple whom had the approval of their parents, held a ceremony, and pledged their faithfulness to one another had made it as clear as possible they were getting married.

How then did we arrive at the point we now find ourselves? As time progressed, many states began passing laws outlawing the marriage of racially mixed couples. In the mid-1800's, certain states began allowing interracial marriages as long as those marrying received a the state's approval. In the 1920's more than 30 states prohibited whites from marrying individuals of another racial background. 18 states had restrictions on remarrying after a divorce, and a dozen states would refuse a license if one partner were a drunk, addict or "mental defect." Soon states began requiring all people to obtain a marriage license. By 1929, every state in the nation had adopted marriage license laws.

The government had now entered into the business of determining who was fit to marry, how drunk was "too drunk," or if some had an addiction or just a vice. By granting government the license to marry, we are granting it the license to further infringe on our individual liberties. How does the state decide who is a "mental defect?" Could a situation arise today in which the state could claim one partner was not mentally competent enough to get married? Unfortunately, it already has. Last month in Scotland social workers halted a wedding because they deemed the woman, "Not bright enough to marry." Kerry Robertson, who admits to having mild learning difficulties is able to read, write, and speak clearly. However social services informed her she would not be allowed a formal license because in their view she "did not understand the implications of getting married." The government officials were kind enough to inform Ms. Robertson of their decision just 48 hours before her wedding.

Unfortunately this story takes an even more morbid tone. Last week Kerry met with social services to determine the fate of her baby. Kerry who is currently pregnant with the couple's first child, was told she was not intelligent enough to be a mother. She was informed she would be allowed only a few hours with her baby before government officials took custody and placed the child in foster care. Social services assert Kerry's fiancée has no standing as the child's father because the two are not married and do not have the state's permission to do so. This story belongs on the cover of a supermarket tabloid and yet it took place in an industrialized western nation in the 21st century. If the government claimed you had no right to get married, how would you react? If the government informed you it would be stealing your child just hours after his birth, what would you do?

Faith
For those who hold faith as their moral compass, the power to get married does not come from the government. That power comes from a creator who gave that gift to be enjoyed for His glory and our betterment. In the Bible the blessing of marriage is first found in Genesis 2:18 and outlines God's desire for man and wife to be joined together in both a physical and spiritual union. Yet the idea of a license removes both God and parental responsibility from the marriage. Traditionally a woman was given in marriage by her father as the ceremonial passing of care to the new, most important man in that woman's life, her husband. Even today the tradition exists and can still be heard in almost all wedding ceremonies. The marrying official states, "Who gives this woman to be married to this man?" At which point the father states his approval. Deuteronomy 22:16, Exodus 22:17 and I Corinthians 7:38 are just a few of the many Scriptural references glorifying God's blessing in our lives and supporting God's sovereignty in marriage over the state's.

Christian principles teach us the institution of marriage is something that should indeed be protected. However it is the government's intervention in marriage that has created the crumbling moral foundation inherent in so many of our well intentioned laws. While states such as Texas and Utah may have different marriage laws than Massachusetts and Vermont, is a religious individual who adheres to a traditional view of marriage supposed to support government intervention when it suits his interests? Certainly not. Rather the believer who wants to defend marriage should do just that by removing the government's role instead of supporting big government policies only when convenient. The necessity of opposing a marriage license solely on Christian principles could be an article unto itself.

However it is vital to question why those adhering to a socially conservative, religious, and perhaps also Christian worldview are often the largest proponents for the government's involvement in marriage. The same government that creates unjust statutes, institutes immoral policies, and has grown consistently more tyrannical, is the same government we want to promote morals and defend the institution of marriage? No thank you.

Freedom
For some the issue of faith and religion has no place in the marriage discussion. A moral code comes not necessarily from a deity but a natural right bestowed upon one from birth. You have an unimpeded right to life, liberty and property just so long as you do not infringe upon the life, liberty and property of another individual. No government entity, no matter how pure they claim their motives to be, has any right to steal your liberty or tell you how you can live your life and whom you can spend your time with. A couple who claims to be in love, chooses to have a ceremony announcing their union, and begins living together as a married couple has rights both under natural law and the Constitution.

Yet despite the enormous media coverage ballot propositions and marriage laws have gained, the genders of the individuals are actually irrelevant to the rights they share. These individuals have the right to live their lives as they wish as well as the right to be left alone. What they do not have however, is the right to force those who disagree with their lifestyle to pay for their coupling through tax breaks, partner benefits or economic subsidies. Just as some on the right pine for government intervention in marriage in order to defend traditional values, some on the left clamor for that same intervention in order to secure financial gains and increase the size of government. Their fight is not for the freedom and equality they claim to desire, but rather the statist policies that would create more bureaucracy and more government debt.

If both the left and the right came at marriage from a liberty perspective they would realize there can be a joint agreement on the necessity for the individual to have pre-eminence over the state. While they may have different sets of values, they could easily reach the same conclusion. The idea of a marriage license infringes on both the God given right to get married and the natural right to live how you wish.

A Necessary Conclusion
In almost every wedding you've been to, you've probably heard the final words uttered by the marrying official. Whether from a judge, a pastor, or another religious representative, he states, "By the power vested in me by the state of __________, I now pronounced you man and wife." Advocates of individual freedom should cringe every-time we hear those words. The idea of, "Power" being granted by a government agency is like a dagger into the heart of liberty. Opposing government involvement in marriage holds no bias for those professing faith, those adhering to law, or those preferring individual freedom.

A religious individual should want to defend the idea of traditional marriage as an institution created and blessed by God. It is because of this belief they must push for government to be removed completely. The believer examines a state that has consistently assaulted his faith and the values he holds dear, and somehow he wants that same government to be involved in promoting his moral values? A liberty minded individual should want to defend each person's right to live as they deem proper. It is not important we agree with one lifestyle or another. It is instead important we agree an individual has certain freedoms that their religion or lack of religion should have no impact on, just as long as others are not forced to administer it, pay for it, or approve of it.

The advocate of liberty must be ready to pledge their allegiance not to the state, but to the values they hold as high. For some this may be a spiritual worldview, for some a view based on the life of Christ and a Biblical foundation, and for others an emphasis on the natural rights and liberties each person is born with. Though they may take different paths to get there, it is vitally important they end up at the same conclusion. In our battle to protect personal ethics and individual freedoms we must understand our enemy is not our fellow brother in the cause. Our enemy is a state that uses tyranny to bully us into asking permission to engage in an activity for which no permission is needed. Though we may disagree on a moral code and how that code should be defined, we can come together to promote individual autonomy, protect inherent rights, and turn away from marriage licenses once and for all. We may find we have more in common than we thought.
Copyright © 2009 Campaign for Liberty

Election News

2009-11-05T21:17:00.001-05:00

In case you read this blog, but aren't a local paper reader or a facebook friend, I am thankful to inform you that I won a Township Supervisor seat in Tuesday's election. Here are the results:

Union Supervisor

Bob Zechman, Jr. DEM 68 29.96%
Billy Allred REP 159 70.04%

I appreciate the help I received from friends and neighbors by posting my signs and asking their friends and neighbors to vote for me.

I spent election day at the polls talking to voters. My opponent, Bob Zechman, was there as well and we had a good time talking through the lulls of the day. He's really a nice guy and I would have voted for him if I wasn't running.

So now the six year term of fun begins. Several people have asked me what I was going to do now that I have the job. I think it's a little easier to define what I'm NOT going to do. Here's a few for starters:

Raise Taxes, Pass Zoning, Increase Regulation, Deny Variances, Centralize Power, etc.

Overall, my goal is to spend wisely, and hold private property sacred. It should be a real treat dealing with other county officials who think highly of planning and zoning, ie. their own control.

Obama Believes In Open Government . . .

2009-10-24T10:50:00.001-04:00

He just hasn't accomplished it yet.

Local Government Is Better Than Federal, But I Prefer Private Property

2009-10-22T22:05:00.001-04:00

I'm running for Township Supervisor in less than two weeks. You could infer that I think local government at its most granular level is . . .
1. Legitimate
2. Beneficial
3. In need of my help.

I actually think local government is . . .
1. More Legitimate than the far away mob of elites who rule us.
2. More Beneficial than those who plunder our wealth and devalue our currency.
3. Always in need of consistent leaders who value property rights more than power.

So I will run to serve. Not to serve the government, the majority, the businesses or the special interests, but to serve the common man's right to rule himself and his property as he sees fit.

After all, that is what works.

A Nobel Winner Who Showed Freedom Works
by John Stossel

Pundits and politicians act as if government can solve almost any problem. At the slightest hint of trouble, the ruling class reflexively assumes that knowledgeable, wise and public-spirited government regulators are capable of riding to the rescue. This certainly is the guiding philosophy of the Obama administration.

So how remarkable it is that this year's Nobel Memorial Prize in economics was shared by Elinor Ostrom, whose life's work demonstrates that politicians and bureaucrats are not nearly as good at solving problems as regular people. Ostrom, the first woman to win the prize (which she shared with Oliver Williamson of UC-Berkeley), is a political scientist at Indiana University. The selection committee said that she has "challenged the conventional wisdom that common property is poorly managed and should be either regulated by central authorities or privatized. Based on numerous studies of user-managed fish stocks, pastures, woods, lakes and groundwater basins, Ostrom concludes that the outcomes are, more often than not, better than predicted by standard theories. She observes that resource-users frequently develop sophisticated mechanisms for decision-making and rule enforcement to handle conflicts" (emphasis added).

Ostrom's work concentrates on common-pool resources (CPR) like pastures and fisheries. Policymakers assume that such situations are plagued by free-rider problems, where all individuals have a strong incentive to use the resource to the fullest and no incentive to invest in order to enhance it. Analysts across the political spectrum theorize that only bureaucrats or owners of privatized units can efficiently manage such resources.

Few scholars actually venture into the field to see what people actually do when faced with free-rider problems. Ostrom did. It turns out that free people are not as helpless as the theorists believed.

She writes in her 1990 book, "Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action," that there is no shortage of real-world examples of "a self-governed common-property arrangement in which the rules have been devised and modified by the participants themselves and also are monitored and enforced by them."

In other words, free people work things out on their own.
Not only is government help often not needed, Ostrom says it usually screws things up because bureaucrats operate in an ivory tower ignorant of the local customs and the specific resource.

Political theorists assume away the problems of political control, but the problems are real. There is no reason to believe that bureaucrats and politicians, no matter how well meaning, are better at solving problems than the people on the spot, who have the strongest incentive to get the solution right. Unlike bureaucrats, they bear the costs of their mistakes. Moreover, as the prize committee pointed out, "Rules that are imposed from the outside or unilaterally dictated by powerful insiders have less legitimacy and are more likely to be violated."

Some of Ostrom's readers think that she is as critical of the free market as she is of government management. She writes, "(N)either the state nor the market is uniformly successful in enabling individuals to sustain long-term, productive use of natural resource systems." But what those readers miss is that the resource-management arrangements Ostrom documents are voluntary agreements that people themselves devise, monitor and enforce. These agreements are part of the free market, even if the resource is not formally divided into privately owned units. Fundamental for advocates of freedom is not "the market" narrowly conceived, but the broader realm of consent and contract.

I was amused to see the lengths to which the New York Times went to spin Ostrom's (and Williamson's) selection in an anti-free-market direction. Reporter Louis Uchitelle wrote, "Neither Ms. Ostrom nor Mr. Williamson has argued against regulation. Quite the contrary, their work found that people in business adopt for themselves numerous forms of regulation and rules of behavior – called 'governance' in economic jargon – doing so independently of government. ..."

Please. Rules of behavior that are independent of government are not what anybody means by "regulation." Advocates of regulation say people can't devise methods of "governance" that leave politicians out of the picture, but Ostrom shows they are wrong.

We libertarians aren't against rules – we are against top-down rules imposed by out-of-touch bureaucrats. People generate better rules when the state leaves us alone.

Before You Get A Swine Flu Shot . . .

2009-09-23T12:53:00.001-04:00

You should probably watch this 60 Minutes 1979 expose about the '76 swine flu scare. You should ask some questions.

1. Based on the state's past record will you accept their word that we are experiencing or are about to experience an epidemic or pandemic?
2. Are you willing to stake your life on the safety of these vaccines?
3. If you don't receive the vaccine how much more likely are you to die or suffer long term debilitation from swine flu?

Part 1

Part 2

This Man Should Have Been President

2009-09-18T11:42:00.001-04:00

In many ways, I regard him as my president. He is certainly a leader who leads with the right ideas.

You May Have The Power, But We Have The Cameras

2009-09-04T10:14:00.001-04:00

I am consistently amazed at the way the internet and technology are revolutionizing American Politics. Let's hope it results in some of these bums gettting thrown out of "their" office.

I Laughed Today When I Saw This . . .

2009-09-01T09:36:00.001-04:00

Not that any of our former presidents are much different.

THE GOVERNMENT CAN!!! (need I say more)

2009-08-28T10:59:00.002-04:00

Want To Know Precisely What Is Wrong With American Health Care?

2009-08-24T18:33:00.002-04:00

This article describes it in great detail. I don't agree with all the details of his solutions, but they would certainly be better than mandating our actual care.

The American Health Care System Killed My Father
by David Goldhill

Almost two years ago, my father was killed by a hospital-borne infection in the intensive-care unit of a well-regarded nonprofit hospital in New York City. Dad had just turned 83, and he had a variety of the ailments common to men of his age. But he was still working on the day he walked into the hospital with pneumonia. Within 36 hours, he had developed sepsis. Over the next five weeks in the ICU, a wave of secondary infections, also acquired in the hospital, overwhelmed his defenses. My dad became a statistic—merely one of the roughly 100,000 Americans whose deaths are caused or influenced by infections picked up in hospitals. One hundred thousand deaths: more than double the number of people killed in car crashes, five times the number killed in homicides, 20 times the total number of our armed forces killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another victim in a building American tragedy.

About a week after my father’s death, The New Yorker ran an article by Atul Gawande profiling the efforts of Dr. Peter Pronovost to reduce the incidence of fatal hospital-borne infections. Pronovost’s solution? A simple checklist of ICU protocols governing physician hand-washing and other basic sterilization procedures. Hospitals implementing Pronovost’s checklist had enjoyed almost instantaneous success, reducing hospital-infection rates by two-thirds within the first three months of its adoption. But many physicians rejected the checklist as an unnecessary and belittling bureaucratic intrusion, and many hospital executives were reluctant to push it on them. The story chronicled Pronovost’s travels around the country as he struggled to persuade hospitals to embrace his reform.

It was a heroic story, but to me, it was also deeply unsettling. How was it possible that Pronovost needed to beg hospitals to adopt an essentially cost-free idea that saved so many lives? Here’s an industry that loudly protests the high cost of liability insurance and the injustice of our tort system and yet needs extensive lobbying to embrace a simple technique to save up to 100,000 people.
And what about us—the patients? How does a nation that might close down a business for a single illness from a suspicious hamburger tolerate the carnage inflicted by our hospitals? And not just those 100,000 deaths. In April, a Wall Street Journal story suggested that blood clots following surgery or illness, the leading cause of preventable hospital deaths in the U.S., may kill nearly 200,000 patients per year. How did Americans learn to accept hundreds of thousands of deaths from minor medical mistakes as an inevitability?

My survivor’s grief has taken the form of an obsession with our health-care system. For more than a year, I’ve been reading as much as I can get my hands on, talking to doctors and patients, and asking a lot of questions.

Keeping Dad company in the hospital for five weeks had left me befuddled. How can a facility featuring state-of-the-art diagnostic equipment use less-sophisticated information technology than my local sushi bar? How can the ICU stress the importance of sterility when its trash is picked up once daily, and only after flowing onto the floor of a patient’s room? Considering the importance of a patient’s frame of mind to recovery, why are the rooms so cheerless and uncomfortable? In whose interest is the bizarre scheduling of hospital shifts, so that a five-week stay brings an endless string of new personnel assigned to a patient’s care? Why, in other words, has this technologically advanced hospital missed out on the revolution in quality control and customer service that has swept all other consumer-facing industries in the past two generations?

I’m a businessman, and in no sense a health-care expert. But the persistence of bad industry practices—from long lines at the doctor’s office to ever-rising prices to astonishing numbers of preventable deaths—seems beyond all normal logic, and must have an underlying cause. There needs to be a business reason why an industry, year in and year out, would be able to get away with poor customer service, unaffordable prices, and uneven results—a reason my father and so many others are unnecessarily killed.

Like every grieving family member, I looked for someone to blame for my father’s death. But my dad’s doctors weren’t incompetent—on the contrary, his hospital physicians were smart, thoughtful, and hard-working. Nor is he dead because of indifferent nursing—without exception, his nurses were dedicated and compassionate. Nor from financial limitations—he was a Medicare patient, and the issue of expense was never once raised. There were no greedy pharmaceutical companies, evil health insurers, or other popular villains in his particular tragedy.

Indeed, I suspect that our collective search for villains—for someone to blame—has distracted us and our political leaders from addressing the fundamental causes of our nation’s health-care crisis. All of the actors in health care—from doctors to insurers to pharmaceutical companies—work in a heavily regulated, massively subsidized industry full of structural distortions. They all want to serve patients well. But they also all behave rationally in response to the economic incentives those distortions create. Accidentally, but relentlessly, America has built a health-care system with incentives that inexorably generate terrible and perverse results. Incentives that emphasize health care over any other aspect of health and well-being. That emphasize treatment over prevention. That disguise true costs. That favor complexity, and discourage transparent competition based on price or quality. That result in a generational pyramid scheme rather than sustainable financing. And that—most important—remove consumers from our irreplaceable role as the ultimate ensurer of value.

These are the impersonal forces, I’ve come to believe, that explain why things have gone so badly wrong in health care, producing the national dilemma of runaway costs and poorly covered millions. The problems I’ve explored in the past year hardly count as breakthrough discoveries—health-care experts undoubtedly view all of them as old news. But some experts, it seems, have come to see many of these problems as inevitable in any health-care system—as conditions to be patched up, papered over, or worked around, but not problems to be solved.

That’s the premise behind today’s incremental approach to health-care reform. Though details of the legislation are still being negotiated, its principles are a reprise of previous reforms—addressing access to health care by expanding government aid to those without adequate insurance, while attempting to control rising costs through centrally administered initiatives. Some of the ideas now on the table may well be sensible in the context of our current system. But fundamentally, the “comprehensive” reform being contemplated merely cements in place the current system—insurance-based, employment-centered, administratively complex. It addresses the underlying causes of our health-care crisis only obliquely, if at all; indeed, by extending the current system to more people, it will likely increase the ultimate cost of true reform.

I’m a Democrat, and have long been concerned about America’s lack of a health safety net. But based on my own work experience, I also believe that unless we fix the problems at the foundation of our health system—largely problems of incentives—our reforms won’t do much good, and may do harm. To achieve maximum coverage at acceptable cost with acceptable quality, health care will need to become subject to the same forces that have boosted efficiency and value throughout the economy. We will need to reduce, rather than expand, the role of insurance; focus the government’s role exclusively on things that only government can do (protect the poor, cover us against true catastrophe, enforce safety standards, and ensure provider competition); overcome our addiction to Ponzi-scheme financing, hidden subsidies, manipulated prices, and undisclosed results; and rely more on ourselves, the consumers, as the ultimate guarantors of good service, reasonable prices, and sensible trade-offs between health-care spending and spending on all the other good things money can buy.

These ideas stand well outside the emerging political consensus about reform. So before exploring alternative policies, let’s reexamine our basic assumptions about health care—what it actually is, how it’s financed, its accountability to patients, and finally its relationship to the eternal laws of supply and demand. Everyone I know has at least one personal story about how screwed up our health-care system is; before spending (another) $1trillion or so on reform, we need a much clearer understanding of the causes of the problems we all experience.

Health Care Isn’t Health (Or Happiness)

“Money is honey,” my grandmother used to tell me, “but health is wealth.” She said “health,” not “health care.” Listening to debates over health-care reform, it is sometimes difficult to remember that there is a difference.

Medical care, of course, is merely one component of our overall health. Nutrition, exercise, education, emotional security, our natural environment, and public safety may now be more important than care in producing further advances in longevity and quality of life. (In 2005, almost half of all deaths in the U.S. resulted from heart disease, diabetes, lung cancer, homicide, suicide, and accidents—all of which are arguably influenced as much by lifestyle choices and living environment as by health care.) And of course even health itself is only one aspect of personal fulfillment, alongside family and friends, travel, recreation, the pursuit of knowledge and experience, and more.

Yet spending on health care, by families and by the government, is crowding out spending on almost everything else. As a nation, we now spend almost 18 percent of our GDP on health care. In 1966, Medicare and Medicaid made up 1 percent of total government spending; now that figure is 20 percent, and quickly rising. Already, the federal government spends eight times as much on health care as it does on education, 12 times what it spends on food aid to children and families, 30 times what it spends on law enforcement, 78 times what it spends on land management and conservation, 87 times the spending on water supply, and 830 times the spending on energy conservation. Education, public safety, environment, infrastructure—all other public priorities are being slowly devoured by the health-care beast.

It’s no different for families. From 2000 to 2008, the U.S. economy grew by $4.4 trillion; of that growth, roughly one out of every four dollars was spent on health care. Household expenditures on health care already exceed those on housing. And health care’s share is growing.

By what mechanism does society determine that an extra, say, $100 billion for health care will make us healthier than even $10 billion for cleaner air or water, or $25 billion for better nutrition, or $5 billion for parks, or $10 billion for recreation, or $50 billion in additional vacation time—or all of those alternatives combined?

The answer is, no mechanism at all. Health care simply keeps gobbling up national resources, seemingly without regard to other societal needs; it’s treated as an island that doesn’t touch or affect the rest of the economy. As new tests and treatments are developed, they are, for the most part, added to our Medicare or commercial insurance policies, no matter what they cost. But of course the money must come from somewhere. If the amount we spend on care had grown only at the general rate of inflation since 1970, annual health-care costs now would be roughly $5,000 less per American—that’s about 10 percent of today’s median income, to invest for the future or to spend on all the other things that contribute to our well-being. To be sure, our society has become wealthier over the years, and we’d naturally want to spend some of this new wealth on more and better health care; but how did we choose to spend this much?

The housing bubble offers some important lessons for health-care policy. The claim that something—whether housing or health care—is an undersupplied social good is commonly used to justify government intervention, and policy makers have long striven to make housing more affordable. But by making housing investments eligible for special tax benefits and subsidized borrowing rates, the government has stimulated not only the construction of more houses but also the willingness of people to borrow and spend more on houses than they otherwise would have. The result is now tragically clear.

As with housing, directing so much of society’s resources to health care is stimulating the provision of vastly more care. Along the way, it’s also distorting demand, raising prices, and making us all poorer by crowding out other, possibly more beneficial, uses for the resources now air-dropped onto the island of health care. Why do we view health care as disconnected from everything else? Why do we spend so much on it? And why, ultimately, do we get such inconsistent results? Any discussion of the ills within the system must begin with a hard look at the tax-advantaged comprehensive-insurance industry at its center.

Health Insurance Isn’t Health Care

How often have you heard a politician say that millions of Americans “have no health care,” when he or she meant they have no health insurance? How has a method of financing health care become synonymous with care itself?

The reason for financing at least some of our health care with an insurance system is obvious. We all worry that a serious illness or an accident might one day require urgent, extensive care, imposing an extreme financial burden on us. In this sense, health-care insurance is just like all other forms of insurance—life, property, liability—where the many who face a risk share the cost incurred by the few who actually suffer a loss.

But health insurance is different from every other type of insurance. Health insurance is the primary payment mechanism not just for expenses that are unexpected and large, but for nearly all health-care expenses. We’ve become so used to health insurance that we don’t realize how absurd that is. We can’t imagine paying for gas with our auto-insurance policy, or for our electric bills with our homeowners insurance, but we all assume that our regular checkups and dental cleanings will be covered at least partially by insurance. Most pregnancies are planned, and deliveries are predictable many months in advance, yet they’re financed the same way we finance fixing a car after a wreck—through an insurance claim.

Comprehensive health insurance is such an ingrained element of our thinking, we forget that its rise to dominance is relatively recent. Modern group health insurance was introduced in 1929, and employer-based insurance began to blossom during World War II, when wage freezes prompted employers to expand other benefits as a way of attracting workers. Still, as late as 1954, only a minority of Americans had health insurance. That’s when Congress passed a law making employer contributions to employee health plans tax-deductible without making the resulting benefits taxable to employees. This seemingly minor tax benefit not only encouraged the spread of catastrophic insurance, but had the accidental effect of making employer-funded health insurance the most affordable option (after taxes) for financing pretty much any type of health care. There was nothing natural or inevitable about the way our system developed: employer-based, comprehensive insurance crowded out alternative methods of paying for health-care expenses only because of a poorly considered tax benefit passed half a century ago.

In designing Medicare and Medicaid in 1965, the government essentially adopted this comprehensive-insurance model for its own spending, and by the next year had enrolled nearly 12 percent of the population. And it is no coincidence that the great inflation in health-care costs began soon after. We all believe we need comprehensive health insurance because the cost of care—even routine care—appears too high to bear on our own. But the use of insurance to fund virtually all care is itself a major cause of health care’s high expense.

Insurance is probably the most complex, costly, and distortional method of financing any activity; that’s why it is otherwise used to fund only rare, unexpected, and large costs. Imagine sending your weekly grocery bill to an insurance clerk for review, and having the grocer reimbursed by the insurer to whom you’ve paid your share. An expensive and wasteful absurdity, no?

Is this really a big problem for our health-care system? Well, for every two doctors in the U.S., there is now one health-insurance employee—more than 470,000 in total. In 2006, it cost almost $500 per person just to administer health insurance. Much of this enormous cost would simply disappear if we paid routine and predictable health-care expenditures the way we pay for everything else—by ourselves.

The Moral-Hazard Economy

Society’s excess cost from health insurance’s administrative expense pales next to the damage caused by “moral hazard”—the tendency we all have to change our behavior, becoming spendthrifts and otherwise taking less care with our decisions, when someone else is covering the costs. Needless to say, much medical care is unavoidable; we don’t choose to become sick, nor do we seek more treatment than we think we need. Still, hospitals, drug companies, health insurers, and medical-device manufacturers now spend roughly $6 billion a year on advertising. If the demand for health care is purely a response to unavoidable medical need, why do these companies do so much advertising?

Medical ads on TV typically inform the viewer that a specific treatment—a drug, device, surgical procedure—is available for a chronic condition. Many also note that the product or treatment is eligible for Medicare or private-insurance reimbursement. In some cases, the advertiser will offer to help the patient obtain that reimbursement. The key message: you can benefit from this product and pass the bill on to someone else.

Every time you walk into a doctor’s office, it’s implicit that someone else will be paying most or all of your bill; for most of us, that means we give less attention to prices for medical services than we do to prices for anything else. Most physicians, meanwhile, benefit financially from ordering diagnostic tests, doing procedures, and scheduling follow-up appointments. Combine these two features of the system with a third—the informational advantage that extensive training has given physicians over their patients, and the authority that advantage confers—and you have a system where physicians can, to some extent, generate demand at will.

Do they? Well, Medicare spends almost twice as much per patient in Dallas, where there are more doctors and care facilities per resident, as it does in Salem, Oregon, where supply is tighter. Why? Because doctors (particularly specialists) in surplus areas order more tests and treatments per capita, and keep their practices busy. Many studies have shown that the patients in areas like Dallas do not benefit in any measurable way from all this extra care. All of the physicians I know are genuinely dedicated to their patients. But at the margin, all of us are at least subconsciously influenced by our own economic interests. The data are clear: in our current system, physician supply often begets patient demand.

Moral hazard has fostered an accidental collusion between providers benefiting from higher costs and patients who don’t fully bear them. In this environment, trying to control costs is awfully tough. When Medicare cut reimbursement rates in 2005 on chemotherapy and anemia drugs, for instance, it saved almost 20 percent of the previously billed costs. But Medicare’s total cancer-treatment costs actually rose almost immediately. As The New York Times reported, some physicians believed their colleagues simply performed more treatments, particularly higher-profit ones.

Want further evidence of moral hazard? The average insured American and the average uninsured American spend very similar amounts of their own money on health care each year—$654 and $583, respectively. But they spend wildly different amounts of other people’s money—$3,809 and $1,103, respectively. Sometimes the uninsured do not get highly beneficial treatments because they cannot afford them at today’s prices—something any reform must address. But likewise, insured patients often get only marginally beneficial (or even outright unnecessary) care at mind-boggling cost. If it’s true that the insurance system leads us to focus on only our direct share of costs—rather than the total cost to society—it’s not surprising that insured families and uninsured ones would make similar decisions as to how much of their own money to spend on care, but very different decisions on the total amount to consume.

The unfortunate fact is, health-care demand has no natural limit. Our society will always keep creating new treatments to cure previously incurable problems. Some of these will save lives or add productive years to them; many will simply make us more comfortable. That’s all to the good. But the cost of this comfort, and whether it’s really worthwhile, is never calculated—by anyone. For almost all our health-care needs, the current system allows us as consumers to ask providers, “What’s my share?” instead of “How much does this cost?”—a question we ask before buying any other good or service. And the subtle difference between those two questions is costing us all a fortune.

There’s No One Else to Pay the Bill

Perhaps the greatest problem posed by our health-insurance-driven regime is the sense it creates that someone else is actually paying for most of our health care—and that the costs of new benefits can also be borne by someone else. Unfortunately, there is no one else.

For fun, let’s imagine confiscating all the profits of all the famously greedy health-insurance companies. That would pay for four days of health care for all Americans. Let’s add in the profits of the 10 biggest rapacious U.S. drug companies. Another 7 days. Indeed, confiscating all the profits of all American companies, in every industry, wouldn’t cover even five months of our health-care expenses.

Somebody else always seems to be paying for at least part of our health care. But that’s just an illusion. At $2.4 trillion and growing, our nation’s health-care bill is too big to be paid by anyone other than all of us.

In 2007, employer-based health insurance cost, on average, more than $12,000 per family, up 78 percent since 2001. I’ve run several companies and company divisions of various sizes over the course of my career, so I can confidently tell you that raises (and even entry-level hiring) are tightly limited by rising health-care costs. You may think your employer is paying for your health care, but in fact your company’s share of the insurance premium comes out of your potential wage increase. Where else could it come from?

Let’s say you’re a 22-year-old single employee at my company today, starting out at a $30,000 annual salary. Let’s assume you’ll get married in six years, support two children for 20 years, retire at 65, and die at 80. Now let’s make a crazy assumption: insurance premiums, Medicare taxes and premiums, and out-of-pocket costs will grow no faster than your earnings—say, 3 percent a year. By the end of your working days, your annual salary will be up to $107,000. And over your lifetime, you and your employer together will have paid $1.77 million for your family’s health care. $1.77 million! And that’s only after assuming the taming of costs! In recent years, health-care costs have actually grown 2 to 3 percent faster than the economy. If that continues, your 22-year-old self is looking at an additional $2 million or so in expenses over your lifetime—roughly $4 million in total.

Would you have guessed these numbers were so large? If not, you have good cause: only a quarter would be paid by you directly (and much of that after retirement). The rest would be spent by others on your behalf, deducted from your earnings before you received your paycheck. And that’s a big reason why our health-care system is so expensive.

The Government Is Not Good at Cost Reduction

Every proposal for health-care reform has featured some element of cost control to “balance” the inflationary impact of expanding access. Yet it goes without saying that in the big picture, all government efforts to control costs have failed.

Why? One reason is a fixation on prices rather than costs. The government regularly tries to cap costs by limiting the reimbursement rates paid to providers by Medicare and Medicaid, and generally pays much less for each service than private insurers. But as we’ve seen, that can lead providers to perform more services, and to steer patients toward higher-priced, more lightly regulated treatments. The government’s efforts to expand “access” to care while limiting costs are like blowing up a balloon while simultaneously squeezing it. The balloon continues to inflate, but in misshapen form.

Cost control is a feature of decentralized, competitive markets, not of centralized bureaucracy—a matter of incentives, not mandates. What’s more, cost control is dynamic. Even the simplest business faces constant variation in its costs for labor, facilities, and capital; to compete, management must react quickly, efficiently, and, most often, prospectively. By contrast, government bureaucracies set regulations and reimbursement rates through carefully evaluated and broadly applied rules. These bureaucracies first must notice market changes and resource misallocations, and then (sometimes subject to political considerations) issue additional regulations or change reimbursement rates to address each problem retrospectively.

As a result, strange distortions crop up constantly in health care. For example, although the population is rapidly aging, we have few geriatricians—physicians who address the cluster of common patient issues related to aging, often crossing traditional specialty lines. Why? Because under Medicare’s current reimbursement system (which generally pays more to physicians who do lots of tests and procedures), geriatricians typically don’t make much money. If seniors were the true customers, they would likely flock to geriatricians, bidding up their rates—and sending a useful signal to medical-school students. But Medicare is the real customer, and it pays more to specialists in established fields. And so, seniors often end up overusing specialists who are not focused on their specific health needs.

Many reformers believe if we could only adopt a single-payer system, we could deliver health care more cheaply than we do today. The experience of other developed countries suggests that’s true: the government as single payer would have lower administrative costs than private insurers, as well as enormous market clout and the ability to bring down prices, although at the cost of explicitly rationing care.

But even leaving aside the effects of price controls on innovation and customer service, today’s Medicare system should leave us skeptical about the long-term viability of that approach. From 2000 to 2007, despite its market power, Medicare’s hospital and physician reimbursements per enrollee rose by 5.4 percent and 8.5 percent, respectively, per year. As currently structured, Medicare is a Ponzi scheme. The Medicare tax rate has been raised seven times since its enactment, and almost certainly will need to be raised again in the next decade. The Medicare tax contributions and premiums that today’s beneficiaries have paid into the system don’t come close to fully funding their care, which today’s workers subsidize. The subsidy is getting larger even as it becomes more difficult to maintain: next year there will be 3.7 working people for each Medicare beneficiary; if you’re in your mid-40s today, there will be only 2.4 workers to subsidize your care when you hit retirement age. The experience of other rich nations should also make us skeptical. Whatever their histories, nearly all developed countries are now struggling with rapidly rising health-care costs, including those with single-payer systems. From 2000 to 2005, per capita health-care spending in Canada grew by 33 percent, in France by 37 percent, in the U.K. by 47 percent—all comparable to the 40 percent growth experienced by the U.S. in that period. Cost control by way of bureaucratic price controls has its limits.

Uncompetitive

In 2007, health companies in the Fortune 1,000 earned $71 billion. Of the 52 industries represented on Fortune’s list, pharmaceuticals and medical equipment ranked third and fourth, respectively, in terms of profits as a share of revenue. From 2000 to 2007, the annual profits of America’s top 15 health-insurance companies increased from $3.5 billion to $15 billion.

In competitive markets, high profits serve an important social purpose: encouraging capital to flow to the production of a service not adequately supplied. But as long as our government shovels ever-greater resources into health care with one hand, while with the other restricting competition that would ensure those resources are used efficiently, sustained high profits will be the rule.

Health care is an exceptionally heavily regulated industry. Health-insurance companies are regulated by states, which limits interstate competition. And many of the materials, machines, and even software programs used by health-care facilities must be licensed by state or federal authorities, or approved for use by Medicare; these requirements form large barriers to entry for both new facilities and new vendors that could equip and supply them.

Many health-care regulations are justified as safety precautions. But many also result from attempts to redress the distortions that our system of financing health care has created. And whatever their purpose, almost all of these regulations can be shaped over time by the powerful institutions that dominate the health-care landscape, and that are often looking to protect themselves from competition.

Take the ongoing battle between large integrated hospitals and specialty clinics (for cardiac surgery, orthopedics, maternity, etc.). The economic threat posed by these facilities is well illustrated by a recent battle in Loma Linda, California. When a group of doctors proposed a 28-bed private specialty facility, the local hospitals protested to the city council that it was unnecessary, and launched a publicity campaign to try to block it; the council backed the facility anyway. So the nonprofit Loma Linda University Medical Center simply bought the new facility for $80 million in 2008. Traditional hospitals got Congress to include an 18-month moratorium on new specialty hospitals in the 2003 Medicare law, and a second six-month ban in 2005.

The hospitals’ argument has some merit: less complicated surgical cases (the kind specialty clinics typically take on) tend to be more profitable than complex surgeries and nonsurgical admissions. Without those profitable cases, hospitals can’t subsidize the cases on which they lose money. But why are simple surgeries more profitable? Because of the nonmarket methods by which Medicare sets prices.

The net effect of the endless layers of health-care regulation is to stifle competition in the classic economic sense. What we have instead is a noncompetitive system where services and reimbursement are negotiated above consumers’ heads by large private and government institutions. And the primary goal of any large noncompetitive institution is not cost control or product innovation or customer service: it’s maintenance of the status quo.

Our Favored Hospitals

In 1751, Benjamin Franklin and Dr. Thomas Bond founded Pennsylvania Hospital, the first in America, “to care for the sick-poor and insane who were wandering the streets of Philadelphia.” Since then, hospitals have come to dominate the American medical landscape. Yet in recent decades, the rationale for concentrating so much care under one roof has diminished steadily. Many hospitals still exist in their current form largely because they are protected by regulation and favored by government payment policies, which effectively maintain the existing industrial structure, rather than encouraging innovation.

Between 1970 and 2006, annual Medicare payments to hospitals grew by roughly 3,800 percent, from $5 billion to $192 billion. Total annual hospital-care costs for all patients grew from $28 billion to almost $650 billion during that same period. Since 1975, hospitals’ enormous revenue growth has occurred despite a 35 percent decline in the number of hospital beds, no meaningful increase in total admissions, and an almost 50 percent decline in the average length of stay. High-tech equipment has been dispersed to medical practices, recovery periods after major procedures have shrunk, and pharmaceutical therapies have grown in importance, yet over the past 40 years, hospitals have managed to retain the same share (roughly one-third) of our nation’s health-care bill.

Hospitals have sought to use the laws and regulations originally designed to serve patients to preserve their business model. Their argument is the same one that’s been made before by regulated railroads, electric utilities, airlines, Ma Bell, and banks: new competitors, they say, are using their cost advantages to skim off the best customers; without those customers, the incumbents will no longer be able to subsidize essential services that no one can profitably provide to the public.

Hospitals are indeed required to provide emergency care to any walk-in patient, and this obligation is a meaningful public service. But how do we know whether the charitable benefit from this requirement justifies the social cost of expensive hospital care and poor quality? We don’t know. Our system of health-care law and regulation has so distorted the functioning of the market that it’s impossible to measure the social costs and benefits of maintaining hospitals’ prominence. And again, the distortions caused by a reluctance to pay directly for health care—in this case, emergency medicine for the poor—are in large part to blame.

Consider the oft-quoted “statistic” that emergency-room care is the most expensive form of treatment. Has anyone who believes this ever actually been to an emergency room? My sister is an emergency-medicine physician; unlike most other specialists, ER docs usually work on scheduled shifts and are paid fixed salaries that place them in the lower ranks of physician compensation. The doctors and other workers are hardly underemployed: typically, ERs are unbelievably crowded. They have access to the facilities and equipment of the entire hospital, but require very few dedicated resources of their own. They benefit from the group buying power of the entire institution. No expensive art decorates the walls, and the waiting rooms resemble train-station waiting areas. So what exactly makes an ER more expensive than other forms of treatment?

Perhaps it’s the accounting. Since charity care, which is often performed in the ER, is one justification for hospitals’ protected place in law and regulation, it’s in hospitals’ interest to shift costs from overhead and other parts of the hospital to the ER, so that the costs of charity care—the public service that hospitals are providing—will appear to be high. Hospitals certainly lose money on their ERs; after all, many of their customers pay nothing. But to argue that ERs are costly compared with other treatment options, hospitals need to claim expenses well beyond the marginal (or incremental) cost of serving ER patients.

In a recent IRS survey of almost 500 nonprofit hospitals, nearly 60 percent reported providing charity care equal to less than 5 percent of their total revenue, and about 20 percent reported providing less than 2 percent. Analyzing data from the American Hospital Directory, The Wall Street Journal found that the 50 largest nonprofit hospitals or hospital systems made a combined “net income” (that is, profit) of $4.27 billion in 2006, nearly eight times their profits five years earlier.

How do we know whether the value of hospitals’ charitable services compensates for the roughly 100,000 deaths from hospital-borne disease, their poor standards of customer service, and their extraordinary diseconomies of both scale and scope? Might we be better off reforming hospitals, and allowing many of them to be eliminated by competition from specialty clinics? As a society, couldn’t we just pay directly for the services required by the poor? We don’t know how many hospitals would even survive if they were not so favored under the law; anyone who has lost a loved one to a preventable hospital death will wonder how many should.

You Are Not the Customer

What amazed me most during five weeks in the ICU with my dad was the survival of paper and pen for medical instructions and histories. In that time, Dad was twice taken for surgical procedures intended for other patients (fortunately interrupted both times by our intervention). My dry cleaner uses a more elaborate system to track shirts than this hospital used to track treatment.

Not every hospital relies on paper-based orders and charts, but most still do. Why has adoption of clinical information technology been so slow? Companies invest in IT to reduce their costs, reduce mistakes (itself a form of cost-saving), and improve customer service. Better information technology would have improved my father’s experience in the ICU—and possibly his chances of survival.

But my father was not the customer; Medicare was. And although Medicare has experimented with new reimbursement approaches to drive better results, no centralized reimbursement system can be supple enough to address the many variables affecting the patient experience. Certainly, Medicare wasn’t paying for the quality of service during my dad’s hospital stay. And it wasn’t really paying for the quality of his care, either; indeed, because my dad got sepsis in the hospital, and had to spend weeks there before his death, the hospital was able to charge a lot more for his care than if it had successfully treated his pneumonia and sent him home in days.

Of course, one area of health-related IT has received substantial investment—billing. So much for the argument, often made, that privacy concerns or a lack of agreed-upon standards has prevented the development of clinical IT or electronic medical records; presumably, if lack of privacy or standards had hampered the digitization of health records, it also would have prevented the digitization of the accompanying bills. To meet the needs of the government bureaucracy and insurance companies, most providers now bill on standardized electronic forms. In case you wonder who a care provider’s real customer is, try reading one of these bills.

For that matter, try discussing prices with hospitals and other providers. Eight years ago, my wife needed an MRI, but we did not have health insurance. I called up several area hospitals, clinics, and doctors’ offices—all within about a one-mile radius—to find the best price. I was surprised to discover that prices quoted, for an identical service, varied widely, and that the lowest price was $1,200. But what was truly astonishing was that several providers refused to quote any price. Only if I came in and actually ordered the MRI could we discuss price.

Several years later, when we were preparing for the birth of our second child, I requested the total cost of the delivery and related procedures from our hospital. The answer: the hospital discussed price only with uninsured patients. What about my co-pay? They would discuss my potential co-pay only if I were applying for financial assistance.

Keeping prices opaque is one way medical institutions seek to avoid competition and thereby keep prices up. And they get away with it in part because so few consumers pay directly for their own care—insurers, Medicare, and Medicaid are basically the whole game. But without transparency on prices—and the related data on measurable outcomes—efforts to give the consumer more control over health care have failed, and always will.

Here’s a wonderful example of price opacity. Advocates for the uninsured complain that hospitals charge uninsured patients, on average, 2.5 times the amount charged to insured patients. Hospitals defend themselves by contending that they earn from uninsured patients only 25 percent of the amount they do from insured ones. Both statements appear to be true!

How is this possible? Well, hospitals bill according to their price lists, but provide large discounts to major insurers. Individual consumers, of course, don’t benefit from these discounts, so they receive their bills at full list price (typically about 2.5 times the bill to an insured patient). Uninsured patients, however, pay according to how much of the bill the hospital believes they can afford (which, on average, amounts to 25 percent of the amount paid by an insured patient). Nonetheless, whatever discount a hospital gives to an uninsured patient is entirely at its discretion—and is typically negotiated only after the fact. Some uninsured patients have been driven into bankruptcy by hospital collections. American industry may offer no better example of pernicious “price discrimination,” nor one that entails greater financial vulnerability for American families.

It’s astonishingly difficult for consumers to find any health-care information that would enable them to make informed choices—based not just on price, but on quality of care or the rate of preventable medical errors. Here’s one place where legal requirements might help. But only a few states require institutions to make this sort of information public in a usable form for consumers. So while every city has numerous guidebooks with reviews of schools, restaurants, and spas, the public is frequently deprived of the necessary data to choose hospitals and other providers.

The Strange Beast of Health-Care Technology

One of the most widely held pieces of conventional wisdom about health care is that new technology is relentlessly driving up costs. Yet over the past 20 years, I’ve bought several generations of microwave ovens, personal computers, DVD players, GPS devices, mobile phones, and flat-screen TVs. I bank mostly at ATMs, check out my own goods at self-serve supermarket scanners, and attend company meetings by video¬conference. Technology has transformed much of our daily lives, in almost all cases by adding quantity, speed, and quality while lowering costs. So why is health care different?

Well, for the most part, it isn’t. Whether it’s new drugs to control previously untreatable conditions, diagnostic equipment that enhances physician productivity, or minimally invasive techniques that speed patient recovery, technology-driven innovation has been transforming care at least as greatly as it has transformed the rest of our lives.

But most health-care technologies don’t exist in the same world as other technologies. Recall the MRI my wife needed a few years ago: $1,200 for 20 minutes’ use of a then 20-year-old technology, requiring a little electricity and a little labor from a single technician and a radiologist. Why was the price so high? Most MRIs in this country are reimbursed by insurance or Medicare, and operate in the limited-competition, nontransparent world of insurance pricing. I don’t even know the price of many of the diagnostic services I’ve needed over the years—usually I’ve just gone to whatever provider my physician recommended, without asking (my personal contribution to the moral-hazard economy).

By contrast, consider LASIK surgery. I still lack the (small amount of) courage required to get LASIK. But I’ve been considering it since it was introduced commercially in the 1990s. The surgery is seldom covered by insurance, and exists in the competitive economy typical of most other industries. So people who get LASIK surgery—or for that matter most cosmetic surgeries, dental procedures, or other mostly uninsured treatments—act like consumers. If you do an Internet search today, you can find LASIK procedures quoted as low as $499 per eye—a decline of roughly 80 percent since the procedure was introduced. You’ll also find sites where doctors advertise their own higher-priced surgeries (which more typically cost about $2,000 per eye) and warn against the dangers of discount LASIK. Many ads specify the quality of equipment being used and the performance record of the doctor, in addition to price. In other words, there’s been an active, competitive market for LASIK surgery of the same sort we’re used to seeing for most goods and services.

The history of LASIK fits well with the pattern of all capital-intensive services outside the health-insurance economy. If you’re one of the first ophthalmologists in your community to perform the procedure, you can charge a high price. But once you’ve acquired the machine, the actual cost of performing a single procedure (the marginal cost) is relatively low. So, as additional ophthalmologists in the neighborhood invest in LASIK equipment, the first provider can meet new competition by cutting price. In a fully competitive marketplace, the procedure’s price will tend toward that low marginal cost, and ophthalmologists looking to buy new machines will exert downward pressure on both equipment and procedure prices.

No business likes to compete solely on price, so most technology providers seek to add features and performance improvements to new generations of a machine—anything to keep their product from becoming a pure commodity. Their success depends on whether the consumers will pay enough for the new feature to justify its introduction. In most consumer industries, we can see this dynamic in action—observe how DVD players have moved in a few years from a high-priced luxury to a disposable commodity available at discount stores. DVD players have run out of new features for which customers will pay premium prices.

Perhaps MRIs have too. After a long run of high and stable prices, you can now find ads for discount MRIs. But because of the peculiar way we pay for health care, this downward price pressure on technology seems less vigorous. How well can insurance companies and government agencies judge the value of new features that tech suppliers introduce to keep prices up? Rather than blaming technology for rising costs, we must ask if moral hazard and a lack of discipline in national health-care spending allows health-care companies to avoid the forces that make nonmedical technology so competitive.

In 2002, the U.S. had almost six times as many CT scanners per capita as Germany and four times as many MRI machines as the U.K. Traditional reformers believe it is this rate of investment that has pushed up prices, rather than sustained high prices that have pushed up investment. As a result, many states now require hospitals to obtain a Certificate of Need before making a major equipment purchase. In its own twisted way, this makes sense: moral hazard, driven by insurance, for years allowed providers to create enough demand to keep new MRI machines humming at any price.

But Certificates of Need are just another Scotch-tape reform, an effort to maintain the current system by treating a symptom rather than the underlying disease. Technology is driving up the cost of health care for the same reason every other factor of care is driving up the cost—the absence of the forces that discipline and even drive down prices in the rest of our economy. Only in the bizarre parallel universe of health care could limiting supply be seen as a sensible approach to keeping prices down.

The Limits of “Comprehensive” Health-care Reform

A wasteful insurance system; distorted incentives; a bias toward treatment; moral hazard; hidden costs and a lack of transparency; curbed competition; service to the wrong customer. These are the problems at the foundation of our health-care system, resulting in a slow rot and requiring more and more money just to keep the system from collapsing.

How would the health-care reform that’s now taking shape solve these core problems? The Obama administration and Congress are still working out the details, but it looks like this generation of “comprehensive” reform will not address the underlying issues, any more than previous efforts did. Instead it will put yet more patches on the walls of an edifice that is fundamentally unsound—and then build that edifice higher.

A central feature of the reform plan is the expansion of comprehensive health insurance to most of the 46 million Americans who now lack private or public insurance. Whether this would be achieved entirely through the extension of private commercial insurance at government-subsidized rates, or through the creation of a “public option,” perhaps modeled on Medicare, is still being debated.

Regardless, the administration has suggested a cost to taxpayers of $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion over 10 years. That, of course, will mean another $1 trillion or more not spent on other things—environment, education, nutrition, recreation. And if the history of previous attempts to expand the health safety net are any guide, that estimate will prove low.

The reform plan will also feature a variety of centrally administered initiatives designed to reduce costs and improve quality. These will likely include a major government investment to promote digitization of patient health records, an effort to collect information on best clinical practices, and changes in the way providers are paid, to better reward quality and deter wasteful spending.

All of these initiatives have some theoretical appeal. And within the confines of the current system, all may do some good. But for the most part, they simply do not address the root causes of poor quality and runaway costs.

Consider information technology, for instance. Of course the health system could benefit from better use of IT. The Rand Corporation has estimated that the widespread use of electronic medical records would eventually yield annual savings of $81 billion, while also improving care and reducing preventable deaths, and the White House estimates that creating and spreading the technology would cost just $50 billion. But in what other industry would an investment with such a massive annual return not be funded by the industry itself? (And while $50 billion may sound like a big investment, it’s only about 2 percent of the health-care industry’s annual revenues.)

Technology is effective only when it’s properly applied. Since most physicians and health-care companies haven’t adopted electronic medical records on their own, what makes us think they will appropriately use all this new IT? Most of the benefits of the technology (record portability, a reduction in costly and dangerous clinical errors) would likely accrue to patients, not providers. In a consumer-facing industry, this alone would drive companies to make the investments to stay competitive. But of course, we patients aren’t the real customers; government funding of electronic records wouldn’t change that.

I hope that whatever reform is finally enacted this fall works—preventing people from slipping through the cracks, raising the quality standard of the health-care industry, and delivering all this at acceptable cost. But looking at the big picture, I fear it won’t. So I think we should at least begin to debate and think about larger reforms, and a different direction—if not for this round of reform, then for the next one. Politics is, of course, the art of the possible. If our health-care crisis does not abate, the possibilities for reform may expand beyond their current, tight limits.

A Way Forward

The most important single step we can take toward truly reforming our system is to move away from comprehensive health insurance as the single model for financing care. And a guiding principle of any reform should be to put the consumer, not the insurer or the government, at the center of the system. I believe if the government took on the goal of better supporting consumers—by bringing greater transparency and competition to the health-care industry, and by directly subsidizing those who can’t afford care—we’d find that consumers could buy much more of their care directly than we might initially think, and that over time we’d see better care and better service, at lower cost, as a result.

A more consumer-centered health-care system would not rely on a single form of financing for health-care purchases; it would make use of different sorts of financing for different elements of care—with routine care funded largely out of our incomes; major, predictable expenses (including much end-of-life care) funded by savings and credit; and massive, unpredictable expenses funded by insurance.

For years, a number of reformers have advocated a more “consumer-driven” care system—a term coined by the Harvard Business School professor Regina Herzlinger, who has written extensively on the subject. Many different steps could move us toward such a system. Here’s one approach that—although it may sound radical—makes sense to me.

First, we should replace our current web of employer- and government-based insurance with a single program of catastrophic insurance open to all Americans—indeed, all Americans should be required to buy it—with fixed premiums based solely on age. This program would be best run as a single national pool, without underwriting for specific risk factors, and would ultimately replace Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurance. All Americans would be insured against catastrophic illness, throughout their lives.

Proposals for true catastrophic insurance usually founder on the definition of catastrophe. So much of the amount we now spend is dedicated to problems that are considered catastrophic, the argument goes, that a separate catastrophic system is pointless. A typical catastrophic insurance policy today might cover any expenses above, say, $2,000. That threshold is far too low; ultimately, a threshold of $50,000 or more would be better. (Chronic conditions with expected annual costs above some lower threshold would also be covered.) We might consider other mechanisms to keep total costs down: the plan could be required to pay out no more in any year than its available premiums, for instance, with premium increases limited to the general rate of inflation. But the real key would be to restrict the coverage to true catastrophes—if this approach is to work, only a minority of us should ever be beneficiaries.

How would we pay for most of our health care? The same way we pay for everything else—out of our income and savings. Medicare itself is, in a sense, a form of forced savings, as is commercial insurance. In place of these programs and the premiums we now contribute to them, and along with catastrophic insurance, the government should create a new form of health savings account—a vehicle that has existed, though in imperfect form, since 2003. Every American should be required to maintain an HSA, and contribute a minimum percentage of post-tax income, subject to a floor and a cap in total dollar contributions. The income percentage required should rise over a working life, as wages and wealth typically do.

All noncatastrophic care should eventually be funded out of HSAs. But account-holders should be allowed to withdraw money for any purpose, without penalty, once the funds exceed a ceiling established for each age, and at death any remaining money should be disbursed through inheritance. Our current methods of health-care funding create a “use it or lose it” imperative. This new approach would ensure that families put aside funds for future expenses, but would not force them to spend the funds only on health care.

What about care that falls through the cracks—major expenses (an appendectomy, sports injury, or birth) that might exceed the current balance of someone’s HSA but are not catastrophic? These should be funded the same way we pay for most expensive purchases that confer long-term benefits: with credit. Americans should be able to borrow against their future contributions to their HSA to cover major health needs; the government could lend directly, or provide guidelines for private lending. Catastrophic coverage should apply with no deductible for young people, but as people age and save, they should pay a steadily increasing deductible from their HSA, unless the HSA has been exhausted. As a result, much end-of-life care would be paid through savings.

Anyone with whom I discuss this approach has the same question: How am I supposed to be able to afford health care in this system? Well, what if I gave you $1.77 million? Recall, that’s how much an insured 22-year-old at my company could expect to pay—and to have paid on his and his family’s behalf—over his lifetime, assuming health-care costs are tamed. Sure, most of that money doesn’t pass through your hands now. It’s hidden in company payments for premiums, or in Medicare taxes and premiums. But think about it: If you had access to those funds over your lifetime, wouldn’t you be able to afford your own care? And wouldn’t you consume health care differently if you and your family didn’t have to spend that money only on care?

For lower-income Americans who can’t fund all of their catastrophic premiums or minimum HSA contributions, the government should fill the gap—in some cases, providing all the funding. You don’t think we spend an absurd amount of money on health care? If we abolished Medicaid, we could spend the same money to make a roughly $3,000 HSA contribution and a $2,000 catastrophic-premium payment for 60 million Americans every year. That’s a $12,000 annual HSA plus catastrophic coverage for a low-income family of four. Do we really believe most of them wouldn’t be better off?

Some experts worry that requiring people to pay directly for routine care would cause some to put off regular checkups. So here’s a solution: the government could provide vouchers to all Americans for a free checkup every two years. If everyone participated, the annual cost would be about $30 billion—a small fraction of the government’s current spending on care.

Today, insurance covers almost all health-care expenditures. The few consumers who pay from their pockets are simply an afterthought for most providers. Imagine how things might change if more people were buying their health care the way they buy anything else. I’m certain that all the obfuscation over prices would vanish pretty quickly, and that we’d see an end to unreadable bills. And that physicians, who spend an enormous amount of time on insurance-related paperwork, would have more time for patients.

In fact, as a result of our fraying insurance system, you can already see some nascent features of a consumer-centered system. Since 2006, Wal-Mart has offered $4 prescriptions for a month’s supply of common generic medications. It has also been slowly rolling out retail clinics for routine care such as physicals, blood work, and treatment for common ailments like strep throat. Prices for each service are easily obtained; most are in the neighborhood of $50 to $80. Likewise, “concierge care,” or the “boutique” style of medical practice—in which physicians provide unlimited services and fast appointments in return for a fixed monthly or annual fee—is beginning to spread from the rich to the middle class. Qliance Medical Group, for instance, now operates clinics serving some 3,000 patients in the Seattle and Tacoma, Washington, areas, charging $49 to $79 a month for unlimited primary care, defined expansively.

It’s worth pausing over this last example. Many experts believe that the U.S. would get better health outcomes at lower cost if payment to providers were structured around the management of health or whole episodes of care, instead of through piecemeal fees. Medicare and private insurers have, to various degrees, moved toward (or at least experimented with) these sorts of payments, and are continuing to do so—but slowly, haltingly, and in the face of much obstruction by providers. But aren’t we likely to see just these sorts of payment mechanisms develop organically in a consumer-centered health-care system? For simplicity and predictability, many people will prefer to pay a fixed monthly or annual fee for primary or chronic care, and providers will move to serve that demand.

Likewise, what patient, when considering getting an artificial hip, would want to deal with a confusion of multiple bills from physicians, facilities, and physical therapists? Aren’t providers likely to organize themselves to provide a single price to the consumer for care and rehabilitation? And won’t that, in itself, put pressure on providers to work together as efficiently as possible, and to minimize the medical errors that would eat into their joint fee? I suspect we would see a rapid decline in the predominance of the fee-for-service model, making way for real innovation and choice in service plans and funding. And the payment system would not be set by fiat; it would remain responsive to treatment breakthroughs and changes in consumer demand.

Many consumers would be able to make many decisions, unaided, in such a system. But we’d also probably see the rise of health-care agents—paid by, and responsible to, the consumer—to help choose providers and to act as advocates during long and complex care episodes.

How else might the system change? Technological innovation—which is now almost completely insensitive to costs, and which often takes the form of slightly improved treatments for much higher prices—would begin to concern itself with value, not just quality. Many innovations might drive prices down, not up. Convenient, lower-cost specialty centers might proliferate. The need for unpaid indigent care would go away—everyone, recall, would have both catastrophic insurance and an HSA, funded entirely by the government when necessary—and with it much of the rationale for protecting hospitals against competition.

Of course, none of this would happen overnight. And the government has an essential role to play in arming consumers with good information. Congress should require maximum transparency on services, prices, and results (and some elements of the Obama administration’s reform plan would move the industry in this direction). We should establish a more comprehensive system of quality inspection of all providers, and publish all the findings. Safety and efficacy must remain the cornerstone of government licensing, but regulatory bias should favor competition and prevent incumbents from using red tape to forestall competition.

Moving from the system we’ve got now to the one I’ve outlined would be complicated, and would take a long time. Most of us have been paying into an insurance system for years, expecting that our future health-care bills would be paid; we haven’t been saving separately for these expenses. It would take a full generation to completely migrate from relying on Medicare to saving for late-life care; from Medicaid for the disadvantaged to catastrophic insurance and subsidized savings accounts. Such a transition would require the slow reduction of Medicare taxes, premiums, and benefit levels for those not yet eligible, and a corresponding slow ramp-up in HSAs. And the national catastrophic plan would need to start with much broader coverage and higher premiums than the ultimate goal, in order to fund the care needed today by our aging population. Nonetheless, the benefits of a consumer-centered approach—lower costs for better service—should have early and large dividends for all of us throughout the period of transition. The earlier we start, the less a transition will ultimately cost.

Many experts oppose the whole concept of a greater role for consumers in our health-care system. They worry that patients lack the necessary knowledge to be good consumers, that unscrupulous providers will take advantage of them, that they will overspend on low-benefit treatments and under-spend on high-benefit preventive care, and that such waste will leave some patients unable to afford highly beneficial care.

They are right, of course. Whatever replaces our current system will be flawed; that’s the nature of health care and, indeed, of all human institutions. Our current system features all of these problems already—as does the one the Obama reforms would create. Because health care is so complex and because each individual has a unique health profile, no system can be perfect.

I believe my proposed approach passes two meaningful tests. It will do a better job than our current system of controlling prices, allocating resources, expanding access, and safeguarding quality. And it will do a better job than a more government-driven approach of harnessing medicine’s dynamism to develop and spread the new knowledge, technologies, and techniques that improve the quality of life. We won’t be perfect consumers, but we’re more likely than large bureaucracies to encourage better medicine over time.

All of the health-care interest groups—hospitals, insurance companies, professional groups, pharmaceuticals, device manufacturers, even advocates for the poor—have a major stake in the current system. Overturning it would favor only the 300 million of us who use the system and—whether we realize it or not—pay for it. Until we start asking the type of questions my father’s death inspired me to ask, until we demand the same price and quality accountability in health care that we demand in everything else, each new health-care reform will cost us more and serve us less.

$636,687.75

Ten days after my father’s death, the hospital sent my mother a copy of the bill for his five-week stay: $636,687.75. He was charged $11,590 per night for his ICU room; $7,407 per night for a semiprivate room before he was moved to the ICU; $145,432 for drugs; $41,696 for respiratory services. Even the most casual effort to compare these prices to marginal costs or to the costs of off-the-shelf components demonstrates the absurdity of these numbers, but why should my mother care? Her share of the bill was only $992; the balance, undoubtedly at some huge discount, was paid by Medicare.

Wasn’t this an extraordinary benefit, a windfall return on American citizenship? Or at least some small relief for a distraught widow?

Not really. You can feel grateful for the protection currently offered by Medicare (or by private insurance) only if you don’t realize how much you truly spend to fund this system over your lifetime, and if you believe you’re getting good care in return.

Would our health-care system be so outrageously expensive if each American family directly spent even half of that $1.77 million that it will contribute to health insurance and Medicare over a lifetime, instead of entrusting care to massive government and private intermediaries? Like its predecessors, the Obama administration treats additional government funding as a solution to unaffordable health care, rather than its cause. The current reform will likely expand our government’s already massive role in health-care decision-making—all just to continue the illusion that someone else is paying for our care.

But let’s forget about money for a moment. Aren’t we also likely to get worse care in any system where providers are more accountable to insurance companies and government agencies than to us?

Before we further remove ourselves as direct consumers of health care—with all of our beneficial influence on quality, service, and price—let me ask you to consider one more question. Imagine my father’s hospital had to present the bill for his “care” not to a government bureaucracy, but to my grieving mother. Do you really believe that the hospital—forced to face the victim of its poor-quality service, forced to collect the bill from the real customer—wouldn’t have figured out how to make its doctors wash their hands?

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200909/health-care

Don't Send Your Kids To College!

2009-08-21T15:41:00.001-04:00

In the last few months I've read several columns and blogs about the exorbitant costs and overrated worth of a college education. The article below speaks directly to that issue and it's well worth a read.

The internet is changing the face of politics, education, information - the world. Hopefully, despite man's sinfulness, some good changes are on the way. With the loss of liberty and the growth of government in America, we need some change in the Right direction.

M.I.T. Calls Academia's Bluff

by Gary North

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has begun the most revolutionary experiment in the history of education, stretching all the way back to the pharaohs. It now gives away its curriculum to anyone smart enough to learn it. It has posted its curriculum on-line for free. These days, this means a staggering 1900 courses. This number will grow.
This is proof to the academic world that MIT regards its program as the best, and dares any other institution to prove otherwise, where everyone can see and compare. The free site validates the MIT T-shirt: HARVARD: Because not everyone can get into MIT."
MIT has publicly stiffed its main rival for the title of the best science university on earth. That rival is the California Institute of Technology. CalTech will forever play catch-up to MIT on-line. It will be "We, Too On-line University."
Students around the world can see for themselves that MIT has what it takes to be the best. They can test drive the entire curriculum.
Top students all over the world still want to attend MIT. They want a diploma that has MIT's name on it. The free site does not reduce demand for an MIT diploma. It increases it.
MIT has up-ended several millennia of higher education. Let me explain.
THE NATURE OF THIS REVOLUTIONARY EXPERIMENT
For as long as there have been priesthoods, there has been formal classroom education.
The Egyptian priests had classrooms, lectures, and students taking notes.
The Jews had schools where bright young men came to learn the Hebrew texts and memorize the oral tradition, which began being written down in the second century A.D. This oral tradition was written down centuries later: the Mishnah and the Talmud.
The Classical Greeks had academies. Plato and Aristotle taught young men the rudiments of philosophy.
The Greeks also had medical schools.
These programs were closed to most outsiders. A student had to be accepted. He also had to pay.
In most cases, the information was secret. The student was bound by an oath of secrecy. Here are the opening words of the original Hippocratic Oath.
I swear by Apollo Physician and Asclepius and Hygieia and Panaceia and all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will fulfill according to my ability and judgment this oath and this covenant:
To hold him who has taught me this art as equal to my parents and to live my life in partnership with him, and if he is in need of money to give him a share of mine, and to regard his offspring as equal to my brothers in male lineage and to teach them this art – if they desire to learn it – without fee and covenant; to give a share of precepts and oral instruction and all the other learning to my sons and to the sons of him who has instructed me and to pupils who have signed the covenant and have taken an oath according to the medical law, but no one else.
The training created a medical guild. The guild functioned as an oligopoly. It kept prices high by restricting access to the training.
This is what the college diploma has always done. It has created a guild that restricts entry by non-certified people. This keeps wages high.
To obtain the diploma, a person must pay money to the trainers. The trainers are located at one center or special regional centers. Journeying to the center adds costs. Quitting a full-time job back home also adds to the expense. Forcing students to attend pre-requisites adds to the cost. Everything is done to screen access to the knowledge.
So, the knowledge does not spread. This is the crucial function of the academic screening system, especially for practical knowledge: healing people and building things.
For the first time in the history of man, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has opened the gates to all comers. It has said, "You won't get certified by us, but you can get the classroom knowledge. If you are smart enough to teach yourself, you will have the knowledge."
MIT has now removed the most important layers of bureaucracy: the layers associated with classroom instruction.
1. The fee to obtain the training2. The cost of journeying to a training center3. The pre-requisite system4. The cost of quitting your job
This has de-mystified the entire guild procedure. It says this: "If you are smart enough, you can master the initial content."
This opens the door for the revival of the local apprenticeship system. Here is where a student masters the non-textbook basics of a field, which are at least as important as the textbook content.
Think of a written account of how to tie a shoelace. Then think of a parent's training: apprenticeship.
There is one remaining price barrier: the high cost of textbooks. But Amazon, eBay, and the many on-line used book sellers let you buy older editions for $20 instead of $150. A textbook one edition behind is 99% effective in every undergraduate major.
The gatekeeping function of the academic guild is now under assault by one of the supreme gatekeepers: MIT.
REMOVING BUREAUCRACY
The next step in the liberation of society is the introduction of certification by examination without diplomas. There would no requirement to attend a school. Just pass the exam.
This terrifies every guild. Smart people could get in just by passing the guild's entry-level exam.
The ultimate breakthrough would be a requirement that every certified member of a guild would be required to pass the guild's entry exam every five years or else lose his official license to practice. That would mean the end of exams that screen for wage reasons rather than for technical reasons. The members would demand easier exams, so that they could pass. More students would pass. Wages would decline.
Finally, there would be a removal of state-chartered systems of professional licensing. It would not be illegal to sell any services at any price.
Combine these, and the bureaucratization of society would end.
If you think, "This is utopian," consider this: MIT has removed the crucial initial layer, which imposes the greatest financial burden.
A student in India who understands English and who has access to the Web can get an MIT education.
If other universities imitate MIT, the world of higher education will be radically changed for the better.
$120,000 DEGREES FROM PODUNK COLLEGE
Let me tell you a story I know first-hand. It happened several years ago.
There is a tiny Christian college – then unaccredited – that has pretensions of being a first-rate Christian university for conservatives. The librarian put a book by a certain historian on its shelves. This scholar had written some unconventional books regarding certain controversial aspects of World War II. This book was not one of them.
Some bonehead faculty member came to him and told him to remove this book. He refused. She then told the administration. The librarian was ordered by the administration to remove the book, because a library-review committee was scheduled to visit the school. This team could revoke the library's accreditation if certain kinds of books or authors with certain views were found on the shelves. The librarian quit, as he should have. The book was then removed.
The administration was bluffed by a bonehead faculty member into committing a preposterous assault on intellectual liberty – removing a book from the library – because of the administration's utter terror in the presence of a committee of librarians.
There was a day when Christians chose death by lions rather than capitulating to the State. That day is long gone. This is the confession of Christian higher education: "Our government-accredited utmost for His highest." Colleges are staffed by certified bureaucrats who have been trained by certified bureaucrats. They grew up in the fear of committees, and this fear never leaves them.
The losers? The students and their parents, who spend $120,000 to earn a degree (if the student graduates) from a low-prestige school that provides a third-rate education. In addition, the school raises another $15,000 a year per student from naïve donors who don't know how third-rate the place is.
There are accredited universities around the world that offer distance-learning programs where a student can earn a liberal arts degree at home in two or three years for $15,000. A student can pay his own way by working as an apprentice to a local businessman. This way, he or she learns a trade. But no. The parents send them off to college for $30,000 a year (after taxes).
Parents who send their children off to Podunk College are behind the technological curve.
First, about half of college freshmen don't graduate, even after six years. Second, those who do graduate enter a job market in which only 20% of graduates can find a non-minimum wage job.
The graduates are four to six years older, minimally educated, have no full-time work experience, and have forfeited four to six years of income. I call this "formally certified stupidity." What would you call it?
A college could easily provide free on-line guides to passing the Advanced Placement, CLEP, and DSST exams to quiz out of the first two years. Total cost: under $2,000 for the exams. That would save parents at least $60,000. The school would provide conservative guidelines for free on-line in PDF. It would also provide free YouTube or Blip.tv video courses.
If the school were interested in educating people, it would do all this. But Podunk College is interested in selling accredited degrees at above-market rates. It is not interested in educating people. This includes all of the "dedicated to furthering God's kingdom" colleges. They are dedicated to furthering their little kingdoms at parents' expense.
If they are really worth the money, they should prove this for free on-line. MIT has. Why not them?
Simple: because they are not worth the money. They know it. The parents don't know it. The illusion must go on.
Could a college make its money by teaching upper division courses on-line for 25% of today's tuition – $5,000 a year instead of $20,000 – with no room and board costs? Yes. Will any of them do this? Of course not. Why not? Because they are in debt up to their ears for educationally unnecessary real estate. They adopted a technologically defunct model before the Web.
There is another reason. If a school's curriculum were 100% on-line for free, every parent, donor, and prospective student could judge the academic quality of the program. There is no interest in doing this. I think the administrators have a sense that their programs are not up to the standards of tax-funded universities.
Their problem is not lack of money and physical plant. Education is about wisdom, self-discipline, highly motivational teachers, and perspective. The problem for these schools is a lack of a distinctive Christian academic worldview.
If parents could see the classroom presentations, they might conclude that the academic content is essentially the same, the perspective is the same, and the cost is far higher than tax-funded education. A prayer before each class is not worth an extra $80,000.
Someday there will be a Christian college aimed at home school graduates that itself is 100% on-line and priced accordingly. In the meantime, parents and students have on-line alternatives for under $20,000, total.
There are several universities that offer this, most notably Excelsior and Edison State.
Would a college lose its accreditation if it adopted such a program? Not if it played things smart. It could enroll on-campus students whose parents are eager to spend extra money. There are still lots of these parents. Jennie Sue and Billy Bob want to get away from home at their parents' expense for four to six years. They wheedle a free education by pleading a love of classroom education. Peer pressure from other parents reinforce this. "What? Your kid is still at home?"
Would parents enroll their children at an unaccredited college? Maybe not. They, too, grovel at the feet of accreditation committees. But since the graduates of accredited schools can't get decent jobs these days, of what economic value is accreditation?
I am not talking about students who major in a natural science like engineering or chemistry. But hardly any American students do. I am talking about the standard, career-unrelated liberal arts degree.
WHAT DO PARENTS WANT?
The sad fact is this: most parents don't care about education. They care about accreditation. The great German social scientist Max Weber commented on this just after World War I. He wrote this:
If we hear from all sides demands for the introduction of a regulated curricula culminating in specialized examinations, the reason behind this is, of course, not a suddenly awakened 'thirst for education', but rather a desire to limit the supply of candidates for these positions and to monopolize them for the holders of educational patents – [B]ureaucracy strives everywhere for the creation of a 'right to the office' by the establishment of regular disciplinary procedures and by elimination of the completely arbitrary disposition of the superior over the subordinate official. The bureaucracy seeks to secure the official's position, his orderly advancement, and his provision for old age.
Parents seek union cards for their children. But there are so many kids with union cards today that the advantage has disappeared.
What should a wise parent do? Keep the child home and away from the bureaucrats. Get the child apprenticed to a local businessman. Have the child quiz out of the entire B.A.
Add an incentive. The child gets $50,000 in cash – or half the total cost of college – as a graduation present. The child pays for his/her college education. The parent saves a bundle, especially considering how many students drop out. The child gets starting capital. Use it for grad school. Use it for starting a business. Use it for down payments on a few repossessed houses.
Meanwhile, Podunk College gets nothing. This is the way it ought to be until it offers something educationally unique and worth the extra money, or else offers its existing run-of-the mill program on-line for a third of the money that it charges today.
Private, campus-based, wildly overpriced colleges with undistinguished academic programs will survive, but only a handful of them will prosper. They function today as expensive marital matchmaking services. There are cheaper ways to marry off your children. They can to use one of these on-line dating services.
To the parent who says, "I don't want my child being certified by a state university like Edison State or Louisiana State," I respond: "So, you prefer to pay $120,000 to a private college that gained its accreditation only by kissing the hindquarters of a state-licensed accreditation agency?"
There is stupidity and then there is financially suicidal stupidity. Parents display both. The older the child, the more suicidal the stupidity.
Under no circumstances – none – should a family or a student go into debt for college. The average student graduates with $20,000 of debt. This is suicidal. When graduates marry, they are $40,000 in debt. I offer lots of horror stories here:
CONCLUSION
The end of the high-priced university training system is in sight. It may take a generation. These schools are licensed agencies of the state. They will not surrender without a fight. But when the best science university in the world says "Come and get it . . . free!" the other schools have a major problem for justifying secrecy. This response – "We offer a better program than MIT does" – is not likely to be widely believed.
Any college that does not have all of its professors' classroom lectures on-line on YouTube or Vimeo or Blip.tv is saying, loud and clear, "We don't want people to see how incompetent our faculty really is."
Any college that claims to be Christian but which assigns standard secular textbooks and does not publish on-line refutations of these textbooks is saying, loud and clear, "We agree with the textbooks. We charge parents $30,000 a year so their kids can have a prayer before every class – maybe – and a morally safe environment – maybe." I call it Darwinism with prayers.
It is fraudulent. It is corrupt. It is widespread.
Parents, save your money. Have your college-bound children stay at home and pay for their own educations by using AP/CLEP/DSST exams at $60 per course, plus on-line distance education at $100 to $125 per semester unit, plus local apprenticeship with a salary are the way for your children to pay for their own college educations. This takes the risk out of the deal for you. With a 50% drop-out rate, there is huge risk.
If you say, "My child is not smart enough or mature enough to learn on his own," then do not send him off to college. Let him stay home and watch Animal House twice a day until he matures.
August 20, 2009
Gary North [send him mail] is the author of Mises on Money. Visit http://www.garynorth.com. He is also the author of a free 20-volume series, An Economic Commentary on the Bible.
Copyright © 2009 Gary North

I Don't Always Agree With Piper, but . . .

2009-08-06T12:05:00.001-04:00

This is spot on. I'm certainly glad to see him say this out loud.

Specter Massively Booed on Reading Legislation

2009-08-03T09:52:00.001-04:00

Arlen Specter is beginning another series of Townhall Meetings here in Pennsylvania. I plan on attending the following event:

EVENT: Senator Arlen Specter will hold a town hall meeting in Lewisburg

DATE/TIME: 3:45pm on Tuesday, August 11, 2009

LOCATION: Bucknell University, Trout Auditorium
701 Moore Avenue
Lewisburg, PA 17837

I can only hope that angry voters show up like they did at this meeting:

Is It Single-Payer or Not? President Obama Can't Make Up His Mind.

2009-08-03T09:23:00.002-04:00

No Health Care For You Retard!

2009-07-31T13:24:00.001-04:00

While this punchy dramatic title is not what was quoted, the ultimate outcome is the same - NO HEALTHCARE FOR THE DISABLED.

I just can't believe Rahm Emmanual's brother who holds two presidential healthcare appointments would actually put this in public. "True cost savings will occur when we deny healthcare to the disabled."

Easy Money Ben Dodges a Great Question

2009-07-31T09:57:00.002-04:00

Civil Rights Don't Include Library Rights

2009-07-30T14:06:00.001-04:00

Are You Willing to Pay For Abortions?

2009-07-28T17:31:00.001-04:00

The Immorality of Taxpayer Funded Abortion

by Ron Paul

Healthcare continues to dominate the agenda on Capitol Hill as House leadership and the administration try to ram through their big government healthcare plan. Fortunately, they have been unsuccessful so far, as there are many horrifying provisions tucked into this massive piece of legislation.
One major issue is the public funding of elective abortions. The administration has already removed many longstanding restrictions on abortion, and is unwilling to provide straight answers to questions regarding the public funding of abortion in their plan. This is deeply troubling for those of us who do not want taxpayer dollars funding abortions.
Forcing pro-life taxpayers to subsidize abortion is evil and tyrannical. I have introduced the Taxpayer’s Freedom of Conscience Act (HR 1233) which forbids the use of any taxpayer funds for abortion, both here and overseas.
The most basic function of government is to protect life. It is unconscionable that government would enable the taking of it. However this is to be expected when government oversteps its constitutional bounds instead of protecting rights. When government supercedes this very limited role, it cannot help but advance the moral agenda of whoever is in power at the time, at the expense of the rights of others.
Free people should be left alone to follow their conscience and determine their own lifestyle as long as they do not interfere with other people doing the same. If morality is dictated by government, morality will change with every election. Even if you agree with the morality of the current politicians and think their ideas should be advanced, someday different people will inherit that power and use it for their own agendas. The wisdom of the constitution is that it keeps government out of these issues altogether.
Many say we must reform healthcare and treat it as a right, because that is the moral thing to do. Poor people should not go without healthcare in a just society. But too many forget the immorality of stealing from others in order to make this so. They also forget the morality and compassion that naturally exists in communities when government is not fomenting class warfare with wealth redistribution programs.
Many doctors willingly volunteer, accept barter or reduced payment from patients who can’t pay, or give away services for free. Many charities help the poor with food, housing and healthcare. These charities are much more responsive and accountable for helping people in need than government ever could be. This is the moral way that private individuals voluntarily deal with access to healthcare, but government intervention threatens to pull the rug out from this sort of volunteerism and replace it with mandates, taxes, red tape, wealth redistribution, and force.
The fact that the national healthcare overhaul could force taxpayers to subsidize abortions and may even force private insurers to cover abortions is more reason that this bill and the ideas behind it, are neither constitutional, moral, nor in the American people’s best interest.

I Hate Sarbanes-Oxley

2009-07-21T14:25:00.001-04:00

Having worked for a publicly-held company for 5 years, I live day to day with the repercussions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. It adds billions of dollars of unnecessary management and auditing costs to companies. I know these types of preemptive over-regulation had some factor in our financial demise in the last year as well. I read this article back when it was first printed and after coming across it again today, thought I would bring it up again.

Repeal Sarbanes-Oxley
by Alex Epstein (March 28, 2007)

Imagine opening tomorrow's newspaper and reading this: "Citing all-too-frequent child abuse and neglect, Congress has proposed the Parenting Reform Act. Under the proposed law, all parents must swear that they have not 'caused unreasonable physical harm or danger' to their children. To verify compliance, all parents will be required to submit their children to a monthly full-body inspection by the new Parental Oversight Board, and account for every cut, scrape, and bruise that inspectors find. If a parent cannot prove the 'reasonableness' of any injuries to the Board's satisfaction, it could result in a loss of custody and 20 years in prison."
Our reaction to this proposed law would be outrage. It is unjust and destructive, we would say, for the government to make arbitrary accusations of abuse and neglect, to conduct baseless investigations, and then to force an innocent parent to try to disprove them.
We should say the same about an existing law that perpetrates such horrors, not against parents, but against businessmen: Sarbanes-Oxley.
Sarbanes-Oxley has been under debate lately--pitting those who say the law must be amended against those who say it must be preserved. But both sides are wrong: Sarbanes-Oxley is a fundamentally corrupt law that must be repealed.
Sarbanes-Oxley was passed nearly five years ago, in the anti-business frenzy following the collapse of Enron--a frenzy in which any corporate crimes were characterized as a black mark on all businessmen. Instead of simply gathering evidence and prosecuting individual perpetrators accordingly, our leaders passed a law that forces all businessmen to prove to the government that they are not cooking their books.
Under Sarbanes-Oxley, the government, without any evidence of possible fraud, has free reign to scour a company's books to determine whether they "fairly" represent the company's finances and do "not contain any untrue statement of a material fact or omit to state a material fact."
What is "fairly"? What is "material"? Since these terms are undefined, they mean anything government bureaucrats want them to mean. For example, the government under Sarbanes-Oxley can declare a CFO a defrauder for reasonably deciding to capitalize an expenditure instead of expensing it (there are many such judgment calls in accounting).
Further, how can the government hold a businessman criminally responsible for any mistake in a financial report, which is the product of hundreds of people making thousands of individual judgments and decisions? Sarbanes-Oxley says the mistake is "knowing" if the internal controls management establishes to prevent error and fraud are not "adequate." But since the government does not define "adequate," anytime a regulator decides there "should have been" still one more control to prevent even the most inconsequential of errors--management is guilty of fraud.
If parents knew that the government could throw them in jail for every judgment call and innocent error that resulted in a skinned knee, they would avoid "risky" situations like trips to the park, and spend their time tracking their child's every move and their own so that they could rebut the government's arbitrary accusations. The same is true for businesses under the potential guillotine of Section 302 of Sarbanes-Oxley--behavior practically mandated by the extensive testing and documenting of internal controls required by Section 404. Whole companies avoid any action the government might frown upon, and pour endless time and energy into monitoring and cataloging anything that a government inspector might conceivably believe is relevant to financial reporting.
Such behavior is now rampant in corporate America. One study documents businesses engaging in practices like "requiring an auditor to attend a meeting to prove it took place" and "proving that all of the physical keys to an office in Europe have been accounted for since it opened in 1995"! "Even a completely harmless error that nobody cares about," says a lawyer who handles Sarbanes-Oxley compliance, "takes up hundreds and hundreds of hours of the auditors, the CEO, the CFO and the audit committee."
That America's honest, productive businessmen are spending their time and shareholder money to "prove" they are not criminals--when they could be spending those hours and dollars on R&D, new product launches, or mergers and acquisitions--is a monumental injustice. Is it any wonder that misery among top executives is reported throughout corporate America, that top executives are departing at record rates, that more and more public companies are going private, that only a small fraction of the largest IPOs last year took place in the United States?
Sarbanes Oxley must be repealed--not "relaxed," as many business groups are timidly suggesting. And we must start treating businessmen as American citizens: innocent until proven otherwise.
Copyright © 2007 Ayn Rand® Institute. All rights reserved.

Christian Choices & Libertarian Principles - An Anti- Zoning Primer for My Youngest

2009-07-14T09:58:00.001-04:00

This past weekend, at least two of my children were building houses with lincoln logs in our homeschool room. The youngest, Nathan who is 6, came to me crying and angry.

"Katherine built her house too close to mine and she won't move it!", he said. "Will you tell her to move it?"

This sounded all too familiar, like something residents complain about to their local government official. I saw my opening and asked him what he had done to fix the situation? Other than telling her emphatically to move it and crying, he hadn't done anything. So I gave him three choices.

1. Forget about it, choose peace and make friends.
2. Ask her nicely, and use incentives to coax her into moving.
3. Move his own house.

I explained that if I made her move her house, in a few minutes he would do something that she didn't like and she would come to me crying to make him change something he didn't want to change.

This option, the one he had already tried, is the one chosen by many Americans today. They choose to whine and complain, while seeking the strong arm of government to fix what they don't like about another individual's actions.

Priscilla appropriately asked, "What do you think God would want you to do?" He knew the answer.

As a Christian, I support the rights of free individuals to make choices about their own life and property. I do not seek the power of government intervention to coerce others into making the decisions that I would make or which benefit me. And, as a Christian, I am held responsible for my own actions in how I respond and treat those people who make decisions I don't like.

A Little Independence on Independence Day (if you don't mind)

2009-07-05T22:55:00.001-04:00

I'll be away on a tent-camping vacation this week - away from electronic devices. Ran across this article from 2003. How much worse has it gotten in 6 short years?

The Totalitarian Impulse
by Karen De Coster

Liberty-minded individuals are so used to criticizing the totalitarianism that emanates from governments that they forget one other source of constant oppression that needs to be dealt with: the tyranny of the masses.

The mass of totalitarians, these days, is composed of hordes of petty, self-elected Führers running around trying to dictate everyone else’s choices and lifestyles to suit their own preferences and comfort levels. The totalitarian impulses that resonate from these individuals are alarming. Americans, on the whole, are ripe for lording it over everyone else, and they have no problem making arbitrary judgments about the needs of others while proclaiming that which is necessary or not, based on their own foregone conclusions.

How about the current "war" against SUVs? This is one of the most hysteria-induced campaigns to ever permeate the human senses. Nitwits like Arianna Huffington, a nationally syndicated columnist, don’t just declare a dislike for SUVs or a personal preference for something more inspiring, but instead, Huffington promotes an entire Detroit-bashing campaign that is running TV commercials indicting SUV owning soccer moms for hijacking airplanes, blowing up nightclubs, sending American soldiers off to war, and teaching kids around the world to hate America. So sickening and insane are the implications that one has to immediately see Huffington as an illegitimate source on any topic going forward.

In fact, nothing is more reckless than people appointing themselves to apply dictatorial rule over their fellow men. Not a day goes by where I don’t receive yet another e-mail from the latest Hitler-of-the-day, telling me why others don’t “need” to own and drive an SUV. They actually take to defining "accepted purposes" for the ownership of vehicles. I had one reader tell me that her parents "lived on a farm in snowy Iowa, and if they could get by without one, so can soccer moms and everyone else." Well, there you go. Let’s not improve living standards for folks, but rather, let’s let the frenzied, envious masses dictate life’s little rules according to their bête-noirs.

Somehow, an SUV becomes an unnecessary fashion statement while sports cars, convertibles, big luxury cars, and classic cars all get passing grades. The whiners never present a substantial case for their wild assumptions. Instead, they can only point out that their lives are made miserable when others don’t come up to their standards and absolutes.

These kinds of people are downright wicked. They are quintessential fools who don’t believe that their freedom ends at others’ noses. They make simplistic, emotional claims that everything everyone else does can somehow "affect them," so therefore, the potential for being impinged upon is enough of a reason to trot out their list of decrees that others need to abide by – decrees that can only be enforced by the ruling regime in Washington.

The most amazing thing about these fascists is that they can’t even think for themselves; they are out there parroting everyone else on the hysteria-mobile, and they go digging for ways to rationalize the tyranny over others. Any rationale will work. Perhaps these tyrants need to wake up to the fact that the choices of others are none of their business.

In any case, it is ruinous for anyone to think they can determine what has or hasn't a "purpose" in anyone else's life. Just because they don't have an immediate purpose for a given option does not mean that others don't. The point is, "need" or "purpose" is defined by whom? Them? The government? GW Bush? Michael Jackson? Santa’s elves? Dorothy and Toto? Do we all have to justify our choices with the Hitlerian bunch first?

The SUV despotism, overall, is a sign of much more ominous things. It defines a personality type that often resorts to sniveling and whining about the human race as a whole, with a hatred for the hoi polloi and their commercial tendencies. These folks hold themselves out as the paragons of righteousness in a world that is awash in bad behavior, bad choices, and misguided appetites. Sound familiar? Study the routines of the world’s worst tyrants and it will.

ABC’s John Stossel is perhaps a good example of a guy who recognizes the totalitarian impulse of the masses. His Give Me a Break segments not only make a mockery of government repression, but also, much of his fault-finding is with the people themselves – regular citizens that commence tirades over the details of others’ lives.

Witness the collective howls over cell phone use in cars. Stossel’s segment on banning cell phones was particularly compelling, especially since the latest popular crusade for all the little tyrants is the micromanagement of what we do in our car.

According to Stossel, "polls show about 70 percent of Americans support a ban on handheld cell phones." He adds, "People do all kinds things while driving. They eat, fix their hair, put on lipstick, light cigarettes, and we even saw someone curling their eyelashes. If we must always drive with two hands on the wheel, should we outlaw picking your nose? Just putting on my sunglasses or drinking a sip of coffee takes a hand of the wheel. The radio is a big distraction problem; I'm constantly distracted trying to push the tiny buttons to avoid commercials."

In any case, why are cell phones such a focus? If it’s not out-and-out envy, what is it? Hardly a day goes by where some jerk talking on a cell phone doesn’t do something foolish in front of me, enough to put me on the alert. However, the same goes for folks driving while they are eating, yelling at their kids in the back seat, and distracting themselves looking at the latest strip mall, neon sign, or sales banner. Do we just ban all distractions, ban any and all items in cars, and ban children from cars? How about banning passengers in the front seat? They can be more distracting than the ubiquitous cell phone.

Stossel’s findings that Americans have a totalitarian bent toward cell phone use are hardly surprising. This impulse is apparent in the anti-junk food crusaders as they rage on against corporations like McDonald’s under the auspices of "health concerns." These crusaders blame the manufacturers of quick foods for everything from obesity to lifelong bad habits to baiting "addiction" to fat and cholesterol. If they can’t dictate your car choice, they’ll try to tell you what you can or can’t eat.

The totalitarian hordes hate Starbucks, and they would probably like to put caffeine on the same regulatory level as heroin. The smoking Nazis need no introduction, as various state attorneys general and corrupt trial lawyers persuaded the masses that smoking is a collective decision, not an individual one. You want to allow your customers to enjoy smoking in your place of business? Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, wants to stop you. And he’s got the support of many citizens who would love to see that happen because they don’t smoke.

Raising children is no longer a parental choice as others want to lord it over that sphere too. Don’t discipline your children in public, because somewhere someone will decide that they are the arbiter of justice for your child if they don’t like what they see. Car seats? A friend of mine showed up at his son’s school with his son not in the car seat (he was beyond the required minimum age), and he was read the riot act by a teacher who thought that her capricious assessment supercede a father’s direct supervision.

The individual tyrant mindsets that make up that of the collective mass are necessarily the result of democracy. Weaned on the teats of the State, these individuals are imbued with the "democratic" philosophy that government is there to provide for their endeavors, even if it means having the State aggress against others to relieve them of life’s little uncertainties and risks. Democracy gives them a say-so in the political process, a process where coercive powers are exercised at will via majority rule. Once the nipples of democracy have been exposed to the piglets gathering round the hub of majority rule, we engender a perpetual breeding process of decadent usurpation by the masses over the few.

Do people ever stop to think that the world exists beyond their own little, personal quirks? The powers that create the laws these folks clamor for will only be used against them to clamp down on their own choices and lifestyles at some point in the future. What goes around comes around, but hey, I suppose it’s only the here and now that matters to the high time preference peoples.

Before I get the wave of hate mail from the assorted Führers that have read this, here’s the startling revelation I must make in order to avoid the usual charges of "me first": I don't own an SUV. I don’t smoke, and I don’t ever eat at McDonald’s. I defend individual rights, private property, and free enterprise where it does not aggress against the person or property of another. It's called F-R-E-E-D-O-M. Let the Lifestyle Police get a life and stop whining about the consumer choices of those around them for the sake of elevating their personal choices as truths. Consumers should be able to make their own choices without others dictating their own moral sentiments, complaints, and general harassments upon them. Perish the thought!

In other words, get out of our lives, get out of our decisions, and tend to your own attainments. This is not Stalin's Russia.

January 14, 2003

Karen De Coster, CPA, [send her mail] is a paleolibertarian freelance writer, graduate student in Austrian Economics, and a business professional from Michigan. Her first book is currently in the works. See her Mises Institute archive for more online articles, and check out her website, along with her blog.

Copyright © 2003 Karen De Coster

For God and Country? Politics and the Gospel

2009-06-19T09:06:00.001-04:00

I have lately been enjoying Chris Anderson's Blog. Late last year he wrote a couple of articles for the OBF Visitor on politics/government.

I have included the first article below; the second is here and is also worth reading. With the exception of some dispensational glimmers, I appreciate and agree with his perspective on these issues. In a blog that crosses both religion and politics, these articles are thorough reminders of where our deepest interest lies.

For God and Country? Politics and the Gospel

America has elected a new president, and the “religious right” is reeling. In the last decade, political liberals have gained the House, the Senate, and now the White House. After thirty years of intense political activism, American Christians have very little to show for their efforts. Abortion is still legal. Though there have been small restrictions for which we can be thankful, even those baby steps may be erased by a new administration. Evolution is accepted as an undeniable truth. Pornography rages. The homosexual agenda is gaining steam.

Sure, one could make the argument that if Christians had not flexed their political muscle, things would be even worse, but I wonder if that’s true. I wonder if the energies and confidence of American Christians have been misplaced for the last generation. I wonder if the “thud” we heard on November 4, 2008 wasn’t the final fall of the evangelical political machine. Frankly, I wonder if that would be such a bad thing. I believe there are a number of lessons to be learned for Christians in the wake of the 2008 election.

First, we must recognize that the Church of Jesus Christ will be fine, regardless of who is in office—or what that “office” is.
To hear some Christian leaders leading up to the election (or the two that preceded it), one might have thought that the one loophole in Christ’s promise in Matthew 16:18 is the election of a liberal to the United States presidency—that the gates of hell just might prevail against Christ’s church if a Democrat were to win the highest office! Of course I’m jesting, but I have heard a number of doomsayers suggest that the ability of Christ’s church to minister will be severely hindered by a liberal government.

Such fears have no biblical or historical grounds. The church has thrived in a variety of political systems, from republics and monarchies to empires and dictatorships. For example, the vitality of the church in Nero’s Roman Empire or in modern Communist China makes the “free” church of America look positively impotent. The gospel, as Paul says in 2 Timothy 2:9, is “not bound.” That’s not to say that I’m yearning for persecution; Christians who do so are naïve and should pay attention to 1 Timothy 2:1–2. Is it not true though, that the power of the gospel and the purity of the church have shone most brightly in times of political opposition, not times of freedom? American Christians may have cause for concern about their country, but the church of Jesus Christ will be just fine.

Second, we must recognize that “saving America” is not high on God’s agenda.
I’m genuinely grateful for the religious freedoms we enjoy as Americans and for the sacrifice of many who have defended those freedoms on our behalf. I’m grateful that our nation’s founders were God-fearers and that many were born again. I’m grateful for the influence of the Scriptures in our laws. I’m grateful God has used the United States as a “slingshot” from which missionaries have been sent around the world. However, I believe that American Christians often blur the lines between the cause of Christ and the cause of country, too often “rendering to Caesar that which is God’s,” to quote Irwin Lutzer. Indeed, I wonder if even the phrase “for God and country” shouldn’t give us pause. As Augustine taught, believers are citizens of two kingdoms, one heavenly and one earthly. We can be—we should be—both committed Christians and committed citizens, but we must not equate or confuse the two. To suggest that we owe God and country—any country!—a similar allegiance is absurd. God’s work in the world thrived for thousands of years before America existed. America is not God’s newly chosen nation, our wrestling texts like 2 Chronicles 7:14 away from ancient Israel notwithstanding. It cannot even be called a “Christian nation” as no such creature exists. God wants to save Americans—and Koreans, and Pakistanis—not America.

Third, we must recognize that working to advance the cause of Christ by political means is unbiblical and impossible.
History is littered with failed attempts to advance the cause of Christ by unspiritual means. Constantine’s conversion of the Roman Empire from paganism to Christianity by the mere passing of a law was fruitless and even harmful. The efforts of the Crusades of the eleventh through thirteenth centuries to free the Holy Land and convert unbelievers at the point of a sword is a blight on the history and testimony of the church. Even prohibition in the early twentieth century demonstrates that political efforts to stop sinners who are intent on sinning from doing so will ultimately fail. The attempts of modern political activists to advance the cause of Christ by political means are similarly misguided. They’ll be no more successful than Constantine or the Crusaders.

That’s not to say it is illegitimate for Christians to participate in politics as citizens. I’m not calling for political pacifism. Scripture commends believers exercising their rights as citizens (Acts 25:10–11). All Christians should vote and make their voices heard on biblical issues with timely communication to their representatives. Some may pursue politics as a career, following notable examples like Joseph, Daniel, and Mordecai. Indeed, William Wilberforce, who successfully pushed for the outlawing of the slave trade in nineteenth century England, provides a compelling example of the good a believing politician can accomplish.

We must admit, however, that many issues (such as taxation, the economy, welfare, national defense, gun rights, and health care) do not clearly have a biblical principle at stake. Further, we must acknowledge that even if we were to prevail on the issues that are affected by clear biblical principles (such as abortion or homosexuality), doing so won’t reconcile sinners to God. Making grievous sins illegal is a worthy cause, but many people who are opposed to abortion and homosexuality will still suffer God’s wrath for eternity. We have a more important agenda than social and political issues; we have the gospel of Christ!

Perhaps striking out at politics will remind the church that the cause of Christ cannot be advanced by the arm of the flesh (Jer 17:5); that the weapons of our warfare must not be natural, but spiritual (2 Cor 10:4); that the source of our confidence must not be the “chariots and horses” of politics (Prov 20:7), but the God who rules in heaven regardless of who rules on earth (Ps 103:19).

Fourth, we must recognize that political activism can distract us from evangelism and distort the message of the Gospel.
Few churchmen throughout history have been as politically active as John Wycliffe, the “Morningstar of the Reformation.” The pre-Reformer spent most of his ministerial life defending England against the abuses of the Papacy, especially as it related to the national treasury, becoming a national hero in the process. However, when Wycliffe moved away from political issues to oppose Roman Catholicism on theological issues (such as transubstantiation and the authority of the Scriptures) in the final years of his life, he was abandoned by political leaders and disciplined by both church leaders and his beloved Oxford University. Yet, his most important and enduring work for Christ was accomplished when he prioritized preaching, writing tracts, translating the Scriptures, and training and sending out faithful preachers (the Lollards). His evangelical influence outlived him, becoming one of the sparks that would eventually set the world ablaze in the Protestant Reformation.

Whereas Wycliffe turned from political issues to gospel issues, the modern church has in many ways done the exact opposite. We have traded in our spiritual birthright for a bowl of political influence. Sometimes the cost has been orthodoxy, as evangelicals have aligned with political and social conservatives from a variety of false religions. The fact that Jews, Roman Catholics, and Mormons can form a united front for political purposes should be sufficient evidence that such causes are not distinctly Christian. Other times, the gospel hasn’t been denied, but merely displaced. We have been distracted from the main thing. Let me give two prominent examples from the late twentieth century, beginning with a quotation.

“We have a message of redeeming grace through a crucified and risen Lord. Nowhere are we told to reform the externals. We are not told to wage a war against bootleggers, liquor stores, gamblers, murderers, prostitutes, racketeers, prejudiced persons or institutions, or any other existing evils as such. The gospel does not clean up the outside but rather regenerates the inside.”

Surprisingly, those words were spoken by Dr. Jerry Falwell. Dr. Falwell was well-known during his lifetime as the pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, the preacher on the nationally-televised Old Time Gospel Hour, and the president of Liberty University. Though Falwell had profound disagreements with fundamentalists, his commitment to the cause of the gospel was widely recognized. However, as he rose in prominence he began to see an opportunity for influence in the political realm that he believed was even more important. In 1979, Falwell became one of the founders and the face of the “Moral Majority,” a political movement that many credit for Ronald Reagan’s 1980 landslide victory over Jimmy Carter. Regardless of one’s opinions about Falwell, the crucial point for our discussion is this: he intentionally shifted his time, energy, and resources from gospel causes to political activism for many of the final years of his life.

Another example of shifted priorities is Dr. D. James Kennedy. His accomplishments are strikingly similar to Dr. Falwell’s—he’s a Presbyterian counterpart to the prominent Baptist. He, too, pastored a large church (Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida), had a national television broadcast (The Coral Ridge Hour), and started an educational institution (Knox Theological Seminary). Most significantly, Dr. Kennedy was the founder of Evangelism Explosion, an amazingly influential ministry that continues to have a strong presence around the globe. However, also like Falwell, Kennedy spent his final years focusing on politics. He was involved in the Moral Majority, then started the Center for Christian Statemanship on Capitol Hill and the grassroots political organization Reclaiming America for Christ. Dr. Kennedy’s evangelistic and political agendas at times contradicted one another. For example, he invited a Roman Catholic Priest to participate in the 2007 Reclaiming America for Christ Conference.
Such political ecumenism is dangerous, to be sure, but even fundamentalists who would avoid such blatant compromise are in danger of distorting the gospel through political activism. Many a fundamentalist church—while complaining of the social gospel of modernists—has made a living fighting communism and gun control. And while we may congratulate ourselves that—unlike evangelicals such as Falwell, Kennedy, and Robertson—we’ve avoided the political fray, one wonders if the dual roles of a fundamentalist like Ian Paisley, a Northern Irish preacher and controversial politician, have helped or hindered the cause of the gospel there. Back to this side of the ocean, when Americans think of conservative Christianity or “evangelicalism,” do they more immediately think of the Republican Party than the crucified and risen Savior? If we’re not careful, we can give the impression that the gospel is only for members of the GOP—that God isn’t only an American, but a conservative Republican.

Many a pious pastor has said, “If you’re called to preach, don’t step down to be the President of the United States.” That sounds good, but I’m not sure we really believe that the gospel is more important than government. We seem to have more urgency about political agendas than the Christian message, and we show our priorities by our bumper stickers, forwarded emails, yard signs, and conversations. Much like the modernists were distracted by their social gospel, evangelicals and fundamentalists are easily distracted from gospel ministry by secondary issues.

Finally, we must recognize that society will not improve until the coming reign of Christ and that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only hope for fallen sinners.
Scripture prophesies of a time when the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdom of God and Christ (Rev 11:15). All things will eventually be brought under Christ’s feet (1 Cor 15:24–28), both for a literal millennial reign and for eternity. Amen. Come quickly, Lord Jesus!

In the meantime, sinners will continue sinning and society will get worse and worse prior to Christ’s return (2 Tim 3:1–13). I’m not suggesting that the church should respond with passive resignation. I am, however, suggesting that since mankind’s ship is sinking we should devote ourselves to filling lifeboats rather than polishing the ship’s brass. I’m urging us to devote ourselves to redeeming lost people, not an unredeemable culture.

The example of Christ (not to mention the early church!) requires that we prioritize the gospel.Contrast our preoccupation with political issues with the priorities of our Lord. Christ legitimized the authority of the barbaric Roman Empire (Mat 22:21), never speaking against it. He refused to participate in political or social reform, though he was constantly pressured to do so (John 6:15). Even at the climax of his popularity, when he was ushered into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday as the great Deliverer of the Jews, he intentionally went to cleanse the Temple, leaving Herod’s Palace alone (Matt 21:1–13). Christ clearly testified before Pilate that his kingdom was not of this world (John 18:36). Even his commands to be salt and light (Matt 5:13–16) contain no indication that he was thinking in terms of political activism.

Further, the commands of Christ and His apostles require that we prioritize the gospel.The lion’s share of our attention, time, and resources must go to the advancement of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We have been commanded by Christ to preach the gospel and make disciples (Matt 28:18–20; Mark 16:15; Luke 24:46–48; Acts 1:8). We have been entrusted with a message far greater than “small government” or “low taxes” or “family values.” We have the gospel of Jesus Christ, which alone is “the power of God for salvation to all who believe” (Rom 1:16). We have been entrusted with the Scriptures, which alone are “able to make people wise for salvation” (2 Tim 3:15). We have a Savior who has reconciled us to God, and has in turn committed to us His message of reconciliation that we might pass it on to others (2 Cor 5:18–21). That is the message that must dominate our lives. That is the message we must communicate as faithful ambassadors. That is the message we must speak to men on behalf of Christ.

Your party may have lost the election. It’s okay. Your Savior has won the battle for your soul, and He will win the battle of the ages. Indeed, it’s already settled. There will be no campaigns, no debates, and no election. Christ wins! It’s time for His church to get back on task and get back on message, preaching Christ crucified, not political talking points.

Endnotes
My statement regarding the failures of the religious right may seem unduly pessimistic. However, Cal Thomas and Ed Dobson, two of the early movers and shakers of the Moral Majority, make the case as insiders that the religious right has “failed” (Blinded by Might, pp. 23, 42). All of the book is worth reading.
Irwin Lutzer, Why the Cross Can Do What Politics Can’t, p. 41. The entire book is excellent.
Quoted by Ed Dobson in Blinded by Might, p. 85. The statement was made in the 1960’s.

Live Free or Die

2009-06-18T13:19:00.002-04:00

What a great article from hero Walter Williams yesterday. I wish I could have been present at Steyn's speech.

A MINORITY VIEW
BY WALTER WILLIAMS
RELEASE: WEDNESDAY, JUNE 17, 2009

Live Free or Die

"Live Free or Die" is the title of author and columnist Mark Steyn's speech at Hillsdale College, reproduced in Imprimis (April 2009), a Hillsdale publication that's free for the asking. Canadian born, now living in New Hampshire, Steyn has had firsthand experience with socialist tyranny in his home country that is rapidly becoming a part of America. Commenting on one of his run-ins with Canada's human rights commissions, Steyn points how it might seem bizarre to find the progressive left making common cause with radical Islam. One half of that alliance is pro-gay, pro-feminist secularists and the other half is homophobic, misogynist theocrats. Steyn argues what they have in common overrides their differences, namely, "Both the secular Big Government progressives and the political Islam recoil from the concept of the citizen, of the free individual entrusted to operate within his own societal space, assume his responsibilities, and exploit his potential."
I doubt whether there are many Americans who think Congress has either the right or competency to choose where they live, what clothes they wear or what cars they drive. Yet many Americans stand ready to allow Congress to decide what doctors they go to and what treatments they receive. We forget that once we have government-sponsored health care, it can be used to justify almost any restraint on liberty. That's the justification behind helmet and seatbelt laws. Britain is well along the road toward totally controlling health care. Steyn says, "Under Britain's National Health Service, for example, smokers in Manchester have been denied treatment for heart disease, and the obese in Suffolk are refused hip and knee replacements. Patricia Hewitt, the British Health Secretary, says that it's appropriate to decline treatment on the basis of 'lifestyle choices.'" Steyn adds, "Smokers and the obese may look at their gay neighbor having unprotected sex with multiple partners, and wonder why his 'lifestyle choices' get a pass while theirs don't. But that's the point: Tyranny is always whimsical."
In most of the developed world, the government has gradually taken over many of the responsibilities of adulthood from health care, childcare, care of the elderly and other responsibilities formerly seen as individual or family. Nobel Laureate economist Paul Krugman suggests that American conservatives preaching "family values" is hypocrisy while Europeans live it. On the continent, Krugman says, "Government regulations actually allow people to make a desirable tradeoff -- to modestly lower income in return for more time with friends and family." Steyn insightfully observes, "As befits a distinguished economist, Professor Krugman failed to notice that for a continent of 'family friendly' policies, Europe is remarkably short of families. While America's fertility rate is more or less at replacement level -- 2.1 -- seventeen European nations are at what demographers call 'lowest-low' fertility -- 1.3 or less -- a rate from which no society in human history has ever recovered. Germans, Spaniards, Italians and Greeks have upside-down family trees: four grandparents have two children and one grandchild." Steyn asks, "How can an economist analyze 'family friendly' policies without noticing that the upshot of these policies is that nobody has any families?" My answer to Steyn's questions is: the kind of economist that looks at the seen and ignores the unseen.
Mark Steyn provides us with a historical tidbit. "Live Free or Die," which graces New Hampshire's license plate, are the words of John Stark, New Hampshire's Revolutionary War hero. He uttered those words decades after the War when he was 81 years old, the complete sentence being: "Live free or die: Death is not the worst of evils." Steyn says these words should not be interpreted "as a battle cry: We'll win this thing or die trying, die an honorable death. But in fact it's something far less dramatic: It's a bald statement of the reality of our lives in the prosperous West. You can live as free men, but, if you choose not to, your society will die."

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

OH NO! The Federal Reserve Might Be Shut Down . . .

2009-06-10T10:46:00.001-04:00

The Federal Reserve Transparency Act (HR1207) is gaining traction in congress with 209 current sponsors. The Fed has hired a lobbyist to lobby against the bill which requires the Comptroller General to audit the Fed by the end of 2010 and report to Congress. The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 which instituted this economic puppetmaster exempted them from audit because of the "sensitive" nature of their transactions with foreign governments. We can pray that is about to come to an end. Hopefully it will also END THE FED!

Fed Would Be Shut Down If It Were Audited, Expert Says
By: CNBC.com 10 Jun 2009 09:55 AM ET

The Federal Reserve's balance sheet is so out of whack that the central bank would be shut down if subjected to a conventional audit, Jim Grant, editor of Grant's Interest Rate Observer, told CNBC.

With $45 billion in capital and $2.1 trillion in assets, the central bank would not withstand the scrutiny normally afforded other institutions, Grant said in a live interview.

"If the Fed examiners were set upon the Fed's own documents—unlabeled documents—to pass judgment on the Fed's capacity to survive the difficulties it faces in credit, it would shut this institution down," he said. "The Fed is undercapitalized in a way that Citicorp is undercapitalized."

Grant said he would support legislation currently making its way through Congress calling for an audit of the Fed.

Moreover, he criticized the way the Fed has managed the financial crisis, saying the central bank's target rate should not be around zero.

"I think zero is the wrong rate for almost any economy," Grant said, adding the Fed has "embarked on a vast experiment in moral hazard. Interest rates are the traffic signals in a market economy, and everything's green. ... You have to wonder whether these interest rates are the right clearing rate or rather they are the imposition of a central bank."

Amid a disparity between analysts predicting there will be no rate hikes soon and the fed funds futures indicating tightening by the end of the year, Grant said he thinks the Fed indeed will begin raising rates as inflation creeps into the picture.

Fed funds futures have fully priced in as much as a half-point rise in the target rate from its current range of zero to 0.25 percent.

"If the hairs on the back of your neck stand up when there's too much unanimity of opinion, then one begins to worry about this," he said. "The Fed proverbially has been late."

© 2009 CNBC.com

A Nation Led By Crooks

2009-06-09T09:31:00.001-04:00

. . . but only with good intentions, of course!

This video summarizes the reasons we are headed for a deeper recession instead of stabilization of the economy. Bottom Line - overreaching government power and deceit feeds instablity.

Do We Really Need School Choice?

2009-06-05T17:14:00.001-04:00

Here's the Public Education supporter view versus a documentation of the realities.

The case against homeschooling
By JESSE SCACCIA
Homeschooling: great for self-aggrandizing, society-phobic mother…… but not quite so good for the kid.
Here are my top ten reasons why homeschooling parents are doing the wrong thing:
10. “You were totally home schooled” is an insult college kids use when mocking the geeky kid in the dorm (whether or not the offender was home schooled or not). And… say what you will… but it doesn’t feel nice to be considered an outsider, a natural outcropping of being homeschooled.
9. Call me old-fashioned, but a students’ classroom shouldn’t also be where they eat Fruit Loops and meat loaf (not at the same time I hope). It also shouldn’t be where the family gathers to watch American Idol or to play Wii. Students–from little ones to teens–deserve a learning-focused place to study. In modern society, we call them schools.
8. Homeschooling is selfish. According to this article in USA Today, students who get homeschooled are increasingly from wealthy and well-educated families. To take these (I’m assuming) high achieving students out of our schools is a disservice to our less fortunate public school kids. Poorer students with less literate parents are more reliant on peer support and motivation, and they greatly benefit from the focus and commitment of their richer and higher achieving classmates.
7. God hates homeschooling. The study, done by the National Center for Education Statistics, notes that the most common reason parents gave as the most important was a desire to provide religious or moral instruction. To the homeschooling Believers out there, didn’t God say “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations”? Didn’t he command, “Ye shall be witnesses unto me”? From my side, to take your faithful children out of schools is to miss an opportunity to spread the grace, power and beauty of the Lord to the common people. (Personally I’m agnostic, but I’m just saying…)
6. Homeschooling parent/teachers are arrogant to the point of lunacy. For real! My qualifications to teach English include a double major in English and education, two master’s degrees (education and journalism), a student teaching semester and multiple internship terms, real world experience as a writer, and years in the classroom dealing with different learning styles. So, first of all, homeschooling parent, you think you can teach English as well as me? Well, maybe you can. I’ll give you that. But there’s no way that you can teach English as well as me, and biology as well as a trained professional, and history… and Spanish… and art… and counsel for college as well as a school’s guidance counselor… and… and…
5. As a teacher, homeschooling kind of pisses me off. (That’s good enough for #5.)
4. Homeschooling could breed intolerance, and maybe even racism. Unless the student is being homeschooled at the MTV Real World house, there’s probably only one race/sexuality/background in the room. How can a young person learn to appreciate other cultures if he or she doesn’t live among them?
3. And don’t give me this “they still participate in activities with public school kids” garbage. Socialization in our grand multi-cultural experiment we call America is a process that takes more than an hour a day, a few times a week. Homeschooling, undoubtedly, leaves the child unprepared socially.
2. Homeschooling parents are arrogant, Part 2. According to Henry Cate, who runs the Why Homeschool blog, many highly educated, high-income parents are “probably people who are a little bit more comfortable in taking risks” in choosing a college or line of work. “The attributes that facilitate that might also facilitate them being more comfortable with home-schooling.”
More comfortable taking risks with their child’s education? Gamble on, I don’t know, the Superbowl, not your child’s future.
1. And finally… have you met someone homeschooled? Not to hate, but they do tend to be pretty geeky***.
*** Please see the comments for thoughts on the word ‘geeky.’ But, in general, to be geeky connotes a certain inability to integrate and communicate in diverse social situations. Which, I would argue, is a likely result of being educated in an environment without peers. It’s hard to get by in such a diverse world as ours! And the more people you can hang out with the more likely you are to succeed, both in work life and real life.

I'd say Jesse probably was taught to think and write in public school.
And the documentary:

Preparing For Local Politics . . . Hog-Wrestling

2009-06-02T14:59:00.001-04:00

I found an event that really should prepare me for the struggles of local politics.

During the summer, a local market hosts a hog-wrestling event the last Saturday night of each summer month. This year, a friend from Pik-Rite invited me to be on one of their teams - The Pig Pickers. This past Saturday night was the first event. Here are some pictures along with an explanation.

This is a good shot of how the contest works. Each team of four is released into a 30 foot hog pit to chase a ~150lb hog around.

The whistle blows, the timer starts, and they chase the hog around a while . . .

Occasionally, a dive tackle is necessary to grab the squealing pig.

Once you've stopped him from runnin', you've got to hoist him up . . .

And carry him over to the "throne" in the center of the ring. Sometimes team members slip and fall during the carry.

But hopefully, in a short period of time, they get the hog on the barrel and "crown" him with one of their hats.

The timer stops when the crown is applied and the team with the quickest time is declared the winner. Our 10 second first run was the top score!

Each team wrestles twice and uses their best time.

During Intermission, there is a belly flop contest where a collection is taken for the winner. I was one of three participants vying for $37 in muddy cash.

I went last and decided on a full twist since my competition had done straight on flops.

I acheived a face first flop and disappeared into the mud.

But I got up quick and dirty . . .

And the crowd went wild.

It was the easiest $37 dollars I ever made.

Now I'm ready to be a rural Township Supervisor!

I'll Never Retire . . . Either!

2009-05-27T19:35:00.001-04:00

The following article was recently reprinted from 1997. Although it is not written from a Christian perspective, it reminds me of one of my favorite John Piper quotes. Piper tells of the couple that took early retirement in Florida, playing softball, cruising on their boat, and collecting seashells. “Picture them before Christ at the great day of judgment: ‘Look, Lord. See my shells.’"

I'll Never Retire
William Diehl

Before the mid 1950s, there was no "retirement" as we use the term today. A 1950 poll showed most workers aspired to work for as long as possible. Quitting was for the disabled. Life did not offer "twilight years," two decades of uninterrupted leisure courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer.
Just since 1960, the percentage of men over 65 still working has dropped by half. And the average retirement age keeps falling. It's down to 62, which gives the average man 18 years to be retired in its current meaning. It is not unusual to see people ending their careers in their mid-fifties.
This is one of the monumental changes in the fabric of society wrought by the government, that has so altered the integrity of the people.
As someone on a payroll until the age of 79, and now employed on a non-compensated basis, I came to see that I was regarded as something of a freak. Was I trying to set some sort of record? Had I failed to accumulate a large enough estate?
There seemed to be some feelings too that I was somehow un-American, and a poor reflection on a generation that is supposed to be enjoying the good life.
Observing my generation opt for leisure, I see all sorts of adaptations. One described his life in Florida as meeting the same three golfers on the first tee at the same time each day for nine holes, then lunch in the club house, nine holes after lunch, shower, gin and tonic, and then back to the condo to dress for dinner. When asked if this was the routine for every day, he said, "No, I help my wife clean on Tuesday."
This is what I'm supposed to aspire to?
Another friend, in answer, said "I sleep as late as I can because I don't know what to do when I get up."
The remark heard most frequently is "I've been so busy since I retired, I don't know how I ever had time for my job" or "Retirement is so wonderful, I should have retired sooner."
At this point it might be in order to ask--"Busy doing what?"
Many of those who retire at 55, 60, 65, or 70 are some of the most experienced, knowledgeable, and capable people in the workforce. Rather than occupying positions that might be available to younger people, they could be creating and expanding job opportunities for others.
There is a sense of self-worth that comes from working to a purpose that is essential to well-being, whether the task involves major responsibility or physical exertion, as both require diligence and daily attendance.
How did we come to this slough of despondency? Like so many of our present disorders, it was the siren call of the great white father in Washington: "Come unto me all ye who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest."
With Social Security, Medicare, and public pensions, the government has created a large new class of dependents who see no necessity to save or to accept responsibility for themselves, their offspring, or their parents.
As this fatally flawed scheme proceeds toward disaster, the beneficiaries are so insistent that their benefits be maintained and are such a strong political force, that few congressmen have the temerity to say publicly what everyone knows: payments cannot be sustained. Those who are working are paying benefits that will not be available to themselves.
Buddha on his deathbed admonished his followers to, above all, observe strenuousness. How strange that sounds in today's world. Our culture denies this essential virtue to our seniors, who have become dilettantes.
As we observe able-bodied citizens hiking the malls or sampling the midnight buffets on the cruise ships, we are struck by their purposelessness, and the overwhelming boredom they manifest. There is no need to arise in the morning, or any necessity to go to bed on time. Their reason for existence has ceased. They have lost the respect of those who support them, and lost their self-respect in the process.
A story is told of one who had led a long and eventful life. When the time came to cross the deep lake, he was pleased with the skiff and the oarsman as well as his welcome and the accommodations furnished him. The surroundings were beautiful, the weather pleasant, and the food more than adequate. After a few weeks, he wanted to try his hand at gardening again, but that could not be arranged. After repeated requests to work in the dining hall or on the grounds, he cried in exasperation, "This is no better than Hell." The reply came from above, "Where did you think you were?"
Irving Babbitt reflected on the nature of work, how it was seen in the past as a God-given calling, and indeed served to define a person. With the loss of vocation has come a loss of identification.
To remedy this loss does not require legislation or public awareness. The solution is within the grasp of everyone who has decided to continue to be productive. It often means a change in occupation. It may mean giving up benefits and accepting a lower wage, or no wage at all. But a reason for living, and a retention of identity, are surely sufficient remuneration.
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William Diehl lives and works in Defiance, Ohio

An Anti-Planning/Zoning Reading List

2009-05-22T00:01:00.002-04:00

A friend asked me for a reading list regarding my positions against zoning and land-use planning. My position was also the cause of some minor controversy with a couple of voters on Tuesday. Since I haven't had the time yet to condense these books and articles into a lengthy paper of my own, I'll post the list and modify it from time to time. (For those of you who thought I was the only living person who opposes zoning and planning - there are more of us than you think!)

If you ponder this material and are still unconvinced that zoning and central planning are bad ideas, I would say we have a fundamental disagreement about the proper role and nature of constitutionally restrained, republican government. (I do not necessarily endorse all the political philosophies espoused on the sites which host the following articles, or by the authors themselves; eg. I am not an Objectivist, an Anarchist, or a card-carrying Libertarian.)

Economist Walter Block's 1980 lecture entitled "Is Zoning Obsolete?"
Economist Thomas Sowell's 2004 article entitled "Property Rites"
Professor and entrepreneur Dr. Yaron Brook's 2002 article entitled "When Your Home Is Not Your Castle"
HIA President Bob Day's 2005 speech entitled "A Tale Of Two Cities"
Economist Walter Williams' 2007 article entitled "Economics and Property Rights"
Policy Analyst Adam Summers' 2005 article entitled "Your Home is Your Cottage"
Cascade Policy Institute Director Matt Wingard's 2007 blog post entitled "Running With Robbers"
Professor James Saltzman's 1994 article entitled "Houston Says No To Zoning"
Professional Cyclist Jim Fedako's 2006 blog post entitled "Zoning Is Theft"
Economist Walter Williams' 2006 article entitled "Property Rights Attack Continues"
Commentator John Stossel's 2008 TV program entitled "Politically-Incorrect Guide to Politics"
Law Professor Bernard Siegan's works.
Wikipedia entry on alternative to zoning - Nuisance Laws
Law Professor Richard Epstein's works.
Gerald Russello's 2009 book review of a Richard Epstein book.
Anonymous article entitled "The 'Takings' Issue – What Constitutes A 'Taking'?”
Economist Walter Williams' 2006 article entitled "Property Rights Are A Fundamental Human Right"
Real Estate Attorney David Wilens' 2000 articles entitled "The Evils of Zoning", "Isn't Zoning Necessary to Prevent Nuisances", "The Antidote for Zoning: Bringing Objectivity to the Land Development Process" and "The Antidote for Zoning: The 'Coming to the Nuisance'"
Warren Ross and Brian Phillips wrote a six-part series entitled "In Defense of Property Rights"
Brian Phillips helped talk Hobbs, New Mexico residents out of passing a zoning ordinance.
Economist Edward Glaesar's and Finance Professor Joseph Gyourko's 2002 article entitled "Zoning's Steep Price"
Economist E.C. Pasour's 1983 article on Land-Use Planning
Economist Bruce Benson's 1981 articles entitled "The Black Market for Property Rights" and "A Supply and Demand Analysis of Changing Property Rights"
Economist Thomas Sowell's 2005 article entitled "The Human Price of California's Statist Housing Policies"
Writer James Bovard's 1996 article entitled "Zoning: The New Tyranny"
Law Professor Eric Claeys' 2003 presentation entitled "The Uneasy Legacy of Progressivism in Zoning"

Cultivating Community in the American Church

2009-05-21T18:16:00.001-04:00

From Desiring God Blog interview with Paul Tripp:

What is the greatest hindrance to cultivating community in the American church?
The first thing that comes to mind is frenetic western-culture busyness.
I read a book on stress a few years back, and the author made a side comment that I thought was so insightful. He said that the highest value of materialistic western culture is not possessing. It's actually acquiring.
If you're a go-getter you never stop. And so the guy who is lavishly successful doesn't quit, because there are greater levels of success. "My house could be bigger, I could drive better cars, I could have more power, I could have more money."
And so we've bought an unbiblical definition of the good life of success. Our kids have to be skilled at three sports and play four musical instruments, and our house has to be lavish by whatever standard. And all of that stuff is eating time, eating energy, eating money. And it doesn't promote community.
I think often that even the programs of a local church are too sectored and too busy. As if we're trying to program godliness. And so the family is actually never together because they're all in demographic groupings. Where do we have time where we are pursuing relationships with one another, living with one another, praying with one another, talking with one another?
I've talked to a lot of families who literally think it's a victory to have 3 or 4 meals all together with one another in a week, because they're so busy. Well, if in that family unit they're not experiencing community, there's no hope of them experiencing it outside of that family unit.
We have families that will show up at our church on Sunday morning with the boys dressed in their little league outfits, and I know what's going to happen. They're going to leave the service early. Now what a value message to that little boy! Do I think little league is bad? I don't think it's bad at all. I think it's great. But they're telling him what's important as they do that.
You can't fit God's dream (if I can use that language) for his church inside of the American dream and have it work. It's a radically different lifestyle. It just won't squeeze into the available spaces of the time and energy that's left over.
And I'm as much seduced by that as anybody. We have sold our four-bedroom house because our kids are gone, and we've bought a loft in Chinatown, Philadelphia. And we're amazed at how simple our life has become. We're grieving over how we let our life get so complicated.
Last year, for example, I put almost $2,500 worth of gas in my car. This year, I've put $159 in the first quarter. It's because we're walking places, and that slows our life down, and we're near the people in our church because we're within walking distance of the church. And we've had so many natural encounters with people because of that.
We're living in a much smaller place. We got rid of most of our stuff. As we went through it, we laughed about how we just collected stuff. All that stuff has to be maintained. It grabs your heart, it grabs your schedule, it grabs your time. It becomes a source of worry and concern and need to pay.
So we've just been confronted with how all of those things that aren't evil in themselves become the complications of life that keep us away from the kind of community that we need in order to hold on to our identity.

Simon Says, "Hold the Handrail"

2009-05-20T16:07:00.001-04:00

Canada is much safer than the USA; they protect their citizens. To clarify, citizens are protected from hurting themselves so that government doesn't need to hurt them.

"Do what the we tell you do. Do what our signs tell you to do. Don't do anything that we think might endanger you. We will protect you." -Government