UPDATED: GOV.CON Is Working As Intended

Communism, Economy, Government, Healthcare, Socialism, The State

Delay it, fix it, tweak it, get Amazon’s computer programers to redesign it; and, boohoo, the poor president—a pox on Obama!—is so poorly served by it!

Republicans and Democrats alike have made these specious, irrelevant, mealy-mouthed points about the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.” That includes those “pig-ignorant panelists” who turn the Sean Hannity Show into such a zoo. (My apologies to all animals, who are far and away superior in intelligence and manners to Sean’s panelists.)

You can no more mend Government.Con than you could have tweaked Stalin’s Gulag.

Read “Why Government ‘Care’ Will Never, Ever Work” at the preeminent libertarian site, Economic Policy Journal:

…In the bureaucracy, incentives will forever be inverted. Failure results in success: in more funds, more training, more time off. “We don’t have profits and losses in the civil service. Success in the civil service is measured by the size of our staff and budget. A bigger department is more successful than a smaller one,” smiled the marvelously sardonic Sir Humphrey Appleby, superstar of the satire “Yes, Prime Minister.”
Since it “manages” money not its own, government has no real incentive to conserve resources, ensure a job is properly done, or deliver on its promises. Entrusted with the administration of assets you don’t own, have no stake in; on behalf of people you don’t know and who have no real recourse against your mismanagement—how long before your on-the-job performance mirrors that of the government? …

MORE.

UPDATE: “Some health insurance gets pricier as Obamacare rolls,” concedes the LA Times. But what would an LA Times article be without floating a foolish theory, blaming business for a law that has mandated extended coverage?

Guaranteed, exhaustive coverage is driving up rates:

Individual policies must also cover a higher percentage of overall medical costs and include 10 “essential health benefits,” such as prescription drugs and mental health services. The aim is to fill gaps in coverage and provide consumers more peace of mind. But those expanded benefits have to be paid for with higher premiums.

Justice demands that people who scoffed at the right analysis (see “Destroying Healthcare For The Few Uninsured,” August 7, 2009) of this law and cheered it on should suffer. They deserve to suffer. But I fear the future for all. Be afraid.

Exculpating Evil: Depravity Or Deprivation?

Crime, Justice, Morality, Pseudoscience, Psychiatry, Race, Racism, Reason

CORRESPONDENT DON LEMON is a (piss-poor) prime-time reporter for CNN. Deprivation was the theme of Lemon’s sympathetic segment on 14-year-old (alleged) slasher Phillip Chism. Chism killed his 24-year-old math teacher with a box cutter.

According to Lemon’s editorializing , the possible source of Chism’s deprivation, boohoo, was not depravity but an absent father. Bill O’Reilly—and all other “conservative” pundits—is also prone to backwards logic, namely that if someone does something evil, then you work backwards in search of exculpating factors. Anything but pure unmitigated evil.

Controlled studies show that well-functioning individuals tend to report as many pathological experiences as do people who don’t function well. The same faulty reasoning must lead us to conclude that their trauma caused their successes.

Investigation Discovery featured a gaggle of Australian lasses who murdered a girl who had made their leader jealous. These feral females beat their victim and then set her alight as she begged for mercy. The stiffest sentence received by one of them was 17 years.

It’s a consolation that here in the U.S., Chism will be tried and sentenced as an adult.

Lemon:

DON LEMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The students are back at Danvers High School.

COLLIN BUTLER, JUNIOR, DANVERS HIGH SCHOOL: I’m trying to return to some essential of normalcy.

LEMON: The school’s flag at half-staff and pink ribbons on the trees — reminders that thing are still far from normal.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Why would someone do this to someone so nice?

LEMON: Still, more questions than answers as to what made 14-year-old Phillip Chism allegedly kill his math teacher Colleen Ritzer with a box cutter on Tuesday and then dump her body in the woods behind the school’s athletic field. He then went to this theater to see Wood Allen’s “Blue Jazzman”.

Chism’s uncle in Tennessee among those who still can’t understand why.

TERRENCE CHISM BLAINE, UNCLE OF PHILLIP CHISM: This is the furthest thing from reality for me to believe that Phillip could, you know, get entangled in something like this.

LEMON (on camera): His uncle told CNN that Chism’s parents are separated. Chism’s father, a former military man, is now living in Florida. The question is, could trouble at home be one of the reasons behind his alleged attack?

CARRIE KIMBALL-MONAHAN, SPOKESPERSON, ESSEX COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY: An investigation is a broad and painstaking effort. So they’re all, any and all information that’s pertinent and relevant to proving our case is taken into consideration.

LEMON: Would something like that be relevant?

KIMBALL-MONAHAN: It could be.

LEMON (voice-over): The freshman student Cambria Cloutier sat near Chism in Ritzer’s math class. She said he was a good student but that something was different about Chism’s behavior on Tuesday.

CAMBRIA CLOUTHIER, FRESHMAN, DANVERS HIGH SCHOOL: He was a little more quiet than usual. He had his ear buds on. He was drawing. He was not doing math. He wasn’t paying attention.

LEMON: Clouthier says Ritzer teacher asked Chism to stay after class to help him with what he missed, telling CNN’s Pam Brown that she walked by the classroom after school and saw the two of them together.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: What did you see in the classroom at 3:15?

CLOUTHIER: I saw Ms. Ritizer standing at her desk computer smiling at me. And then I saw Phillip slouching in his chair, staring at me when I walked by.

LEMON: Just 15 minutes later, according to sources close to the investigation, Colleen Ritzer was brutally killed in the school’s second floor bathroom.

CLOUTHIER: If I had walked by there 15 minutes later, what could have happened? If I witnessed that, what could I have done?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEMON: And sources close to the investigation say there is no indication that there is anything in this young man’s path that would lead him to this type of behavior. And they also say that reports of him having a crush on the teacher are unfounded. In the meantime, Erin, 24-year-old Colleen Ritzer will be laid to rest on Monday.

BURNETT: Thank you, Don.

UPDATED: Why Government ‘Care’ Will Never, Ever Work

Free Markets, Government, Healthcare, Objectivism, Private Property, Republicans

“Why Government ‘Care’ Will Never, Ever Work” is the current column, now on WND. An excerpt:

At every opportunity, Jedediah Bila, a regular among the pig-ignorant panelists paraded on the Fox News and Business channels, parroted Bill O’Reilly’s “not ready for prime time” line. The premise of that fatuity is that given time, Obamacare could be readied for prime time.

A “scandal” bleated another cipher in a skirt—a Republican, naturally—about the error-riddled Obamacare website, when she should have been explaining that HealthCare.gov not working is no more a “scandal” than waste, fraud and abuse in Medicare and Medicaid, perpetrated by program administrators, program recipients, elected and unelected officials alike.

Failure and fraud is business as usual in government.

Liberals are incapable of grasping economic truths. That goes without saying. But why are “conservatives” every bit as dumb about the dynamics in a nationalized enterprise as opposed to the workings of a market society? Republicans appear incapable of articulating why it is that centrally planned systems fail.

The gold standard for stupid is this Republican riff: “Government would work much better if it were run like a business.” It is in violation of the Law of Identity. A is A. Things are what they are. Government is government; it is not business. The task of a rational man, advised Ayn Rand, is to perceive reality, not to create or invent it.

Rep. Fred Upton does Jedediah Bila one better. “Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars [have been] spent for a system that still does not work,” complained the Republican from Michigan.

Wrong. Government spends trillions of taxpayer dollars on systems that don’t work (the military included). That’s what government does by definition; by virtue of being government.

The problem is not so much the 55 contractors involved in designing Barack Obama’s signature Web portal, but the Central Planning Board that selected inept coders—and the kinky incentives to which any federal agency in charge will subject any and all contractors under its control.

The same web developers generally do a great job on each of our personal computers; in other words, when handling private property. If they don’t …

Read the complete column. “Why Government ‘Care’ Will Never, Ever Work” is now on WND.

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UPDATE (10/24): To add to the litany in “Why Government ‘Care’ Will Never, Ever Work,” show me a company in the private sector (which is not the recipient of government handouts) that is shielded from bankruptcy. An audit would reveal that most government departments, the Obamacare bureaucracy included, are insolvent. Yet the fact that the taxpayer is forced to bankroll them indefinitely with tax dollars, immunizes these systems against all forms of accountability, fiscal and other.

You have to be a dimwit to want care from such an establishment.