Category Archives: Government

Unhealthy Propaganda

Barack Obama, Communism, Democrats, Economy, Free Markets, Government, Healthcare, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, The State

BELOW ARE SOME HIGHLIGHTS, interspersed with comments, from BO’s much-anticipated address to the two chambers—an address that was, overall, thin gruel. For those who’ve switch off to preserve their health, the text to the president’s speech on “the need to overhaul health care in the United States” is here. I provided a rights-based primer in a previous post, “Preparing For Unhealthy Propaganda.”

“I am not the first President to take up this cause, but I am determined to be the last.” [The historical president’s quest to continue to make history …]

“There are now more than thirty million American citizens who cannot get coverage.” [Not so. See “Destroying Healthcare For The Few Uninsured.”]

“Those who do have insurance have never had less security and stability than they do today. More and more Americans worry that if you move, lose your job, or change your job, you’ll lose your health insurance too.” [The answer is to create the conditions for jobs in the private economy, not to kneecap job creators, Chicago style.]

“Then there’s the problem of rising costs.” [The solution is A Free Market in Medical Care, which we lack.]

“There are those on the left who believe that the only way to fix the system is through a single-payer system like Canada’s, where we would severely restrict the private insurance market and have the government provide coverage for everyone. On the right, there are those who argue that we should end the employer-based system and leave individuals to buy health insurance on their own.”

“I have to say that there are arguments to be made for both approaches. But either one would represent a radical shift that would disrupt the health care most people currently have. Since health care represents one-sixth of our economy, I believe it makes more sense to build on what works and fix what doesn’t, rather than try to build an entirely new system from scratch. And that is precisely what those of you in Congress have tried to do over the past several months”

“The plan I’m announcing tonight would meet three basic goals:

It will provide more security and stability to those who have health insurance. It will provide insurance to those who don’t. And it will slow the growth of health care costs for our families, our businesses, and our government.” [Only in defiance of the laws of economics.]

“First, if you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, Medicare, Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have. Let me repeat this: nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have.

What this plan will do is to make the insurance you have work better for you.

“Now, if you’re one of the tens of millions of Americans who don’t currently have health insurance, the second part of this plan will finally offer you quality, affordable choices. If you lose your job or change your job, you will be able to get coverage. If you strike out on your own and start a small business, you will be able to get coverage. We will do this by creating a new insurance exchange – a marketplace where individuals and small businesses will be able to shop for health insurance at competitive prices.” [About this “exchange” BO wants to breathe life into: what he’s describing is a phony “market place” brought about by flesh-and-blood central planners. If that were possible the Soviet Union would not have collapsed. Pray tell, where in the world—and in history—have command economists “designed” functioning, efficient, fair markets?]

“For those individuals and small businesses who still cannot afford the lower-priced insurance available in the exchange, we will provide tax credits, the size of which will be based on your need. And all insurance companies that want access to this new marketplace will have to abide by the consumer protections I already mentioned.”

COERCION KICKER: “individuals will be required to carry basic health insurance – just as most states require you to carry auto insurance. Likewise, businesses will be required to either offer their workers health care, or chip in to help cover the cost of their workers.” [BO forgot to mention that so-called Cadillac coverage amounting to $800,000 per annum will be taxed to the tune of 35 percent. Just saying.]

BO is nothing if not benevolent: “Now, I have no interest in putting insurance companies out of business.”

Can BO count?: “I have insisted that like any private insurance company, the public insurance option would have to be self-sufficient and rely on the premiums it collects. … based on Congressional Budget Office estimates, we believe that less than 5% of Americans would sign up.” [And this 5 percent will pay through premiums alone for a $900 billion plan over a decade? How on earth?]

“I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits – either now or in the future. Period. And to prove that I’m serious, there will be a provision in this plan that requires us to come forward with more spending cuts if the savings we promised don’t materialize.” [What do they know, but the CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE disagrees, writing, on June 15, 2009, that “enacting the proposal would result in a net increase in federal budget deficits of about $1.0 trillion over the 2010–2019 period.” Where did these professional number crunchers go wrong?]

I’m getting tired of following this fanciful fairytale. So let me end my service to BAB readers with one more fabulous assertion by BO: “Most of these costs will be paid for with money already being spent – but spent badly – in the existing health care system. The plan will not add to our deficit.”

THE PREMISE OF THE ABOVE being that the government, which is responsible for the waste and fraud in Medicare, Medicaid and the VA system, will also be in charge of eliminating the same features of these state-run systems.

Update III: Who's Hiring? (Switzerland)

Affirmative Action, Canada, Debt, Federal Reserve Bank, Government, Healthcare, Inflation, Labor, Regulation

GOVERNMENT IS. “The government will have to hire some 600,000 people during the four years of President Obama’s term. That would bump up the current workforce by a third,” reports MSNBC.

The New York Times informs that, “While the private sector has shed 6.9 million jobs since the beginning of the recession, state and local governments have expanded their payrolls and added 110,000 jobs, according to a report issued Thursday by the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government.”

It then adds a stupendously silly afterthought:

“Government jobs are always more stable than private sector jobs during downturns, but their ability to weather the current deep recession startled Donald J. Boyd, the senior fellow at the institute who wrote the report.”

[SNIP]

Government jobs come into being by political fiat, not by market forces or necessity. Political will is what sustains them; it is state force that accounts for their stability and longevity. This is why these jobs, so to speak, “write” their own conditions of employment.

Government jobs have another signal characteristic:

“Government job creation schemes are predicated on government taxing, borrowing or inflating the money supply—activities that reduce capital available to the private sector. Such programs are politically popular because they are visible. However, for every job ‘created’ by government, an unidentifiable job will be destroyed in the private sector.”

It’s a zero-sum game: The parasite is sucking the lifeblood of the host. The larger he gets, the weaker the host grows.

The growth of government, of course, means that many more leaches will be implementing onerous rules and regulations that make it even harder for the struggling private economy to recover.

Still, the Times is perplexed at “the disparity between the public and private sector job market.”

Update I: “CANADA’S private sector added 49,200 workers in August, the first time they have hired more than fired since September,” reports the AP.

Of greater interest is the fact that, “while the U.S. has seen 81 banks fail in 2009 alone, Canada has not experienced the failure of any major financial institution. There has been no crippling mortgage meltdown or banking crisis north of the border, where the financial sector is dominated by five large banks.”

Update II (Sept. 5): MILTON FRIEDMAN (Via Roy B.) on the fallacy of government as an agent of wealth creation and on needing production—goods and services—not spending:

Update III (Sept. Eighth): SWITZERLAND HAS “knocked the United States off the position as the world’s most competitive economy” (via Reuters & Drudge).

The U.S. as the world’s largest economy lost last year’s strong lead, slipping to number two for the first time since the introduction of the index in its current form in 2004.

The study also factors in a survey among business leaders, assessing for example the government’s efficiency or the flexibility of the labor market. …

The WEF applauded Switzerland for its capacity to innovate, sophisticated business culture, effective public services, excellent infrastructure and well-functioning goods markets.

If to go by the report, the depression is some kind of swine flu, which randomly infects some, but not other, banks. However, American banks were leveraged like no other financial institutions in the world. (I’m not including Zimbabwe’s banks, although maybe I should, given how close the US is to Tanzania with respect to the soundness of its banks: “In the assessment of banks’ soundness, the Alpine country still ranked 44th. U.S. banks fell to 108 — right behind Tanzania — and British banks to 126 in the ranking, now topped by Canada’s banks.”)

US banks were also uniquely subject to state-mandated affirmative-action lending: a “State-mandated spoils system for minorities.”

Wait until the insurance industry collapses because of an Obama decree against “discrimination” based on health status. This is the very definition of insurance. Remove the costs of risk taking and you remove the incentives to avoid risks. Doesn’t Dipstick associate this incentive structure with his oft-repeated objective: inculcating healthy habits in the population? Moreover, unless the industry can charge premiums based on risk, it becomes a non-profit. Remove profit from the insurance equation, and the industry will be on its way to croaking.

Update III: A Jeremiah-Wright Repeat Performance (Jones Gone)

Barack Obama, Communism, Democrats, Environmentalism & Animal Rights, Government, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Socialism

Spare me a repeat performance of the Jeremiah Wright farce, only with Van Jones, the Special Advisor for Green Jobs at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, substituting for the Obamas’ preacher; and surfacing in YouTube clips while delivering Wright-like jeremiads lambasting white men and Western civilization, as every liberal lunatic and wimpish WASP pretends Obamby hardly knew the jejune Jones.

Can we skip this? Can this country’s anointed cognoscenti at least pretend to be familiar with the concept of a learning curve?

To quote ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper:

Van Jones,

“[a] top environmental official of the Obama administration issued a statement Thursday apologizing for past incendiary statement and denying that he ever agreed with a 2004 petition on which his name appears, a petition calling for congressional hearings and an investigation by the New York Attorney General into “evidence that suggests high-level government officials may have deliberately allowed the September 11th attacks to occur.”

Jones, the Special Advisor for Green Jobs at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, is Number 46 of the petitioners from the so-called “Truther” movement which suggests that people in the administration of President George W. Bush “may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war.”

In a statement issued Thursday evening Jones said of “the petition that was circulated today, I do not agree with this statement and it certainly does not reflect my views now or ever.”

He did not explain how his name came to be on the petition. A source said Jones did not carefully review the language in the petition before agreeing to add his name.

It’s one thing to have voted for Obama; it’s quite another to walk around in a daze pretending the man has no relationship to the entourage of crazies that has been catapulted to power with him.

Incidentally, I am less perturbed by Jones’ affinity with 9/11 conspirators than with the vertiginous ignorance of economics that accompanies his green faith. The man’s mandate is to do serious damage.
Just as Obama intended.

Here’s a prophetic prediction (NOT): There are many Van Jones’ in the Obama administration. You’ll meet them in the fullness of time. Quit feigning surprise when they crawl out from their dank corners.

Update I (Sept.4): I TOLD YOU SO. The predictable LiveLeak and YouTube clips are surfacing showcasing this apparent anomaly in the Obama administration: a black man who is every bit as cynical and smug as Jeremiah Wright, and like him is consumed by savage rage and envy. But like Obama’s confidant and reverend of 20 years, Van Jones is somehow treated atomistically. Conservatives too are positing only whether he has a future; will he be fired, and what kind of vetting did he undergo. It is manifestly obvious to these pundits that Obama could not possibly have approved of such a man.

Once again, “The Real Slim Shady” slithers away successfully.

Update II: THE REAL STORY is this, courtesy of Byron York:

Total words about the Van Jones controversy in the New York Times: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy in the Washington Post: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on NBC Nightly News: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on ABC World News: 0.
Total words about the Van Jones controversy on CBS Evening News: 0.

Update III (Sept. 6): JONES FALLS ON HIS SWORD so that Obamby may retain his porcelainized image. My Way News:

“President Barack Obama’s adviser Van Jones has resigned amid controversy over past inflammatory statements, the White House said early Sunday.

Jones, an administration official specializing in environmentally friendly “green jobs” with the White House Council on Environmental Quality was linked to efforts suggesting a government role in the 2001 terror attacks and to derogatory comments about Republicans.”

Long Live Jack Kevorkian

America, Fascism, Government, Individual Rights, Justice, Law, libertarianism, Liberty, Natural Law, Religion, The State

IN HIS OWN WORDS. Jack Kevorkian is a free man. And that makes him better than most: “The law can only stop a person from exercising a right”;”You cannot transgress a natural right”; “Religion puts your mind in a straitjacket”; “Maybe Michael Jackson craved [anesthetics] so much, the doctor administered them to keep him quiet. The patient got what he wanted”; “America is not the country you think it is. How free are you? You are as free as the law lets you be, and America is the greatest law factory in the world“; “We have a lot of traits of fascism in this country; Ayn Rand predicted it”; “Are we done as a country? We’re done as a free country, yes”; “Most people are enslaved sheep. They cry to the government, ‘Do something for me.'”
Bar one, I agree with all the aforementioned. Jack Kevorkian may be ideologically confused, but he is free and fiercely courageous.