Category Archives: Free Markets

1-800-ObamaCare-Political con

Barack Obama, Free Markets, Government, Healthcare, Private Property

Wall Street Journal: “In an era where Google is making self-driving cars and Amazon offers next-day delivery for just about anything, the White House plunged ahead with a system it knew to be defective and is relying on the technology of the 19th century as the fall-back.”

As if government can ever be a source of innovation in delivering consumer products and services. Only in a profit-and-loss system, which in turn is predicated on the presence of private property, can consumers get what they want.

“Remember when Mr. Obama said you could keep your policy if you liked it?”

Insurance companies are also already sending out notices to millions of consumers cancelling individual policies because they are non-compliant with ObamaCare’s new mandates. Kaiser Health News, usually a cheerleader for the law, reports that “Florida Blue, for example, is terminating about 300,000 policies, about 80 percent of its individual policies in the state.” Kaiser Permanente in California has sent notices to 160,000 people, Highmark in Pittsburgh is dropping about 20% of its individual market customers, and Independence Blue Cross of Philadelphia is dropping about 45%.

MORE.

Listen Up Furloughed F-cks!

Free Markets, Government, Healthcare, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Propaganda, Socialism

It has to be clear that the US government is a government for the benefit of certain factions alone. Members of the productive, private sector—they support the entire exercise in futility—got up and went to work as they do day in and day out, while the parasites who live off their avails whinged about lost wages and lost vacations (I can’t recall when last my better half has taken one). Since the oink sector sets its own salaries, the same people will award themselves backpack on the backs of the workers who carry their dead weight. Of that you can be sure.

So listen up furloughed f-cks and do us all a favor. Get a real job so we don’t have to carry the weight of your hefty salaries (on average double that of the average wage in the country), the liability of your healthcare and retirement benefits the likes of which we can only dream of, and your general sanctimony about your value.

“More than nine out of every ten employees,” reports Bretibart.com, “at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are considered ‘non-essential.'” You can be sure that the trend obtains throughout the “oink sector.”

From what Ed Krayewski at Reason.com writes rather unclearly, it would appear that “about 800,000 out of the 2.1 million strong federal workforce are “non-essential.”

Never one to mince words, Thomas DiLorenzo does, however, make mince of these parasites and their media advocates:

The “media” have finally destroyed what tiny bit of credibility they had as a “news” source with their “coverage” of the government “shutdown.” This of course is good news for all producers and non-parasites in American society. They have done so with their ridiculous claims all over tv and radio of a supposed “increasing backlash” against the “shutdown” of a few government offices. Americans are experiencing “Frustration Coast to Coast,” shouts USA Today in the dumbest headline of the day. Among the “horror stories” discussed are a woman who may have to postpone her “fantasy wedding” in a government-run park; a possibly cancelled marathon in New Jersey; various vacations in government-run parks; and a family that may have to delay “the dream of home ownership” for a few days. Oh, the misery of the poor booboisie!

No one I’ve been around gives a crap. No one is talking about it but the “media,” who are worse propagandists than any who worked for PRAVDA under Soviet communism. This morning, for example, ABC News picked two or three parasites/public dole collectors to whine about how “upset” they were that government-run national parks thousands of miles away were shut down. Then they covered the entire screen with Obombya’s mug and with his annoying, bellowing, preachy voice saying “the Republicans had better reopen the government.” That’s the Official Party Line of the day, faithfully repeated in the title of a USA Today editorial: “Blame for the Shutdown Falls Squarely on the GOP.” Nice lapdog. Nice lapdog.

This is all good, because it will hopefully lead to the same thing that eventually happened in the former Soviet Union, namely, no one believed anything the government and its media propagandists ever said. Once this becomes a reality, the days of the regime are limited.

The Warmongers: Not Looking Out For Us

Business, Economy, EU, Free Markets, Iran, Media, Russia, The State

“The Warmongers: Not Looking Out For Us” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

To listen to U.S. government officials there is only an upside to the punitive sanctions imposed on Iran by the United States and a reluctant European Union. Consequently, the emphasis is forever on how to toughen the punishment; never on whether to lift economic sanctions on the long-suffering people of Iran.

But what about the effects of trade boycotts on American businesses?

Chris Harmer of The Institute for the Study of War estimates that the Boeing Company alone forfeits a minimum of $25 billion in business every year because of U.S.-imposed sanctions on Iran, a niche market that is filled by the Russians. Overall, Harmer puts the value to U.S. business of trade lost due to the economic embargo on Iran at approximately $50 billion per annum.

For example, Iran imports $1.5 billion worth of cars a year, the beneficiaries of which are companies like Nissan, Toyota and Peugeot (when they might have been General Motors and Chrysler). Peugeot does an added half a billion dollars’ worth of commerce with Iran just in car parts.

The Iranian economy, moreover, has diversified and is adapting to life without the U.S. The rest of the world—pockets in Europe and most of Asia—has not isolated Iran, with the result that the country has many trading partners other than the U.S. And while Iran has lost petroleum revenue due to sanctions, the trend will not endure. China, Japan and South Korea are hungry for the country’s crude.

Not to be overlooked are the costs to Americans of sanction enforcement, avers Harmer. In addition to the opportunity costs—the missed business aforementioned—there are “direct costs.” The Office of Foreign Asset Control in the U.S. Treasury Department squanders around $1 billion a year in developing lists of “financial institutions that are subject to sanctions,” and then infringing on the rights of individuals and companies to freely exchange privately owned property.

“Indirect costs” are incurred in the course of cultivating a massive U.S. intelligent infrastructure—a veritable alphabet soup of agencies—upon which the Treasury draws in enforcing a regimen of sanctions.

So too are the “deterrent costs” borne by the American taxpayer who pays for patrolling the Persian Gulf, the Northern Arabian Sea, and the Strait of Hormuz. …

… As a general rule, state-enforced boycotts harm honest, hard-working Americans who use the economic means to earn their keep. …”

Read the entire column. “The Warmongers: Not Looking Out For Us” is now on WND.

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