Prin-Spec References

S/L: Mandate Birth Control Insurance Coverage for Women

2011-09-09T09:54:00.000-07:00

Cost should not matter when deciding birth control

My commentary:

Posted by zemack July 25, 2011 at 11:39AM

“But it’s up to every woman to decide for herself whether or not to use birth control.” Who would disagree with that? But it’s also up to that woman to pay for it herself, not force others to pay through a compulsory insurance mandate. But, there are hundreds of benefit mandates forced upon our “private” health insurance across the nation. So, if a woman is forced to pay for some guy’s prostate cancer treatment of Viagra in the same way, why shouldn’t she demand he pay for her birth control? It seems only fair, right?

What’s unfair is for government to impose any mandates at all. Insurers and their customers have a moral right to contract freely with each other, to mutual benefit, without government interference. Government’s job is to enforce those health insurance contracts and prosecute fraud and breech of contract, not redistribute wealth through regulation and law. That is not only immoral, but is one of the prime reasons for out-of-control health costs. When each of us is forced to pay for everyone else’s healthcare, but not our own, then the incentive is to not give a hoot what our’s costs, but to simply pressure government to dump our costs on others. Socialism turns everyone into predators, not “brothers and sisters”.

Our health insurance system is a socialized system through and through. “Private” insurance is only nominally so, and is really an extension of government. It is far from anything resembling a free market, being more in the nature of economic fascism – i.e., socialism through the back door. Of course, we have real socialism in the system too, through Medicare, Medicaid, S-CHIP, and so on.

The S/L justifies this new mandate on the grounds of “public health” because “About half of all pregnancies in the United States are unplanned, which places a heavy strain on society.” But who switched the burden of unplanned pregnancies onto “society” – onto others through their taxes – in the first place? It was the statists themselves through government programs. To “fix” that problem, they propose to widen government control of medicine through our quasi-governmental insurance industry in the form of this new mandate.

No one is morally responsible for another’s health care needs, except as dictated by personal choices and actions – such as bringing a child into the world. Beyond that, the moral standards of individual rights, free markets, and a free society means every adult individual is responsible for his own healthcare needs only, until and unless he/she volunteers to give financial help to a neighbor or friend or even a stranger. No one’s unfilled needs places an automatic moral claim on the money or services of another, beyond private voluntary charity. Until we accept these moral truths, we will continue to build toward totalitarian socialism one brick at a time.

On income taxes and job creation, history debunks the Star-Ledger

2011-09-08T11:51:00.000-07:00

On income taxes and job creation, history debunks GOP views, NJ Star-Ledger Sunday, July 17, 2011.

I've left the following comments:

July 17, 2011 at 1:12PM

Several corespondents have already pointed out the blatant context-dropping, selective use of facts, and outright falsehoods employed by the editors. Here are a few more:

 The 1950s economy limped along through three recessions. So anemic was it that JKF ran his 1960 presidential campaign on a promise to “get America moving again”. The 1960s featured accelerated growth after Kennedy cut tax rates from 91% to 70%.
 The Reagan tax cuts brought rates down from 70% to 28%. Tinkering by the Bush –Clinton--Bush administrations bounced those rates around between the upper 20s and upper 30s, but all three presidents left the bulk of the Reagan cuts essentially in place. Those cuts were a prime reason for the 1982-2000 economic boom that saw interest rates, inflation, and unemployment all trend steadily downward from double digits simultaneously – a feat that Keynesianists thought to be impossible. Clinton benefited enormously from that boom, especially after the 1994 Republicans aborted his statist schemes and pushed him to the “Right” on economic policy (ex. welfare reform, spending restrain, and capital gains tax cuts). Of course, as Melland points out, in retrospect the beginning of the housing bubble – of which Clinton and Bush share equal blame – “helped” Clinton also.
 The 2001-03 “tax cuts for the rich” vastly benefited the middle class, lowering the average family’s tax burden by tens of thousands of dollars over the past decade, even as those cuts were justly spread across all income brackets.
 But the Bush rate cuts – the most important aspect economically - were small. The benificial effects of those meager rate cuts were overwhelmed by other factors. The real reason for the sub-par economy of the 2000s was the terrorist attacks and subsequent onset of war, along with Bush’s large increase in government regulation, government spending and deficits, trade barriers, the draining away of investment resources to feed the government-induced housing bubble, and the subsequent bust.

The editors ridicule private job creators, as any statist who worships government must. But jobs come from somewhere – that somewhere is the energy and ability of business creators and growers. Government can not create real, productive jobs. It can only shift resources by force from some people to others, and then claim credit for the jobs “created” by the politically favored recipients of that largess but paid for by the killing of other jobs drained from those who finance government spending.

The polls may or may not favor tax hikes on the wealthy. But sound economic policy is not determined by public opinion polls, or the moral perversity of any hypocrite who beats the drum for higher taxes, but only on the other guy.

I can't pass up the chance to make a few remarks regarding this:

David_Hinderer_298 July 18, 2011 at 10:42AM
Follow

Tax increases would be an incentive for the rich to create jobs once to see their wealth dwindle. Raising taxes would provide some motivation. They are under no preassure to create jobs since they getting richer for not doing but collect interest from their investment.

I've seen this view before. Put simply, Hinderer is essentially saying that theft is good, because it will provide an "incentive" to go out and work hard to replace what has been stolen. I trust that if a burglar robbed Hinderer's home, he would not file charges. Instead, he would be thankful, since it would encourage him to work to replace the stolen goods!

Only a slave mentality would conceive of so hideous a rationalization for tax increases.

Rand/Jesus Flap and Glenn Beck

2011-09-08T06:39:00.000-07:00

Glenn Beck Backtracks After Seeing AVN "Rand vs Jesus" Ad, by Eric Sapp

My initial response posted 07:11 PM on 6/15/2011:

" 'I think the vast majority of us will agree that Rand's vision of America where selfishness is the greatest virtue and compassion and love of neighbor are some of the worst evils... this is not the America we want' - Eric Sapp.

"Anyone who would deny to his neighbor the moral right and sanction to work for the achievement of his own selfish well-being and happiness can not claim the mantel of “compassion and love of neighbor”. Rand saw the predatory nature of altruism, and why it is the vital ethical tool of collectivism. If selfishness (properly understood) is not a virtue, then preying upon others is. If it is right to place the interests of your neighbors before your own, then it is right to demand that your neighbors do the same for you. Altruism, as Rand discovered, is an inverted morality that enshrines the unearned as a moral absolute. Socialists are desperate to defend their ethical standards against the rational Objectivist alternative that is the philosohical foundation of capitalism. That is why false alternatives such as the one embodied in the passage above are used to distract attention away from the true nature of Rand’s benevolent, rights-respecting morality.”

Eric Sapp responds, posted 10:04 PM on 6/15/2011:

you are of course welcome to your opinion, and please keep shouting it loud and clear b/c you are making my point. But for me and most Americans, the whole love your neighbor as your self and there is no greater love than this, that a man would lay down his life for another and blessed are the meek and importance of a servant heart will be the values we at least aspire to hold up above love of self.

My rebuttal posted 11:08 AM on 6/18/2011:

"Thanks for responding, Mr. Sapp. Yes, I’ll keep “shouting it loud and clear”, b/c as Ayn Rand said – and I think you would agree with her – the battle for America’s future is fundamentally a moral one.

"My side is a tiny minority, as of now. And I agree that most Americans cleave consciously to the 'servant heart' ethic. But the Rand/Jesus flap your side unleashed can only help my side by raising Rand’s profile. And I would argue that the Objectivist minority has a potent weapon working: Most Americans – Christians included – live their actual private lives more in tune to the Objectivist ethics; that is to say, as rights-respecting, rationally selfish individualists.

"In his time, Jesus’ ethics may have made some sense. But his ancient code does not jive with a nation born on the principle of the supremacy of EVERY individual’s right to the pursuit of his own happiness. The 'meek' – the everyday man – did inherit the earth. It is called capitalism.

"I believe that when Americans come to understand Ayn Rand’s moral message as the true validation of the Declaration of Independence, her code will become the dominant one. That will take time, of course, well beyond one election cycle. But time is on the side of better ideas, and when that day comes, that will be the end of the predatory welfare state, and the final realization of the Founding Fathers’ vision.

Let the moral battles begin."

MontanaSouth posted 02:59 PM on 6/16/2011 :

benevolent? it is benevolent to view charity as an evil? Neither altruism or Rand's morality are realistic views in a world populated by human beings. It is not altrusitic to assist those whose circumstances have put them at a disadvantage. It is beneficial to society to help establish a strong working society with protections from the Greed is Good view of capitalism

.

My response posted 03:43 PM on 6/17/2011:

"I will not let pass your framing the issue on a false premise – that altruism equates to benevolence and charity and the rejection of the first means ipso facto a rejection of the second. They are not the same. Charity is rightfully a personal, private matter, properly offered only within the context of one’s overall hierarchy of values. Objectivism makes no blanket moral judgement concerning charity one way or the other, other than that it should be consistent with your overall long-term self-interest (properly understood). This is, in my decades-long observation, the way most people view charity.

"But the obsession with charity is a sideshow straw man held up for purposes of a misrepresentative smear campaign. The main issue is: Do you have a moral right to your own life, or does everyone else have first moral claim on you – and vice versa? You state that you reject both altruism and Rand’s morality as impractical. But what are you counting on when you demand “a strong working society” (the collective) over “Greed is Good … capitalism” (individual self-determination)? You are counting on altruism, which holds that the good of others is one’s only moral justification for living.

"Thank you for vindicating my position concerning the correlation between collectivism and altruism. I reiterate my uncompromising position: It is Rand’s rational selfishness, not altruism, that is the benevolent, rights-respecting morality – and, I might add, the practical one, if a free society is your goal.

GlennBeckReview, Media critic, blogger, posted 11:59 AM on 6/18/2011, in response to Mark Dohle (03:22 PM on 6/16/2011), who wrote, "The irony of all this...Ayn Rand spent her life smashing typical conservative thought. Perhaps people will finally realize that her ideas are not conservative (abortion, marriage, immigration...look it up). The left always tried to pin her as a conservative, but she is as far from them as she is from the left. Fascism and Socialism are both statism. Ayn Rand favored individualism, the opposite of statism."

Ayn Rand was a reactionary, like [Glenn] Beck.

My response posted 12:16 PM on 6/18/2011:

“There appears to be a typo: The term is revolutionary (at least in regards to Rand) - in the same nature as the Founding Fathers. It is individual rights, not statism, that is new in history. The American Revolution has been under attack from statist reactionaries almost from the beginning.

"It is defenders of Judeo/Christian ethics who are the reactionaries. Ayn Rand's moral revolution is needed to compliment the Founders' political revolution - and complete the American Revolution.

"Ayn Rand is truly America's Last Founding Father!”

Sophiacherie posted 02:11 AM on 6/17/2011:

Did you know that Ayn Rand idolized a serial killer who murdered and dismembered a 12 year old girl and called him a "superman" because "other people don't exist for him and he doesn't see why they should" as she write in her diary?

My Response posted 09:58 PM on 6/17/2011

"Though this has nothing to do with Objectivism or the current debate, I’ll comment anyway. You are guilty of major context-dropping. Rand did not idolize a serial killer, but abstracted an apparent individualist character trait of [ William Edward] Hickman’s for the purpose of creating a profile for a potential novel (which was never written). She abhorred the depravity of his behavior, of course, and said so.

"Just as admiration for the intelligence of a master thief doesn’t imply idolization of the actor or his crime nor invalidate the virtue of intelligence, so it was with the 23-year-old Ayn Rand in regard to Hickman.

"Context is always crucial, and it’s right there in its entirety in 'Journals of Ayn Rand'. It was 1928, and the youthful influence of Nietzsche was still there (the “superman” comment); an influence which she later officially rejected. One should take care to take isolated bits from never-intended-for-publication private journals and twist something ridiculous out of it. That statement is not an endorsement of murder, as your quoting it absurdly implies. The totality of her published writing is an unequivocal condemnation of the initiation of physical force in human relationships, which she regarded as an unmitigated evil. How does that jive with idolizing a killer? To believe that is to put yourself in the market for the Brooklyn Bridge.

If you’re going to critique Objectivism, then just do it, if you can. Don’t resort to the cowardly ad hominum fallacy."

To clarify a bit further, Hickman is discussed extensively in "Journals" on pages 22, 27, 36-39, and 40-44. On page 22, I quote from editor David Harriman:

Hickman served as a model for Danny [Renahan, a charactor in Rand's "The Little Street"] only in strictly limited respects, which AR names in her notes. Danny does commit a crime in the story, but it is nothing like Hickman's. To guard against any misinterpretation, I quote her own statement regarding the relationship between her hero and Hickman:

"[My hero is] very far from him, of course. The outside of Hickman, but not the inside. Much deeper and much more. A hickman with a purpose. And without the degeneracy. It is more exact to say that the model is not Hickman, but what Hickman suggested to me."

A GOP Idea Comes Back to Bite, But...

2011-06-08T16:05:00.000-07:00

...it's unfair to paint all Republicans with the same RomneyCare brush. That said, The Star-Ledger makes an important political point in the December 2010 editorial.

Republicans liked what they now decry in health care reform

My Commentary

zemack December 15, 2010 at 7:04PM

The Star-Ledger is partially right, here. The dirty little secret of the entire healthcare debate is that the centerpiece of the entire ObamaCare package is a gift from Republicans. What I disagree on is the characterization of today’s GOP opponents of the individual mandate as the “Right” – if by Right one means support for individual rights and a government limited to protecting those rights.

How is it that “Without [the individual mandate], millions of younger and healthier people will go without coverage, gambling that they won’t get sick — and knowing that if they do, the cost will be spread to the rest of us through higher premiums or Medicaid”?

“Higher premiums” are a result of government mandates that force insurers to cover “pre-existing conditions” and hospital emergency rooms to treat the uninsured without charge. Medicaid is a government program that forces taxpayers to cover “the poor”. The GOP supports all three, even though they necessitated the individual mandate. They call the court ruling “a great blow for personal liberty”, even though many of the same conservatives hailed RomneyCare in Massachusetts as a “free market solution”.

But, it’s obvious that neither the Republicans nor the conservatives even know what “liberty” means. If they did, they would fight to overturn all three mandates, and the privatization and eventual phaseout of Medicaid. These immoral government intrusions into healthcare violate the rights of insurers, hospitals, doctors, and all taxpayers, who are forced to involuntarily provide or pay for the healthcare of others. Without their elimination, the ObamaCare individual insurance mandate does indeed appear to “seem reasonable”, as the Editors put it.

The sad fact is, there is no Right in American politics today. The Democrats are far Left, and the Republicans are moderately Left, and both keep marching farther and farther Left. Thus, the so-called “political center” keeps moving Left as well, by default. Most Americans, though, still lean toward individualism, which is manifested in the Tea Party Movement and the recent election: even though the movement still lacks a coherent ideological framework. Unfortunately, there is no major party political voice for individual rights, yet.

The consequence of all of this is that totalitarian socialism in medicine is almost here, and the rest of the economy is following suit, by default of a Republican Party that has abandoned its principles. Government controls beget more government controls, which beget more government controls, as the statist beat goes on. This editorial proves the point.

Other's Commentary:

jrsyshorjohn December 15, 2010 at 8:58PM

Folks, it's all true that 'Obamacare' is a Repubican program (first proposed by then President Richard M. Nixon) that now is reviled by third millenium Republicans, but that's not the issue here.

As an inner city kid who spent 13 years being taught very well by the Sisters of Charity, I learned that every right carries with it a concomitant responsibility. For example, the right to drive carries with it the concomitant rsponsibility to purchase auto insurance. The sisters believe that access to health care is a basic human right. I fully agree. However, with that right comes the responsibility to participate in the system by purchasing health insurance, even if you are a healthy twenty something who thinks he or she is immortal.

Talk to anyone who works in an Emergency Room and let them tell you about the young uninsured delivered by EMS after some traumatic injury, and the huge hospital bills that follow. Who's paying for their care? The rest of us responsible citizens who understand that rights carry responsibilities. It's that simple.

zemack December 16, 2010 at 4:56PM

jrsyshorjohn

“Responsibility”… determined and imposed by whom? It’s crucially important to understand exactly what we are talking about, as the stakes are high. What you are saying, in essence, is: “To secure these rights, governments are instituted to trample these rights”!

Rights are a guarantee and a sanction to freedom of individual action in a social context. They are moral principles that govern human relationships, by banishing force as a means of associating with one another. They assure each individual the freedom to think and act upon his/her own judgement, free from coercive interference by other people, including those acting in the capacity of a government official. Rights are unconditional, so long as you respect, and refrain from violating, the same rights of others. Rights are not, however, a claim to material benefits that must be supplied by others. Nor do they impose any involuntary, unchosen obligation to act against your own beliefs. Rights protect you from these kinds of coercion. By definition, rights can not conflict, with the rights of one necessitating the violation of the rights of others. Rights, in other words, are unalienable and possessed equally and at all times by all individuals. Rights are not a gift of the state, society, or God, accompanied by arbitrary “responsibilities”. They do not pop into existence because of the assertions of any persons who happen to “believe that access to health care is a basic human right”. Individual rights are an unconditional, unalienable birthright of every human being, because he is a human being.

The correct wording is: “To secure these rights, governments are instituted among men”.

The same principle of rights that protects an individual’s freedom of action, also defines the limits of that freedom. No one has a right to force some people to pay for the healthcare of another. No one has a right to force some people to provide medical treatment for another. No one has a right to force another person to buy health insurance. No one has a right to impose involuntary servitude on another human being. There is no price tag on rights. A “right” that imposes an unchosen obligation on some to provide unearned benefits to another is not a right at all – it is a privilege bestowed by a tyrannical government and paid for out of the exploitation of others. Sound familiar? Check your history. It’s a sad fact that, even in this day and age, we still can’t let go of some manifestation of the age-old scourge of slavery. Like a vampire, it keeps re-incarnating, returning in different forms that allow many to evade the truth of what they are advocating. Only a proper recognition of and understanding of individual rights will finally eradicate this dark human evil, once and for all.

For more on the relationship between individual rights and personal responsibility, read my post 5/11/09 post, Responsibility Depends on Individual Rights

The Constitution - It's About More than just Words

2011-06-08T10:00:00.000-07:00

The following editorial was written in response to last January's Republican gimmick to open the 2011 session of the House of Representitives with a reading of the US Constitution. I use the term "gimmick" because ... well ... the GOP doesn't exactly have a good track record of living within its meaning.

Be that as it may, here is the editorial followed by exerpts from the comments section:

Reading of the Constitution should include every word

fpparent January 10, 2011 at 6:53AM

And if you knew anything about Consitutional history, you'll know that the 3/5 clause that liberals are so quick to judge has absolutely nothing to do with human value. It was a measure added to prevent slave owners from using those slaves to enhance their states' representation in Washington.

zemack January 10, 2011 at 6:49PM

Fpparent is right here. Slavery was wrong, not the 3/5 clause. That clause was a victory for anti-slavery factions – which couldn’t at the time muster the political strength to completely eradicate that ancient evil from American soil - because it limited the electoral power of the slave states. In essence, the South was not allowed to have its cake and also eat it. It was not allowed to accrue any political benefits from a segment of the population that at the same time was denied its individual rights – i.e., treated as less than fully human.

The 3/5 clause is politically irrelevant today, not because it’s shameful or unimportant, but because that particular manifestation of slavery no longer exists in America. Today, we partially enslave the productive members of society under an unconstitutional predatory welfare state.

zemack January 10, 2011 at 7:59PM

The Constitution is indeed an “imperfect document”. But that imperfection stemmed from the fact that it didn’t fully implement the principles laid down in the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration is the philosophical foundation of America. The principles it laid down were unalienable individual rights possessed equally and at all times by all people and a government charged with the task of protecting those rights. Those rights were understood to be sanctions to freedom of action to pursue one’s own happiness, not an automatic claim to material benefits that must be provided by the forced labor and confiscation of the property of others.

Aside from the abolition of slavery, the constitutional change mechanism bestowed by the Founders was not employed to remove the imperfections so as to fully implement America’s Declaratory principles. Instead of moving America toward the fully free society envisioned by the Founders, the “living document” feature exploited those imperfections, such as the unfortunate wording of the Commerce Clause, eminent domain, and tolerance for tax-funded education, to completely eradicate the Founding principles, and instead push the nation steadily down the road to ever more omnipotent government.

The result is an “empty constitution” – one devoid of any guiding principles. But a free nation that abandons its core principles, as America has, will not remain free. The editors laud the “ever-changing rough draft of history”. But without the constraints of a constitution based upon rational political principles such as those laid down in the Declaration, a nation’s government is like a sociopath lacking morals or conscience. It is a rogue government, guided by nothing but the latest whims of any court, legislature, or electoral majority that chooses to reinterpret the “unfinished document” according to the political winds of the moment. The big winner in such a game is government power. The big loser is the individual.

America’s “living document” no longer protects our freedom because the “changes and scratch-outs and doodles in the margins” weren’t confined within the boundaries established by the Declaration of Independence – a document that in its essentials is a perfect one. It established the framework for a servant government that recognizes the supreme value of the individual – which each and every one of us is – and that “promotes the general welfare” by protecting individual rights from violation by fellow men and, most importantly, from the government itself. We're not quite at "rogue government" status yet, but we're getting there. We must rediscover and relearn our unique heritage, and bring our nation back within its bounds.

Wolves, Vultures, Consumers - and New Debit Card Regulations

2011-05-30T17:19:00.000-07:00

Debit card changes swipe at consumers, by Chuck Jaffe @ MarketWatch.

In an otherwise mundane piece concerning the mechanics of debit card fees and the effect that new Federal regulations will have on them, Jaffe snuck this in:

Currently, legislation in both the House and Senate would at least delay the reform, and the rhetoric is flying on both sides. Since releasing the proposal, the Fed has received more than 11,000 comment letters. Financial institutions call the planned cut in swipe fees a “$12 billion gift to retailers,” while the retailers respond by suggesting that postponing the change would be akin to “another bailout” of the banking industry.

This is a battle between wolves and vultures for the last meat left on the carcass and, ladies and gentlemen, we’re the meat.

I get my back up when I see other Americans being treated this way. Keep in mind that we're not talking about fraud here. We're talking about fees for services "consumers" find valuable.

I've left the following brief comments:

Mr. Jaffe laments the “battle between wolves [retailers] and vultures [banks] for the last meat left on the carcass and, ladies and gentlemen, we’re the meat” – i.e., between the people that provide the outlets for products and services we desire and those who provide popular and convenient means of purchasing them. That privileged, superior elite – we “consumers” – are not vultures or wolves, of course. “We’re” entitled to cheaper fees than the lowly producers are willing to charge – imposed by regulatory fiat by our alleged protectors.

It’s a shame that the entitlement mentality has penetrated so deep that we can’t see the real wolves and vultures – those newly empowered “public servants” whose idea of “reasonable” ... supersedes the voluntary decisions of the private market participants: and newly empowered by virtue of the financial overhaul bill allegedly necessitated by a financial crises. “We” just want our cheaper fees, personal freedom of choice be damned.

Note that Jaffe acknowledges that the new regulations - which will, if enacted, result in "debit-card fees [being] sliced by up to 70%" - will encourage banks to replace the lost revenue elsewhere:

Consumers will pay for those benefits in the form of higher banking fees — bigger charges on use of ATMs outside your bank network, but also additional charges for online banking or paper statements and other conveniences. Consumers might see less-favorable interest rates (particularly on the accounts where they get reduced swipe-fee revenue, but also on loans), and fewer rewards programs.

Free checking accounts, already on the endangered species list, could become virtually extinct.

But, Jaffe doesn't question the practical wisdom of the Fed meddling in the debit fee arena - let alone the moral or legal right to interfere in what is a private, voluntary trade among merchants, banks, and consumers. He simply accepts as the given the regulations coming forth from government officials - like an unchallengeable law of nature - and simply convicts retailers and banks for the sin of reacting.

In our massively regulated financial industry, it's hard to tell what fees we are paying in response to what prior regulations. Jaffe quotes an expert as saying "You could make swipe fees a lot more transparent on the front end — and that would be seen as good — but if the banks and the retailers find other ways to hit you for a few hundred bucks that is less transparent, it would be hard to say you came out ahead.” The biggest cloud of all, however, is the government regulatory Leviathan - which was made even bigger and more complex by Obama's reform bill - another one of those legislative monstrosities that nobody even reads, let alone understands.

Talk about lack of transparency! It's a wonder our banking system even works at all.

Tax Credits and the Separation Issue

2011-05-28T05:47:00.000-07:00

The state, religion and the U.S. Supreme Court
by Linda Stamato and Sanford M. Jaffe

"The First Amendment’s establishment clause, meant to protect religion against any intrusion by the state or, to put it another way, to ban government from the establishment of religion, has stood, despite challenges, until this decision, which allows the use of tax credits to pay for religious school tuition. Not, by the way, because the court had a close look at what the state of Arizona in this case was doing — aiding religious schools — but saying it didn’t have to look at that issue because those who were bringing the case had no standing to challenge it."

Why didn't "those who were bringing the case [have] no standing to challenge it"?

Today’s landmark decision [Arizona Christian School Tuition Organization v. Winn] declared that the plaintiffs in the case lack standing to bring the challenge in the first instance because the program is funded by private contributions, not government funds.

“When Arizona taxpayers choose to contribute to [School Tuition Organizations], they spend their own money, not money the State has collected from respondents or from other taxpayers,” wrote Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, for the 5-4 majority. “While the State, at the outset, affords the opportunity to create and contribute to [a School Tuition Organization], the tax credit system is implemented by private action and with no state intervention. Objecting taxpayers know that their fellow citizens, not the State, decide to contribute and in fact make the contribution.”

“Like contributions that lead to charitable tax deductions, contributions yielding [School Tuition Organization] tax credits are not owed to the State and, in fact, pass directly from taxpayers to private organizations. Respondents’ contrary position assumes that income should be treated as if it were government property even if it has not come into the tax collector’s hands. That premise finds no basis in standing jurisprudence,” continued Kennedy. (U.S. Supreme Court Dismisses Legal Challenge to Arizona School Choice Program)

It comes down to two fundamentally different views of concerning the relationship between the state and the individual - i.e., collectivism vs. individualism. The authors acknowledge this conflict, saying "It came down to determining whether the granting of a tax credit is the functional equivalent of collecting and spending tax money".

For their part, the court minority opinion holds:

[A]ssume a state wishes to subsidize the ownership of crucifixes in one of three ways. It could purchase them in bulk and distribute them; it could reimburse buyers with a check; or it could pay with a tax credit. ... Now, really — do taxpayers have less reason to complain if the state selects the last of these three options?

I've left the following comments:

zemack April 30, 2011 at 8:20AM

On tax credits, the authors are easily refuted on the facts. Who is "the tax payer"? It's the person who earned it. A person earns $100. He decides to take advantage of an education tax credit program. He spends it according to his own judgement. His tax liability is thus reduced by $100. He is simply not sending it to the government. No other taxpayer is involved. In the case of education tax credits, money spent on education doesn't change. What changes is who decides how it is spent. Follow the money: private taxpayer to private institution. The government is out of the loop. In what way are “the taxpayers” or the government subsidizing religion? They are not. Every dollar in question involves only the taxpayer that earned it.

There are two broader issues involved here, though. First, does the citizen’s life belong to the state, or is the state the servant of the citizens? Who has first claim on the nation’s earnings, and first responsibility for the education of the child? Is it those who earned the money, and those who brought the child into the world? Or, is it the state. The authors argue for the state, and thus support a totalitarian concept. That is the root of their position.

The second issue involves the church/state issue. Here, the authors are 100% correct. People have an unalienable right to their religious beliefs, including the right to believe in and practice no religion at all. Any tax funding of religion is a threat to that freedom. The corollary is that no one should be forced to support, through their taxes, religious ideas they may or may not agree with. The separation doctrine protects religion from government, and us from religion. Fair enough, and I concur.

So, why should I be forced to support, through my taxes, educational ideas that I may or may not agree with, or that “offend” me? I abhor the collectivist theories of John Dewey, which dominates modern progressive education. I believe in the individualist educational and epistemological philosophies of Maria Montessori and Ayn Rand. Why should I be forced to pay for Dewey? And why should I be forced to pay for the education of other people’s children, any more than be forced to pay for the religious training of those same children?

When government controls education, it controls what is taught and how it is taught. It controls the flow of ideas. The very convincing arguments in favor of the separation of church and state, clearly articulated by the authors, apply equally to education generally. Phasing out and abolishing the government-run public schools – i.e., the separation of school and state – follows logically from the church/state issue. The ultimate answer to the tax credit issue is to abolish education taxes altogether.

A Refreshing Defense of Individualism

2011-05-27T10:07:00.000-07:00

Actually, We're Not All In This Together, by Edward H. Crane, president and cofounder of the Cato Institute.

My commentary:

Ed Crane is right. No one can think for you. No one can acquire knowledge or skills for you. No one can exert the mental efforts required to make the neurological connections that make understanding possible in you own brain. No one can make the choice for you whether to initiate action or stagnate. No one can make the choice for you of what kinds of actions to take. Everything you are begins with self-motivation and self-discipline. The choice of whether to be honest or not, a parasite or not, a thug or not, self-supporting or not, is entirely an individualistic affair, no matter what advantages in terms of nurturing parents or the accumulated knowledge of mankind or other kinds of cooperative opportunities “society” makes available to you.

Collectivists see no difference between human beings. That is why collectivism in any of its manifestations must lead to the subordination of the thinking, self-supporting, honest, moral people to the lazy and the shiftless. The “We’re all in this together” philosophy is a philosophy by and for parasites and power-lusters – seekers of unearned material benefits and seekers of unearned greatness and “prestige”. It is the siren song of universal destitution and totalitarianism.

My Objective Standard Article - Vouchers vs. Tax Credits

2011-03-21T17:27:00.000-07:00

My article, Toward a Free Market in Education: School Vouchers or Tax Credits?, appears in this Spring’s addition of The Objective Standard. It seeks to move the parental school choice movement in the direction of less government control by embracing properly structured tax credits while rejecting any incarnation of government-funded private school vouchers. The idea of education tax credits has, of course, been around for a long time. What I’ve sought to do is pull together a plan that carries the idea to its full logical implications – in effect, bringing about the separation of education and state one parent, and one child, at a time.

Parental school choice has been a focus of mine for at least 20 years. My thinking on the subject has evolved over time, culminating in the plan I submit in the TOS piece. I believe that the time is right for this article. When I first latched on to it, the idea that all parents should be able to choose their children’s school through some manner of redirecting their education tax dollars was considered a fringe issue not worthy of much serious consideration, even though it had been more than 30 years since Milton Friedman launched the idea in the 1950s. Today, we see choice programs popping up around the nation. In New Jersey, Governor Chris Christie has endorsed the nation’s first statewide universal parental choice initiative.

The political winds are now at the backs of the choice movement. This is a good thing, up to a point. It represents the most serious challenge to the hegemony of the government’s virtual education monopoly at least in my lifetime, and probably ever. It is my view that the public school establishment is on the ropes, and major changes are on the way. The growing strength of the school choice movement is evidence of that. But, the movement needs more. Its current thrust could turn the promise of parental school choice into a disaster for the private school sector, and set back the cause of educational freedom by years, if not decades.

The school choice debate needs a healthy infusion of the argument from individual rights, with all that that implies. This article should help open the door wide to that infusion. I look forward to answering questions and objections concerning my plan, especially from those that may come from the reactionary defenders of the status quo.

Finally, I want to acknowledge the help I received in writing the TOS article. My daughter Christine and wife Kathy offered valuable proofreading services on my first draft submission to the editors. Though the final article was significantly revamped through the editing process and bore significant revisions in structure and content to the original version, their help should be acknowledged. I cannot overstate the assistance given to me by TOS’s Editor Craig Biddle and Assistant Editor Alan Germani. There are more questions and complexities to the idea of a tax credit-based transition to a free education market than can be dealt with in a short article. A short book could probably be written on the subject. In constructing my case I was often prone to wonder off into different directions which, though I thought important, tended to dilute my theme. Craig and Alan persistently and patiently kept me on message – to say nothing of the many important suggestions and guidance they offered.

I hope you enjoy the article.

Another Empty Slap at Ayn Rand

2010-07-28T16:57:00.000-07:00

In an otherwise interesting analysis of the evolving Tea Party Movement, Doyle McManus throws out this cheap shot:

"Tea party candidates Sharron Angle in Nevada and Rand Paul in Kentucky have both derided the unemployed as victims of their own laziness, a position that doesn't play well beyond the Ayn Rand right."

The utter disregard for the truth readily on display by the Anti-Ayn Rand Cult is tiresome, but I fired off this rebuttal anyway:

MikeZemack wrote on 07/28/2010 07:54:45 PM:

Where is the evidence that Ayn Rand ever endorsed a shallow, generalized viewpoint that “derided the unemployed as victims of their own laziness”? As a committed Objectivist, I could tell you that there isn’t any. It looks like a bit of guilt by association going on here. While laziness might be true of some of today’s unemployed, including the idle rich whom she disdained, Ayn Rand would have rightly viewed most as victims of disastrous government policies, although she would not hold them totally blameless if they supported the policies that led to their unemployment. She was a true champion of the middle class, which she viewed as “a country’s motor and lifeblood”.

As to “the Ayn Rand right”, there isn’t any. Today’s American right is dominated by the Christian conservatives and to a lessor extent the libertarians, both of whom stand philosophically opposed to Objectivism’s most important metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical essentials. It’s true that many on the right will wave the Ayn Rand banner when it suits them, cherry picking isolated out-of-context bits and pieces of her idea system. But you will learn little about her thinking by paying attention to Angle or Paul.

As to Mr. McManus and his ilk, ad hominem and straw man tactics are common methods of attacking Ayn Rand, because they dare not confront her ideas openly and honestly. This sort of empty, backhand slap at Ayn Rand is typical of those who simply can’t refute her ideas.

Economists Call for More Demand Stimulus

2010-07-20T13:33:00.000-07:00

In an open letter entitled, GET AMERICA BACK TO WORK, 16 prominent economists called on the federal government to enact yet another "stimulus" package to spur "demand". This is supposed to make up for the lost purchasing power of the unemployed.

"The urgent need is for government to replace the lost purchasing power of the unemployed and their families and to employ other tax-cut and spending programs to boost demand. Making deficit reduction the first target, without addressing the chronic underlying deficiency of demand, is exactly the error of the 1930", they said, forgetting the lessons of the Great Depression - the crippling activist policies of the Hoover and FDR Administrations.

I've left the following comments:

4:32 pm, Jul 20, 2010

Zemack

I have a better idea. Instead of another government stimulus package, why not just legalize theft. Everyone can then be free to rob his neighbors, as long as he spends the loot. That would create plenty of "demand", be more efficient because it would cut out the bureaucratic middleman, and be more honest and straightforward than having our politicians do it for us.

Of course, that wouldn't work any better than government spending, for the same reason. Legitimate, private sector demand has a fundamentally different origin than "public demand".

As any honest consumer knows, you need to earn some money before you go to the store. Money must be made, before it can be spent. "Consumer spending" is really a trade between two producers - the buyer who earned the money, and the seller of goods and services. Private consumers add to the pie, before they take a slice.

Politicians who promote stimulus programs ignore or evade the first part of the trade that makes consumer spending possible - the earning part. This fact exposes the crucial difference between consumer spending and government (or government-induced) spending.

Every time the federal government creates another program to stimulate demand (or consumption), it does so - like a thief - by seizing the earnings and savings of the nation's productive citizens through taxation, deficit spending, or inflationary printing press money. Posturing politicians seek to make us more prosperous, through policies paid for out of our own money and financial nest eggs. Unlike private consumers, the government doesn't "earn" its money.

Stimulus always fails, for this very reason. Private consumers work for the money they spend, thus producing their own demand. Stimulus politicians - from liberals like Obama to psuedo-conservatives like Bush - do not create demand. They simply steal it.

The source of consumer spending is productive work. The source of government demand-side stimulus policies is economic plunder.

Of course, understanding this requires logic, or at least basic common sense. Keynes ignored both under his creation - macroeconomics, the field that studies economic activity without focussing on actual human beings - because he was fundamentally a statist. Politicians ignore both, and follow Keynes, because it satisfies their powerlust and craving for a pat on the back for "doing something". The economy gets damaged long term, but Keynes had the famous answer, the height of immoral irresponsibility: "In the long run, we are all dead."

"Consumer" Spending vs. Government Spending

2010-07-01T16:22:00.000-07:00

Dublin's economy could teach U.S.

That's the Title of the NJ Star-Ledger's July 1, 2010 editorial imploring us to learn the lessons of the Irish government's attempt to pull that nation out of a recession. The Editorial Board writes:

"The Irish didn’t hesitate. In a let’s-get-this-over-with-quickly move, they slashed public spending and raised taxes, the standard recovery recipe of deficit hawks at the International Monetary Fund. The result? Even worse economic shrinkage."

Who knows what the complexities of the Irish economy are. Since the SL is in agreement with the Irish that taxes should go up, they've narrowed down the differences between the two countries to one of government spending. Now, there is no doubt that, when government spending consumes a quarter to a third (or more) of the nations economic output, changes in its budget expendatures are bound to have an effect on the economy. The Editors believe more government spending is the answer, because:

"[S]timulating the economy is the immediate problem and, inevitably, a key to dealing with the debt and deficits. Macroeconomists can lecture learnedly on the depressed housing and industrial real estate markets as a drag on the economy, but the heart of the economy is consumer spending — two-thirds of the economy in fact."

But, whatever the short-term economic effects of government spending cuts vs. juiced-up "stimulus" spending, the fact remains that human beings must produce the things they consume. Look around your house, or the local department of grocery store, and ask yourself if those thousands upon thousands of shelf items just materialize out of nothing. No, they didn't. Human beings produced them. Another fact is that government, by its very nature, produces nothing.

So-called government "stimulus packages" have never worked, and in fact hurt the economy. I've left the following comments, to briefly explain why that is and necessarily has to be the case.

zemack July 01, 2010 at 4:20PM
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Rather than the Editors of the Star-Ledger, who believe you can spend and consume your way to prosperity, I’d rather turn to some true economic experts to understand what’s needed to generate economic growth.

Gilligan … the Skipper too … the millionaire, and his wife … the movie star … the professor and Mary Ann: Remember them? They all knew better. When the SS Minnow ship-wrecked on that uninhabited island off of Hawaii in 1964, I don’t recall the hapless crew’s first thoughts being: Let’s see, how can we create food and shelter out of nothing, without any effort on our part?

I don’t recall the wealthy passenger Thurston B. Howell, III passing out stimulus checks to his fellow travelers so that they could rush out and spend their way to a vibrant Gilligan’s Island economy.

They understood that before consumption, you must have production. They understood that to have production, you need real people doing real thinking and real labor. And, that’s what they did. That silly little 1960s sitcom that as a teenager I loved so much was way to serious a show to allow the writers to run an episode that portrayed Mr. Howell assuming the role of banker, and telling everyone: “Stand still, and watch my millions shower you with prosperity!” It would have failed after one episode.

They did pretty well on that island, that rag tag group of economic experts. They worked. They had to. But suppose, in one episode, a looting gang of primitive savages invaded the island and began seizing their clothes, food, building materials, hunting weapons, etc., as well as their seed corn (their savings) that was set aside to plant the next harvest? Suppose those savages simply began consuming the stuff created by the ingenuity and hard work of the Gilligan Islanders? Would that have left the shipwrecked crew and passengers more prosperous, or poorer? Now you know why all attempts to stimulate “demand” through government spending always must fail, if prosperity rather than central planning is the goal. Those savages would have created plenty of “demand”, just like our president wants to do with government money.

What the stimulus champions ignore is the crucial difference between private and government “demand”. They stare blankly at statistics that allegedly show that “the heart of the economy is consumer spending”. But all they see is spending – money changing hands at the cash register. They gape at mid-stream, and miss the linkage between money and work. Consumer spending is not a transaction between a consumer and a producer. It is a trade between two producers.

As any honest “consumer” knows, you need to earn some money before you go to the store. Money must be made, before it can be spent. Every time the federal government creates another program to stimulate demand, it does so – like the savage - by seizing the earnings and savings of the nation’s productive through taxation, deficit spending, or printing press money. Private consumers work for the money they spend, thus creating their own demand. Politicians – from liberals like Obama and to conservatives like Bush – simply steal it. The source of consumer spending is productive work. The source of government spending is economic plunder.

Gilligan’s Island is a monument to economic common sense compared with much of what comes out of Washington and the academic ivory towers today. The best advice I can give to the Editors is, watch some Gilligan’s Island reruns. What’s needed is production, if “consumer demand” is the goal. Rein in the imperial bureaucracy (cut regulations), and liberate producers with massive spending and tax cuts. In other words, get the looting savages off of the island!

Oh, and one more thing. That looting band of savages that invaded Gilligan’s Island? Their leader had a name. You might recognize it. His name was Chief John Maynard Keynes.

There's more to it that I could go into. For a more in depth study of this subject, see George Reisman, Economic Recovery Requires Capital Accumulation, Not Government "Stimulus Packages" and Production versus Consumption

The Coming Rental Housing Crisis

2010-06-29T08:45:00.000-07:00

In a 6/26/10 editorial, Stop dreaming: Home ownership is not for everyone, the Wall Street-bashing NJ Star-Ledger acknowledged that government policies brought about the financial crisis. They wrote:

"Owning your own home has been part of the American Dream for decades. But what if home ownership isn’t for everyone?

"Sheila Bair, president of the FDIC, had the guts to raise exactly that question recently before a group of nonprofit housing developers. Gutsy, and long overdue. As we’ve witnessed over the past few years, helping people buy homes they could not afford did them no favor and helped bring on our financial crisis."

I left the following comments:

zemack June 26, 2010 at 11:42AM
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So, the Star-Ledger wants us to “stop dreaming”. OK, then. Are American liberals ready to let go of their utopian dream of central economic planning?

The federal government’s affordable housing crusade began under FDR with the creation of agencies such as Fannie Mae, which killed off the originate-and-hold bank mortgage lending model in favor of originate-and-sell. Over the decades, through regulations, tax policies, government guarantees, political pressure, Federal Reserve monetary policies, and so on, layers upon layers of government interference was built up in the housing and mortgage markets. The purpose, as the Editors point out, was to expand homeownership.

The financial crisis we’re still not out of was the culmination of these government policies. I’m glad to see that acknowledged here. Never mind the irresponsible lenders and borrowers. They are culpable, but they are minor “moving parts” and are just convenient scapegoats. The private players represent merely the consequential face of this crisis. The fundamental cause was yet another failure of central economic planning. Without the government's housing and monetary policies, this crisis simply could not have happened.

I never cease to be astounded by how often the Star-ledger correctly identifies a problem, and then misses the obvious conclusion. The lessons of 150 years of central planning’s failures continues to multiply. So, do we get a call for an end to the government market interventions that the Editors finally admit was the cause of our problems? No, we get vastly expanded government control under the cover of “financial regulatory reform”. And do we get a call for an end to the homeownership crusade? No, trhe market distortions remain, and we get a call to make the same policy mistakes in the rental housing market!

To fix the problems the government itself caused, we reward the government with more power. The entire financial system right down to the consumer ATM transaction will be forced into a bureaucratic straightjacket under a powerful new central planning maze. The financial industry will be private in name only, as is typical under fascism. Then our brand new affordable rental housing crusade will establish the groundwork for yet another crisis that will not be allowed to go to waste. Then we will see de facto nationalization turn into outright nationalization, the final step and ultimate goal of the socialists.

The Editors dream on, and the nightmare approaches.

Dionne Defends the Concentration of Political Power

2010-06-28T16:18:00.000-07:00

In this article, Whose Supreme Court is it?, EJ Dionne Jr. demonstrates the vital importance of understanding the diametrically opposed natures of economic and political power.

My commentary:

Zemack wrote:

To understand the sinister purpose behind those that attack the “concentration of economic power”, one must first understand the difference between economic and political power.

Economic power derives from the ability of a person or organization of persons (a corporation) to produce economic values. It is benign and benevolent, in and of itself. The economic power of a business, no matter how big, is granted only by the voluntary consent of those who buy its products, fill its job positions, or buy its shares. Economic power is non-coercive, but only in a free market.

Political power is the power of physical force, because government alone has the power of law. It can force you, literally at the point of a gun. The concentration of political power is the danger, and the only danger. That is why a constitution is needed to restrict government to use its monopoly on physical force - its power of the gun – to protect the individual rights of its citizens. All of them, including those “regular, average” folks associated with corporations. When government steps outside of those restrictions, it becomes the tool of special interests seeking the power of the gun – political power.

When “private corporations … dominate the state” and “buy government”, it is not economic power that is at work. It is political power. That alleged “concentration of economic power” is made possible by the very power progressives love, the alleged “right” of “our government's elected branches to legislate and regulate” at the behest of the special interests with the most political clout of the moment, which progressives call “the public interest”. To the progressives, corporations are not “the public interest”. Unions and wealthy individuals like George Soros are.

Since political domination of the economy is the goal of progressives, individuals who assert their First Amendment rights through corporations become the enemies of the state. When progressives seek to empower “the political system to protect itself against corruption” and attack “corporations virtually unlimited rights to spend money to influence elections”, it is seeking to protect the political elite from accountability to the people, the ones who disagree with them, and consolidate the concentration of political power.

This article is classic postmodernism, or the use of language as a weapon to cloud the issues to advance a statist agenda. Progressives seek to rein in the “concentration of economic power” in order to increase their own concentration of political power over “regular” people. The only system that can prevent benign economic power from being converted into malignant political power is laissez-faire capitalism (the separation of economics and state). The alternative is totalitarianism. That is the ultimate choice we face. It’s economic power and freedom, or political power and tyranny. Take your pick.

Upholding Objective Law

2010-06-28T13:54:00.000-07:00

The US Supreme Court has just struck a blow for "limited government" by a surprising 9-0 vote. Bob Braun of the NJ Star-Ledger analyzed the decision in an article entitled U.S. Supreme Court removes 'bite' from law used against corrupt N.J. officials. His wrote:

Antonin Scalia went far beyond the progressive Ginsburg in wanting to strip the so-called "honest services" statute of its bite. He did it simply and clearly:

"It fails to define the conduct it prohibits," Scalia wrote in a concurring opinion.

That’s ground zero in constitutional law. The law must say what is illegal. The core of due process of law. Otherwise, anyone can be accused of anything and, if the prosecution is persuasive, anyone can be convicted, particularly by a jury prone to believe all officials are corrupt.

[N]othing beats Scalia’s analysis. "The statute," he wrote, "does not answer the question, `What is the criterion of guilt?’"

It’s got to be something other than election to public office.

I left the following supportive comments:

zemack June 28, 2010 at 4:52PM

Great article. It’s so refreshing to see a concrete issue analyzed in relation to fundamental ideas, an all too rare occurrence. In this case, both Mr. Braun and the US Supreme Court stood up for objective law.

When I heard prosecutors complain that this Court decision stripped them of their “flexibility”, I knew instinctively that the right decision was made, even before I familiarized myself with it. Lack of “flexibility” in prosecurorial matters by government officials is precisely what the American doctrine of “a government of laws and not of men” is intended to enshrine. Non-objective law means arbitrary government power, a basic tenet of a dictatorship.

Just as I cheered the court’s recent decision that removed restrictions on corporate and union campaign spending because it upheld the First Amendment, so I cheer this one. Both uphold critical fundamental principles vital to a free society.

Bob Braun has done a good job here presenting the essential aspects of the issue clearly and concisely.

More on NJ's Municipal Welfare

2010-06-26T17:51:00.000-07:00

Trenton crowd's constitutionally incapable of property-tax reform, by Paul Mulshine

In this article Paul Mulshine discusses the idea of a property tax cap in NJ, and touches on the nature of Trenton's redistributionist state aid scheme.

I've left the following comments:

zemack June 23, 2010 at 8:53PM
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The core issue is much bigger than quibbling over which towns get how much state aid. The issue is the validity of state aid to municipalities as such, or what I call municipal welfare. On the face of it, it makes no sense to send income tax dollars to Trenton, in order to get it back in state aid checks. Of course, the real purpose is wealth redistribution.

Municipal welfare is wrong for the same reason any government-imposed redistributionist scheme is wrong. It is immoral, unconstitutional, and a violation of individual rights and the proper function of government. In addition, like all socialist schemes, it doesn’t work. The current incarnation of the municipal state aid scheme started in the 1970s with the court-pressured imposition of the income tax. Since then, income tax rates have soared, state budgets sank increasingly into the red, aid-fed municipal budgets swelled, and all the while, property taxes soared. And what are we left with? – Abbott districts that are so bad that even many liberals support letting parents get their kids out of Abbott schools via vouchers under the Opportunity Scholarship Act. Only socialism could pull that off.

"It’s not fair," [Assemblywoman Allison Littell McHose of Sussex County] said. "I think people finally understand that they are paying for their own school and they are paying for these Abbott districts on top of it."

No, it is not fair. The whole purpose of municipal welfare is just that. So, why not see that the Emperor has no clothes? Why not adopt a GOP platform plank to repeal municipal state aid, which now consumes more than half the state budget, along with the income tax that funds it? Come to think of it, if forcing people in one town to pay for the education of children in the next town is unfair, then why isn’t it just as unfair to force them to pay for the education of children on the next block?

But that would be another topic – free market capitalism. Republicans and conservatives just can’t seem to let go of socialism when it comes to education.

Robinson on Joe Barton Apology

2010-06-23T16:56:00.000-07:00

A GOP chorus of Joe Bartons on the BP oil spill
The BP apologist is mainstream among conservative Republicans.
- By Eugene Robinson

Select quote:

"A group constituting roughly two-thirds of all Republicans in the House takes the position that President Obama was wrong to demand that BP set aside money to guarantee that those whose livelihoods are being ruined by the oil spill will be compensated. In other words, it's more important to kneel at the altar of radical conservative ideology than to feel any sense of compassion for one's fellow Americans. This, ladies and gentlemen, is how today's GOP rolls."

My commentary:

6/23/2010 5:08:21 PM

The whole point of having a civil court system is to establish an objective venue to settle damage claims. This is the best rights-protection the victims of BP’s well failure, and individuals generally, have. All sides get a hearing, and the facts dictate the outcome. In politics, political connections reign supreme over any facts. Whether the $20 billion represents a shakedown of BP or a protective shady deal cut between Obama and one of his campaign donors is beside the point. The real issue is the Executive Branch’s usurpation of the judicial system.

We are in dangerous territory, if justice is the goal. Considering the assault on the rule of law by this powerlust-driven administration, it is shamefully trivial for Obama Democrats and their supporters to babble about the GOP “favoring” oil companies. They claim to be the voice of “average” Americans, whom they derogatorily call “the little people”. Yet, they have no problem stripping them of their right to their day in court, and replacing that objective venue by throwing them into the world of political calculations.

Plenty of Gulf oil spill victims are going to be shafted if this deal leads to government officials doling out the cash, rather than judges and juries, which it probably will. And plenty of non-victims will be rolling in BP loot. In a court of law, each individual stands tall, win or lose. When power politics trumps justice, the un-politically connected become “the little people”. Mr. Robinson worries about ideas, or “radical conservative ideology”, which he doesn’t bother to name and refute. Meanwhile, he protects the real threat - arbitrary government power. He sees nothing wrong or un-American about a King – excuse me, a president – having the power to force a private company to hand over its money, oblivious to the danger that that precedent poses to all private companies into the future. So much for a government that protects our rights!

Today’s Left-Wing Washington rulers are throwing their fellow Americans under the bus, that they may gain a photo-op handing a check to favored victims. And then Mr. Robinson accuses Republicans, who at least have some semblance of respect for the constitutional separation of powers that protects us from the growth of tyranny, of having no “sense of compassion for one's fellow Americans.”

This, ladies and gentlemen, is how today's Democratic Left rolls.

Menendez: Rein in Wall Street

2010-06-14T13:44:00.000-07:00

In this article, entitled It's time to protect consumers, rein in Wall Street, NJ Senator Robert Menendez touts the financial "reform" bill now before congress. On the premise that NJ residents are stupid and unthinking, he pins the blame for the financial crisis on a few Wall Street firms.

I've left the following comments:

In Senator Menendez's statist Emerald City fantasy world, the great and powerful Oz, exemplified by "Wall Street", has wreaked economic havoc. Nowhere is the role of government interference examined. Mr. Menendez wants us to pay no attention to that man behind the curtain – the government’s political and bureaucratic wizards who pull the levers that control the financial industry and manipulate the markets through such mechanisms as Fannie and Freddie, the FDIC, mark-to-market accounting rules, explicit and implicit mortgage guarantees, the government licensed and competition-protected rating agency cartel, the CRA, the FHA, affordable housing crusades, overt and covert pressures on banks to increase low-income lending by lowering loan standards, too-big-to-fail taxpayer bailout policies, the perverse inversion of normal market incentives through socialization-of-losses policies, and that mother of all culprits – that funny money machine called the Federal Reserve.

The politicians rig the system to get people who can't afford homes into homes. Under the government's bipartisan "affordable housing" crusades, a conveyor belt of sub-prime mortgages runs overtime from the Fed to Fannie and Freddie. Wreckless lenders and borrowers flourish, to the delight of politicians who tout rising homeownership rates. Fannie and Freddie spread toxic mortgages throughout the system via securitization. Quick buck artists overwhelm prudent heads on Wall Street, cashing in on the game the men behind the curtain created. The system collapses. Derivatives and "Wall Street" get scapegoated. The politicians move for de facto nationalization of the financial system to "protect" that mystical entity - consumers.

How do you bring socialism to a country that would never explicitly vote it in? We've seen this pattern before. It's brought in through the back door of fascism. In finance, energy, healthcare, and education, to name a few areas, totalitarian powers are being accrued to Washington. The government creates crisis after crisis, which are never allowed to go to waste. In the not to distant future, we will wake up to find that our major industries are private in name only. Every area of our lives will be controlled by a small clique of all-powerful wizards, who manipulate the levers that run the shell corporations that used to be our great industries.

The fascist wolf has been creeping toward our American house for decades. Under the Bush Administration, the wolf reached the door. Under the Obama Administration, the wolf has crashed through the door.

Menendez, Obama, and their ilk are selling us a bill if goods, and down the river to tyranny. It's time to pay attention to that man behind the curtain

BP and Environmentalism

2010-06-10T17:27:00.000-07:00

From Erosophia: Environmentalism is Responsible for the Gulf Oil Spill, by Jason Stotts

My Commentary:

June 10, 2010 at 5:24 PM
Another major contributing factor is the government’s paltry $75 million liability limit on behalf of deep water oil drillers. This was to manipulate insurance rates lower after oil companies complained that high rates made most drilling unfeasible.

This had the predictable result. Incentives to pursue innovative tecnologies to make drilling safer were stifled, as was the need to be prepared for worst case scenarios (as BP obviously was not). The insurance industry is the economic bulwark against excessive risk. Insurance companies’ make judgements based on economic, technological, and environmental realies, and price their rates accordingly. If oil companies find insurance rates too high, then they can abandon deep water drilling, or they could find better and safer ways to operate to satisfy the insurers and reduce rates.

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) has sponsored a bill to raise that limit to $10 billion, believing that the $75 million cap encouraged ecological gambling, because it was so low. Yes, so why then should oil companies be shielded at all? Artificially capping liability is the very kind of market manipulation that causes problems, by short-circuiting the normal risk management incentives inherent in a free market.

Yes, BP must clean up the mess, and compensate the victims, even if it bankrupts them. If BP engaged in fraud to get the permits, prosecute the company. And, NO BAILOUTS. It is BP’s well, after all.

But, just as with the financial crises, the government rigs the system to encourage excessive risk and reduce personal responsibility, and wonders why disasters happen.

And in similar fashion, we’re seeing the usual demands for more regulation, with blame being placed on a non-existent “free market”. This is perverse. BP is the proximate cause, but government regulation is the ultimate cause. We need less regulation, and more economic laissez-faire.

Catalina has left these two comments:

June 13, 2010 at 3:55 AM

OK, suppose that it _were_ legal to drill close to the shoreline. What do you think BP and Mobile Exxon would do when the oil runs out, like it has in Texas?

It would only have postponed the inevitable.

June 13, 2010 at 5:22 AM
Oh, I forgot to say, I suppose the environmentalists are responsible for THIS, too ?

The article Catalina references is entitled Nigeria's agony dwarfs the Gulf oil spill. The US and Europe ignore it, by John Vidal. The subtitle reads:

"The Deepwater Horizon disaster caused headlines around the world, yet the people who live in the Niger delta have had to live with environmental catastrophes for decades"

Mr. Vidal reports on the mess supposedly created by the oil companies in Nigeria. It's really a saga of government running amuck, and business taking the blame. Jason Stotts answers her, as do I. Here is my response to Catalina:

June 13, 2010 at 11:18 AM
Catalina;

What BP or Exxon or any other energy producer would do “when the oil runs out” depends in large part on the level of governmental restrictions – environmental being perhaps the biggest.

But, let’s say for the sake of your argument that deep water drilling is where they wanted to go. In that case, the best protection against a BP-type disaster is to keep government out of the market’s hair, and let its dynamics play out (See my comment above). In the BP disaster, the government’s hands are all over this spill.

I am not excusing BP completely. Cap or no cap, there is a moral responsibility to be respectful of other people’s property, and be prepared to compensate others for damages caused. At the same time, as even Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), whom I rarely agree with, acknowledges, the government’s artificial liability cap is a prime culprit. There was nothing inevitable about the BP blowout.

But, as Jason Stotts argues, environmentalism is the cause of causes for the BP spill. In the name of protecting “environmentally sensitive areas” where it is technologically and environmentally much safer to drill, such as ANWAR and other coastal areas, we now have the worst environmental mess in US history. Environmentalism’s hands are at least as oily as anyone’s, because of its obsession with “pristine” nature and its disregard for man’s need to exploit nature to survive and thrive.

Remove all environmental restrictions (except where consistent with the protection of private property rights), abolish market interventions such as liability caps, and leave energy producers free to go where they may go. Then we’ll find the answer to the question: “What do you think BP and Mobile Exxon would do when the oil runs out”? – if it runs out.

PS – The Nigerian government, according to that article, is a “partner” with the oil companies, and “Oil spills and the dumping of oil into waterways … have become common due to the lack of laws and enforcement measures within the existing political regime.” In other words, that government is avoiding its proper function to protect private property rights. Instead, it’s running the show and collecting protection money, while private industry gets the blame for “blocking progressive legislation”. That article is a very good argument for the separation of economics and state – i.e., laissez-faire capitalism.

NJ Dems Answer Christie in Typical Fashion

2010-05-12T16:20:00.000-07:00

New Jersey's redistributionist state government is in crisis, and the Democrats who control the legislature have the answer - more redistribution of wealth!

Two top Democrats revealed there budget plan in a Star-Ledger piece entitled Helping NJ senior citizens with true 'shared sacrifice'. They write:

"The Democratic plan to protect New Jersey’s most vulnerable residents calls for a one-year income tax surcharge on the 16,000 New Jerseyans with taxable incomes of at least $1 million. The surcharge would raise about $630 million and eliminate Christie’s plans to force senior citizens to pay higher prescription drug costs and property taxes.

"This is a compassionate approach that allows the shared sacrifice of our most fortunate 16,000 residents to help more than 600,000 senior and disabled citizens who struggle to pay for medication and keep their homes. This plan spreads the pain and protects our most vulnerable."

I've left the following comments:

Posted by zemack
May 12, 2010, 7:18PM

No armed street thug with a gun would have the gall, or the dishonesty, to claim that he is “compassionately” “allowing” his victim to “sacrifice” his wallet to pay for his needs.

No street thug would be so brazen as to claim that his gun does not represent force, but taking responsibility for paying his own way, does.

Oh, but Senator Sweeney and Speaker Oliver don’t want the tax loot for themselves. They only want to funnel that dough to “New Jersey’s most vulnerable residents”, who may or may not like the idea of being made parasites. Apparently, the 16,000 victims of their scheme of legalized armed robbery are not “vulnerable”. There’s one minority group the Dems don’t care much about. Like all humanitarian types, what these politicians seek is the phony prestige of practicing charity with other people’s tax money.

But the “most fortunate” deserve it, right? After all, it’s “the multimillionaire corporate titans, bankers and hedge-fund traders whose actions led to the recent recession.” It could not possibly be the government’s affordable housing crusades enforced through a massive interlocking network of agencies, bureaucracies, loan guarantees, laws, controls, printing-press money and untold market-distorting policies that caused it. It’s all the fault of 16,000 NJ residents, who are indicted, tried, and convicted, without evidence and through guilt by association, of causing the recession – then sentenced to need-based tax penalties. I cannot believe the authors made that statement!

The morality of need worship, which preaches that we are all our brothers’ keepers, will always lead to tyrannical socialist schemes in which the government merely wants to “allow” us or “help” us to be moral and “sacrifice” for others. Under the opposite moral principle, that each of us owns his own life and possesses unalienable individual rights, we are free to engage in voluntary charity to causes and fellow citizens we deem worthy. But there are no predatory politicians or voting blocs looking to sacrifice some to the needs of others through legislative force.

The national financial crisis and NJ’s fiscal calamity are both rooted in the political implementation of the principle that need is an automatic moral claim on the wealth produced by others. Until we recognize that production, individual achievement, personal responsibility, and respect for the rights and property of others, not any kind of sacrifice shared or otherwise, is the moral ideal, we will lurch from crisis to crisis until we go over the edge into the collective abyss.

Farmer Misrepresents Rand

2010-04-12T18:00:00.000-07:00

New Jersey Star-Ledger columnist and former Editor John Farmer has taken a few potshots at Ayn Rand, via a favorite whipping boy of the Left, Alan Greenspan. In his article, entitled Alan Greenspan: The oracle who didn't see it coming, Mr. Farmer wrote:

"Greenspan is famously a disciple of Ayn Rand, a libertarian (some dispute that) and would-be philosopher who scorned government and preached the gospel of free market capitalism unfettered by regulation. Greenspan bought it all. He still believes it, if his testimony last week is any measure.

"In fairness to the Fed, it should be noted that under his successor, Ben Bernanke, it did much in 2009 to stem the slide toward a worse recession, perhaps another even another Depression, and appears more agreeable to tougher oversight of the markets. No more Ayn Rand, in other words."

Though it's quite frustrating and even infuriating to see your ideas (or any ideas) misrepresented, especially by means of the drive-by method of Mr. Farmer, it's also an opportunity. Debunking detractors is an effective means of speading the right ideas. Here is My commentary:

Posted by zemack
April 12, 2010, 8:56PM

Others have addressed the Ayn Rand misrepresentations already, so there may be some redundancy here as I clear up the many fallacies presented by John Farmer.

“Greenspan is famously a disciple of Ayn Rand”

Was, not is, is the more accurate word, although Greenspan is undoubtedly still an admirer. No “disciple” would take the job of monetary dictator. Tying Greenspan to Rand is classic guilt by association. Straw man tactics tell you nothing about Ayn Rand’s ideas, or of their relevance to the financial meltdown. They merely provide a means of evasion.

“a libertarian (some dispute that)”

Some don’t dispute that, the facts do. Libertarianism can’t even be meaningfully defined, as it encompasses everything from anarchists to socialists to any form of doing whatever one pleases. Objectivism, Rand’s philosophy, is clear and incisive, and is as far from a sanction of anything goes as one can imagine. Characterizing Rand as a libertarian is a gross falsehood. At least Mr. Farmer acknowledges the existence of another viewpoint.

“and would-be philosopher”

This is a common type of refrain among Rand’s critics. But here are some quick questions. What is the nature of existence and its relationship to human consciousness (metaphysics)? What is the nature and method of human knowledge (epistemology)? What are the proper abstract value principles to guide the individual’s life, and set the standard by which people deal with one another (ethics)? Ayn Rand’s deep and rich philosophy, Objectivism, provides answers validated by evidence and logic. One can disagree, but if Rand is not a philosopher, then the world’s first philosopher does not exist, and neither does the field. I guess, rather than address Rand’s philosophical ideas, it’s easier just to deny that they exist.

“who scorned government”

Just read her essay, The Nature of Government (which I doubt Mr. Farmer did), and you will see that Rand saw government as the only institution capable of protecting individual rights, making it a necessary good for society. What statists hate is that she asked, and answered, the question “Do men need such an institution—and why?”. Like the Founding Fathers, she scorned rights-violating government, not government as such.

“and preached the gospel of free market capitalism unfettered by regulation”

Finally, the truth, as long as you understand the type of “regulation” she opposed. Ex. - laws against and vigorous prosecution of fraud, enforcement of contracts, etc. are consistent with the proper function of government and are good. Controls imposed on all businessmen because of the wrong-doing of the few (ex. – Sabanes-Oxley after Enron) are based upon the unjust, un-American principle, presumption of guilt, and are bad.

“No more Ayn Rand, in other words.”

If by his reference to Ayn Rand, Mr. Farmer means laissez-faire capitalism, where does anyone see it today – particularly in the financial industry, the most heavily regulated of all economic sectors. Other corespondents address this point. The housing meltdown and financial crisis is a failure of the regulatory state and the mixed economy. No objective observer can deny this. Ayn Rand disappeared from American finance nearly a century ago, when she was not yet 10 years old.

Nothing about Ayn Rand’s ideas and her philosophy of Objectivism can be learned by listening to Alan Greenspan or reading the kinds of unsubstantiated assertions Mr. Farmer throws around. Anyone interested in Ayn Rand should cleave to one of Objectivism’s cardinal virtues – independence (i.e., think for yourself). Study what she has to say, consider the evidence, and draw your own conclusions.

Who's Really "Coming Between You and Your Doctor?"

2010-03-12T17:27:00.000-08:00

In a recent op-ed posted at RealClearPolitics, Froma Harrop complains about the practices of private health insurance companies ( Coming Between You and Your Doctor). She writes:

"The lights must dim around Google's data-storage centers every time someone does a search for "government bureaucrat coming between you and your doctor." Foes of the Democrats' health-reform proposals have been chanting this on the hour for a year..."

After claiming, with some truth, that private insurance company bureaucrats already do the same thing, she asks:

"But why has the idea of letting the government do what private insurers do to save taxpayers money become such a hysterical hot button?"

The difference between government action and private action is the difference between force and voluntary, uncoerced agreement. But with regard to private health insurance in this country, the issue is muddied considerably by government intervention ... i.e., the introduction of force into the market.

We also see yet another example of an ObamaCare proponent taking the status quo as the given, thus avoiding the necessity of any analysis of how the government's policies have created the very problems "reform" is supposedly designed to fix. This tactic is vital to their case, because any honest look at cause and effect would lead to a greatly diminished government role and more freedom as the logical solution.

Here is my commentary:

Posted by: Mike Zemack Mar 12, 07:26 PM

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“The powers in Washington have clearly decided to keep most working Americans in the hands of private insurance companies.”

So laments Ms. Harrop. The statement is true, but off by about seventy years. Decades ago, the Federal government established the third-party-payer, or employer-based, system of health insurance. This created an artificial middleman that disconnected the consumer of healthcare from the provider. Then came thousands of state-imposed insurance mandates across the nation– from community rating to guaranteed issue to benefits – that force insurers to tailor their policies to the demands of political pressure groups rather than market realities … i.e., to the desires and pocketbooks of the consumer, who is perversely not the customer. These same insurers are protected from interstate competition via interstate trade barriers imposed by government.

We’ve all heard the story of the fireman who starts fires, so that he can rush to the scene to “save” lives and property. (We had a real live one of those living in my neighborhood, some years ago.) Well, in regard to America’s health insurance system, the government is that fireman.

The health insurance industry that ObamaCare supporters love to demonize is a scapegoat and a straw man, because it is in fact a political creation. The alleged power of the insurance companies is an extension of government power and would not be possible in a free market. Our fireman now proposes to save us from its own creation! Our “private” health insurance industry is a government controlled and protected series of state-based cartels operating in a government-crippled insurance market. Our “private” health insurance system is in the nature of fascism, or back-door socialism, and is not indicative of a free market.

“Those who care to move this conversation to a more grownup level” start by examining the role that government intervention has played in placing the healthcare of Americans “in the hands of private insurance companies.” They will find that it was the government itself.

The argument for “letting the government do what private insurers do” is a red herring. It is a call for totalitarian centralized control of medicine by government bureaucrats unconstrained by the need to earn a profit … i.e., to satisfy their customers. Insurance company bureaucrats empowered by our government-imposed third-party-payer system are bad enough. Government bureaucrats possessing the legalized power of physical force - i.e., a gun - would end the remaining fragments of freedom to make our own healthcare decisions that we still possess.

The Supreme Court legalized abortion in Rowe v. Wade based on the argument that abortion is a health matter that should be decided solely between a woman and her doctor. Fair enough. The solution to the problems of health insurance rests with the same logic. Remove all government restrictions in the national health insurance market. Restrict government instead – to its proper role of enforcing laws against fraud and breech of contract, mediating legitimate contractual disputes between insurers and insured, and enforcing and protecting contracts and contractual freedom … i.e., to protecting everyone’s individual rights.

Health insurance is solely a matter between the individual and his insurer, and their rights to contract freely to mutual advantage should be protected. The natural incentives of the free market – the consumer seeking the best value for his money from profit-seeking providers seeking to expand sales in an environment of real competition – is the only moral way to “control costs” because people must consume in accordance with what they have earned and providers must price their products to their customers’ budgets. A government that “controls costs” ends up controlling people … i.e., ends up as a dictatorship.

In a free market “no one is going to come between patients and their doctors” because no one can come between patients and their insurers … or their healthcare dollars.

Who's Really Peddling "Big Lie"?

2010-03-09T13:08:00.000-08:00

The Big Lie is on the prowl in the health care debate. But who is guilty of employing it? According to the NJ Star-Ledger, it's the GOP. In its 3/9/10 editorial, entitled Health care reform scare: 'Takeover' claim is GOP's big lie, the Editors had this to say:

"Republican congressional and party leaders are pedaling as fast as they can to distance themselves from the Republican National Committee plan to drum up fear that the Democrats are driving America toward socialism.

"But in fact the GOP has been running that playbook for over a year now, portraying President Obama’s policies as radically left-wing, socialist — in effect, un-American. The most obvious example is the Big Lie about his health insurance reform plan, that it’s 'a government takeover of one-sixth of our nation’s economy.'

"First of all, the fact that health care is consuming one-sixth of our gross domestic product is a big problem and not an argument for letting things be. But no one remotely connected with the Obama administration is suggesting anything like a government takeover of medical care in America. Yet the defenders of the status quo conjure up a dystopian nightmare of 'Obamacare' with Soviet-style hospitals and drone-like doctors and with faceless bureaucrats deciding who gets care and who does not. (How they would be different from insurance company bureaucrats is a mystery.)"

Here is my commentary setting the record straight:

Posted by zemack
March 09, 2010, 10:03PM

The “Big Lie” is an appropriate topic for the Star-Ledger to editorialize on in regard to healthcare. But it’s not the Republicans that are employing it. It is the ObamaCare minions, including the Editors here, who are employing that tactic to its fullest. The real Big Lie is the claim that the only choice we have is between Obama’s “reform” scheme and the status quo. But “the defenders of the status quo” are not entirely accurate either. ObamaCare, the logical consequence of which really will eventually be “Soviet-style hospitals and drone-like doctors and with faceless bureaucrats deciding who gets care and who does not”, is not an outright takeover of healthcare. It is rather another step in the decades-long, slow-motion advance toward an eventual full takeover.

As I’ve been arguing here and elsewhere, the missing ingredients in the entire Left-framed debate is an examination of the role that the government has played in creating the problems healthcare “reform” is supposed to correct, and the third alternative – reinstitution of a free market in healthcare. Despite its strengths made possible by the remaining free market fragments, all of the problems attributed to American healthcare are consequences of prior government policies. The runaway costs and the problem of pre-existing conditions are government creations. Thanks to our government-imposed third-party-payer (employer-based) system, thousands of state-imposed community rating, guaranteed issue and benefits mandates, and legal trade barriers barring interstate competition, our “private” health insurance industry is actually a government controlled and protected series of state-based cartels which is more in the nature of fascism (back-door socialism) rather than any semblance of a market-based system.

The health insurance industry that ObamaCare supporters love to demonize is a scapegoat and a straw man, because it is in fact a political creation. The alleged power of the insurance companies is an extension of government power and would not be possible in a free market.

Of course, making a government takeover of American healthcare inevitable is what ObamaReform is all about, the Editors’ protestations to the contrary notwithstanding. But the Dems have cleverly avoided concrete specifics in their plan, giving cover for the Editors’ outrageously false claim that “no one remotely connected with the Obama administration is suggesting anything like a government takeover of medical care in America”. No. Instead, their plan contains the theoretical blueprint for future totalitarian control of every aspect of healthcare. What does anyone think a 2000 page document is full of? The trick is that the specifics will come later under powers granted to government officials, in the form of an unending tidal wave of coercive rules and regulations.

In an analysis of only a small part of one version of ObamaCare, the House’s HR3962, Professor John David Lewis cites numerous examples of this in his Objective Standard essay, which can be read in full in the Winter 2009/2010 issue. His conclusion:

“[The plan] will reach deeply into federal and state regulations and laws, on a scale that will require years for experts to interpret. It will establish institutions that will be effectively irreversible. It will grant arbitrary powers to bureaucrats, who will have to interpret and enforce its dictates.

“This legislation empowers the executive branch, namely the Secretary of Health and Human Services and a ‘Health Choices Commissioner,’ to write thousands of pages of regulations, and to force Americans to comply with them. For every line in this bill, many pages of regulations will be written.

“The central meaning of both is the repudiation of individual rights. No longer will Americans have the liberty to preserve their own lives in the way they judge best—from now on, they will have to conform to government controls on the most intimate details of their lives.”

The Big Lie is alive and well, and firmly ensconced in the Obama Whitehouse … and in the offices of the Star-Ledger Editorial Board.

And here are some supporting comments from docforfreedom, whom I drew attention to in my last post:

Posted by docforfreedom
March 10, 2010, 3:40PM

Well said, Zemack.

When trying to decide which is worse-- government or insurance company control of health care-- the answer is BOTH. We need freedom to choose for ourselves-- what health care to access directly and which insurance to buy for ourselves. The free market would keep both of these in line if the government weren't so busy meddling. The government ought not be providing any health care.

We can now access websites that can tell us where to obtain services at what price. Radiology groups are beginning to post cash prices. Why do we need a middleman for the majority of services?

We take our cars to our local auto repairman hoping that he can fix it. If there is something more complicated, he sends us to a specialist. Of course, with health care, the bills can run up very high, but THEN we need insurance-- NOT for the routine. Why involve a costly middleman when face to face cash payments would save everyone a lot?

John Farmer's Booby Trap Exposed

2010-03-02T17:00:00.000-08:00

The New Jersey Star-Ledger's John Farmer has made the case that Employer-based health care is a thing of the past.

This, I agree with. But there, we part ways. In classic liberal fashion, Mr. Farmer engages in a bout of breathtaking evasion, ignoring the fact that the insurance system we have now is a government creation. Instead, he simply accepts the status quo as an example of a failure of private insurance, because "the private insurance bigwigs' ... chief incentive is to increase profits in their own and their shareholders’ interest."

Of course, those profits are made possible by offering products that are in their customers' interest, a practice that is essentially forbidden under the very system he laments. Rather than remove those government restrictions and leave insurers free to pursue profits by satisfying their customers, he would rather place your healthcare fate in the hands of the government "whose leaders face the wrath of the voters if they get it wrong." In other words, your healthcare fortunes will be at the mercy of the latest ballot box mob, instead of your own judgement!

The Left is desperate to hang on to the statist controls thay have achieved thus far, and to use them as a springboard for further controls on the way to totalitarian socialized medicine.

I've left a detailed response at the Star-Ledger's website, which is published below. But I'd like also to draw attention to the remarks of docforfreedom, who has several comments posted for this article. He seems mostly right in his comments and a strong defender of the individual.

Here is my full commentary:

We’ve all heard the story of the fireman who starts fires, so that he can be the first on the scene to “save” lives and property. (We had a real live one of those living in my neighborhood, some years ago.) Well, in regard to American health care, the government is that fireman. All of the problems that ObamaCare allegedly addresses are government created. And like that fireman, the politicians - Democrats and many Republicans alike – now rush to fix the problems they created with massive new government interference into healthcare. The health insurance market is at the top of the list of government-created problems.

Today’s health insurance industry is a government created monstrosity. The “power” of the insurance companies derives directly from government interference into the market. Thanks to the tax and regulation-imposed employer-based, or third-party-payer, system, the insurance company works not for the consumer of healthcare, but for some third party. In other words, the consumer is not the customer. But that’s not the only problem. Thousands of state-imposed insurance mandates across the nation– from community rating to guaranteed issue to benefits – force insurers to tailor their policies to the demands of political pressure groups rather than market realities, and force coverages on consumers that they may not want or can afford. These mandates are nothing more than wealth redistribution masquerading as “insurance”. The insurance companies are then protected from competition through interstate trade barriers - imposed by government.

The health insurance industry that ObamaCare supporters love to demonize is a scapegoat and a straw man, because it is in fact a political creation. Our fireman proposes to save us from its own creation! Our “private” health insurance industry is a government controlled and protected series of state-based cartels operating in a government-crippled insurance market. Our employer-based system that Mr. Farmer laments is in the nature of fascism, or back-door socialism, in which the private ownership is more of a mirage than a reality.

The only practical and moral solution is a free market in health insurance. Our current system is as far from a free market as one can imagine short of overt socialized medicine.

A free market is one based on the recognition of individual rights, which means the sanction of freedom of action. This freedom includes the rights of patients, insurers, their customers, doctors, medical products producers, and other healthcare professionals to freely contract with each other through voluntary trade to mutual advantage. The government’s role in a free market is limited but vital – to protect the rights of all concerned, including enforcement of contracts and prosecution of fraud and breech of contract. Otherwise, people should be free of governmental coercion, which is what the “free” in free market means.

Mr. Farmer is right that the employer-based - i.e., third-party-payer - system of health insurance is unraveling. It was inevitable, and a bad idea to begin with. But he misses the obvious: Our deteriorating employer-based health insurance system is a failure of statism, not freedom. Instead, he simply lauds supporters of totalitarian healthcare, - excuse me, ObamaCare in all of its guises – as “those who know something” and writes off opponents as ignorant. But this is only a evasion, and sets the stage for his monumental booby trap – that our only choice is between socialism and fascism:

“Who can we best trust to oversee health insurance? The federal government, with its spotty record for efficiency but whose leaders face the wrath of the voters if they get it wrong? Or the private insurance bigwigs whose chief incentive is to increase profits in their own and their shareholders’ interest?”

The individual citizen who is free to “oversee” his own healthcare and health insurance needs doesn’t even warrant token consideration! Interesting, eh?

Mr. Farmer is dead wrong. The choice is not between government-run healthcare (socialized medicine) and the status quo (quasi government-run healthcare). The choice is between government-run medicine (in all of its incarnations) and a free market.

Gay Marriage and Individual Rights

2010-01-24T08:36:00.000-08:00

In my Introduction to this blog, I wrote:

“[T]he only real guide to understanding human events, their relationships to one another, and where they may lead us, is to discover the fundamental philosophical and moral principles that drive them: hence, the title of my blog. Discovering them is not always an easy task, but with Objectivism as my frame of reference, that is what I aim to do as I analyze and opiniate on today's events.”

Ayn Rand wrote: “Abstractions as such do not exist: they are merely man’s epistemological method of perceiving that which exists—and that which exists is concrete.” Since abstractions as such do not exist but are merely mental tools for understanding reality, they must be logically relative to concrete events and facts. Otherwise, they are merely “floating” … disconnected from reality and thus useless. Since my blog is based on the premise that abstract ideas drive human events, my task is to validate my principles with reference to today’s issues.

Put another way, my blog is about concretizing abstractions. The number one abstract principle that is my driving passion is the concept of individual rights. That abstract reference point is the focus of this post’s analysis of a very controversial subject. It is also a good demonstration of why we need to make full use of our uniquely human conceptual faculty (i.e., our powers of abstraction), and why without abstractions we are essentially “flying blind”.

On January 6, 2010, the Same-Sex Marriage bill went down to a resounding defeat in my rather liberal state of New Jersey. This result should not have happened, and is a case study on the wrong way to advocate for anyone’s rights. On 1/6/10, the New Jersey Star-Ledger foresaw the defeat, pinning the blame on “political missteps”.

For a change, I agree with the Star-Ledger. The Gay Marriage ban should have been lifted in New Jersey. I agree with the Editors’ stand, but not their murky logic … the source of the cause of the defeat.

The failure was not political, but philosophical. A look at the Editors’ logic exposes the cause of the inability of so many politicians to take a firm stand – the “soft supporters [who] may run for cover”. The Editors lament this spectacle and ask: “How did this bill become such a long-shot in a state where most polls show solid support, and where the Democratic governor and leaders of both houses supported it?” It was indeed a long shot. The bill was defeated by a heavily Democratic State senate by a decisive 20-14 margin (with three abstentions). Why? We need to take a look at the Star-Ledger’s own reasoning.

I am sometimes asked a question such as: “Do you support or oppose gay marriage?” This question misses the point. The question is, does anyone have the right to employ the government’s power of legalized physical force to prohibit two people of the same sex to forge a marriage contract? I firmly and unequivocally believe the answer is no. My personal opinions are irrelevant here. Upholding the right to same-sex marriage no more indicates my support for gay marriage than my defense of a woman’s right to her own body indicates support for abortion; or my defense of the First Amendment indicates support for pornography among consenting adults; or my opposition to Affirmative Action indicates support for racial discrimination.

The basic issue is individual rights, the inalienable sanction to take the actions necessary to achieve one’s long-term goals, well-being, and happiness – so long as those actions don’t involve the violation of the same rights of others. Since rights are held equally and at all times by all people, the state’s legal sanction of a marriage contract between any two consenting adults must necessarily include same-sex couples, if the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause means anything. Of course, a private institution like the Catholic Church has every right to refuse to sanction gay marriage. But it has no right to trample the rights of others who disagree.

My opinions aside, it’s hard to see how a marriage between two gay people violates or presents a threat to the rights of anyone else, as would be the case between, say, the parties in a Mafia hit “contract” or the perpetrators of a fraudulent Ponzi scheme. Since the freedom of contract is derived from the right to life and liberty, the burden of proof is on the anti-gay marriage side to validate its stand. It hasn’t - and in fact cannot, do so.

Yet, it won the day in New Jersey.

When the issue is defined properly, there are no “soft supporters”. Broad abstract principles leave out personal judgements on how one feels about the concrete issue involved. When one declares his allegiance or opposition to an abstract principle, he offers a yardstick by which others can judge his stand on a virtually unlimited number of concrete issues. The principle of individual rights, properly understood, leaves no room for “flirting with both sides”, “winks and nods”, or “hiding”. The Editors demand to “learn where each senator stands on gay marriage”. The proper question is: “Where do you stand on the principle of individual rights?” Each legislator’s answer to that question leads logically to a specific vote on the gay marriage bill, since it is essentially a vote on individual rights. But modern politicians on both sides of the ideological divide recoil against principled stands on any issue.

The idea of individual rights is much broader than any single concrete issue, and it is sometimes not readily apparent how to apply it to some particular concrete issue. Disagreements concerning practical application can and do arise among people who hold, and understand, a given principle. But first, the principle must be clearly identified. By evading it, the debate was focussed narrowly on homosexual marriage. This forced the politicians to declare whether they are for or against “gay marriage” and by implication homosexuality as such. But as I stated above, that is not the issue. It should never have come down to that. The senators should have been obliged to take a firm, either/or stand on the paramount question – Do you support or oppose the number one Founding principle of America, unalienable individual rights?

The debate wasn’t properly framed, so it went down to resounding defeat. The supporters such as the “gay rights” group Garden State Equality are partly to blame here. By basing their argument on the premise that they are fighting for “gay rights” rather than the broader principle of individual rights, they undercut their own case by in effect fighting for what one correspondent called “SPECIAL rights”. Fromexperience wrote:

“Marriage is not a right -- civil or otherwise.
In five state and DC, homosexuals have been legislatively "awarded" SPECIAL rights through SSM. Those civil unions and domestic partnerships available ONLY to ss couples are ALSO special rights.”

Marriage is a right, but it’s true that marriage is not a fundamental right. It is a derivative of the foundation of all rights – the right to life. As long as the issue is gay rights, the supporters are vulnerable to this line of attack. Fromexperience is correct that rights are not “special” or “legislatively awarded” or applicable only to gays. But he evades the fact that they are unalienable … i.e., based upon the provable metaphysical facts of reality and thus inseparable from man qua man, and possessed equally by each and every individual. That includes the right of free association, which includes contractual freedom, including marriage contracts. The government’s role is to enforce those contracts, equally. Defending the SSM bill on this proper basis explodes fromexperience’s argument, because to deny an unalienable right to anyone is to deny the same right to everyone … including the contractual right to heterosexual marriage.

It’s obvious why not only liberals but also conservatives ignore, evade, and refuse to explicitly endorse the principle of unalienable individual rights. The implications for both would expose each side to a withering critique of their entire agenda. Adherence to principle cuts through the fog of pragmatism, and obliterates any chance of having one’s cake and eating it too.

For the liberal, it becomes necessary to explain why gays should have the right to freely contract with each other in marriage but not with their health insurance company. If abortion is a medical procedure that should be decided solely between a woman and her doctor, the basic logic behind Roe v. Wade, then why shouldn’t that same line of reasoning (non-interference by government) apply to all issues regarding healthcare? If the government has no right to force a woman to bear a child or deny gays the right to marry, then why should that woman or that gay person be forced into any government-run “insurance” scheme like Medicare, or forced to buy a policy full of state-mandated coverages or submit to an “individual mandate”, or be denied the right to refuse to pay for emergency room visits by uninsured people?

Likewise, for conservatives, it becomes necessary to explain why international free trade is good with regard to material goods, but not to people (immigration). Why is it wrong to force people to fund the latest liberal welfare scheme, but OK to force them to fund Bush’s Faith-Based Initiatives? And why is it wrong to restrict freedom of speech, except to demand that the FCC crack down on “obscene” material in the media?

The inconsistencies are manifest on both sides, if the principle of individual rights is the yardstick to measure the validity of one’s stand on concrete issues. But the Star-Ledger wants to have it both ways. Thus, the Editors defend the gay marriage bill with vague references to “civil” rights or “gay rights”, as if rights are privileges bestowed by society or possessions specific to some group. By evading the exact nature of rights, the advocates of this bill can uphold Gay rights but not medical rights. I offer into evidence the Star-Ledger’s support for the totalitarian "Affordable Health Care for America Act", or HR3962 (and the Senate’s incarnation of ObamaCare), a massive rights-violating monstrosity that makes a mockery of its support for NJ’s SSM bill. If the Editors were to base their call for passage of the Gay Marriage Act on the proper grounds, they would logically have to oppose those healthcare “reform” bills. Both issues are tethered to the principle of individual rights. But since the Editors don’t really support the actual rights of gays (just “gay rights”) there is no need to reconcile those contradictory positions.

“Unprincipled inconsistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”, to paraphrase Emerson, who got it exactly backwards. Of course, one must be consistent based on the right principles … i.e., ideas consistent with objective, concrete reality. And it’s not always easy and sometimes hard. Loyalty to principles often means defending or advocating that which runs contrary to one’s personal convictions. Think of Voltaire, who once said in defense of free speech: “I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it.” The preservation of freedom demands nothing less than that kind of conviction. That’s what’s been in play in my mind, as I grappled with this issue in recent years. I have always thought of marriage as a union between one man and one woman. That hasn’t really changed. But, over the years, I’ve had to rethink my stand on certain political issues in order to bring them into line with my passionate belief in the rights of the individual. Gay marriage is one. I was against its legalization, but eventually came to support NJ’s 2002 domestic partnership law and 2006 civil union legalization.

But as fromexperience notes, those laws represent “special rights” and are thus untenable. This has led me to full support of the legalization of same-sex marriage. It is the only stand consistent with the principle of individual rights and of our constitution.

Regardless of what one personally believes about it, the overriding principle relating to gay marriage points unequivocally to only one conclusion – same-sex couples have the same unalienable rights to contractual freedom as heterosexual couples. The law should recognize that fact.

It’s not always easy acting on principle. It often puts one’s political opinions at odds with one’s personal values and morals. Announcing one’s fundamental beliefs … wearing one’s moral principles on one’s sleeves, so to speak, as I do on this blog … exposes one to the judgement of others by one’s own standards. This is as it should be. One way to avoid that personal responsibility as well as the inevitable (and proper) judgements of others is to simply run from abstract principles, and declare that anything goes on the whim of any moment or issue. That’s the tactic employed by both sides in this debate, including the Star-Ledger Editors. This “pragmatic” approach enables political factions and pressure groups to battle in a domestic civil war, each vowing to grab some political or economic advantage at the expense of others based upon some newly minted group “right”.

But it should be remembered that we owe the very existence of our America to a revolutionary group of men who pledged “our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor” on a radical set of political principles to forge history’s greatest and most moral country ever. Principles are crucial. That is why the principle of individual rights must be placed at the political center stage. It is the means of stemming the aggression of rights violators who seek to impose their own moral judgements on others. Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law. Put another way, the abstraction “individual rights” is the means of stopping anyone from taking the concrete actions of physically preventing a survivor from inheriting the pension benefits of his same-sex deceased partner or another from visiting his same-sex partner in a hospital … i.e., from signing a concrete marriage contract.

The concrete gay marriage bill failed for lack of a proper defense – the abstract moral concept of individual rights.

What's the Cause of the "Bubble Economy"?

2010-01-04T17:13:00.000-08:00

In Forever blowing bubbles: Have we learned anything from market crash?, the New Jersey Star-Ledger laments the bubble economy:

So here’s a question on this first trading day of the new decade: Has the smart money learned from its mistakes and gotten any smarter? Not so you’d notice. The Associated Press reports that some analysts believe new bubbles already are forming. As the Federal Reserve keeps the borrowing costs low — in hopes of reviving investment in job-producing businesses — traders are using the easy credit to bid up prices on stocks, both here and abroad, and on gold.

“They’ve put out the biggest punch bowl in U.S. history and people are guzzling from it,” Haag Sherman, chief investment officer at Salient Partners in Houston, told AP.

The Editors blame "wizards of Wall Street" ... again.

I've left the following rebuttal comments:

So the government’s own Federal Reserve Board is again flooding the economy with fiat money and forcing interest rates down to well below market levels “in hopes of reviving investment in job-producing businesses”. And then we’re supposed to be appalled that the fast-money crowd crawls out of the woodwork to guzzle at the punch bowl. The “smart money” is placed at a competitive disadvantage in the face of the massive paper profits, as sound judgement is eroded and undermined by the perverse Fed-induced market incentives.

Money, especially paper money, is not wealth nor is it the source of wealth creation. The individual human mind is. Productive people must be free to think and act upon their own judgement, to take the risks and its consequences, and reap the rewards of success. That is how a growing economy is established. A sound currency and monetary policy is a requirement of a strong and robust economy. So are economic freedom and free markets. Today we are moving away from both. The Fed can “push on a string” from here to eternity with its inflationary policies, but if actual people of ability and ambition won’t step up and produce actual goods and services, we’re going nowhere.

What we are witnessing today is the inverse of the successful 1980s Reagan policies of “tight money” (i.e., a relatively competently run Fed) coupled with reduced government economic interference. Reaganomics was a far, far cry from laissez-faire capitalism, but the mild regulatory restraint, the sharp income tax rate reductions, and the return of a reasonably sound currency were enough to unleash productive individuals to pursue profit, resulting in tremendous real wealth creation and “investment in job-producing businesses”. The result was a simultaneous downtrend in inflation, interest rates, and unemployment amidst a generation-long economic boom.

Today we have dollar destruction coupled with the Obama Administration’s war on economic success, brought about via a massive expansion of the regulatory state, huge impending tax hikes, demonizing of wide swaths of American industry, the virulent new anti-trust activism, etc. Productiveness is hampered and speculation is encouraged. What result would one logically expect? A bubble economy and falling living standards.

As to the “wizards of Wall Street” building bubbles on top of bubbles, it was the explicit policy of the federal government to expand homeownership at any price that caused the housing boom and bust. The quick-buck “wizards” were simply tagging along for the “easy credit” profits.

The Editors are right to sound the warning bell. We’re heading for an economic calamity that will make the housing meltdown look like a warm-up. Yet, in classic style, the Editors fail to draw the obvious conclusion. Instead, they invert cause and effect, blaming the effect while giving the cause a virtual pass because after all, the Fed is guided by “hopes” – which apparently excuses anything.

The long-term solution is to move in the opposite direction toward free markets, capitalism, individual rights, and limited government. The best place to start is to phase out and abolish the Fed. We’ve had enough of its catastrophic failures.

The Star-Ledger laments the bubble economy, but refuses to see the culprit.

Some Fairness Toward Ayn Rand, From an Unlikely Source

2009-11-24T15:12:00.000-08:00

The liberal Huffington Post, of all places, has published a relatively fair-minded piece on Ayn Rand, entitled The Real Rogue Warrior: Ayn Rand, Not Sarah Palin, by Michael Shermer. Here are a few excerpts:

"Despite the media frenzy surrounding Sarah Palin's autobiographical Going Rogue, the real rogue warrior making a political conservative comeback today is not Palin, but the Russian immigrant turned champion of American conservative principles, Ayn Rand.

"You can no more understand the right without Rand than you can understand it without Buckley, Goldwater, and Reagan. The dismissal of Rand by both the left and the right as mind candy for college kids is fatuous. It may be true that many of us (myself included) were first introduced to Rand in college, but that's when most of us are introduced to most of the philosophical and literary figures in history. So what?

"What are Rand's principles and which of her books should you read to understand the modern conservative movement? Start with Atlas Shrugged. According to a survey conducted by the Library of Congress and the Book-of-the-Month club, readers ranked it #2 behind the Bible as the most influential book they had ever read. It is a murder mystery, not about the murder of a human body, but of the murder of the human spirit."

I addressed, in my comments below, Mr. Shermer's erroneous (in my view) contention that modern conservatism is a good surrogate for Ayn Rand's ideas. Though he did his best, Mr. Shermer doesn't seem to have a firm grasp of the many fundamental differences between Objectivism and conservatism. There are, too be sure, many areas of agreement, as well, especially in economics (although few, if any, conservatives would embrace full laissez-faire capitalism, or the separation of state and economics). That she is decribed as making a "political conservative comeback" is an indication of how much must still be learned about her.

There are some other errors in this piece, such as this quote from Burns:

"Rand intended her books to be a sort of scripture, and for all her emphasis on reason it is the emotional and psychological sides of her novels that make them timeless."

"Scripture" is an odd, and utterly wrong, description of a philosophy that has as a prime fundamental tenet to think for yourself.

Her books do have powerful emotional appeal, but if that is mainly what one gets out of her writing, then you're likely to ... as they say ... "outgrow Ayn Rand".

All in all, though, this is a decent piece that captures the the reason for Ayn Rand's enduring relevance.

Here are my brief comments:

Thank you, Mr. Shermer, for a pretty good article, although the appropriate term to describe Ayn Rand is not rogue, but radical. You make a crucial point all too often forgotten: “Criticism of the founder of a theory does not, by itself, constitute a negation of any part of the theory.” I agree that Sarah Palin (who I am not a fan of) cannot hold a candle to Ayn Rand.

It should be pointed out that many people of various political persuasions in what today passes for the American "Right" - from conservative to libertarian to Republican to "Tea Partyers" - cherry-pick aspects of Rand’s ideas for their own purposes, while ignoring the rich depth of her comprehensive philosophy. Also, a large swath of American Conservatism abhors Ayn Rand for her secularism, social “liberalism”, and the challenge she hurls at Judeo-Christian morality through her ethics of rational self-interest.

You’ll learn little about Objectivism (Rand’s philosophy) by listening to conservatives. So, take some advice from an Objectivist husband, father, and grandfather who never “outgrew” Ayn Rand. If you’re seriously interested in understanding Rand’s enduring appeal, you’ll just have to study her works yourself, and exercise a cardinal virtue of the Objectivist ethics – your own independent judgement.

E. J. Dionne on the "Win for Government"

2009-11-10T19:11:00.000-08:00

On Election Day, a win for government, by E.J. Dionne.

Monday, November 9, 2009

Excerpts:

Here's a story you may have missed because it flies in the face of the dreary conventional wisdom: When advocates of public programs take on the right-wing anti-government crowd directly, the government-haters lose.

This is what happened in two statewide referendums last week that got buried under all of the attention paid to the governor's races in Virginia and New Jersey. In Maine, voters rejected a tax-limitation measure by a walloping 60 percent to 40 percent. In Washington state, a similar measure went down, 57 percent to 43 percent.

They lost in part because opponents of the so-called Taxpayer Bill of Rights measures (known as TABOR) did something that happens too rarely in the national debate: They made a case for what government does, why it's important and why cutbacks in public services can be harmful to citizens and the common good.

In Maine, one ad featured several taxpayers warning about what less government would mean in practice: "Our school budgets have already been cut. This would mean even less money for our classrooms. . . . Community health centers could be cut. People rely on them, especially now." A sympathetic-looking man then appeared on the screen to add: "My wife relies on our home nurse visits. What will we do?"

Here are my comments:

Zemack wrote:

One of the gimmicks statists use to promote their authoritarian agenda is to frame the important issue of the role of government as ... for or against. Thus we get catch phrases such as “the right-wing anti-government crowd”.

Of course, what today passes for the “Right” is a diverse array of frequently antagonistic elements such as Conservatives, Libertarians, and Religious Rightists. But that aside, the purpose of painting anyone who advocates any rollbacks or even restrictions on the further expansion of government power as “anti-government” is to obliterate any acknowledgement of the proper purpose and limits of government. So let’s get some clarification here.

A government is a unique institution. It and it alone possesses a monopoly on the legal use of physical force. This is as it should and must be. The apprehension and prosecution of domestic criminals and the protection of the nation from foreign military aggressors is the job of government (among certain other functions relating to human association), and that requires the organized use of force. No civilized society can exist without a government. Without government, society would quickly degenerate into mob rule and chaos. Government is a necessary good.

At the same time, government’s status as a vehicle of physical coercion also makes it the gravest threat to its citizens. To alleviate that potential threat, a government must be strictly contained, or limited. What standard defines the nature of those limits? The principle of inalienable individual rights. What is the method for implementing those limits? A constitution. This is the original American system. Rights, it should be remembered, are a guarantee and a sanction for freedom of action within the context of social organization (such as the right to freedom of speech, religious practice, and the earning and use of property). Rights are not an automatic entitlement to “home nurse visits” or any other product or service that must be provided by others.

So the choice is not, as Mr. Dionne suggests, between pro- and anti-government positions; or between a government of unlimited powers and anarchy. The choice is between a government limited to the protection of the rights of its citizens and a predatory government that is a tool of any political party, special interest pressure group, or voting block to be used to extract economic privileges at the expense of the rights and property of others.

The “win for government” is a loss for the revolutionary American system. Our nation - which was founded upon the principles of individual rights and limited, rights-protecting government – has degenerated into a chaotic political free-for-all of power-seekers competing for temporary control of the reigns of government’s unique powers of legalized coercion. The winner is any one or group laying temporary claim to the title of representative of that mystical historical siren song of all those who seek forcible domination over the lives, property, and productive work of others … the common good.

Today, the role of our government is being progressively inverted. Instead of protecting our lives, freedom, and property, it has become a major violator of our rights. Instead of protecting us from criminals, it is increasingly using its unique powers for what amounts to legalized criminal activities. I submit into evidence the former Bush Administration and the current runaway statism of the Obama Administration – especially the 2000 page House blueprint for totalitarian control of American medicine.

Growing government power and the consequent loss of individual liberty is a trend that has been going on for more than a century in America. Today, our government is breaking free of all constraints of the constitution and the rule of objective law. If not reversed, the consequences will be dire. Americans desperately need to rediscover the principles of individual rights and the proper role of government.

Where's the "Milestone"? Where's the "Change".

2009-11-09T15:35:00.000-08:00

The New Jersey Star-Ledger has lauded the House of Representatives for its passage of the 1990 page health care "reform" bill, HR3962. They're calling it a Health care reform milestone!

It's no such thing. Here are my comments:

We’ve all heard the story of the fireman who starts fires, so that he can be the first on the scene to “save” lives and property. Well, in regard to American health care, the government is that fireman.

For the past 75 years, ever-increasing government interference into health care has led to a steady escalation of problems. The solution to the problems has always been more government interference. This has been mainly led by the openly socialist Democrats, but too often supported by Republicans (ex. – the HMO Act of 1973, SCHIP in 1997, and Bush’s Medicare prescription drug benefit).

The Editors themselves cite several examples of government-created problems. But once again, they don’t draw the obvious conclusions.

“When crisis hits, they land in emergency rooms, where steep costs drive up the health bill for all of us.”

Why do people who are unwilling or unable to pay their own way “drive up the health bill for all of us”? Because the government forces hospitals and doctors to treat all comers even if they can’t or won’t pay, whether the hospitals want to provide charitable care or not. This forces them to raise rates elsewhere, and causes states to tax the rest of us to subsidize the hospitals.

“For millions of middle-class families, the loss of a job has meant a loss in coverage.”

And exactly who created this absurd situation? The government did, by creating the third-party-payer health insurance system through its tax and regulatory policies, tying our insurance to our jobs.

“[The current bill] also ends the most obnoxious games that insurers play, like banning people with pre-existing conditions and imposing lifetime spending limits.”

“Pre-existing conditions” is a government-created condition, thanks to the aforementioned third-party-payer system, which forces you to find another insurer when you lose or change jobs – a situation that would not exist in a free market in which the patient/consumer actually owns his own policy. Did you ever wonder why you never hear of people losing their life insurance coverage because they contracted a life threatening illness or lost a job? It’s because people own their own policies, and they are guaranteed renewable. By contractual agreement, which is enforceable by the courts, the insurer cannot drop you as long as you pay your premiums (which is your responsibility, not your neighbor’s or other taxpayers).

Terms of contracts - such as “lifetime spending limits”, if any – are a matter between the insurance company and the customer. In our current system, the third party makes those decisions. Insurance companies can’t “impose” anything, at least not in a free market where there is real contractual freedom and competition (which, by the way, the government now forbids). They can only offer products for sale, which the consumers (which should be individuals spending their own earnings) are free to reject or accept. The most successful insurers in a free market would be those that are best at tailoring their products according to the needs and pocket books of the customers they seek.

Of course, if you don’t protect yourself and get sick, you must pay for your care out of pocket. You have no right to expect others to pay for it through government mandates on pre-existing conditions. But first, we need the freedom to take responsibility for our own lives, which only a free market can provide.

We need to get rid of the kinds of draconian government coercion that is crippling health care in this country, and restore the freedom of patients, providers, consumers, and insurers to contract directly and voluntarily with each other. Government has no right to dictate the contractual terms. Individual rights and personal responsibility are two sides of the same coin.

A true debate would begin with an examination of how we got to where we are today. Instead, we get an insane 2000 page blueprint for coercion to “fix” the problems created by government itself, and which is designed to ultimately fail, paving the way for a single-payer health care dictatorship.

The mawkish concern for the uninsured and the janitors and the “children [who] don't get the preventive care” is just a cover. The architects of this bill, and their supporters, are after power, and nothing else.

There’s no “milestone” here. There’s no “change”. There’s just another marker on the road to totalitarian government control of American medicine

Ayn Rand Misrepresentations @ Wake Forest

2009-11-07T04:12:00.000-08:00

A sophomore at Wake Forest University has published an article in the campus newspaper entitled Objectivism conflicts with humanitarian spirit. The author, Matt Moran, dives headlong into a criticism which conflicts with the truth about Objectivism. He then engages in a lengthy dialogue with correspondents in the comments section, though he ignores mine. He repeats every conceivable argument for socialism and tyranny one can think of.

Mr. Moran is clearly a Marxist and a collectivist. He makes many false claims about what Ayn Rand allegedly stood for, such as that she “exhibits a worship of … corporations”, “envisions, unregulated corporate capitalism” (as opposed to laissez-faire capitalism), and “glorif[ies] the wealthy and show[s] contempt for the poor”.

Politically, Mr. Moran is an unabashed statist. He advocates pure tyranny, in the form of democracy: “I consider a moral social system to be a system which benefits the majority.” If the majority benefits from the enslavement of a racial minority, as in the pre-Civil War south, that presumably is all right.

At one point, he declares that the “government (i.e. not a dictatorship) as the tool of a society, reserves the right to tax people to fulfill other social needs and goals.” The contradictions in that statement are obvious.

On what basis does government have a “right” to redistribute anyone’s property and earnings to others? What about the rights of the individual victims of government confiscation? It’s either/or. Either individuals possess rights that are protected by government, or the government has the “right” to do whatever “society” pleases, at the behest of whatever voting block happens to seize control of the “tool” of state. Either a country is free, it is a dictatorship, or it is an unstable mixture of freedom and dictatorship (a mixed economy).

And in another comment: “If you don’t (sic) want welfare to exist, …the poor will either die or work bad jobs for bad money.” In other words, the “poor” are incapable of improving their own lives in a social setting of individual freedom. So, they must be enslaved to a benevolent socialist dictatorship “where survival and basic goods are guaranteed [by whom?]" so they can achieve “the maximization of creative potential[!]”. This society of slaves, slave masters, and profiteers on slavery represents freedom, and humanitarian concern for the poor! One cannot imagine a more contemptible example of “contempt for the poor”.

Mr. Moran’s comments are full of moral equivocations and relativism, floating abstractions (ideas disconnected from reality), rebellions against nature, anti-concepts, context-dropping, etc., etc., etc. I’ve given just a few examples. Other correspondents have called him on many of his absurdities.

Objectivism, of course, is the only intellectual force that defends both the political and moral rights of the individual to his own life, liberty, property, and pursuit of his own goals, values, and happiness from all human predators.

And this conflicts with the humanitarian spirit! Freedom is Slavery!

Here is my commentary, taking Matt Moran to task on one of his points:

Mike Zemack October 11, 2009 5:19 pm

By focusing in on Ragnar Danneskjold, the pirate character in Atlas Shrugged, Matt Moran reveals himself to be less than honest. He writes:

“Among the more impactful quotes in Atlas is the manifesto of a pirate named Ragner Danneskjold.

“This Dane steals from government ships in order to refund the taxes of wealthy individuals and states.

“Somewhere in one of Rand’s many sanctimonious speeches, Danneskjold steals from the undeserving poor and gives to the deserving rich’ in a sick twist of the Robin Hood story. This is, I kid you not, an action that Objectivism celebrates. Normally I would find it refreshing to listen to someone who thinks Americans are not selfish enough.

“However, I consider Objectivism and other philosophies that glorify the wealthy and show contempt for the poor to be sufficiently dangerous to warrant constant opposition.”

Mr. Moran is getting sloppy here. The encounter between Danneskjold and Reardon takes up some 13 pages (572-584, 11th printing, 1957 addition), and nowhere do the words he quotes appear. If he actually read the book (which is doubtful) and wanted to accurately report on the meaning of Danneskjold’s character and purpose, he would have stated the exact quote and the context and full meaning of it. Here is the passage to which he probably refers, which appears “somewhere” on page 576, along with further selected excerpts from Danneskjold’s statement for context and understanding.

“I’m the man … who robs the thieving poor and gives back to the productive rich.

“I have never robbed a private ship and never taken private property. Nor have I ever robbed a military vessel – because the purpose of a military fleet is to protect from violence the citizens who paid for it, which is the proper function of a government. But I have seized every loot-carrier that came within range of my guns, every government relief ship, subsidy ship, loan ship, gift ship, every vessel with a cargo of goods taken by force from some men for the unpaid, unearned benefit of others…

“It is said that [Robin Hood] fought against the looting rulers and returned the loot to those who had been robbed, but that is not the meaning of the legend which has survived. He is remembered, not as a champion of property, but as a champion of need, not as a defender of the robbed, but as a provider of the poor. He is held to be the first man who assumed a halo of virtue by practicing charity with wealth which he did not own, by giving away goods which he had not produced, by making others pay for the luxury of his pity. He is the man who became the symbol of the idea that need, not achievement, is the source of rights, that we don’t have to produce, only to want, that the earned does not belong to us, but the unearned does. He became the justification … for that foulest of creatures – the double-parasite who lives on the sores of the poor and the blood of the rich – whom men have come to regard as a moral ideal.”

If Mr. Moran were to present an accurate portrayal, he would realize that Rand is here upholding justice – that you deserve what you earned but not what you haven’t. Rand condemns not the poor, but the “thieving” poor who exist off of a lifetime of government handouts; not the rich but the productive rich. A full understanding makes it plain that – and this is one of the clear messages of the book – Rand is defending the property of any human being, on any economic level, who earns his own keep – and condemning all moochers, rich as well as poor, such as the wealthy parasites who are the villains in AS.

Rand also does not condemn charity as such, but coercive charity and the phonies – the “double-parasites” – who seek the unearned prestige of practicing “humanitarianism” with other peoples tax money under the “halo of virtue” called altruism. Altruism, as Rand has proven for anyone with the courage and independence to question the accepted “wisdom” of the ages, does not mean benevolence, good will, or true compassion. Instead, it is a moral code that enshrines the unearned as a moral absolute, thus fostering envy, the entitlement mentality, resentment of achievement, and predatory collectivism – cancers that are slowly consuming this country.

Mr. Moran’s article is riddled with inaccuracies and irrelevancies, belying his statement that “I have, to date, tortured my eyes with Atlas Shrugged, the Fountainhead, Anthem, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal and The Virtue of Selfishness.” I have addressed one of them. There’s nothing wrong with criticism, of course. Unfortunately, his criticism of Rand comes at us not from a standpoint of understanding, but from a somewhat Marxist narrative.

Objectivism stands up for every individual person’s right to his own life (rational selfishness), not the right to prey on others for his own ends. It is, first and foremost, a comprehensive set of philosophical principles to guide the individual in his personal endeavors and in his relationships with others. As such, Objectivism provides a moral defense of individualism, capitalism, and America’s founding ideals as laid down in the Declaration of Independence. Ayn Rand is, I firmly believe, America’s last Founding Father because of her philosophic achievement. I urge everyone to study Objectivism and decide for himself. I’m confident that he will learn that Objectivism is a truly humanitarian philosophy.

Lessons of 1929

2009-10-29T17:10:00.000-07:00

The New Jersey Star-Ledger has posted an editorial on 10/29/09, entitled Stock market crash anniversary: Lessons unlearned. They wrote:

"In the years that followed [1929], economists, politicians and Wall Street’s overpaid optimists assured one and all they’d learned from the orgy of greed and excess. It wouldn’t happen again. The Feds had saved the system and put new regulations in place to prevent a repeat. Trust us, they said. And in our ignorance, we did.

"Over time, the lessons of 1929 were made to seem irrelevant and outdated, especially in the go-go economic climate of the 1980s. Layer by layer, 1930s regulations were stripped away. Under pressure from Wall Street, free-market fundamentalists and their acolytes in the press, deregulation was promoted and accepted — by Democrats as well as Republicans — as vital in the emerging global economy.

"The 1929-2009 parallels don’t end there. Post-1929 Wall Street’s leaders fought regulation fiercely; likewise their current-day descendants. Whether it’s regulation of derivatives (the value of which few buyers or sellers understood), higher bank capital requirements, or protection for consumers, Wall Street’s current captains of capitalism are against it.

"Will they win Congress to their side? When have they not? There’s much talk of the need to tighten the reins on Wall Street, especially the trading of billlions [sic] in securities backed by such uncertain assets as mortgages and credit card debt. But legislation remains stalled.

"In this country, Paul Volker has sounded the "too-big" warning. And he’s called for reinstating Glass-Steagall. Volker’s the guy who broke the 1980-81 inflationary recession and set the stage for a generation-long economic expansion.

"Maybe we should listen. Beats laying another egg."

Here is my commentary:

Posted by zemack
October 29, 2009, 8:09PM

Substitute the words “Wall Street” with the name of any ethnic group, and the injustice and bigotry implied in the use of that scapegoat become obvious. Throw in the undefinablely vague bogeymen “greed and excess”, and you’ve got the classic one-two punch beloved of all statists. That’s all they need to whitewash the real causes of the litany of economic catastrophes listed by the Editors.

The Fed’s excess money and credit expansion and then contraction fueled the stock market bubble and crash of the late 1920s. The crash, however, did not cause the depression. The market began to recover almost immediately, just like after the much larger 1987 crash. But unlike 1987, the rally ensued until mid-1930 when the Smoot-Hawley tariff act, the first of a series of disastrous government attempts to “save” the economy, was enacted. As the farm economy subsequently contracted, bank after bank collapsed under the weight of anti-branching, anti-diversification rules and other incompetent banking regulations. The Fed-engineered 30% shrinking of the money supply, massive “public works” projects that further drained capital from the economy, massive tax hikes, etc., etc., etc, crushed the economy. The Hoover-Roosevelt Depression was on. The power-hungry, mad economic scientists of the FDR administration, building on the policy foundation of the statist Herbert Hoover, then embarked upon a crippling array of actions that stretched the depression right through the end of WW II. If ever there could be proof of the failure of government economic intervention, this period of American history is the poster child.

But as the Editors say, we haven’t learned much. The S&L fiasco was brought on by the grossly misnamed Federal Deposit “Insurance” Corporation, a socialist-like scheme that promotes risky bank lending while draining responsible banks, their depositors, and taxpayers who bail them out (the so-called privatization of profits and the socialization of losses).

The current crisis is unequivocally “made in Washington”. Deregulation? Who controls money, the raw material of the banking industry? Who sets reserve requirements, interest rates, accounting standards, and every other conceivable aspect of finance? Exactly what regulatory authority did the government rescind during the alleged “deregulation” wave of the past quarter century? Repeal of Glass-Steagall is the only thing the Editors can point to, and it was not even culpable in the meltdown. Regulation actually increased on the banks (remember Sarbanes-Oxley?).

“Captains of capitalism”? Where does anyone see capitalism? The financial sector is the most heavily regulated American industry, operating under the thumb of a central bank money monopoly. The fed, in fact, is once again the prime culprit. Led by a central planning statist masquerading as a “free market fundamentalist”, the Fed pursued extraordinarily easy money policies without which the basic cause of the recession, the housing bubble, couldn’t have happened. As always, excessive risk-taking is merely a consequence of incompetent Federal Reserve policy. Fannie & Freddie, the FDIC, the CRA, the government’s very own “Too big to fail” policies, and the Clinton/Bush affordable housing crusades, among other things, did the rest.

As to Paul Volcker, I disagree on reinstatement of Glass-Steagall. The diversification enabled by its repeal fosters stronger institutions. What should be repealed is the government’s bailout addiction, which encourages to big to fail “mastodons of the market [like] JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs…” As to Volcker being “the guy who broke the 1980-81 inflationary recession and set the stage for a generation-long economic expansion”, the Editors conveniently forget that he caved in to election year pressure from the Carter administration in the spring of 1980, abruptly reversing course and setting the stage for an even worse “second dip” in the recession. As BanditGuy points out, it was President Reagan who gave Volcker political cover to return to some semblance of sound monetary policy, at great political cost to himself.

Some vague notions of “Wall Street” and “greed” are all the Star-Ledger editors have to hang their hats on. Everywhere one looks, one sees the hand of government intervention making a mockery of free markets. The real lessons of the past century are a history of catastrophic government policies creating economic havoc, with freedom and capitalism getting the blame, leading to more government controls, and so on. The current Washington assault on individual rights, the constitution, the rule of law, and the remnants of free markets is a continuation of the same disastrous trend, “on steroids”.

Gov. Mark Sanford on Atlas Shrugged

2009-10-25T12:20:00.000-07:00

Here is a review of Anne Heller's Ayn Rand and the World She Made, by South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford. Entitled Atlas Hugged, Mr. Sanford's essay attempts to portray Atlas Shrugged positively but he exhibits quite a bit of ignorance in regards to the book and Ayn Rand's philosophy. He also challenges Rand in the area of ethics.

I have taken him to task on a few important points.

My commentary:

Rand’s belief in the “perfectibility” of man is based upon the rejection of the dominant moral code of history, and the discovery of the proper ethics consistent with man’s nature and the metaphysical facts of reality. Altruism enshrines the unearned, both in matter and in spirit, as a moral absolute. As long as self-sacrifice was held to be the ideal, man was destined to be seen as flawed and possessing original sin, because the code of self-sacrifice is inimical to life that must constantly be broken if one is to flourish. Rand did not believe men are infallible, but capable nonetheless of heroic accomplishments on any level of ability. She posited rational self-interest as the proper code to live by, thus freeing people to pursue a life of personal achievement, fulfillment, and happiness, within the context of mutual respect for each other and a peaceful and benevolent coexistence. What the past 10,000 years has proven is that mankind’s “flaw” was in his predatory moral code, not in his nature. This is an essential ethical message in Rand’s novels, which Mr. Sanford misses or ignores.

Galt's hidden valley is not “a perfect society”, but a private, voluntary association of people. It in no way means an advocacy of anarchy. Rand considered government to be a vital institution and a necessary good, without which brutality would reign, provided that it is constitutionally limited to the protection of individual rights.

Objectivism is primarily a philosophy of reason, and so naturally rejects faith (defined as the acceptance of ideas or beliefs without any evidence). But as a long time admirer and student of Ayn Rand - and as an Objectivist husband, father, and grandfather who lives by that philosophy – I can most emphatically say that in no way does Objectivism preclude grace, love or (voluntary) social compact. When people are free – and only when people are free – these values do not conflict with the individual’s pursuit of happiness, and are in fact a part of it.

These are just a few of the errors in this review. Though Mr. Sanford gets some things right, he does not seem very knowledgeable about Ayn Rand or Objectivism. I don’t know what this says about the books that he is reviewing here, since I have not read them myself. But I’d suggest that anyone interested in learning should read and study her novels and non-fiction works and judge for himself (which requires independent thinking, a cardinal virtue in the Objectivist ethical system).

Star-Ledger: Rein in Big Business

2009-10-20T15:59:00.000-07:00

The NJ Star-Ledger's 10/20/09 editorial, Wall Street: Rein in Big Business, is mostly a rehash of the usual myths about the finacial crisi, with an interesting twist which I called them on. For a related article, click here

Comment by others:

"None of the investment scams could have occurred without the explicit lies made by Stand & Poors, Fitch and Moody's. The overvalued EVERYTHING for payola...lots of loot.

These ratings agencies have gotten off scotfree and still value investment instruments, perhaps honestly now, who knows? Both Bush and Obama have looked the other way, setting the stage for a repeat scam at every tranche level."

My response to this correspondent:

Posted by zemack
October 20, 2009, 5:03PM

Golumba;

The three rating agencies are a government-protected cartel, licensed by the SEC, and essentially protected from competition. In addition, many of their customers are delivered to them by government coercion, in the form of requirements that banks, insurance companies, money market funds, and other financial firms get ratings for their debt securities only from ... you guessed it ... SEC licensed rating companies.

Everywhere one looks, one sees the hand of government intervention behind the financial crisis.

My commentary to the Editorial:

Posted by zemack

October 20, 2009, 8:50PM
The Editors claim that:

“Washington has been steadily stripping the system of any real regulation for the last 25 years..."

Just two paragraphs later, they state that:

“The argument that more government involvement is a step toward socialism ludicrously ignores the fact that we’re already more than half way there…”

The Editors apparently think that nobody pays attention to what they say and that they can get away with so blatant a contradiction. The first statement is utterly false. Apart from some minor tinkering with certain rules, exactly what regulatory powers did government actually relinquish? Glass-Steagall was not a regulatory rule, but a bad law whose repeal had nothing to do with the meltdown, which was caused by the Fed-Fannie/Freddie-FDIC-CRA induced subprime mortgage and housing bubbles. Government regulation actually expanded over the past 25 years, as witness Sarbanes-Oxley, the massive 2002 expansion of government interference that punished the thousands of innocent companies that didn’t cook the books, in retaliation for the few that did (and which were prosecuted under previously existing laws). Accounting rules spawned by Sarbanes-Oxley (so-called “mark-to-market”) were another in a series of government culprits. The repeal of Glass-Steagall was a positive that helped several firms weather the crisis by allowing for diversification.

The second statement is all-too-true. But the Editors don’t draw the obvious conclusion. Instead, they clamor for more government control to rectify the damage caused by government itself. This is the pattern by which totalitarian socialism is being smuggled into a once-free America. This road is being paved by the alleged goal of “protecting” the “consumer”, a privileged class that somehow exists separate and apart from producers and being incapable of entering freely into voluntary contractual agreements with the sellers of financial products. And this “protection” is being financed by the “generosity” of another distinct group called “taxpayers”, who are being forced to fund the steady destruction of their own freedom.

No, Washington is not “Moscow in 1917” and Lenin has not “just pulled into Union Station”. But the direction in which this country is headed is no less ominous. The Washington attacks on the health insurers, major news networks, and “Wall Street” fit a familiar pattern. Every advancing dictatorship seeks to shield its power-grabbing designs by demonizing some group of private citizens as enemies of the state (a term not in use, yet). In Russia, the enemy was the bourgeoisie. In Germany it was the Jews. In America today, it is businessmen, whose legitimate lobbying efforts, a normal activity in a mixed economy, are termed “sabotage”.

What must be “reined in” is government power. We must stop rewarding the mounting failures of the regulatory state with still more regulatory powers. The “failure in the current crisis” of the Federal Reserve, the Federal Trade Commission, and the grossly misnamed Federal Deposit “Insurance” Corp. does not, as the Editors claim, “only strengthen the case for tougher regulation”. These failures argue instead for their abolition, and a systematic return to individual rights, limited rights-protecting republican government, and their corollary free market capitalism, before it is too late.

More on Obama's Nobel

2009-10-10T18:31:00.000-07:00

President Obama on the Nobel Peace Prize fast-track

The NJ Star-Ledger joined the chorus of voices fumbling to find the words to justify the ridiculus awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama.

I've left the following comments on their editorial. For more, see my full post at Principled Perspectives:

“So the prize is a symbol, awarded in this case to someone who represents the hopes of that handful of idealists in Oslo.”

So say the Editors.

It’s comical listening to the chorus of voices fumbling for the words to justify this embarrassing decision by the politically and ideologically corrupt Norwegian Nobel Committee “Peace” cabal. Their gibberish about “an early vote of confidence intended to build global support for the policies of his young administration” and “the change in global mood wrought by Obama's calls for peace and cooperation” and “pledges to reduce the world stock of nuclear arms, ease U.S. conflicts with Muslim nations and strengthen its role in combating climate change” just doesn’t quite cut it, even for this sorry crowd.

As the Star-Ledger readily admits, Obama was awarded this Prize for absolutely no concrete reason whatsoever! Something just doesn’t add up. The committee’s real motivation may have something to do with the shadow of an American political giant whose absence on the list of winners looms over their credibility like a giant storm cloud.

What could be the reason for this rush job? There is a critical anniversary coming up on November 9th of this year. This is the clue that makes it all logical.

Though a mixed bag politically and philosophically, Ronald Reagan got
at least one big thing right. He recognized that the Soviet Communist
Empire was an economic and ideological house of cards propped up by
the West. Only a very small handful of others believed that, including
Ayn Rand and Richard Pipes. Against almost universal opposition,
Reagan acted. He removed the moral sanction of our détente and
“peaceful coexistence” strategies by declaring the Soviets an Evil
Empire. Opposition dissidents behind the Iron Curtain were electrified
into action.

Then, as Margaret Thatcher recounted in her Reagan funeral eulogy;

“So the President resisted Soviet expansion and pressed down on Soviet weakness at every point until the day came when communism began to collapse beneath the combined weight of these pressures and its own failures.”

With continued Western economic support and moral sanction, the Evil
Empire could have survived for another generation or more, possibly
with cataclysmic consequences for America and the world. Instead, the ever-present threat of nuclear war was removed, and a billion people were freed … virtually without firing a shot.

It is my belief that the premature awarding of the Prize to Obama is an attempt to blunt the coming renewed recognition of Reagan’s indisputable achievement with the arrival next month of the 20th anniversary of the crumbling of the Berlin Wall – the symbol of the collapse of totalitarian communism.

But whatever the reason, unless and until it is awarded (posthumously) to
Ronald Reagan (jointly, perhaps, with Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II), the Nobel Peace Prize will remain a sham and a moral abomination.

I also gave a pat on the back to wdillon for his post.

Obama the "Moderate"?

2009-10-07T16:48:00.000-07:00

After documenting numerous instances of the Left's supposed disenfranchisement with President Obama, the New Jersey Star-Ledger came to the following startling conclusion in its 10/7/09 editorial, entitled President Obama disappoints the left:

"Is this really the guy liberals voted for? Well, yes. The Democratic left idealized Obama as one of their own during the election campaign and made him the repository of the all liberal goals in limbo during the Bush and even Clinton years.

"But had they looked more closely at Obama’s record in the Illinois Senate — his litany of "present" votes on tough issues, for example — they’d have sensed that, down deep, Obama’s a fervent moderate."

I posted the following comments:

Obama a moderate? I’m tempted to exclaim: “You’ve got to be kidding!” Unfortunately, the Star-Ledger is not that far off of the mark, but only in the political sense. Ideologically, Obama is very far to the left of the “middle”. The fact that a major news outlet can seriously claim that a socialist can be an American moderate is simply an indication of just how far we have drifted toward statism in this country.

This column presented a good example of this on 9/23/09 in its support of Obama’s government takeover of the student loan market (Better Student Loans), a blatant federal power grab over higher education. The justification? The problems in the government’s very own subsidized student loan program. The editors presented Obama’s action to be the only alternative to the status quo, thus whitewashing the only real alternative to total government control – eliminating the student loan program and reestablishment of a free education credit market. Instead, the choice is between two variants of statism … government control through private banking proxies, or direct government control.

There is no debate about the morality or practicality of government-subsidized student lending, no examination of the role of government in creating the problems cited by the Star-Ledger, and no consideration for eliminating the problems caused by government by eliminating the government student loan program.

The same pattern is seen with regard to healthcare and the financial crises. In each case, massive government interference caused the problems, and increased government control is seen as the solution. The moderate “middle” has shifted so far to the Left that the political debate now revolves around how much socialism to accept now and how fast we get to full socialism. I submit in evidence the perverse political spectacle of the republicans now defending Medicare against democrat attempts to trim it (Steele’s "seniors' health care bill of rights"). Obama’s “moderation” serves his purposes well. He merely entertains all competing "alternatives", so long as they represent different paths to his central planning utopia.

Once you throw individual rights, limited rights-protecting constitutional republican government, and free market capitalism into the national debate … America’s founding ideals, the only actual alternative to statism … you expose Obama as the rabid far-Left statist that he really is.

Doctor For Single-Payer - Why?

2009-09-18T12:37:00.000-07:00

This letter-to-the-editor appeared in the New Jersey Star-Ledger Reader Forum of 9/18/09.

Single pay is the way

I am deeply disgusted by the health-care debate. Single-payer health care is the only good solution. I am treating more and more patients for free, as they lost their jobs and health insurance. But this is not a long-term solution. The U.S. is destroying itself by not passing single payer -- and it well deserves it.

Judith Simon, M.D., Millburn

Here is my commentary, which is essentially repeated from my post of 4/17/09:

Posted by Zemack on 09/18/09 at 4:22PM

As a lay person, I have wondered about doctors who support some form of socialized medicine, such as the single payer system advocated by Dr. Judith Simon of Millburn. What would make a doctor want to sacrifice control of his/her career, judgement, and profession to the dictates of government bureaucrats wielding arbitrary powers? And make no mistake. We are talking here about a healthcare dictatorship. There is no getting around the fact that government is force, and nothing else. And when the government pays, the government sets the terms.

I suppose doctors that support socialized medicine have varied reasons for doing so...some innocent, some not. Here are a few of my suppositions.

Perhaps some doctors do not understand the free market alternative to our current system, and see total government control as an undesirable but necessary evil.

Perhaps some may want to take the intellectually lazy career path and avoid the rigors of the free market. They would rather come to work every day, picking canned, off-the-bureaucratic-shelf solutions to their patients' healthcare problems in exchange for some guaranteed unit price from a central governmental authority. (This is what philosopher Leonard Peikoff identified as the "new bureaucratic doctors" practicing "assembly-line medicine". See his essay "Medicine, The Death of a Profession" in the book, The Voice of Reason, page 299).

Some may not like having to deal with patients who want to exercise their right to act upon their own judgement by demanding, say, some test or prescription drug that the doctor may not think is warranted. They would rather deny him that right by imposing the "rational" dictates of some unknown central planner.

Much of the medical profession, I suppose, sees a government-run health care dictatorship as inevitable, and believes that the "practical" course is to make a deal with the devil at the expense of their professional integrity.

Some may be motivated by a desire to help those who cannot afford adequate healthcare, but would rather avoid the responsibility of deciding when, how, and in what capacity to extend charitable care to their indigent patients...by forcing others to foot the bill for their compassion through taxes.

There are also undoubtedly many doctors who are egalitarian ideologues who don't like the fact that some people can afford to pay their own way and some cannot, and thus seek to impose "social justice" at the expense of actual justice.

Whatever their reasons, doctors who support state-run medicine should all recognize that by betraying their own freedom of judgement, careers, professional integrity, and rights, they are also selling out the rest of America...especially America's best blood. Those of us who do not want to trade our independence and freedom for a free appendectomy or cholesterol pill will also be victims.

Obama's 2009 School Speech - and Ayn Rand

2009-09-08T17:35:00.000-07:00

Barack Obama's Education Speech: The Not-At-All Socialist Indoctrination, by Michael Scherer, Time

"At this point, most of the noise about Barack Obama wanting to indoctrinate school children in a back-to-school speech has mostly faded from view. Newt Gingrich has repudiated it. Historians (and White House aides) have pointed out that past Republican presidents--George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan--delivered the same sorts of messages. Some of those Republican leaders who made a stink over the President's plan--like Florida GOP chair Jim Greer--are getting a Labor Day grilling from their local press. [UPDATE: Greer now says, "It's a good speech."]

"Rather than any lefty, neo-socialist, communitarian brainwashing, President Obama's speech to your kids reads like a paean to individual striving and free market capitalism, the sort of thing that Ayn Rand and Barry Goldwater might have signed onto. At root, Obama's message is one of individual responsibility, a disquisition on the freedom of American youth to fail or succeed on their own tenacity and merits."

It looks like some conservatives have been snookered by this philosophically astute president. For my complete take on Obama's speech, click here

My Commentary:

President Obama gives some good practical advice. The problem is not in the “what”, but in the “what for?” Buried in the platitudes is the real message:

“And this isn't just important for your own life and your own future. What you make of your education will decide nothing less than the future of this country. What you're learning in school today will determine whether we as a nation can meet our greatest challenges in the future.

“You'll need the knowledge and problem-solving skills you learn in science and math to cure diseases like cancer and AIDS, and to develop new energy technologies and protect our environment. You'll need the insights and critical thinking skills you gain in history and social studies to fight poverty and homelessness, crime and discrimination, and make our nation more fair and more free. You'll need the creativity and ingenuity you develop in all your classes to build new companies that will create new jobs and boost our economy.

“We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. If you don't do that – if you quit on school – you're not just quitting on yourself, you're quitting on your country.”

There isn't a dictator that ever walked the face of the earth that wouldn't laud those words. The collectivist overtones are unmistakable. The president's message is fundamentally anti-American, running completely contrary to the individualist premise that this country was founded upon, and that unleashed the reason-driven, entrepreneurial energy of free people pursuing their own goals for the sake of their own happiness and their own lives as an end in themselves ... the energy that resulted in the astounding general rise in the standard and quality of living.

The president's purpose is not to advance his political agenda, per se. It is to establish the necessary prerequisite ideas for his (and any future socialist's) agenda, the servile population. Any leader attempting to inculcate in the young the sense of duty and service is a leader who wants and intends to rule their lives. The danger in Obama's message is clear to anyone who understands the power of ideas. Individualism leads to the United States of America. Collectivism leads to Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia or any number of stagnant, poverty-ridden tribal societies – or to a socialist America.

As for who on the Right would applaud this speech, I don't know about Goldwater. Many conservatives uphold the altruist/service-to-the-country doctrine. But Ayn Rand championed the supreme value and rights of the individual to the pursuit of his own happiness, and a government as protector of those rights, not government as master. She would not have approved of Obama's message.

Other's comments:

As we all know, President Reagan also gave a speech to students in 1988. The full text can be found on this link:

http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/archives/speeches/1988/111488c.htm

At one point, referring to a painting of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, he mentions how there are some figures whose faces have not been filled in, they are only outlines. He goes on to say: "America is not yet complete, and it's up to each one of us to help complete it. And each one of you can place yourself in that painting. You can become one of the those immortal figures by helping to build and renew America."

Isn't this the same overall idea of helping our country as used by Obama in his speech? Mike, you need to use the same rod to measure both Obama's and Reagan's words in order to be fair. If you do, then both Reagan and Obama are anti-American and socialists by your standards. As I see it, their words reflect men concerned with encouraging children to grow as useful citizens, instead of being burdens to society. You dig into Obama's words, unearthing what is not there, to fit your pre-determined agenda.

In 1991, President George HW Bush addressed students at Alice Deal Jr High School. Towards the end he said: "Let me know how you're doing. Write me a letter — and I'm serious about this one — write me a letter about ways you can help us achieve our goals. I think you know the address." Obama tried the same thing this time, ahead of time, and was accused of being manipulative and engaging in government intrusion. (The link below will take you to the full text of President George HW Bush's address.)

http://blogs.erockford.com/applesauce/2009/09/06/heres-text-of-george-hw-bushs-speech-to-schoolchildren-18-years-ago/

Both speeches, Reagan's and Bush's brought controversy, especially President Bush's. The difference is that Bush's controversy, although hysterical at times, happened AFTER the speech. The hysteria over Obama's speech was an orchestrated, planned opposition for the sake of it.

I think that with Obama, a novel is being written where the title was written first, i.e., "Obama: a Socialist, Marxist, Communist, Not to Be Trusted Good-For-Nothing Dictator That Has Ruined Our Nation". The text is being written to fit the title with every word, every gesture, every move Obama makes or does not make. Believe me, the right wing will make sure the text fits that title, even if they have to make up the events, or stretch the truth until it is no longer recognizable. But, if it fits, it will go in. Sad, sad, sad.

My commentary:

48.2

adajam;

“You dig into Obama's words, unearthing what is not there, to fit your pre-determined agenda.”

I don't know what you think my “agenda” is, but let me say this. I give him more respect than you do. I take him at his word. President Obama and I have something important in common – philosophical astuteness. We are, however, on the opposite ends of the basic philosophical battleground – collectivism vs, individualism. Let me put it another way.

He speaks of “the country” and “the economy” as though they are mystical entities separate and distinct from the individual human beings that make it up. This is classic. They are to be the purpose and the focus to which the president urges the young “to set your own goals for your education”. But what are the “country” or the “economy” except the sum of the individual interests and efforts of its individual members? A pro-American message would be that the children's' own individual good, and only their own individual good, is the purpose of their education. When you focus on your own life as the purpose and end of your own actions – to make your own life the best and most fulfilling it can be by your own efforts for your own sake – it is the betterment of the country and the economy that you accomplish. That is because you are the country. You are the economy, just as is every other individual that comprises it.

Yet, in true collectivist form, the President attempts to inculcate in the young the sense of duty and service and a sense of smallness next to a cause larger than oneself – in this case, the “country” and the “economy”. (In fairness, so did McCain, whom I didn't vote for either.) Just for the record, I do not say he is a Nazi or a Communist. He is, however, a socialist. His operation tactic is to bring socialism through the back door of fascism. This is a decades long trend, which follows the bipartisan path from Wilson to FDR to Kennedy to Nixon to GW Bush. America is being pushed toward its own brand of national socialism, a “soft” tyranny without the brutality of the German Nazis.

Obama is not unique. Collectivism permeates both major parties to varying degrees. The collectivist mindset has been seeping into American culture for the past century or so, gradually supplanting the revolutionary individualist enlightenment premise of the Founding. It seeps into your own comments, with phrases like “overall idea of helping our country” and “encouraging children to grow as useful citizens” (“useful”, to whom?). It even creeps into Reagan's rhetoric. This is a very dangerous development, in my view. Ideas move history. Pretending that Obama didn't say what he said, or that he doesn't know what he is saying, does not change the facts of reality. He delivered a collectivist message. Collectivism is the philosophical root of all variants of socialism.

“The text”, you say, “is being written to fit the title with every word, every gesture, every move Obama makes or does not make.” Yes, the text is being written - by Obama himself. Collectivism threads through all of his rhetoric … and his policies. The president knows precisely what he is saying, and into what he wants to “re-make” the country. So do I.

The Primitive Soul of a Socialist

2009-09-08T11:42:00.000-07:00

The following letter appeared in the Reader's Forum of 9/8/09 NJ Star-Ledger.

Primitive health care

As a species, we seem to believe we are highly evolved. But when I take a closer look, it becomes quite obvious we are really still very primitive because we labor under layers of illusions that allow us to severely mistreat each other.

A dollar bill is a piece of paper, nothing more and nothing less. We allow ourselves to believe a piece of paper with "one hundred" printed on it is more valuable than a piece of paper with "one."

We are smart enough to realize that money is only paper, yet we are willing to allow millions of our fellow humans to live without access to a primary care doctor simply because they lack the proper number of pieces of paper.

Pain and disease is true reality, the need to have constant access to a caring doctor is true reality. Holding back health care from people because they don't have enough paper is an illusion that only a primitive group would allow. We must strive to evolve to the point that everyone has access to care regardless of how much paper they possess.

Perry Leandro, Cranbury

My Commentary:

Posted by Zemack on 09/08/09 at 4:50PM

Perry Leandro of Cranbury writes:

"A dollar bill is a piece of paper, nothing more and nothing less."

Then why do you receive those pieces of paper in exchange for the real products and services your productive work provides for others? And why can you then exchange those pieces of paper for real products and services you need and want, but that are produced by still others?

A civilized man sees money as a noble medium that stands for something - wealth that has been produced by human beings and made available to other human beings through the voluntary mutually advantageous transaction called trade. By making it possible to work for one person and purchase the work of another, the discovery of money led to the division-of-labor market economy that in turn made possible the huge advance from the primitive witch doctor to modern medicine.

A savage sees only that "A dollar bill is a piece of paper, nothing more and nothing less."

Perry Leandro says:

"Holding back health care from people because they don't have enough paper is an illusion that only a primitive group would allow."

There is nothing illusory about earning your own keep. As every civilized man knows, if you can't afford the price of another man's labor, you basically have only three moral choices - increase your earnings so you can afford it, rely on voluntary private charity, or do without. No one else is obligated to provide you with the necessities of life. As every civilized man knows, all wealth is produced and belongs to the individual human beings that earned it, not the primitive tribe. As every civilized man knows, you cannot consume that which you have not produced, nor consume more than you have produced (earned). And above all, you cannot acquire what others have produced except by voluntary, uncoerced means.

A savage sees providing for his own needs by his own efforts ... earning "enough paper" ... as an "illusion". A savage sees human evolution as returning to the brute force rule of the jungle or the cave dweller, where need is a license to steal rather than a spur to productive work - where "everyone has access to care regardless of how much paper they possess."

A savage sees an ant colony, not a human civilization that has discovered the capitalist market economy governed by the justice of voluntary production and trade, the principle of individual rights, and the nobility and vital necessity of money (which should be gold or gold-backed). A savage sees a primitive tribe that can confiscate and redistribute the property of its members at will, rather than a benevolent, non-coercive association of free individuals whose property is protected by a government of laws and not of looters.

The current healthcare debate reveals that we still have a lot of mental savages among us who long for the primitive world of witch doctors and the rule of the jungle. I'm sure that Perry Leandro is not one of them, just an uninformed soul who needs to grasp the primordial implications of what he is saying.

*For a comprehensive explanation on the moral and practical importance of money, read Francisco's "Money Speech" from Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged.

Rationing - Canadian vs. American Style

2009-08-31T16:42:00.000-07:00

We Ration. We Ration. We Ration. We Ration.

My Commentary:

Posted by: Zemack | August 31, 2009 8:45 PM

Mr. Klein's line of reasoning fails to distinguish between earning one’s keep and getting something for nothing, between government force and voluntary trade. As any honest man knows, one cannot consume what one has not produced. As any honest man knows, one can morally consume what another has produced only after acquiring it by voluntary means…by trade or private charity. As any honest man ultimately knows, one cannot consume in excess of what one earns.

Being unable to afford the price of what someone else produces is not rationing, despite the fact that that term is sometimes used in reference to the laws of economics. Your money represents the value that you have created for someone else through your productive work ... be it a product, service, your labor, or what have you ... in a voluntary trade. You then use your money to purchase the healthcare you need in the same manner … by voluntary trade, on mutually agreed terms, to mutual benefit. If no voluntary agreement is reached, no trade takes place. The fact that one person can’t pay for a medical procedure, while another can (whether in cash or some other means such as a prior contractual agreement like insurance), is not rationing. Nor is it unfair in any way. In a health care free market - which America’s semi-socialist, semi-fascist, government-controlled system is not - physical force is absent.

Government is a unique institution, possessing a legal monopoly on the use of physical force. When government runs healthcare, it must necessarily use its coercive powers to dictate who gets what healthcare when, because when government pays, government sets the terms. The winners are the moochers, the losers are the self-supporting. The essence of government rationing is to forcibly deny health care to those who have earned it, for the sake of those who haven't. The essence of market "rationing" is justice ... each person must earn his health care, by his own effort, in voluntary trade with providers. To advocate the former over the latter is a moral perversion. But then, socialism in all of its collectivist forms is a moral perversion.

Rationing is government distribution of goods and services, as in both World Wars. It is force, and nothing else. There is no coercive central distributive authority outside of government (or government controlled quasi-private insurance giants), only millions of individuals producing and trading by mutual consent. But however one chooses to define rationing, the choice is stark. The choice is voluntary human association or brute bureaucratic state force; earned wealth or the unearned; market justice or "social justice"; the risk of going without or government dependence; the dollar or the gun; freedom or slavery.

Missing the Real Alternative In the Health Care Debate

2009-08-29T18:56:00.000-07:00

In an 8/29/09 editorial, the New Jersey Star-Ledger discusses a growing practice called "medical tourism. In this piece, entitled Seeking affordable health care overseas, the Ledger also exposes the fraudulant choice being presented to the American people.

My Commentary:

Posted by Zemack on 08/29/09 at 10:22PM

Also called "medical tourism", the Star-Ledger hints at what free markets create - competitive conditions under which "patients can receive quality care at lower costs". But the editors don't draw the obvious lesson from their own observations. Instead, the Ledger exposes a gross fraud being put over on the American people by the Left during this health care debate...that the only choice we face is between the status quo and complete socialized medicine. What's missing from this false choice is the third option - the only real antipode to the two choices cited above - a free market in health care. In this, the Left is all too often aided and abetted by conservatives and Republicans who, as the editors point out, merely defend "the world's greatest health system."

Ours does have its strengths. It is still the freest, making America the engine of innovation. If it weren't for America's market, cutting edge medical technology research would dry up, both here and abroad.

But the fact is, our "sick" American health care system is a government created monstrosity. Nearly 50% of healthcare spending is by government, through programs like Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, and a host of smaller state-level carbon copies...socialism. Nearly 40% of the spending is through the allegedly "free" part - the quasi-private, government created, government regulated, and government protected cartel of health insurance companies. The third-party-payer system and the state-imposed trade barriers protect them from nationwide competition as well as the necessity of having to compete directly for the consumer's business. Hundreds of government-imposed insurance mandates (nearly 2000 nationwide, from community rating to guaranteed issue to benefit) have turned "insurance" policies into pre-paid wealth redistribution schemes. Our government-crippled insurance market has turned private insurers into conduits for government coercion. This is not indicative of a free market, but is in the nature of fascism...i.e., socialism through the back door. This double-barreled government assault on medicine creates huge and unnecessary administrative expenses, empowers government and insurance company bureaucrats, disrupts the patient/doctor relationship, drives up costs, disconnects the patient from the providers, etc.

The problems in American medicine have grown in lock step with the growth of government intervention over the past 75 years. Any honest and objective healthcare reform debate must begin with an examination of how we got to this point to begin with. That is not what is happening. Instead, we get defenders of the semi-socialist, semi-fascist, semi-free status quo ... against those advocating more government control and/or outright nationalization masquerading as "reform". We get statists on each side, while the freedom alternative gets no major party sponsorship.

The only real alternative to all of the above is a free market. Instead of everyone being forced to pay for everyone else's healthcare, whether through government-run programs or government-controlled "private" insurers, people should be free to assume responsibility for their own healthcare with their own money. Insurers and providers should be free to compete directly for the consumers' business. A free market leaves patients, providers, consumers, and insurers free to contract voluntarily with each other to mutual advantage, based upon the principle of individual rights, without the kind of massive government coercion noted above. The absence of physical force is the hallmark of a free market. That is what the "free" in free market means. The government's only job, but an important one, is to protect against fraud and breech of contract, and to mediate legitimate contractual disputes.

The natural incentives of a free market ... the consumer seeking good value and the provider seeking expanded sales ... have been proven both in theory and practice to lead to increasing quality and ever-expanding affordability. Health care is more valuable and needed than most other products and services, but it is no different in the most basic fundamental respect ... it is man-made. As such, the same laws of economics apply to medicine as to any other economic sector. Most importantly, a free market is the only moral solution, because it forbids the predatory practice of people seeking to force others to provide for them what they perceive to be their "right" to healthcare. Instead, everyone is guaranteed their unalienable rights to their own life, liberty, and pursuit of their own health care (and happiness).

See also The Henry Ford of Heart Surgery and Open-Heart Surgery--90% off

Individualism, Collectivism, and "the Cause of Waste"

2009-08-25T17:03:00.000-07:00

Amit Ghate has written a terrific piece, Misconstruing the Cause of Waste, which was published on Pajamas Media. He writes:

"Once again, the president has it backwards. But in flouting economics, he reveals his stance on a much deeper issue, one which is determining the fate of the country: individualism vs. collectivism.

"Individualism — the country’s founding idea — holds that each man is a moral end in himself.

"So how does this apply to waste? Waste, by definition, means 'spending to no avail or profit.' But observe that when men are free to pursue their own values, they’re incentivized to act carefully.

"Accordingly, under individualism, waste is minimized by each person, one transaction at a time. Indeed, the 'cost discipline' which free markets are so famous for emerges from this very fact.

"Contrast this to the collectivist approach favored by our current politicians. Under their view, the individual isn’t an end in himself, but merely a cog in the machine, a means to the group’s 'good.'

"The ramifications to waste are threefold. First, by prohibiting certain activities, government eliminates competition...Next, because it can confiscate our money to pay its bills, government has little incentive to control costs...Finally, because the government has usurped their prerogatives, individuals no longer decide what is worthwhile and what isn’t. Government forcibly disconnects the decision of what’s valuable from the people who actually pay for the values."

My Commentary:

32. Mike Zemack:

Amit Ghate has done a terrific job of exploding another of the many fallacious arguments against freedom in medicine. More importantly…and I know I’m not the first to acknowledge this…Mr. Ghate identifies the basic philosophical conflict that will determine the future direction of American healthcare and of America generally. Only capitalism is consonant with the premise that the sovereign individual is the standard of value, because it alone bans predatory force in human relations. All other social systems (including welfare statism and democracy) embody collectivism to some degree, with the rulers as omnipotent representatives of the collective. This cannot be stressed too often or too strongly. Collectivism is tyranny, and the only humane antipode to it is individualism.

I also have to address correspondent #2, Anonymous. His comments bring to mind a passage from Francisco’s “money speech” in Atlas Shrugged:

“Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter.”

Anonymous condemns the money earned by the people who produce the valuable products and services without which there would be no healthcare debate. He demands “government intervention in the health care market” to grab by force for himself the “benefit from the advances in medical technology” so he doesn’t have to “line the pockets of these folks”… the very folks in the “private system that does not value human beings” who produce the goods that can keep Anonymous and his ilk healthy and alive.

Read Francisco’s money speech, then draw your own conclusions about the ethical character of Anonymous.

Also relevant to his comments is Harry Binswanger’s “The Dollar and the Gun”.

Aug 25, 2009 - 4:58 pm

WF's John Mackey on Health Care Reform

2009-08-16T17:00:00.000-07:00

A Wall Street Journal op-ed by Whole Foods CEO John Mackey has ignited quite a “debate” on WF’s website under the heading “Health Care Reform”. I place the term debate in quotation marks because, well, the pro-Obamacare minions have mostly remained true to form…resorting to what my daughter told me is “absolute hatred [that] is sickening”.

What warranted this vitriolic outburst against the man who runs a very successful company that heretofore had been a favorite of what my son-in-law calls the “stereotypical tree-hugger clientele”? Judge for yourself from these brief excerpts:

"While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system. Instead, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction—toward less government control and more individual empowerment. Here are eight reforms that would greatly lower the cost of health care for everyone:"

After detailing the eight free-market reforms he advocates (He does not endorse laissez faire.), he goes on:

"Many promoters of health-care reform believe that people have an intrinsic ethical right to health care—to equal access to doctors, medicines and hospitals.

"Health care is a service that we all need, but just like food and shelter it is best provided through voluntary and mutually beneficial market exchanges. A careful reading of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution will not reveal any intrinsic right to health care, food or shelter. That's because there isn't any. This "right" has never existed in America.

"Rather than increase government spending and control, we need to address the root causes of poor health. This begins with the realization that every American adult is responsible for his or her own health.

"Health-care reform is very important. Whatever reforms are enacted it is essential that they be financially responsible, and that we have the freedom to choose doctors and the health-care services that best suit our own unique set of lifestyle choices. We are all responsible for our own lives and our own health. We should take that responsibility very seriously and use our freedom to make wise lifestyle choices that will protect our health. Doing so will enrich our lives and will help create a vibrant and sustainable American society."

Take responsibility for your own healthcare, and give us some freedom to do so. But you do not have the right to demand that someone else provide it. What can be more American than that? Apparently, there are plenty of people in the country that have no right to call themselves Americans.

Here is my contribution to that “debate”:

Thank you, Mr. Mackey, for advocating real reform, not more of the same old government interference masquerading as "change". The problems in American healthcare have grown in lock step with the growth of government intervention over the past 75 years. Real reform begins by recognizing that fact.

But, especially, thank you for recognizing the core issue, the nature of individual rights.

The fundamental question surrounding the healthcare debate is: Does the individual own his own life based upon the principle of unalienable rights, as the Founders understood? Or is he the property of the state (or "society", as represented by the state), as every dictator in world history preached?

Consider the claim that a manmade product such as healthcare is a right, and what it actually means in practice. If someone requires medical care, then the providers (doctors, nurses, pharmaceutical and device makers, etc.) must be legally obligated (i.e., compelled) to provide their services to that person. Likewise, that person’s neighbor, or the guy 3000 miles away, must be legally obligated to pay for his treatment. In other words, the providers whose skills make medical care possible, as well as those whose taxes pay for it, are serfs.

Rights, properly understood, are guarantees to freedom of action and place no obligation or duty on the individual save one…to respect the same rights of all. The idea of a right to material values such as health care forces an involuntary servitude on others to provide it. Any "right" to products or services that must be produced by others obliterates our actual rights to life, liberty, and property. That is why the alleged "right" to health care requires a government takeover of the medical field…to give the state the power to loot and enslave the productive and self-reliant.

A free market based upon actual individual rights is the only moral solution to our healthcare "crisis".

Thank you again, Mr. Mackey. You have more supporters than you may know!

-Mike Zemack

And here is my rebuttal to a Canadian supporter of Obamacare who thinks he knows what our Founding documents say:

"We are Canadians and are appalled at Mr. Mackey's comments about health care in Canda. Universality of access is a basic tenet of Canada's medicare programme. Moreover, I can't believe that the president of a company that purports to have a social conscience could argue that there is no intrinisic right to health care. The American constitution guarantees the right to life, liberty, and the pusuit of happiness. Ctizens without access to medical care when needed, are deprived of their right to these constitutional guarantees."

Harvey Williams misunderstands America’s founding documents. It is not the Constitution, but the Declaration of Independence that "guarantees the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness". The Constitution enumerates those rights, which are guarantees to freedom of action in pursuit of happiness. There is no right to healthcare, food, or any other product or service that must be provided by others.

The idea of a right to material values such as health care forces an involuntary servitude on others to provide it. Any "right" to products or services that must be produced by others obliterates our actual rights to life, liberty, and property.

Many of us Americans are not so quick to hand over our freedom in healthcare to an elite, politically appointed gaggle of "medical experts" that we don’t know and that don’t know us, in exchange for a "free" appendectomy or cholesterol pill.

Mr. Mackey, by defending individual rights based upon their true, moral meaning, is exhibiting the real nature of a "social conscience".

Steve Forbes Attacks Antitrust

2009-08-11T15:43:00.000-07:00

Steve Forbes has done something that is long overdue. In a Fact and Comment op-ed in his magazine, entitled Who Needs Antitrust? We Don't, Mr. Forbes states:

But Justice busybodying here underscores a fault: Antitrust efforts serve no public good. It's illegal for companies to carve up a market, collude on bids or fix pricing. The supposed threat that antitrust efforts combat is monopoly. Earth to Washington: In free markets monopolies are short-lived. Competition inevitably rises up, and innovators invariably upend the market.

The bottom line: Most of the trustbusters in the Justice Department, not to mention those in the Federal Trade Commission, should be forced to "pursue other opportunities."

I've left the following comments:

Posted by Zemack | 08/11/09 07:23 PM EDT
The antitrust laws are based upon faulty logic, such as the "pure and perfect competition" theory, which has no basis in economic reality. They penalize legitimate market success, engender political interference into private concerns, and leave businessmen defenseless against arbitrary, un-definable terms such as "restraint of trade". They are immoral and unjust. But most importantly, they represent something that is inimical to a supposedly free nation based upon the rule of law. The antitrust laws are non-objective.

Thank you, Mr. Forbes, for this piece. It's long past time for capitalism's advocates to recognize that the antitrust laws do nothing but harm to free markets.

For more on the injustice called Antitrust, see:

The Abolition of Antitrust

Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

A must-read on antitrust

"A nation / One Body" - the Enemy's Decaying Intellectual Corpse

2009-08-08T16:24:00.000-07:00

Subsequent to my comments, another correspondent left this in the Star-Ledger Reader Forum. This discussion was the subject of my post of 8/4/09.

HSR0601 wrote, in part:

"U.S. health care consumers are usually one step removed from the cost because they are covered by employer-provided insurance, which might operate as a formula for a slow pace of transfer, along with the code of mandate.

"All free states as a nation / one body, and a fundamental human right, cover all their people. The debate about a human right, or public policy
in America is puzzling them now."

My commentary:

Posted by Zemack on 08/08/09 at 7:23PM

The fundamental conflict of the health care debate comes down to the age-old battle of collectivism vs. individualism. HSR0601 argues for the collectivist side:

"All free states as a nation / one body, and a fundamental human right, cover all their people."

"Slavery", in other words, "is freedom". The idea that there is a "fundamental human right" to any man-made product such as healthcare depends on the view of human beings as interchangeable cells in some super-organism, or ants in a hill colony, or "a nation / one body". The collectivist notion of "one body" is a floating abstraction with no basis in reality. Any group such as a nation, or society, or the public consists of independent, autonomous, individual human beings...each with his own stomach, heart, goals, values, character, and mind.

Collectivism serves a sinister purpose, though. Consider what the alleged "right" to health care actually means in practice.

If someone requires medical care, then the doctors, nurses, pharmaceutical and device makers, etc., must be legally obligated (i.e., compelled) to provide their services to that person. Likewise, that person's neighbor, or the guy 3000 miles away, must be legally obligated to pay for his treatment. In other words, the providers whose skills make medical care possible, as well as those whose taxes pay for it, are serfs. There is no other way. That is why the alleged "right" to health care requires a government takeover of the medical field...to give the state the power to loot and enslave the people. We would all become both slaves and moochers.

HSR0601s "a nation / one body" argument is a cover to justify...on the altruist grounds that "we are our brothers', and our sisters', keepers", as the president likes to say...the grab for unearned goods and control over other people's lives. Collectivism is the doctrine by, for, and of the parasites and the power-lusters. It's incredible that, after Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, Red China, and all of the lesser variants of collectivism, this idea can still be taken seriously.

We don't need the third-party-payer system, which empowers insurers; or the mandates and interstate trade barriers, which cripple the insurance industry; or Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP, EMTALA, etc, which empower government bureaucrats and enslave all to all. We need to abolish the current semi-socialized, semi-fascist, government regulated system, in favor of the only moral alternative - freedom (the real kind), individual rights, a rights-protecting government, and free markets in medicine.

Title IX and "Federal Financial Assistance"

2009-08-07T17:12:00.000-07:00

The following article, entitled Uneven Playing Fields by H. Clay McEldowney, appeared in the August 6, 2009 Washington Post. Here are a few excerpts:

"With endowments shrinking, donations falling and operating budgets squeezed, colleges and universities face great pressure to cut costs. Athletic departments are an obvious target. But, troublingly, men's sports are disproportionately bearing the brunt.

"From these wrenching choices an equally difficult question arises: Why are more guys being taken off the athletic field while the women mostly play on?

"A big part of the answer is that the federal law governing collegiate athletic opportunity, known as Title IX, is indifferent to economics. Rich schools and poor, large and small, those with high-profile programs or without -- all must abide by the law's strict enforcement regime or face federal investigation, the wrath of trial lawyers or both.

"Congress made Title IX law more than 37 years ago. A lot has changed for men and women on campus since 1972. Most colleges are worrying about how to attract and retain more male students, not the other way around. The law was meant to ensure fairness for both sexes, and that is not what is happening."

I left the following comments:

Zemack wrote:

I agree with Mr. McEldowney's assessment of Title IX. But, leaving aside the immorality of the egalitarian premises underlying Title IX, there is a crucial point being missed here...the ultimate source of the injustice.

The essence of Title IX is as follows:

"No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance."

The key words here are "receiving Federal financial assistance". Virtually every institution of higher learning today receives some amount of government funding, and the tentacles of Federal dollars undoubtedly penetrates deep. But the seldom acknowledged result of government funding of private institutions, organizations, businesses, etc., is the expansion of government power over those entities and thus the lives of private citizens. The inherent dangers of government financing has been dramatically demonstrated in the recent TARP program, which resulted in the exercise by two administrations of dictatorial state powers to fire CEOs, abrogate contracts, overturn well-established objective bankruptcy proceedings and principles to engender political favoritism, the dictation of compensation packages for company executives, and the general escalation of political control over wide swaths of American industry from banking to insurance to automotive.

In view of President Obama’s aggressive plans to establish "universal higher education" through such vehicles as the direct federal takeover of all student loans and the massive expansion of the Pell Grant program, there is an important lesson that should be heeded: both in regards to the issue of Title IX as well as in the broader context of the proper role of government. When the government pays, the government sets the terms. When the tuition of every college entrant is, at least in part, a government check, the resulting political control over higher education will make Title IX look like a spat over t-ball by comparison.

Federal funding of education is an illegitimate abuse of government power. It is immoral because it violates the rights of the citizens who are forced to pay for it through taxation. Mawkish and miss-named catch phrases like "investing in education" notwithstanding, the steadily rising flow of Federal dollars into higher education is a growing danger. In a constitutional republic based upon unalienable individual rights, the government’s proper function is to protect those rights. The use of taxpayer money for the purpose of "Federal financial assistance", and the consequent accompanying compulsory government controls such as Title IX, have no place in a free society.

8/7/2009 8:05:39 PM

Nothing "Vague" About Freedom

2009-08-04T18:09:00.000-07:00

The following letter and comment was published in the Star-Ledger Reader Forum on 8/4/09

Short-sighted opposition

As a patient currently in chemotherapy for an aggressive cancer, I am amazed that some people can be opposed to health care reform that includes a "public plan." Without Medicare -- the government plan that has been in operation for decades, which paid for a necessary surgical biopsy and is now paying for the therapy at the cancer center of my choice -- I would probably be destitute soon if I had to rely only on the private plan whose premiums I paid all these years.

I'm surely not alone. Anyone over 65 who has unfortunately needed health care has almost certainly blessed their access to insurance support from this "public plan." The opposition of younger people, who can safely bet they will be older someday, seems to me curiously short-sighted.

In my view, the most reasonable and effective government insurance program would be a carefully thought-out single-payer plan, which, during these long months of hearings, has been kept off the table by big insurance and big drug companies whose profits leave them lots of money to pay lots of lobbyists.

Those who complain about a vaguely defined loss of freedom under government regulation might reflect that without a public plan, the American public will be free to get very sick indeed.

Alice Mariani, Hillsborough

Posted by patriots4u on 08/04/09 at 9:34AM

Alice Mariani, Hillsborough wrote:
Those who complain about a vaguely defined loss of freedom under government regulation might reflect that without a public plan, the American public will be free to get very sick indeed.

It is not vaguely defined in the text of the bill itself. Yes, the bill is difficult to read, but after taking some time and going through the first 100 pages or so already, I'm finding some disturbing things.

There is a section (pg 16) on Protecting Choice, but it clearly defines that after the bill goes into affect you cannot change or re-enroll in your current coverage. How ironic.

There is a section (pg 50) on Prohibiting Discrimination in Health Care, that first states "EXCEPT as otherwise explicitly permitted by this Act...".
So the Government is free to discriminate, but the rest of us aren't.

Here is another section that blatantly states if the bill is found to be Unconstitutional, too bad.
pg 53 - SEC. 155. SEVERABILITY.
"If any provision of this Act, or any application of such provision to any person or circumstance, is held to be unconstitutional, the remainder of the provisions of this Act and the application of the provision to any other person or circumstance shall NOT be affected.

Try reading the bill, and let me know if your opinion still stands.

My Commentary:

Posted by Zemack on 08/04/09 at 9:08PM

patriots4u is right to be concerned about the effects this bill will have on our freedom. Alice Mariani calls these kinds of objections "a vaguely defined loss of freedom under government regulation". So, let's clear up the "vagueness" by defining our terms.

Freedom means only one thing - unalienable individual rights. As the Declaration of Independence states, we are all endowed equally with these rights. Importantly, rights are guarantees to freedom of action within a social context...such as the rights to speech, religious practice, and the earning of property through productive work and voluntary, mutually beneficial trade. A right is not an automatic claim on the products, services, earnings, skills, or property produced by others. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by any other person, group, or the government.

Clearly, Medicare (and all such welfare state schemes) is a massive violation of individual rights. Medicare did not, as Ms. Mariani claims, pay for her treatment. Nor did it come from any personal-type account funded by her's or a spouse's earnings. That money was confiscated from other people through force of taxation, in clear violation of both the constitution and their individual rights. There is nothing vague about that.

The treatment she receives was made possible by the social conditions created by America's founding principles of individual rights and limited rights-protecting government...principles that are now eroding. The scientists, entrepreneurs, businessmen, inventors, and investors had the freedom to think and act on their own judgement, invest their own time and money, set their own goals, take their own risks, produce the healthcare products and services and offer them for sale to willing buyers, and profit from their achievements under the protection of a government of objective laws. There is nothing vague about that. Again, that freedom is steadily eroding.

Obamacare would wipe out the last vestiges of that freedom. Does Ms. Mariani really want the conditions that existed before the Enlightenment, the American Revolution, and capitalism, which made possible the rise, in a mere 200 years, of modern medicine? That was a time when people really were "free to get very sick indeed", and suffer and die young without the hope that our freedom-spawned modern medicine gives us.

As to the healthcare "reform" bill, it is a dictatorial monstrosity. patriots4u only scratches the surface. Care will be heavily rationed. Providers will be enslaved. Innovation will be smothered in this, the last remnants of a free market. As Marc K. Siegel writes in the 8/3/09 NY Post, there will be "new committees and commissioners with undefined but far-reaching powers -- a Health Choices Commissioner, a Health Benefits Advisory Committee, a Comparative Effectiveness Committee, a Task Force on Clinical Preventative Services..."

I acknowledge that Medicare has been popular, but it is beginning to break down, with more and more doctors dropping out. Ms. Mariani is enjoying the early "workable" phase of this Ponzi scheme. But that is coming to an end. In the bill is this gem for seniors to behold:

"A prime example comes in the section starting on page 425 of the House bill. This dictates that an Advanced Care Planning Consultation must take place every five years from the age of 65 -- with the intervention of so-called counselors, trained and appointed by the government. [Many] senior citizens [will] be shortchanged or pushed prematurely to euthanasia.

Whose decision should it be to phase out such people? The government's?"

Yes, according to this bill.

I have been forced to pay into Medicare for more than four decades, and am approaching enrollment age. For that, I will be confronted with the complete loss of my freedom...my individual rights...to determine, in consultation with my doctor, the appropriate treatment and payment options. Bean-counting state bureaucrats who don't know or care about my circumstances will have complete power.

I will spend the rest of my life...whatever time the state allows me...fighting to abolish Medicare, controls and regulations on insurers and providers, and other state intrusions into medicine. For the sake of my children, grandchildren, and anyone who values freedom, I will fight for free market capitalism, individual rights, and a government that protects our rights - as a moral imperative.

More on the "Public Option"

2009-08-04T14:49:00.000-07:00

The following letter was published in the Star-Ledger Reader Forum om 8/4/09.

Where's the freedom?

In your editorial "Making a mess of it" (July 26) regarding health care reform, you make the incredibly specious reference to free enterprise and government competition in the health insurance industry.

Since when does the government compete with the private sector? The federal government's function is to promote free commerce, not impede it. What kind of competition are we talking about where one player makes the rules for the other? The government has no entrepreneurial risk when it has the power of taxation.

The federal and state governments have already made the rules for the private sector players. This has led directly and indirectly to rising costs. These costs in turn increase the uninsured rolls. Now the public option proposes to set reimbursement at Medicare levels, while the private players must abide by reserve formulas based on loss ratios. No such regulations exist for the government plan.

From whom will patients seek remedy when the federal board refuses to pay? Who regulates the "public option"?

Competition? Please.

Jerry Kopychuk, Hackettstown

My Commentary:

Posted by Zemack on 08/04/09 at 5:28PM

Jerry Kopychuk is exactly right, and I'd like to expand on this notion of "public - private" competition.

The government is a unique institution, distinguished by its legal monopoly on the use of physical force. America's great achievement was to limit that compulsive power to the protection of our inalienable individual rights. That is government's proper role. Stepping outside of those constraints invalidates government, as America's Founders understood.

The proposed "public option" is intended to destroy private health insurance, and clear the way for single-payer medical tyranny. Everyone knows it. The politicians will do whatever it takes to support their "competitor". They will use government's tax and monetary powers to keep premiums "affordable"; regulatory powers to hamper private insurers; force below-market prices on providers; harass private executives with explicit or implied "back-room" threats using the arbitrary and capricious powers of the regulatory apparatus, the IRS, or antitrust division of the Justice Department. The employment of government's unique powers of legalized physical force to destroy private businesses, industries, and livelihoods is legalized criminality.

Obama's plan is a continuation of the trend of the past 50-75 years...socialized medicine through the fascist back door. There is nothing "market-oriented" about it. There is, in fact, nothing market-oriented about our current semi-socialized, government controlled system.

Nevertheless, to allege that there can be "competition" between a government plan and private business is to equate an armed thug with his victims. The aim is to snuff out the last shreds of freedom and individual rights in American medicine. The public "option" is organized crime on a scale that relegates Al Capone to the status of a petty thief.

Health Care - Not the "Right" Thing to Do

2009-08-02T06:24:00.000-07:00

The following two letters appeared in the Star-Ledger Reader Forum on 8/1/09. One is pro-socialized medicine, and the other is against. The second letter-writer is on the right track.

Health care reform

Months of debate have produced "health care" bills that need life support. They are so riddled with conditions that they are doomed to destruct. The original concept has been shot full of holes, bearing little resemblance to what I think Americans really want: a chance for them and their families to be healthy and to get reasonable treatment when not, without having to take out a second mortgage.

Why have dozens of civilized countries been able to provide health care for all, for decades, at a sensible cost, but America cannot? I believe it is because they, unlike America, do not view health care as a cash cow for private interests, but "the right thing to do", and a social investment in its own citizens.

Why is it so much easier for Congressmen to fund killing, than caring? For the last 8 years, they have ignored domestic needs while throwing over a trillion dollars to support invasive war and brutal destruction - and barely debating it. Yes, they have prioritized death, injury and displacement of over a million civilians, and have subjected our military and their families to an untenable burden.

Have they all lost their minds? Have we, to accept this from our elected officials, who are our employees?

Jo Sippie-Gora, Kinnelon.

Wrong on health rights

In a letter to the editor ("Health care is a right," July 30) a writer stated that health care was a human rights issue. Some argue that health care is a "precondition of life itself." This argument is flawed. There are other more important preconditions for life, such as food, shelter, and clothing.

If health care is a right, how did our forefathers miss that? It's "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," not life, an appointment with a doctor, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The question of health care is not rights, but how best to provide health care at the lowest possible cost. The outcome would make health care more affordable.

The number of "uninsured" Americans that is thrown around, 45 million, is easily corrected when you look at the 2007 census. The truer figure is 22 million once you remove the 14 million undocumented workers, the 15 percent who choose not to have insurance for their own reasons and those 5 percent that are between jobs.

The true way to provide affordable health care to more of those 22 million citizens is to foster competition between insurers. Remove restrictions on citizens crossing state lines to seek affordable health care. Limit malpractice lawsuits. Keep your freedom to choose, don't turn health care over to a swollen, mismanaged federal government.

W. Paul Kelley, Berkeley Heights

My Commentary:

W. Paul Kelley is absolutely correct. Health care is not and can not be a right. Neither can any man-made product or service.

The fundamental principle that America was founded upon is unalienable individual rights possessed equally by all people, at all times, and protected equally and at all times by government. Rights are guarantees to freedom of action within a social context...such as the rights to speech, religious practice, and the earning of property through productive work and voluntary, mutually beneficial trade. A right is not an automatic claim on the products, services, earnings, skills, or property produced by others.

Consider the claim that a manmade product such as healthcare is a right, and what it actually means in practice. If someone requires medical care, then the doctors, nurses, pharmaceutical and device makers, etc., must be legally obligated (i.e., compelled) to provide their services to that person. Likewise, that person’s neighbor, or the guy 3000 miles away, must be legally obligated to pay for his treatment. In other words, the providers whose skills make medical care possible, as well as those whose taxes pay for it, are serfs.

Rights, properly understood, are political and place no obligation or duty on the individual save one…to respect the same rights of all. The idea of economic rights…the right to material values such as health care…forces an involuntary servitude on others to provide it. Economic rights...which are actually entitlements, not rights...obliterate our actual rights to life, liberty, and property. That is why the alleged “right” to health care requires a government takeover of the medical field…to give the state the power to loot and enslave the people.

This is not, as Jo Sippie-Gora claims, "the right thing to do", no matter how many other peoples and nations say so. The sacrifice of the productive and self-supporting to the parasites and the power-lusters has been the scourge of mankind that the United States of America was created to banish; by guaranteeing to each human being the rights to his own life, his own liberty, his own earned property, and the pursuit of his own goals and happiness.

All of us fighting against "universal health care" must recognize that health care is not a right…if all manifestations of socialized medicine are to be stopped and the proper free market reforms can be implemented.

The Soul of the Single Payer Advocate

2009-08-02T05:17:00.000-07:00

The following letter appeared in the Star-Ledger Reader Forum on 7/30/09

Better in Canada

Canadian-style health care is much better than even insured services in New Jersey.

Americans are debating health care insurance, and they should. I can tell you that having a health care insurance system available to everyone is way better than the systems in place in New Jersey, even for those with insurance plans, and infinitely better for those who can't afford the private plans. I grew up in New Jersey and married a Canadian, and now live in Canada, but have a relative with health issues still in New Jersey, so I have a good comparison.

With a publicly organized health care insurance plan, you can concentrate on your health, instead of your bank balance. No different list of doctors depending on which plan you are in. No HMO to deal with. Find a local doctor, make an appointment, show your health card -- that's it. Specialists are covered by referral from there. Just the reduced stress in dealing with the health care system is a health benefit.

Kathleen O'Neil, Toronto

My Commentary:

Posted by Zemack on 08/02/09 at 8:40AM

Kathleen O'Neil writes:

"With a publicly organized health care insurance plan, you can concentrate on your health, instead of your bank balance."

But your bank balance represents something profoundly moral...the money earned through your own productive work. Your money represents your means of purchasing the goods and services you need but that are produced by others. Your bank balance stands for your ability to earn your own keep.

By disconnecting "your bank balance" from your responsibility to "concentrate on your own health", Ms. O'Neil is in essence demanding that someone else be forced to pay for your health care.

The real soul of the advocates of a "Canadian-style", "publicly organized health care insurance plan" is the moocher.

Rights vs. Privileges

2009-08-02T05:09:00.000-07:00

This letter was published in the Star-Ledger Reader Forum on 7/30/09.

Health care a right

After reading the article, "Twenty-somethings contemplate Obama's health care plan," (July 27) it became even more evident to me the national crisis we face with our health care system. As a college graduate, I have seen so many of my friends struggle to find jobs and have an even harder time getting insured after they were kicked off their parent's insurance plan.

America is one of the leading industrialized countries, and yet has one of the worst health care systems in the western world. The health care system we have now will never sustain itself, and it is time for reform.

If we reform our health care system we will also be strengthening our economy. So many Americans are left uninsured and have no other option but to go to the emergency room for even minor health problems. Because of this, taxpayers pay more.

Having private companies compete with a public health care option will bring the cost of the health care down for even the people who are already insured.

With health care reform our economy will recover and job opportunities will increase. Most importantly, the health of our nation will improve. It is not a privilege, but a human right to have health insurance.

Victoria Maione, Hamilton

My Commentary:

Posted by Zemack on 08/02/09 at 8:05AM

Victoria Maione claims that health insurance (and, by implication, health care "is not a privilege, but a human right".

What, then, constitutes a right? As laid out in America’s founding documents, a right is not a grant from any politician, state, or collective such as society or a democratic majority. A right is an unalienable sanction of the freedom to take action, such as freedom of speech, association, religious practice, etc.

A right is not an automatic claim on the products, services, earnings, skills, or property produced by others.

So what, exactly, is a privilege? According to Webster’s, it is:

"An exceptional law made in favor of or against any individual… a right, immunity, benefit, or advantage granted to some person, group of persons, or class, not enjoyed by others and sometimes detrimental to them." (Emphasis added.)

Now, keeping in mind the definitions cited above, consider the claim that a manmade product such as healthcare (or health insurance) is a right, and what it actually means in practice. If someone requires medical care, then the doctors, nurses, pharmaceutical and device makers, etc., must be legally obligated (i.e., compelled) to provide their services to that person. In other words, the providers whose skills make medical care possible are serfs. Likewise, that person’s neighbor, or the guy 3000 miles away, must be legally obligated to pay for his treatment. In other words, they are armed robbery victims.

Every person in a free society has a right to take the actions required to satisfy his own healthcare needs. He has no right to rob his neighbor to pay for them, nor force any provider to “serve” him, nor elect politicians to impose those obligations. There is no such thing as a “right” to healthcare or any other man-made product, beyond what one can pay for himself through a voluntary transaction with those who produce it.

What Ms. Maione has actually accomplished is to invert the meanings of the words privilege and right. This new privileged class of healthcare consumer is thus granted “rights” that are “detrimental to” and “against” the very people needed most…doctors and other providers. The alleged “right” to health insurance is actually a privilege granted to some by force of government, at the expense of the freedom and property of others.

Victoria Maione should learn that words have meanings because what she and her ilk advocate, whether they are honest enough or even conscious enough to acknowledge…is the right to enslave.

The 9/12 Project and "Vacation" Replay - 1

2009-07-18T19:23:00.000-07:00

A major installment of the Tea Party Movement will take place on September 12, 2009, in Washington, D.C. Called the 09.12.09 March on Washington, it promises to be the most significant event thus far of the budding movement spawned by the arrival of Obama statism. The march is being sponsored by FreedomWorks foundation and includes 18 co-sponsors (so far), including the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights.

It will also mark my entrance into this area of activism. I plan to attend and take an active role in the March, along with my daughter Susan and wife Kathy. I will discuss this further on my blog, Principled Perspectives, in coming weeks.

In the meantime, as my vacation lull continues, I am republishing the following LTEs relating to this subject, along with my commentary response. The letters and my response appeared originally in the New Jersey Star-Ledger Reader Forum of April 22, 2009.

Tea Parties Past and Present

From the Star-Ledger Reader Forum, April 22, 2009

Letter #1

Defends tea partyers
I object vehemently to the charges by reader Lawrence Uniglicht in his letter to the Readers Forum, ("No tea for me, thank you," April 18) that all those protesting increases in taxes and an overspending government are malcontents and clowns. I suggest people look at Govs. Jim McGreevey and Jon Corzine, and Sens. Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez if they want to see clowns.

The protesters did not throw tea into Boston Harbor to start a war with England, but peacefully assembled to protest a fearful trend by a Democratic Congress and administration to take away our constitutional right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that our founders fought so hard to win. Protesters were from all walks of life. They did not break store windows, overturn and set fires to cars, or fight with the police. They personified what Americans are -- hard-working, law-abiding, and moral citizens.

As for constructive ideas from the Republicans, tea party opponents should know there were many proposals that were denied by the Democrats in Congress, mainly because they would be successful in restoring the economy to the way it was before 2006. That was the year the left-wing voted in a Democratic Congress, and we have been sinking toward socialism ever since.
-- Richard A. Ketay, Newark

Letter #2

History doesn't repeat
Once again, the American people are responding like sheep. A case in point is the recent "tea parties" across the country.

Had protesters been paying attention, they would realize the tax rate on the wealthy will only increase from 36-39 percent, far below the 90 percent rate under President Dwight Eisenhower.

The nationwide tea party, which was created to oppose taxation, borrowed its name from the Boston Tea Party. As a history teacher, let me take the opportunity to remind the American public that the Boston Tea Party was not about taxes. It was staged to protest the monopoly being granted to the East India Tea Company by Prime Minster Lord North, who was a primary investor in the company.
-- James O'Brien, Bayonne

My Commentary:

Posted by Zemack on 04/22/09 at 7:23PM
James O'Brien, the history teacher, doesn't understand the significance of today's Tea Parties, or of the philosophical common denominator linking them to the original Boston Tea Party. Richard A. Ketay does. The fundamental principle linking both across a span of centuries is a profoundly moral one...the uniquely American concept that the individual's life is his and does not belong to any "higher power" such as a king, warlord, democratic majority, state, priest, president, or ayatollah. That principle is embodied in the doctrine of unalienable individual rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness.

The concrete issues are different, but the principle is the same. Any government-imposed monopoly such as the East India Tea Company is a violation of individual rights because it forcibly bans individuals from exercising their liberty to promote their lives through the freedom of production and trade in a particular market. Today's protestors are not concerned with some narrow issue such as 3% in the income tax code. Rather, the massive confiscation of wealth through deficit spending and the forced transfer of wealth to politically connected failed corporations and irresponsible mortgage borrowers are what concern the protestors. This will be paid for either through direct, massive tax increases or through the inflationary back door...the confiscation of the purchasing power of our money through the government printing press.

Worse still is the use of the financial crisis as a cover for a breathtaking dictatorial economic power grab by government through its regulatory apparatus. This, despite the fact that it was the massive buildup over the years of government interference in the housing and mortgage markets, as well as the central bank money monopoly called the federal reserve system, that caused the crisis to begin with. The statist policies of Bush and Obama are a direct assault on America's founding principles of individual rights and a government limited to protecting those rights.

I find it fascinating that Mr. O,Brien chooses to call today's protestors "sheep" for rising to defend individual rights, which means the right and responsibility of each of us to take charge of our own lives. In contrast, President Obama constantly demands that we suspend our own judgement and our selfish concern for our rights (the "old, stale" arguments, as he puts it) in order to "come together" to solve our nations problems. This language is a euphemism for relinquishing control of our lives to central planning ideologues who seek to consolidate federal control over private contracts and corporate governance, energy, healthcare, education, food production, finance and investments, etc.

Who are the real sheep? It is certainly not the Tea Party protestors, many if not most of whom are attempting to build an individual rights coalition to push back against the rising tide of statism sweeping Washington, D.C.

The "Public Option" and Organized Crime

2009-07-14T11:55:00.000-07:00

Here's more deception from the socialized medicine crowd.

For lack of a better term

by Clarence Page

July 12, 2009

My Commentary:

The proposed “public option” is intended to destroy private health insurance, and clear the way for single-payer medical tyranny. Everyone knows it. The politicians will do whatever it takes to support their “competitor”. They will use government’s tax and monetary powers to keep premiums “affordable”; regulatory powers to hamper private insurers; force below-market prices on providers; harass private executives with explicit or implied “back-room” threats of regulatory, IRS, or antitrust actions, etc.

The government is a unique institution, distinguished by its legal monopoly on the use of force. America’s great achievement was to limit that compulsive power to the protection of our inalienable individual rights. That is government’s proper role. Stepping outside of those constraints invalidates government, as America’s Founders understood. The employment of government’s unique powers of legalized physical force to destroy private businesses, industries, and livelihoods is legalized criminality.

To allege “competition” between a government plan and private business is to equate an armed thug with his victims. The public “option” is organized crime on a scale that relegates Al Capone to the status of a petty thief.

Any honest and objective healthcare reform debate must begin with an examination of how we got to this point to begin with. The problems in American healthcare have grown in lock step with the growth of government intervention over the past 75 years. The solution is to discover capitalism. The only just and moral course to take on healthcare reform is to rid healthcare of government interference. End all government insurance mandates, barriers to inter-state competition, and the third-party-payer system; phase out existing “public” plans like Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP, and let people take personal responsibility for their own healthcare, as is their unalienable right under American principles. Leave healthcare dollars in the hands of the people that earned it through some vehicle like HSAs, leave providers and insurers free to compete directly for those consumer dollars, and restrict the government to its proper role of protector of the individual rights of all (which includes anti-fraud laws and enforcement of contracts). The natural incentives inherent in a free market provide the proper, moral dynamics for affordable, widely available quality healthcare.

Thomas Jefferson On Independence Day

2009-07-04T11:34:00.000-07:00

The Letters of Thomas Jefferson: 1743-1826
LAST LETTER: APOTHEOSIS OF LIBERTY

To Roger C. Weightman, Monticello, June 24, 1826

RESPECTED SIR, --

The kind invitation I receive from you, on the part of the citizens of the city of Washington, to be present with them at their celebration on the fiftieth anniversary of American Independence, as one of the surviving signers of an instrument pregnant with our own, and the fate of the world, is most flattering to myself, and heightened by the honorable accompaniment proposed for the comfort of such a journey. It adds sensibly to the sufferings of sickness, to be deprived by it of a personal participation in the rejoicings of that day. But acquiescence is a duty, under circumstances not placed among those we are permitted to control. I should, indeed, with peculiar delight, have met and exchanged there congratulations personally with the small band, the remnant of that host of worthies, who joined with us on that day, in the bold and doubtful election we were to make for our country, between submission or the sword; and to have enjoyed with them the consolatory fact, that our fellow citizens, after half a century of experience and prosperity, continue to approve the choice we made. May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. That form which we have substituted, restores the free right to the unbounded exercise of reason and freedom of opinion. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.

I will ask permission here to express the pleasure with which I should have met my ancient neighbors of the city of Washington and its vicinities, with whom I passed so many years of a pleasing social intercourse; an intercourse which so much relieved the anxieties of the public cares, and left impressions so deeply engraved in my affections, as never to be forgotten. With my regret that ill health forbids me the gratification of an acceptance, be pleased to receive for yourself, and those for whom you write, the assurance of my highest respect and friendly attachments.

Happy Independence Day, from Mike Zemack

A Note to My Valued Visitors

2009-07-01T17:43:00.000-07:00

During the month of July, I will be on “vacation”, sort of. Family will be visiting from out of state…namely, my 4 grandchildren with their mother (my daughter), while their father pursues his doctorate elsewhere.

So, together with my wife and my other 2 NJ grandchildren and their parents, I will be quite busy. So, my posting here may be light. I’ll be back in earnest come August.

In the meantime, I’ll fill the gaps by re-publishing some of my favorite posts that are still relevant today.

Have a great summer!

Mike Zemack

Government "Incentives" in Healthcare

2009-06-24T17:41:00.000-07:00

The following article by David I Knowlton, a former deputy commissioner of health in New Jersey and current president and CEO of the New Jersey Health Care Quality Institute, has been published in the June 24, 2009 Star-Ledger of NJ. This is just another man with another statist plan.

Health reform isn't brain surgery

My Commentary:

Posted by Zemack on 06/24/09 at 8:39PM
The purveyors of government control of medicine, euphemistically called "national health care reform", offer all kinds of angles to plug their wares. In all cases, they start by citing the current problems in American healthcare, and propose some government-imposed solution.

What they never acknowledge is the fact that our current system is a creation of government. Yet they hold the government up to be champions of their own victims.

The premise that "we are all our brothers' keepers" is the governing principle, and is the first major problem. America currently spends some $7500 per capita per year ($30,000 per family of four and rising) on healthcare. Almost 90% of that amount represents people spending other people's money. There are the government programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP. There is the tax distortion-created third-party-payer system. There are the thousands of state and federal dictates imposed on the insurance industry such as community ratings, guaranteed issue, and benefits mandates which are nothing more than wealth redistribution masquerading as insurance. Today's private insurance industry is actually a quasi-private, government created and protected cartel, and is not indicative of a free market. It is a conduit for government edicts, not a dynamic, competitive, entrepreneurial industry free to tailor policy choices to market realities.

Our system is a combination of communism for seniors, the poor, and some peoples' children...and fascism for the rest of us.

Ours is a system in which everyone is forced to pay for everyone else's healthcare, but is not responsible for his own (except for small co-pays and deductibles). What kind of incentives does anyone think that will create? Yet Mr. Knowlton prattles about "urging our leaders to realign incentives in the health care system", and "plenty of models we can look to for guidance". There sure is a model to look toward - a free market, the system based upon the recognition of individual rights. Instead of forcing us to take care of everyone else, while at the same time demanding that everyone else...i.e., the government...take care of us, how about getting government out of healthcare and health insurance and leave us free to make our own decisions and take personal responsibility for our own health? You'd be surprised what kinds of incentives are evident when you reap the rewards of good habits and pay the price for the bad, while having our unalienable rights guaranteed.

But it is not solutions that are the goal. It is power...the power of control by bureaucratic and political elites. The artificial "incentives" and tax-funded "investments" are code words for the coming tyranny.

It gets tiresome to hear the David Knowltons of the world keep promoting government solutions to the problems created by government. Our money is not "there for the taking" by any man with another plan. Our money and property are not his, nor the government's, nor anyone's to dispose of...except those who earned it.

The current "debate" on "reform" is an intellectual and philosophical fraud, leaving Americans with the false perception that our choice is either the status quo or submission to state-run medicine. There is no political sponsorship for the authentic alternative.

Any honest and objective healthcare reform debate must begin with an examination of how we got to this point to begin with. The problems in American healthcare have grown in lock step with the growth of government intervention over the past 75 years. The solution is to discover capitalism. The only just and moral course to take on healthcare reform is to rid healthcare of government interference. End all government insurance mandates, barriers to inter-state competition, and the third-party-payer system; phase out existing "public" plans like Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP, and let people take personal responsibility for their own healthcare, as is their unalienable right under American principles. Leave healthcare dollars in the hands of the people that earned it through some vehicle like HSAs, leave providers and insurers free to compete directly for those consumer dollars, and restrict the government to its proper role of protector of the individual rights of all (which includes anti-fraud laws and enforcement of contracts). The natural incentives inherent in a free market provide the proper, moral dynamics for affordable, widely available quality healthcare.

One NJ Doctor's Rebellion

2009-06-22T16:32:00.000-07:00

From the Star Ledger Reader Forum.

Cash-only health care

As a psychotherapist, I do not accept Medicare or Medicaid. Why? Because they pay a pittance compared to private health insurance. Yet private insurance has been reducing reimbursement rates with no warning or notification to providers. In fact, there has been no increase in reimbursement since 1994. Can you imagine not getting a raise in pay for that long and having your income reduced as well?

If President Obama's health care reform passes, any provider worth his weight will not take insurance at all and take only cash, freeing themselves from the organized crime of insurance all together. This will leave only the worst providers as "In network." Quality care will be left only to the rich, while those trying to save a buck will save little. People need to speak up and demand answers from "for-profit" insurance companies.

Leo Battenhausen, Roselle

My Commentary:

Posted by Zemack on 06/22/09 at 7:26PM

Leo Battenhausen describes how American medicine is slowly being destroyed, but misses a crucial fact and thus blames the wrong culprit... the "for-profit" insurance industry.

Our system of health insurance is an absurd, government-created Rube Goldberg concoction, administered by quasi-private companies forbidden to tailor policies to market demand; i.e., the choices and budgets of the actual, individual consumers of healthcare. Our current system is not indicative of a free market, but of a mixed economy. Perversely, the insurance company works not for the consumer...i.e., the patient...but for the employer, union, or other third party, to which it is beholden. It has created huge administrative costs throughout the system, undermined the doctor-patient relationship, placed undue power in the hands of insurance company bureaucrats, and tied people to their jobs.

I have encountered, as a patient, the squeeze between what my doctor wants to prescribe and what the insurer demands. Since I am not the insurer's customer, I have no leverage and no choice. Because of the third-party-payer system, which was created and maintained by tax-code distortions, the doctor-patient relationship is disrupted, leading to the kinds of problems described by Mr. Battenhausen.

What is needed, for the private sector, is an end to the third-party-payer system, all insurance mandates, and all state-imposed restraint-of-trade laws. Government, through its controls and interference, is the source of the seeming power of the "private" insurance company. The proper role for government is an important one; to protect against fraud and breach of contract, and to mediate contractual disputes. Beyond that, the politicians should get out of the insurance business altogether. Health insurance is properly a contractual matter to be decided between the individual and his insurance company, as a matter of unalienable right. Likewise, healthcare services are a matter between the provider and the patient. If the insurer works directly for the patient, then he...the doctor's customer...is responsible for payment, whatever the contractual arrangements he has with his insurer happen to be. A doctor and patient are free to make payment and price arrangements directly, by mutual agreement, as it should be.

The problem is not "for-profit" insurance as such, but government interference, which inverts the normal market incentives. In a free market - which is a system based on individual rights - insurers, providers, customers and patients are free to contract with each other, voluntarily to mutual advantage. Profits are a natural consequence of the free market. They are the result of providing goods and services at prices that are both affordable yet above the cost of production, and accrue to companies best at doing that. The profit motive drives prices lower and quality higher, but only in a free market where companies compete directly for the consumer's business. The whole history of capitalism, when it is allowed to function, is one of growing profits by cutting prices by cutting production costs, thus expanding the market by increasing affordability. More importantly, the right to any profits earned by one's own productive work in any field is a moral, unalienable human right. Profits, properly understood, are noble.

As to government-run "insurance" programs, they should be phased out and abolished. They are corrupting and destroying medicine in this country. By refusing to deal with Medicare and Medicaid Mr. Battenhausen is taking more than a practical step. He is taking a moral stand against his own enslavement. Perhaps if more doctors rebelled in this manor, we would get the only moral solution to the problems plaguing American healthcare - a free market - rather than the ultimate disaster we appear headed for.

Ken Gordon on "The Public Option"

2009-06-13T20:32:00.000-07:00

The gross dishonesty and/or ignorance about the causes of the current healthcare/health insurance "crisis" is evident in this piece.

Nothing Good Just Happens

The author, Ken Gordon, is the former Majority Leader of the Colorado State Senate.

My Commentary:

Mike Zemack said...

What Mr. Gordon doesn’t say is that our system of health insurance is a creation of the government. The third-party-payer system was imposed by government via tax-code distortions. Perversely, the insurance company works not for the consumer but for the employer, union, or other third party that purchases the policy, even though the consumer’s own earnings pay for it. The thousands of state and federal mandates imposed on the insurers dictate the content of the policies, force consumers to pay for coverages that they may not want, sharply drives up the cost of the policies, and actually creates a system of pre-paid healthcare…not insurance. State restraint-of-trade practices prevent a competitive national insurance market from developing, also driving prices up and choices down.

Our system of health insurance is an absurd, government-created Rube Goldberg concoction, administered by quasi-private companies forbidden to tailor policies to market demand; i.e., the choices and budgets of the actual, individual consumers of healthcare. It has created huge unnecessary administrative costs throughout the system, undermined the doctor-patient relationship, placed undue power in the hands of government and insurance company bureaucrats, inverted the normal market incentives that lead to higher quality, lower prices, and wide availability, and tied people to their jobs.

Now Mr. Gordon and his ilk propose to “solve” the problems they themselves caused by creation of the fraud called a “public option”. This is nothing more than a back-door attempt at something Americans have never wanted…totalitarian government control of healthcare. The government holds a legal monopoly on physical force. The “option” is backed by this power of the gun. The politicians can and will do whatever it takes to support their “public option”. It will use tax subsidies to keep premiums “affordable”; arbitrary regulatory powers to hamper its private “competitors”, etc. The government will act as any organized crime syndicate does…use its unique power of physical compulsion to drive private citizens out of business. To say that there can be competition between a government-owned entity and private companies is to see no difference between an armed thug and his victims.

The obvious and only moral solution to the problems in health insurance cited by Mr. Gordon is to liberate the insurance market of all of this government interference, leaving individuals and insurers free to contract directly with each other to mutual advantage…a freedom that is theirs by unalienable right. But solutions are not the goal; power is. Having crippled the industry, making it unable to function, it is now cast as the villain. Every advancing dictatorship needs scapegoats.

The real liars here are the “public option” advocates. The problems in American healthcare have grown in lock step with the growth of government intervention. Any honest and objective healthcare reform debate must begin with an examination of how we got to this point to begin with. Instead, they are now declaring that freedom has failed, consumers are too stupid to understand health insurance, and that dictatorship is the answer.

But today’s problems in medicine represent a failure, not of freedom, but of statist government intervention. The choice we face…for ordinary Americans and providers alike…is between being held in a stranglehold by government central planners, or taking control of our own healthcare in a truly free market.

"Health Care Debate"--What about the Third and Moral Option?

2009-06-12T13:41:00.000-07:00

The following letter was published in the Star-Ledger Reader Forum.

Health care debate

I am perplexed and discouraged by the fight over health care. It's pretty obvious that what we're doing isn't working so well.

In the big picture, it seems to me, if we want our businesses to be competitive, getting health care off their backs is a necessity.

I still hear people, even those who love their Medicare, complain they don't want the government involved in their health insurance. They don't want a government bureaucrat telling their doctor what's okay to do and what's not okay. Meanwhile, I guess, they don't mind some insurance company bureaucrat making those decisions.

I've heard some people suggest we be allowed to buy our insurance in another state where it's cheaper. Think they'll have any preferred providers in your state?

I believe in a compromise: single payer via taxes with a government plan in the mix and private insurance companies competing. This would get the premium dollars off of industry, would let those who want private insurance get it, would let those who want public insurance get it, and would insure all the uninsured. It would help our industries be more competitive, and your health care wouldn't be connected to your employment.

John Smith, Hamilton

My Commentary:

Posted by Zemack on 06/12/09 at 8:29PM

John Smith cites a couple of problems such as employer-based health insurance and insurance company bureaucrats making healthcare decisions. His solution, though, amounts to "First, do more harm".

All of the problems in American healthcare can be attributed directly to government intervention. The third-party-payer system was imposed by government via tax-code distortions. Perversely, the insurance company works not for the consumer but for the employer, union, or other third party, even though the consumer's earnings pay for it. The thousands of state and federal mandates imposed on the insurers force consumers to pay for coverages that they may not want, sharply drives up the cost of the policies, and actually creates a system of pre-paid healthcare...not insurance. These mandates are really wealth redistribution masquerading as insurance. State restraint-of-trade laws prevent a competitive national insurance market from developing, also driving up prices and choices down. Medicare and Medicaid, which have made government the largest purchaser of healthcare products, have so corrupted the market that the normal forces that lead to higher quality and lower costs have been inverted. This is just part of the story.

Our system of health insurance is an absurd, government-created Rube Goldberg concoction, administered by quasi-private companies forbidden to tailor policies to market demand; i.e., the choices and budgets of the actual, individual consumers of healthcare. It has created huge administrative costs throughout the system, undermined the doctor-patient relationship, placed undue power in the hands of government and insurance company bureaucrats, and tied people to their jobs.

Yet Mr. Smith's "compromise" would reward the government with totalitarian control over all aspects of healthcare. When the government pays, the government sets the terms...period. You hand your money over to the state, and in exchange you give up your freedom...a lose-lose proposition. This, in essence, is communism. "Allowing" private companies to "compete" against the government-run "option" is merely socialism through the back door, where "private" companies are merely conduits for government control...i.e., fascism. So, according to Mr. Smith, the choices are either the status quo, or some totalitarian combination of communism and fascism.

It's imperative, before we sink to that level, that we consider the third option...the only moral one and the one ignored by both major parties. End the system of compelling everyone to pay for everyone else's healthcare. End all government interference in the insurance market, leaving government to its proper role of protecting individual rights such as through anti-fraud laws and contract enforcement and mediation of disputes. Leave consumers and patients free to decide, along with their doctors, what treatments to use along with prices and payment options. Leave everyone free to plan for their own retirement, to accept responsibility for their own decisions, to take responsibility for their own lives...not be forced to pay other people's expenses. Leave everyone free to decide when and in what capacity to help others, based upon each person's own personal values, assessments of the worthiness of the recipient, and affordability.

Leave insurers and providers free to compete directly for the consumer's business. Leave providers, consumers, insurers, doctors, and patients free to act upon their own judgement, and to contract voluntarily with each other to mutual advantage.

Free market capitalism, the original American system based upon the unalienable and equal rights of every individual, is the only moral path to health care reform. The government's proper role is to protect individual rights, which are guarantees to the freedom to take the actions necessary for the advancement of one's own life and happiness. Rights are not an automatic, unconditional claim on the earnings, property, products, services, or skills produced others. The government's job is not to guarantee health insurance or healthcare to all, but to maintain the societal conditions of liberty and non-coercive association required for people to live their lives and solve their own problems.

Eliminating coercive government interference in healthcare and insurance combined with individual rights in medicine will dramatically reduce the cost and lead to greater quality. That is what always happens when consumers are free to spend their own money and producers to compete for their business. Healthcare, though a high value product and need, is essentially no different than any other man-made product. Consumers seeking the best value for their money, and profit-driven producers seeking to expand sales and grow, places incentives on the side of greater and greater availability and affordability. These basic laws of economics would work no different in healthcare than they would in any other market, when people are left free.

The current healthcare "crisis", if you want to call it that, is not a failure of freedom or free markets. Any honest and objective healthcare reform debate must begin with an examination of how we got to this point to begin with. The problems in American healthcare have grown in lock step with the growth of government intervention. The solution is to discover capitalism. The only just and moral course to take on healthcare reform is to rid healthcare of government interference.

Today's problems in medicine represent a failure, not of freedom, but of statist government intervention. The choice we face is not between a government-run healthcare dictatorship and the status quo, as Mr. Smith, would have us believe. The choice we face...for doctors, patients, drug producers, etc...is between being held in a stranglehold by government central planners, or taking control of our own healthcare in a truly free market.

Gillis on the Lessons of Atlas

2009-06-09T17:18:00.000-07:00

David Gillis of St. Clair, a Times Herald community columnist, wrote a column comparing the business headlines to Atlas Shrugged, published 52 years ago.

The column is entitled "Rand's novel offers lessons for current economic crisis".

I posted the following brief comments, partly in response to other correspondents;

MikeZemack wrote:

Private business is the face of this crisis, but is NOT indicative of actual capitalism--the separation of economics and state. Private ownership can exist in non-capitalist systems, such as fascism. This crisis occurred in a heavily regulated industry, under a central bank money monopoly. There is the Federal Reserve, FDIC, Fannie and Freddie, mortgage guarantees, the CRA, the network of “affordable housing” policies, mandatory accounting rules, the state-licensed rating agency cartel’s AAA endorsement based upon implicit government guarantees, “to big to fail” bailout policies…etc., etc.

Rand correctly identified the corruptive nature of political interference in private economic decision-making, and the way in which the regulatory apparatus acts as the conduit. The government’s primary role in causing and exacerbating this crisis is impossible to dismiss. Those who blame “deregulation” or “unfettered markets” have no clue what capitalism is, and are not looking at the facts.

New Jersey's Autism Mandate

2009-06-02T15:12:00.000-07:00

Some New Jersey Legislators have proposed a bill requiring insurance companies to cover autism treatment. This article appeared in the New Jersey Star-Ledger. Posted below is my response to the initial article followed by a lively and emotional debate between myself and other correspondents who support the bill. Others' comments are in block quotes. The entire comments thread can be read by going to the artcle.

The article:

Speaking up for autism

My initial ommentary:

Posted by Zemack on 06/02/09 at 6:11PM
Senate bill s1940, which I believe is still pending, "Requires health insurers and SHBP to provide certain mental health benefits for eating disorders..." Mr. Roberts' bill will force insurers to cover autism treatment. Put another way, both of these laws would make it illegal for any insurer to sell a policy in New Jersey that does not include coverage for these ailments. This means that the cost of insurance premiums will have to rise, forcing everyone to buy coverage for something that they may not want or be able to afford. If you want a peak at one of the culprits that are driving insurance costs up, this is it.

However heart-wrenching the circumstances of a particular medical condition may be on family and patient, it has to be said. All such mandates are driven by special interests and their political surrogates seeking to use the power of government to stick everyone else with their medical bills. They are really wealth redistribution masquerading as insurance. They are immoral and unjust because they violate the rights of insurers and their customers to contract voluntarily with each other to mutual advantage.

Having said that, I also believe there is a genuine injustice suffered by parents of autistic children. While they struggle to pay the cost of their own children's treatment, they themselves are victims of a myriad of other government mandates, programs, and policies.

For example, they are forced to pay the cost of similar insurance mandates such as New Jersey's soon to be (or already) enacted Senate bill S1940. In addition, that same couple that is struggling to afford treatment for their own autistic child is paying, through their taxes, the healthcare expenditures of: the elderly (Medicare), the poor (Medicaid), other peoples' children (SCHIP), other uninsured people ("charitable" government aid to hospitals to cover "free" emergency room care, including for illegal aliens, imposed under the federal law EMTALA), etc., etc., etc. In addition, there are medical research grants to universities and colleges. And don't forget foreign aid healthcare spending, including President Bush's $50 billion Aids relief package to Africa. Undoubtedly, there is more. Such is the unjust nature of a system where everyone is forced to pay for everyone else's healthcare.

Our system of health insurance is an absurd, government-created Rube Goldberg concoction, administered by quasi-private companies forbidden to tailor policies to market demand; i.e., the choices and pocket books of the actual, individual consumers of healthcare. The absurdities are not hard to find. For example, my policy covers a myriad of routine medical procedures such as doctor's visits, eyeglasses, dental fillings, medical exams, etc. (after co-pays and deductibles). Yet I can be stuck with massive bills for something like Autism treatment. And I don't have a choice, since my health insurance is purchased by a third party...spending my own money to boot.

A real insurance policy would cover only the major, unforeseen, catastrophic healthcare expenses above a high deductible, such as those cited in the article. That is the real purpose of insurance. In a free market, most medical care would undoubtedly be paid for directly by the consumer with his own out-of-pocket money. It is unlikely, given the choice, that many people would hand over wads of money to insurance companies year after year for routine care or even for such things as mammograms, colonoscopies, moderate amounts of prescription drugs, etc. What we have today is pre-paid healthcare that creates mountains of administrative expenses, empowers insurance company and government bureaucrats to impose decisions properly belonging to the people, and drives up the cost of healthcare and insurance premiums.

The proper role for government is an important one; to protect against fraud and breech of contract, and to mediate contractual disputes. Beyond that, and rather than compound the problem with more mandates, the politicians should get out of the insurance business altogether. Health insurance is properly a contractual matter to be decided between the individual and his insurance company, as a matter of unalienable right. They should not be at the mercy of every politician and special interest group seeking to impose their will on others.

jlsmith June 02, 2009 at 7:56PM

Wow, we must have some victims of the public education system here. Zemack and Givmeliberty, do you know what insurance is? Seems you don't. It is a vehicle for spreading risk. Any medical insurance policy, to be meaningful, should address all medical issues requiring significant expenditures. Do you know anything about autism? Guess not. Because as the #1 children's major health condition (a biologically based medical condition more common than childhood cancer, diabetes and AIDs combined), it fits cleanly into the category of "major, unforeseen catastrophic healthcare expenses". Do you understand the magnitude of expenses associated with major conditions that are always covered by medical insurance, like cancer, diabetes, heart conditions, rheumatoid arthritis, trauma care, etc.? Obviously not, as autism treatment is absolutely not more expensive than these conditions. Have you priced out a stay in an intensive care unit lately? Do you know what we pay for end-of-life expenses for people on life support? Have you looked at the costs of the newer biotechnology agents used against cancer that often extend life by only a few months? It doesn't take long to amass a bill for hundreds of thousands of dollars or even more for a major medical condition these days. Please do your homework before making inaccurate statements and engaginig in poorly reasoned analyses.

My Response to jlsmith:

Posted by Zemack on 06/02/09 at 8:52PM
The hugely inflated cost of medical care exists under a system of massive government interference. That should be a strong clue. The third-party-payer system, the thousands of mandates, restraint-of-trade state policies, socialist government programs, all of the controls, taxes, and regulations; all of this inverts the normal market incentives that would lead to higher quality and lower prices. Of the $7500 per capita America spends on healthcare, almost 90% of that represents people spending other people's money.

But even in a free market, some healthcare expenses will be very expensive, and there will be those that will be unable to afford them. That is where insurance comes in, as I stated above, or private charity.

But my main point is, no one has the right to force another. This is something you pointedly ignore. Free people have a right to act on their own judgement...consumers, patients, insurers, providers...so long as they don't violate the rights of others. No one...not politicians, nor special interests, nor you...has the right to use the legalized force of government impose his own judgement on others.

A government either protects individual rights, as stated in the Declaration of Independence, or it is a predator. It's freedom or tyranny. Thanks to those who believe that force is a legitimate means of dealing with one's fellow citizens, we're heading in the direction of tyranny.

Others' Commentary:

njerseymom3 June 02, 2009 at 10:19PM

Zemack, you do not have to have medical insurance. It's your choice. The reality is, almost no one can afford to have something medically go wrong, or even right. Just don't have a baby, not even a healthy one. Don't have an accidental fall and whatever you do, don't develop any chronic illness because you will be begging for charity care or living on the street. Yes, the cost of services is over the top, but the point of this article was the societal costs and long term benefits of providing intervention early on to help produce productive adults who are not a drain on the system. That is the ultimate goal of every parent who has a child with these brain based ailments and we will do everything that we can to make that happen

blarneyboy June 02, 2009 at 10:44PM

Funding for these families is a moral necessity. Jersey, with the highest rate of autism in the land, and highest concentration of drug companies in the world, needs to find the link between the two that appears to be causing this developmental disaster. If we don't, "the fix" is in, so look to see which drug companies, and their individual big wigs, are giving the most contributions to the skethier politicians slithering around the state.

jlsmith June 03, 2009 at 11:21AM

Zemack-

We don't live in your utopian libertarian reality. "Mandates" are already in place on a mass scale. About sixty percent of our healthcare system is already socialized (the Medicare and Medicaid systems are funded by tax dollars), and that is never going to change. Ever. Because most illness occurs in the elderly, and it is politically impossible to pull the rug out from our elderly who on limited incomes and will never be able to afford the care they need. So I understand your philosophical leanings, but they really aren't relevant.

We parents in the autism community are sick to death of having our children "nickled and dimed" with pretentious, condescending neighbors and school board members deciding if our children are "worth" the expense of treating their condition, (and medical insurance companies slamming the door in our faces and providing nothing. These EXACT SAME PEOPLE of course are spending my money every day on their health problems. They have cancer, they have diabetes, they have lupus, they have heart problems, they get trauma care for a car accident. Their parents have alzheimers or congestive heart failure or need kidney dialysis. Their children have asthma, life threatening allergies, or were born needing the services of a neonatal intensive care unit. And I do not EVER say to them, you know, I know your dad has alzheimers and I feel great compassion for him and for you, but as a taxpayer and payor into the into the insurance premium pool, by gosh, I have to tell you that your dad is costing me a lot of money, and I just don't think the we as a society can afford to take care of him. I recently had lunch with a woman who was going through chemo, and has been hospitalized 8 times this year, including undergoing 3 surgeries (imagine the expense). She got onto the subject of how her school district is being financially ruined by the special needs students, knowing full well my child has autism. It took every bit of restraint I possessed to not say to her "I'd love to run the numbers on how much the public has spent on my child versus how much the public has just spent on your care." This woman, just like many others in society who resent our children, are total and complete hypocrites, and their arguments about cost (and "mandates") with respect to autism are utterly invalid, when cost and mandates are not on the table for other conditions.

We need to get out of our survival of the fittest, dog eat dog mentality and aspire to a higher moral ground. We need to respond to illness with help, not resentment, and one irrational excuse after another as to why we won't pay.

My Response to njerseymom3, blarneyboy, and jlsmith:

Posted by Zemack on 06/03/09 at 9:14PM

jlsmith

Your argument seems to be: We're 2/3 of the way to totalitarian socialism, so we may as well accept it and go the rest of the way. Well, how do you think we got to "sixty percent socialized"? We got where we are by the same incremental, predatory, dog-eat-dog process that you despise but that is actually epitomized by Speaker Roberts' bill and S1940. It was made possible by the blind pragmatism of people seeing only the small steps and ignoring the ominous trend. It was made possible by the belief that a little bit of rights-violating of our fellow Americans was OK...then a little bit more and a little more...

I agree with you that autism parents are victims of a system that forces them to pay tens of thousands of dollars toward other peoples' healthcare, while leaving them out in the cold. I made that injustice plain on 6/2/09 @ 6:11pm. Your point that we are where we are, it's not going to change, so give me my due is understandable. But I do not accept that freedom is doomed, America is dead, and we should not fight back. The consequences are too dreadful. What do you think it will be like when the "worth" of not just autism treatment but all medical treatment is at the mercy of not "pretentious, condescending neighbors and school board members", but of unknown government bureaucrats wielding dictatorial powers over all of medicine?

When the American government stepped wholesale outside of its constitutional constraints of being a protector of individual rights, beginning in the 1930s, it unleashed the predatory gangs called special interest pressure groups; each seeking to gain control of the legislative process to extract some economic advantage at the expense of the rest of the country. You want dog-eat-dog? Well, there it is in all of its glory. The armies of lobbyists that swarm around the state capitols and Washington, D.C., is a consequence of government's massive control over all economic activity. They wouldn't exist in a free, rights-respecting society.

I do not single out the autism mandate for opposition. I oppose all mandates. The counter-revolution against America's founding ideals of unalienable individual rights, limited rights-protecting government, and justice that began in the Hoover-FDR era is reaching its climax. We are at a tipping point where not only does a line have to be drawn but statism has to be rolled back. Healthcare is currently the central front. The current system is unsustainable, and the choices are either capitalism and individual rights or totalitarian socialism. I do not believe the latter is inevitable, as you do.

I believe in every individual's right to his own life, to act on his own judgement, to his property and earnings, and to the pursuit of his own welfare and happiness, so long as he respects the same rights of others. This is not "survival of the fittest". This is not "dog-eat-dog". This is not libertarianism (which I certainly do not subscribe to!). This is the original ideal of liberty envisioned by the Founding Fathers. I am trying to sound the alarm here...to get people to look up and see where we are headed and to see that no one will benefit from tyranny except the government.

Maybe I and others like me are whistling past the graveyard. Then again, maybe not.

njerseymom3

"Zemack, you do not have to have medical insurance. It's your choice."

I don't have a choice of which insurance company to choose or the policy options. That is determined by a third party...in this case, my union. Changes are constantly made as to the insurer, the co-pays, and the coverage. I have no choice in any of that. Yet, my money...and that of the other members...pays for it.

"The reality is, almost no one can afford to have something medically go wrong, or even right."

Not true. See my post of 6/2/09 @ 6:11pm. Even uninsured people pay plenty in healthcare expenses, just not their own. If healthcare is unaffordable, then where does the more than $2 trillion come from that America currently spends annually on it? We all pay it in a myriad of ways, but most of it is spent by someone else. If we can't afford healthcare, then we can't afford "universal healthcare" either.

The issue is not the wisdom of treatment for autism. The issue is in the "we can make that happen". Who is "we"? By advocating this new law, you are claiming the right to dispose of the earnings and violate the rights of others. This is immoral, and no one has any right to speak for others. Each of us is responsible for his own expenses, not that of others unless we as individuals choose to be, voluntarily. It is the right and responsibility of each of us to decide when and in what capacity to help others, based upon our own values and affordability. No one has the right to force their views and values on others.

Blarneyboy

On what basis is this moral? Let me be unequivocal here. The easiest thing in the world to do is to profess concern for some cause, legitimate or not, then seek a law to force others to pay for your concern with their money and their rights. You get no moral sanction from me. There is no compassion in trampling the rights of others.

Others' Commentary:

blarneyboy June 03, 2009 at 11:34PM

What do you propose, Zemack? Leave the ill on a riverbank to be washed away at high tide? There's a lot appealing about the libertarian concept, but not its Darwinian disregard for those who are weaker, or sicker.

jlsmith June 04, 2009 at 12:43PM

Zemack-

Where to begin? Another primer on medical insurance. When you buy comprehensive medical insurance, it is supposed to cover payment for scientifically validated treatments that are generally accepted as efficacious in the medical community for the full array of medical conditions that exist. As new treatments become available, they are added to the schedule of covered expenses through various processes. Insurance companies often fight the addition of new treatments, particularly treatments that are expensive. They will argue that treatments are "investigatory" or "experimental" long after the evidence is in that they are commonly used and proven safe and effective. Some treatment providers are more effective than others at obtaining coverage for their products and services. For example, the pharmaceutical industry is extremely adept at getting their products covered by insurance companies, and indeed their markets depend on it. The same is generally true for surgical and interventional procedures performed by physicians, although that can be a little more challenging. However, in some situations, the insurance companies are able to successfully keep expensive treatments off their formularies, and that is where mandates come in. A patient base will basically come in and fight the insurance companies, lose, get frustrated, and then fight back in the legal and legislative arenas. You have to understand that in these situations the insurance industry is being sanctioned FOR WHAT THEY SHOULD BE DOING ALREADY IF THEY WERE INTELLECTUALLY HONEST.

In the instant case, therapy for autism should have been covered by insurance IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE STANDARDS SET UP BY THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY ITSELF starting decades ago, when the treatments were first developed and validated. The only reason they got away with not providing coverage is because 1/ the incidence of autism has only recently exploded and the patient base lacked critical mass to effectively fight for this coverage until now, 2/ there were no monied and politically astute pharma or AMA reimbursement professionals working on behalf of providers and patients to obtain reimbursement--just a bunch of ragtag parent groups and non-organized behaviorists crying into the wilderness; and 3/ parents could often get at least a little help (though almost always inadequate) through their school districts, which have a parallel obligation to provide behavioral therapies under IDEA.

From a legal perspective, mandates are effectively an adverse regulatory ruling against the industry--where the legislature, acting on behalf of the public, enforces the industry's own standards on itself. So there is no "forcing" here--this is what the insurance company should be doing but hasn't, because it has been able to get away with it.

I am as much as a fan of free market capitalism as anyone, but the insurance industry in it's current state is massively corrupt and functioning as an oligopoly, with no meaningful competition (and not as a result of "government interference" as you would allege and as is spewed by their pr departments). If you haven't learned that in the past few years, you've been simply asleep.

I am all for reforming our medical care system, but we are absolutely not going to start by throwing kids with autism off the cliff (not when utter crap like Viagra has been prioritized above our children's needs). We will work to accomplish order and equity in the CURRENT SYSTEM while at the same time IN PARALLEL laying the groundwork for a new system. 1 in 94 kids in New Jersey has autism (1 in 60 boys) . They cannot wait.

blarneyboy June 04, 2009 at 2:50PM

Well said, Jlsmith. Give babies dozens of shots and the immune system could react by causing autism, requiring the drug companies to create MORE shots to treat the autism caused by the original overload of shots= PROFIT.

There's so much drug lobby money in the political system, we may never get to the truth...as children suffer. 1 in 94!

My Commentary

Posted by Zemack on 06/18/09 at 6:58PM

jlsmith

I am all for reforming our medical care system, but we are absolutely not going to start by throwing kids with autism off the cliff (not when utter crap like Viagra has been prioritized above our children's needs). We will work to accomplish order and equity in the CURRENT SYSTEM while at the same time IN PARALLEL laying the groundwork for a new system.

There is a certain logic to this statement. In principle, we're closer than you think. I have made it clear that a comprehensive approach to "reforming our medical care system" is vital. But this must be more than lip service. What should the "groundwork for a new system" entail? It begins with understanding certain key points.

So there is no "forcing" here--this is what the insurance company should be doing but hasn't, because it has been able to get away with it.

"Should be doing"...according to whom? Exercising one's fundamental right to produce and trade...i.e., freedom...is not getting "away with it", or of anything. That is a primitive, tribal premise of the individual as a subject of the state, rather than the American concept of an independent being possessing unalienable rights. Freedom is an unalienable right, not a gift from the state or society.

More importantly, the claim that a government action is not force is an utter denial of reality...a statement that belongs on Orwell's doublespeak list, along with; War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.

Government, by its very nature, has a legal monopoly on the use of physical force. Every governmental action involves the use of force in some manner. This is proper, but only under certain conditions. This basic fact of the nature of government is what necessitates a constitution; the only purpose of which is the protection of private individuals from government force. Proper constitutional constraints limit the power of government to the protection of individual rights. When government steps outside of those constraints, such as legally compelling some people to provide a certain type of insurance...whether on behalf of a ruler, the "public", a pressure group, a democratic majority, someone's need, or what-have-you...it is no longer acting legitimately, but as a criminal.

I am as much as a fan of free market capitalism as anyone...

No, you're not. You advocate a mixed economy...a deteriorating conglomeration of limited economic freedom corrupted by an ever-expanding mass of government controls, regulations, and interventions...i.e., force. The nature and consequences of a mixed economy is described very well...by you. Just get a big enough gang together -- or "critical mass", in your words - to gain control of the legislative process, and you get to impose on others what you couldn't get through voluntary means. On one level, I can't really blame you and others with autistic children. This game of "cold civil war", of pressure groups fighting to use government's power for the purpose of economic predation, has been going on for a long time. The big loser in the mixed economy is the individual and his rights. Note that as a "ragtag" group of individuals, you have no choice but to pay for viagra coverage. But as a political pressure group, you get to force your will on others, just as the viagra lobby was able to force theirs on you. Multiply this process by the thousands, and you have the "dog-eat-dog", Darwinian consequences of a mixed economy. The big winner in this "cold civil war" is the government, which steadily gains power over our lives no matter which pressure group happens to be "winning" at any particular time. At the end of this road lies dictatorship; that the Speaker Robertses and the Blarneyboys can claim an unearned prestige built on the phony "compassion" paid for with other peoples' money. The only solution is the separation of economics and government, a system called capitalism, which would put an end to this beggar-thy-neighbor domestic con game.

Indeed, our insurance industry "in it's current state is massively corrupt and functioning as an oligopoly", if you want to use that ridiculous term. The term "cartel" would be more accurate. A cartel is only made possible by government force. The fact that the insurers are privately owned does not make our current system "free market capitalism". Private ownership also exists under fascism. One of the dangerous fallacies widely accepted today is to equate "capitalists" with capitalism.

In a free market, individual rights...which are guarantees to freedom of action, not a claim to someone else's life or property...are protected by government. There is no "STANDARDS SET UP BY THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY ITSELF", imposed upon all insurance companies by government fiat. There are no cartels under capitalism. The industry is open to all who wish to enter the market, regardless of any "standards" set up by any group of companies calling itself "the industry". An insurer is free to ignore those standards and offer policies in accordance with its own market judgement...its judgement as to what consumers may want and be willing and able to pay for, and what is economically viable. What "is supposed" to be covered...whether established treatments or new ...is determined, properly, by voluntary contractual agreement between the consumer and the insurer. The government's role is not to dictate, but to mediate any contractual disputes through the objective medium of the civil courts and to prosecute breech of contract. But the terms of the contract are set between consumer and insurer, by mutual consent to mutual advantage. In a free market, no one is forced. That is what the "free" in free market means.

Consumers are free to choose among competing policies offered by competing companies. There is complete freedom of contract, with government protections against fraud or breech. But there is no inherent right of consumers to any particular type of policy or coverage, if no one chooses to offer it. There is no inherent right of insurers to sell any particular policy or coverage , if no one chooses to buy it. The basic principle is justice...every person is responsible for his own life, and may satisfy his needs only by means of voluntary trade and association with those who produce what he needs. When government violates rights by interfering in that contractual relationship, such as with mandates, the product ceases to be insurance. When the government uses its coercive power to dole out economic favors to some groups at the expense of others, it is engaging in fascism; the use of superficially private business as a conduit for the illegitimate exercise of government's monopoly on legal physical force. The legislature is then not "acting on behalf of the public", but on behalf of whatever groups claiming to represent "the public" happen to have their political hacks sitting in that body. The government's only real "public interest" function is to protect individual rights...everyone's rights, equally and at all times...because each and every individual is a part of "the public". If the government violates the rights of one single person, it can no longer claim to be "acting on behalf of the public".

The current problems in our healthcare are "not as a result of 'government interference' as you would allege".

Really? This doesn't jive with your previous statement that "About sixty percent of our healthcare system is already socialized", or with the facts of reality. America currently spends some $7500 per capita per year ($30,000 per family of four and rising) on healthcare. Almost that entire amount represents third parties spending other people's money. This is a fundamental part of the problem. Without government interference, we would purchase our own healthcare directly from providers, insurance directly from insurers, and be responsible for our own healthcare retirement planning, etc. Our entire healthcare financing system is a creation of government. Over the past several decades, the problems in healthcare have grown in lockstep with the growth of government interference: In other words, with the growth of force imposed on the private sector.

Your reference to "the past few years" is taken to mean the financial crisis. Good comparison. The financial sector is controlled by a central bank money monopoly. This sector is, arguably, even more controlled than healthcare...and look where we are. In similar fashion to healthcare, the crisis we are now in is entirely the result of a build-up of government interference in the banking, mortgage, and housing markets...i.e., the build-up of force.

In fact, the areas beset with the most problems...such as soaring costs, falling quality, and crazy distortions...are the three sectors most heavily dominated by government--healthcare, finance, and education (with energy closing in on fourth place).

There is much, much more to say regarding the "PARALLEL laying [of] the groundwork for a new system". Understanding the difference between government action and private action...between force and voluntary human association...and how the former corrupts the latter is crucial to finding the right reform path--individual rights in medicine.

As for blarneyboy, The issue is; who decides when and how to help another? That is a decision for each of us to make based upon our own evaluation of the worthiness of the recipient of our charity, our values, and our ability to be able to afford the time and/or resources. No one has the right to impose his idea of "compassion" on others, either at gunpoint or by supporting some government law...essentially the same thing. Those who do are phonies. The idea that "we are all our brothers' keepers" has turned America into a nation of thieves, where anyone with a "good cause" in one hand and the lever of political power in the other can pick his neighbor's pocket. That is a fundamental source of the problems in America's healthcare financing system.

I would say that the best protection that the small minority of helpless people have...the "weaker, or sicker"... is the freedom of those who they must depend on. It's no contradiction that you support both the "appealing libertarian concept" and socialism. One is anti-government, the other totalitarian government. In both cases, there is no protection for individual rights. So you are consistent here. Morality is the missing ingredient in your viewpoint. I oppose your Darwinian disregard for the lives and liberty of the strong and healthy...the very people upon whom the "weaker, or sicker" must depend. If you don't want to "leave the ill on a riverbank to be washed away at high tide", you would embrace capitalism, not socialism or libertarianism. Only a rights-respecting and protecting society is a benevolent and compassionate society.

As for blaming pharmaceutical companies for autism, I'm not that familiar with the issue. But my understanding is that there is little evidence to support your claim. It's a cheap shot (no pun intended). There's a funny thing about freedom, though...you don't have to buy the dangerous products made by the evil profit-seeking pharmaceutical companies...unless, of course, the government forces you to. (Never mind the lobbyists. No private person, group, or company can force you. Only government can, at the behest of some special interest. This is why, once again, I advocate the separation of economics and government.)

What should be investigated, but isn't, is the role of religion in the increasing incidence of autism. In the early years, a child has a desperate need and strong desire to understand the world around him, which means to learn to use his cognitive tools of logic that enable him to cope with that world. But if a small child is brow-beaten with the notions that he must blindly obey the arbitrary commands of an incomprehensible supernatural being or rot in hell; that his life is pre-determined by "God's plan"; that he is evil by nature; that humility is a virtue and self-esteem is a vice; that the quest for knowledge is sinful; that his mind is impotent before the "awesome" power of statues gazing down on him in a cathedral designed to make him feel small and inconsequential - would it be surprising if that child escaped into his own autistic world? No, most Christian parents are not holy rollers who literally practice that dogma. That would be cruel. But the rise in autism parallels the resurgence of religion in American culture over the last couple of decades.

NOTES on the CAUSES of AUTISM:

The Extremely Male Brain

" In 1998 British gastroenterologist Andrew Wakefield published a study in the Lancet linking autism to the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella. The paper was based on only 12 subjects, and the theory has been debunked in much larger studies. Wakefield is being investigated by Britain's General Medical Council for, among other things, misrepresenting his subjects' medical records. But the vaccine theory lives on among parents who refuse to vaccinate their children, with public health consequences for the rest of the population."

Dionne on Sotomayor Nomination

2009-05-29T13:12:00.000-07:00

Obama's Anti-Roberts, by E.J. Dionne in the Washington Post, May 28, 2009.

Excerpts:

"Republicans would be foolish to fight the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court because she is the most conservative choice that President Obama could have made.

"And even though they should support her confirmation, liberals would be foolish to embrace Sotomayor as one of their own because her record is clearly that of a moderate.

"In this battle, it's important to separate Obama's reasons for choosing Sotomayor from her actual record. He was drawn to her not simply because the politics of naming the first Latina justice were irresistible, but also because he saw her as the precise opposite of Chief Justice John Roberts.

"In his September 2005 speech explaining his vote against Roberts, Obama argued that 95 percent of court cases are easily settled on the basis of the law and precedent. But in 'those 5 percent of hard cases,' Obama said, the 'legal process alone will not lead you to a rule of decision' and 'the critical ingredient is supplied by what is in the judge's heart.' "

My Commentary, posted on 5/29/2009 at 9:08:42 PM

Zemack wrote:
The crucial issue here is not whether Ms. Sotomayor is a liberal, conservative, or Hispanic or a woman. The real issue is President Obama’s judicial philosophy, which is an assault on a key founding principle of the United States and the foundation of justice. On May 1, 2009, the president said:

“... [J]ustice isn't about some abstract legal theory or footnote in a case book.

“I view that quality of empathy, of understanding and identifying with people's hopes and struggles as an essential ingredient for arriving at just decisions and outcomes.”

His nominee, Sonia Sotomayor, said the following in a 2001 California Berkeley School of Law
speech:

“…“[T]he aspiration to impartiality is just that–it’s an aspiration…

“There is no objective stance but only a series of perspectives,”

What this means is that a judge may, on any subjective whim, side-step the objective reliance on law and facts and substitute his own emotions in rendering a decision. What America since its founding has been guided by [is] the principle of “a government of laws and not of men”. President Obama’s historic precedent is to say, “not anymore”.

Never mind that “only” the most complex 5% of the cases will be affected. Once the arbitrary supplants the objective, the whole judicial system becomes an emotional crapshoot. How do the antagonists in a court case decide when to settle out of court when the only valid frame of reference, the law and the facts, can be rendered meaningless at any time by some judge’s “perspectives”? How does one prepare to enter a court of law governed by judges who can act at any time – not as an impartial arbiter of objective facts and law – but on what happens to just “feel right”? How can one ever know whether he will be a part of some imaginary 95%, or the other 5%? How can one ever know if he as an objective shot at justice? What’s the point of having courts at all, if impartiality is “just an aspiration” rather than a solemn pledge?

If Obama believes that the “disadvantaged” deserving of “empathy” would somehow benefit from the breakdown of objective law and equal, blind justice, he should think again. “A government of men” is tyranny, and the greatest victims of tyranny throughout history have always been the average citizen. America, the “government of laws”, has always been a place of achievement for the “little guy”, precisely because of the equal protection under the law that he can count on.

If Obama’s judicial philosophy takes hold, it can no more be contained to just 5% of the judiciary than cancer cells can be contained in the body. The road to tyranny begins with small first steps. President Obama has taken a scary first step down that ancient road of the rule of men rather than laws.

This issue transcends the liberal-conservative, democrat-republican divide. A judge has a legal, professional, and, especially, a moral duty to make the utmost effort to prevent personal feelings from impinging upon the rigorous adherence to facts and law…no matter how complex the case. Judge Sotomayor’s rejection of objectivity and impartiality renders her unfit for the Supreme Court. And President Obama must be sent a strong message by congress: The dignity of the judicial process must be preserved. The future of America depends on it.

When justice is transformed from an objective absolute into a ball of putty, there is no justice at all. Sonia Sotomayor should not be confirmed.

Medicare's Denial of Virtual Colonoscopies

2009-05-26T17:29:00.000-07:00

This article in the 5/26/09 addition of the New Jersey Star Ledger raises the alarm about the rationing to come.

Denying Medicare coverage for virtual colonoscopy is wrong move

My Commentary

Posted by Zemack on 05/26/09 at 8:29PM
This is an excellent article by Mr. Bramwit. The issue, though, is much wider than the relative value of virtual colonoscopies. It is about who should be making medical decisions, the government or the patient. It is about the proper role of government and the rights of the individual.

Only in the sterile mind of a bean-counting government bureaucrat can medical advances be considered too much of a cost burden on "the system". This is what happens when people give up their freedom for the illusion of "free, guaranteed" medical care. The perverse system that awards this kind of power to a hand-full of government central planners is the collectivized utopia that forces everyone to be responsible for everyone else's healthcare, but not one's own.

Medicare is following the predicted and foreseeable trajectory; exploding costs, followed by rationing, followed by an attempt to "save" the system by expanding it. The healthcare "debate" now centers on the search for new victims to loot and enslave. Whether by covert means such as the Trojan horse of a "public option", or opening up Medicare to all who want in, or by open advocacy of single payer, the drive is on to ensnare everyone under total socialized medicine, one way or the other. The logical and inevitable end result--a healthcare dictatorship.

This Medicare decision is the tip of the iceberg and a harbinger and should be a wake-up call. When we turn over our money to government, we turn over our right to make all manner of medical decisions. When the government pays, the government sets the terms. Ultimately, the central planners will have totalitarian control over who gets what treatment when, how much superficially "private" providers will be paid, and the whole field of cutting-edge medical technology and research. The victims of the cold, heavy hand of the bean counters will suffer and die in silence, even as relatively healthy people enjoy their "free" routine medical care without regard to cost.

The socialist Left loves Rowe vs. Wade on the grounds that the decision to have an abortion is a private matter between a woman and her doctor. Fair enough, and that is something I support. But the same moral and legal logic applies across the board. All medical choices are properly a private matter between the patient and his/her doctor. No one - not the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, nor some "comparative effectiveness research" board, nor any other governmental authority - has any right to interfere with or dictate that decision.

But freedom in medicine is possible only under a system of individual rights...i.e., a free market. There is no other alternative. Only by taking personal responsibility for one's own healthcare, with one's own money, can one exercise his inalienable individual right to make one's own medical decisions. Never mind the absurd contention that the average person couldn't afford to pay for his own health insurance or healthcare. America currently spends some $7500 per capita per year ($30,000 per family of four and rising) on healthcare. Almost that entire amount represents third parties spending other people's money. This is a fundamental part of the problem. Where does all of that money come from? That money comes from all of us in a myriad of ways, yet leaves us with little control over how it is spent.

Real healthcare reform starts with a re-examination of the entire network of government intrusions into the medical field that have been built up over a period of decades; from government entitlement programs, to private market insurance mandates, to the tax-distortion spawned third-party-payer system, and on and on.

As far as this Medicare decision goes, Mr. Bramwit is right to raise the alarm. Unfortunately, he shies away from the obvious solution to this horrendous decision. Rather than spread the unsustainable Medicare cancer with its $38 trillion unfunded liability to the entire country, it's time to challenge that sacred cow. Medicare should be phased out and abolished as a fundamental part of any healthcare reform.

For more on the decision by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to deny coverage for virtual colonoscopies, see The Wall Street Journal article, How Washington Rations.

Mulshine on Laffer

2009-05-21T16:26:00.000-07:00

Steve Lonegan and the 'Laffer Curve', by Paul Mulshine of the New Jersey Star-Ledger.

My Commentary:

Posted by Zemack on 05/21/09 at 7:25PM
I think Lonegan understands better than Christie a fundamental law of nature--production comes before consumption. His flat tax proposal is a recognition of this fact (although I would like to see the income tax abolished altogether). Despite misgivings, I will be voting for Lonegan largely on the basis of his strong statement that the progressive income tax is immoral..., which it certainly is.

As far as government spending goes, the only way to cut spending is to eliminate programs and departments. Making marginal cuts while leaving existing programs in place is the Corzine approach, and is worse than futile. The basis for deciding where to make structural cuts in government begins by reaffirming the original American concept of government, which is to protect individual rights. Therefor, one must distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate spending. Paying for the law courts, police, National Guard, arguably the fire and rescue squads, etc are proper. Use of the government's tax and spend powers to transfer wealth and earnings from those who earned it to those who didn't is both immoral and unconstitutional. None other than Barack Obama, a constitutional scholar, acknowledges as much. He said that the constitution provides for no "redistributive authority", which he called a "fundamental flaw"...no surprise there (from a 2001 interview on Chicago's public radio station WBEZ FM).

So eliminating redistributive state programs (in addition to regulatory agencies) would be not only moral but would be based upon strong constitutional grounds. All redistributive tax-and-spend government programs, including the entire welfare state, are unconstitutional...period. This provides a large target for the spending ax. Here again, I think Lonegan is best positioned, philosophically, to make real spending cuts.

As far as Laffer goes, I think his fundamental justification for cutting taxes...the "Laffer Curve"...amounts to an acceptance of the belief that the wealth of the nation belongs to government. Basing tax policy on the principle of maximizing government revenues is an acceptance of that left wing/collectivist notion. I'm reminded of the old saw that "republicans are the tax collectors for the welfare state".

I agree with gabe71's third paragraph above. Taxes, such as they are necessary to fund the proper functions of government, should be structured so as to minimize damage to production and trade. Rather than Laffer Curve reasoning, I prefer Milton Friedman's idea that "if you cut taxes and government's revenues rose, you haven't cut taxes enough."

On Obama's Christian Strategy

2009-05-20T13:33:00.000-07:00

Conciliatory Fighting Words, by E. J. Dionne of the Washington Post, writing on President Obama's recent commencement address at Notre Dame University

My Commentary:

Zemack wrote:
President Obama’s political strategy is clear, a philosophical masterstroke, and devastating for capitalism and freedom. His grand strategy for remaking America into a nation ruled by the collective should be obvious to anyone who understands the power of ideas and of morality.

But to advocate socialism openly and honestly is and always has been a loser in America. After the tyranny, wars, and unprecedented mass murder wrought by the socialist regimes of Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, Red China, and the many smaller variants of the 20th century, socialism is dead as an intellectual force. Notice how Obama and the American Left run from the socialist label as from the plague, despite the obvious socialist (albeit through the fascist back door) underpinnings of their agenda. How, then, to pursue a socialist agenda in America?

Enter what one might call Obama’s “Christian Strategy”. The President, a philosophically astute man (unlike most of his GOP rivals), is and has been attempting to forge an alliance with Christianity based upon a common moral foundation…altruism. Unlike socialism, religion is a live and growing force in America, and Christianity is the dominant religion. Since socialism and Christianity share the same ethical premise…that the good consists of living for others or putting others above self…Obama’s brilliant strategy is to hitch his socialist agenda to Judeo-Christian ethics.

America was founded on the opposite ethical principle, though those principles were never explicitly defined until the 20th century. The Founding Fathers created a nation based upon the supreme value of the individual possessing the unalienable rights to his own life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. They rejected the tribal view that man must live for others (i.e., the collective). But it was philosopher-novelist Ayn Rand who comprehensively defined the philosophical underpinnings for the American Revolution. Through her classic novels The Fountainhead and especially Atlas Shrugged…and through her philosophy of Objectivism…she presents the moral case for the American Revolution and capitalism.

It is only Ayn Rand who provides the vital intellectual ammunition to counter the accelerating collectivist trend in America, and thus save our individual freedom, because she can defend the individual’s right to exist for his own sake…and prove it. She offers the anti-dote to the doctrine that “we are all our brother’s keepers”, the moral root of Obama’s policies and the root of all variants of socialism. If Obama is to be stopped, Capitalism must be discovered. For Capitalism to be discovered, our Founding principles must be rediscovered and fully understood. For our Founding principles to be fully understood, Ayn Rand and Objectivism must be discovered and embraced.

The President is right that we are at “a rare inflection point in history”. He intends to steer America away from its Founding ideals by hitching his car to the engine of Christianity. It remains to be seen how successful he will be. But Obama understands fully that morality is the key to the direction America will take. It’s time that Capitalism’s defenders understood that, too.

"Empathy" and Obama's Judicial Philosophy--Star-Ledger Reader Forum

2009-05-16T17:06:00.000-07:00

The following letter was published in the New Jersey Star-Ledger on 5/15/09. My comments follow, and you can read my blog post at Principled Perspectives for more.

Empathy is needed

I was nauseated reading Kevin O'Brien's recent op-ed article ("You won't find 'empathy' in the Constitution," May 8).

O'Brien objects to President Obama's stated desire to replace retiring Supreme Court Associate Justice David Souter with an individual who feels empathy with suffering Americans. O'Brien feels empathy has no place in government, and that " equal protection under the law, which is a bedrock of American jurisprudence," precludes officials from entertaining feelings of empathy. O'Brien opines that "empathy assumes partiality." Was the Bush administration showing partiality toward Halliburton when it awarded the contractor -- which was formerly headed by former vice president Dick Cheney -- so many lucrative no-bid contracts? Did Valerie Plame enjoy equal protection under the law when Scooter Libby was pardoned by President George W. Bush after publicly exposing the undercover CIA agent? Did the wealthier elements of American society enjoy empathetic treatment by the Republicans when their taxes were slashed, and America rolled up a humongous deficit as Bush attempted to conquer the world?

Every administration is characterized by empathetic feelings toward one segment of society or another.

It just so happens that after eight years of Republican empathy for the elite, America now has a president who feels empathy toward the larger mass of humanity that doesn't enjoy the wealth the richest one percent of society possesses.

Bill Gottdenker, Mountainside

My Commentary:

Posted by Zemack on 05/16/09 at 8:04PM

Bill Gottdenker needs to refresh his understanding of history. One of history's greatest achievement's is the founding of a nation...the United States of America...on the principle of "a government of laws, and not of men". That principle is, sadly, being steadily eroded as government increases its power and control.

The erosion of that American principle has, indeed, resulted in a mixed economy in which "Every administration is characterized by empathetic feelings toward one segment of society or another." We have become a nation of warring special interest pressure groups fighting (non-violently, so far) for the levers of government power, in order to gain through force some economic advantage that it cannot get voluntarily in the private market...each at the expense of others. This non-violent "civil war" is what happens when the objective rule of law breaks down, and the arbitrary whims of government officials and politicians...a "government of men"...takes over.

Now President Obama wants to undermine and corrupt our courts by inserting the arbitrary emotional whims...the "empathy"...of judges as a substitute for facts, logic, and objective law. This is a highly dangerous development and a major threat to justice. Mr. Gottdenker seems to believe that "the larger mass of humanity" would somehow benefit from the breakdown of objective law and equal, blind justice. But "a government of men" is tyranny, and the greatest victims of tyranny throughout history have always been the average citizen. America, the "government of laws", has always been a place of achievement for the "little guy", precisely because of the equal protection under the law that he can count on.

No, it hasn't been perfect or always consistently practiced. Nevertheless, a government of laws and not of men is an indespensable protector of "the larger mass of humanity". Inverting that principle leads to the rule of brutality, and Obama has taken us a major step down that dark road.

"National Healthcare"--Star-Ledger Reader's Forum

2009-05-16T11:43:00.000-07:00

National health insurance

I have been reading about the various approaches being looked at in Congress to address the creation of a national health insurance plan that would assure coverage to all Americans. I endorse and support that effort.

The federal government already has contracts with almost all of the insurance companies in the United States and the premiums for federal employees are lower than most companies are charged, and definitely lower than what individuals can get.

Why not simply open the federal plan to all businesses and individuals in the country? That would create a rate-base of 300 million and that rate-base would drive down costs.

The federal government can also open up existing federal programs like Medicare to all citizens as a backstop and a way of insuring that private companies do not take unfair advantage of consumers. We will also have to make provision for the indigents, because having people who are not insured is more expensive than covering them.

We can even have graduated levels of assistance for the working poor.

I want to see the current federal insurance system opened to all Americans using an actuarial rate base of all the people in the nation. This will keep the private companies alive as well as assure medical insurance and the health care for everyone.

This can be a win-win.

George N. Wells, Dover

My Commentary:

Posted by Zemack on 05/16/09 at 2:42PM
The basic premise underlying the idea of "universal health care" is the un-American idea that the individual has no rights and is to be subordinated to the group, as represented by the state. It is the deadly ideology of collectivism. I submit into evidence the letter by George N. Wells.

He declares that Congress should set up "a national health insurance plan that would assure coverage to all Americans."

The means by which human needs (and desires) are to be met do not just occur free in nature. They must be created by productive people. There are basically only two ways to acquire the product of another man's labor--by voluntary means such as trade or private charity, or seize it by force. The first is the civilized method; the second is the criminal method. Therefor, the only way that government can guarantee any man-made product such as healthcare is to declare that the people's earnings and the productive labor of the providers belong to "society", and then exercise the totalitarian powers to loot and enslave. There is no other way. When government pays, government sets the terms...on who the money comes from, on who will get what treatment when, prices and salaries, medical technology and innovation, etc.

Mr. Wells declares that "we" should provide for "the indigents" and "the working poor". This is a tacit admission that Mr. Wells believes that the earnings and wealth of others is his to dispose of...the disposition to be carried out by the majority mob's political surrogates. The fact that universal health schemes may be administered by quasi-private companies controlled by the government is nothing more than socialism through the fascist back door.

I support the alternative, free market capitalism. This is the moral system based upon American principles...the principles of individual rights protected by a government limited to that purpose. Rights are guarantees to freedom of action, coupled with the sole obligation to respect the same rights of others...a respect distinctly missing from socialized medicine's proponents. Rights are not an automatic claim on the earnings, property, or wealth produced by others.

In a free market, all associations are voluntary. Consumers, providers, insurers, and patients are left free to contract voluntarily with each other to mutual advantage. Each individual is free to decide for himself when, whom, and in what capacity to help others...free from the predatory, phony do-gooders seeking to practice "charity" with other people's tax money.

Government interference is the source of the problems confronting American healthcare. America currently spends some $7500 per capita per year ($30,000 per family of four and rising) on healthcare. Almost that entire amount represents third parties spending other people's money. This is a fundamental part of the problem.

The only just and moral course to take on healthcare reform is to rid medicine of government interference. End all government insurance mandates, barriers to inter-state competition, and the third-party-payer system; phase out existing "public" plans like Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP, and let people take personal responsibility for their own healthcare, as is their unalienable right under American principles. Leave healthcare dollars in the hands of the people that earned it through some vehicle like HSAs, leave providers and insurers free to compete directly for those consumer dollars, and restrict the government to its proper role of protector of the individual rights of all (which includes anti-fraud laws and enforcement of contracts). The natural incentives inherent in a free market provide the proper, moral dynamics for affordable, widely available quality healthcare.

Mr. Wells endorses and supports tyranny, whether he chooses to acknowledge it or not. I support capitalism and individual rights.

"Healthcare Ailing"--Star-Ledger Reader Forum

2009-05-14T14:05:00.000-07:00

5/14/09

Health care ailing

I awoke recently to a report stating Big Health was going to save the country $2 trillion over the next decade ("Health care industry gets behind Obama's plan," May 11). What a coincidence. Just as the Obama administration begins to tackle heath care reform, a colossal savings has been discovered.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, medical inflation was running around 10 percent annually. Bill Clinton was elected and immediately proposed health care reform. Surprise! Medical inflation plummeted, only to rebounded just as soon as reform efforts were killed.
Should the government have propped up buggy-whip manufacturers when they became obsolete? Of course not. Although the current patchwork quilt that makes up health care financing in this country is likewise obsolete, competition in this sector still has "efficient" insurers with overheads around 15 percent.

Medicare's overhead is 1 percent. It is time for the nation to catch up with the rest of the civilized world.

John O'Connor, Cedar Grove

Insurance reform needed

I would like to add my voice to those who think that a single-payer insurance plan is the way to go. It's not free health care, but a less expensive, more efficiently run and fairer system.
The current system has failed us, that much is obvious. I'm sorry that the insurance companies are afraid of losing their stranglehold on our health care, but the over 40-million of us who are uninsured and risk bankruptcy are not so sympathetic.

David Easton, Maplewood

My Commentary:

Posted by Zemack on 05/14/09 at 8:43PM

John O'Connor comes close to naming the problem with regard to healthcare financing, then misses the obvious conclusion...end government's massive interference. Leaving aside Obama's $2 trillion extortion scheme against the industry, today's "patchwork quilt" is solely the work of government, which Mr. O'Connor now wants to reward with totalitarian control.

To start with, as Jeffcon points out, the idea that government-run programs like Medicare offer low administrative costs is a mirage. For example, the administrative costs for Medicare are huge, but are simply shifted onto the private sector, such as doctor's offices, hospitals, and employers (in the form of tax collection costs). In addition, the government's own tax collection costs are ignored.

The second thing to grasp is that the government-imposed third-party-payer system, thousands of government insurance mandates, and state-imposed restraints of trade that bar inter-state competition impose huge, unnecessary administrative costs while simultaneously driving up the cost of insurance. America currently spends some $7500 per capita per year ($30,000 per family of four and rising) on healthcare. Almost that entire amount represents third parties spending other people's money. This is a fundamental part of the problem. That money comes from all of us in a myriad of ways, yet leaves us with little control over how it is spent. David Easton doesn't have insurance, but (assuming he is a working taxpayer) pays plenty in healthcare costs...only his money goes to pay for other people's healthcare.

Today's insurance industry is actually a quasi-private, government created and protected cartel, and is not indicative of a free market. The seeming "stranglehold on our health care" held by the insurers is really an extension of government coercion. The single-payer "solution" would consolidate power under a centralized bureaucratic elite armed with the government's legal monopoly on physical force. It would have total, life and death control over providers, patients, treatments, prices, medical technology, etc. To put it in Mr. Easton's language, the government would have a stranglehold on our health care...a real stranglehold called a dictatorship.

Any honest and objective healthcare reform debate must begin with an examination of how we got to this point to begin with. The problems in American healthcare have grown in lock step with the growth of government intervention. The solution is to discover capitalism. The only just and moral course to take on healthcare reform is to rid healthcare of government interference. End all government insurance mandates, barriers to inter-state competition, and the third-party-payer system; phase out existing "public" plans like Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP, and let people take personal responsibility for their own healthcare, as is their unalienable right under American principles. Leave healthcare dollars in the hands of the people that earned it through some vehicle like HSAs, leave providers and insurers free to compete directly for those consumer dollars, and restrict the government to its proper role of protector of the individual rights of all (which includes anti-fraud laws and enforcement of contracts). The natural incentives inherent in a free market provide the proper, moral dynamics for affordable, widely available quality healthcare.

Today's problems in medicine represent a failure, not of freedom, but of statist government intervention. The choice we face is not between a government-run healthcare dictatorship and the status quo, as Mr. O'Connor and Mr. Easton would have us believe. The choice we face is between being held in a stranglehold by government central planners, or taking control of our own healthcare in a truly free market.

On Healthcare Rationing

2009-05-03T16:23:00.000-07:00

The Denver Post

Re: Obama's Grand Strategy, April 26 Charles Krauthammer column.

As a public health nurse for some 25 years, I disagree with Charles Krauthammer’s idea that health care would be rationed under single-payer insurance system. It is already rationed by cost.

Only the wealthy and the federal legislature can afford health care (paid for by taxes). None of the poor and few of the middle class can afford health insurance, so they either do without or use public facilities. To tie health insurance to employment was a mistake and is now a direct cause of business and industry failures.

Most of us are aware of health care rationing. No money, no care. Health care for profit was not a good idea. Basic health care and certainly preventive services are a right, as they prevent the spread of disease and monitor epidemics for the whole population.

Our current non-system has priced itself out of existence and no amount of the same old cries of reducing costs by making providers more competitive is getting more tiresome to the public-at-large.

Beth Hohle, Denver

This letter was published in the May 3 edition.

My Commentary:

Ms. Hohle is relying on Orwellian language distortion to advocate for single-payer tyranny.

Rationing is defined as “to distribute, in times of scarcity”. This implies a central authority with the power “to distribute”–for example, the government under single payer. There is no such thing as “rationing by cost”, since there is no central authority to do the rationing. There are only producers of healthcare trading their work for the earnings of others willing and able to pay for it, by voluntary agreement to mutual advantage…just as in all other economic sectors. What Ms. Hohle objects to is justice…the natural fact that in a moral society, when you want or need something produced by others, you can acquire it only by voluntary means. You pay for it or you depend upon private charity and generosity. Morally, being unable to pay for your healthcare…while unfortunate…gives you no right to seize it forcibly by theft or through political surrogates you elect.

She’s right, though, that “To tie health insurance to employment was a mistake”. The third-party-payer system, imposed by government through tax code distortions, is a major reason why “Our current non-system has priced itself out of existence”. In fact the current crisis, if you want to call it that, is a consequence of the massive buildup of government interventions in the medical industry over the past 75 years or so. Government insurance mandates and the state-imposed trade barriers that prevent a competitive national market are also key reasons for the high cost of private health insurance.

So the claim that “None of the poor and few of the middle class can afford health insurance” doesn’t stand up to the facts. They are paying plenty in healthcare costs…only not their own. The person who can’t afford his own coverage is forced to pay, through his taxes, the healthcare expenditures of: the elderly (Medicare), the poor (Medicaid), other peoples’ children (SCHIP), other uninsured people (“charitable” aid to hospitals to cover “free” emergency room care, including for illegal aliens, under the federal law EMTALA), etc., etc., etc. In addition, there are research grants to universities and colleges. And don’t forget foreign aid healthcare spending, including former President Bush’s $50 billion Aids relief package to Africa. Undoubtedly, there is more.

America currently spends some $7500 per capita per year ($30,000 per family of four and rising) on healthcare. Almost that entire amount represents third parties spending other people’s money. If healthcare is unaffordable, how is it that we can foot that large of a bill? This is a fundamental part of the problem. That money comes from all of us in a myriad of ways, yet leaves us with little control over how it is spent. Leave that money in the hands of the people that earned it through some vehicle like HSAs, end government insurance mandates and the third-party-payer system, phase out existing “public” plans like Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP, and let people take personal responsibility for their own healthcare.

I’m always amazed at how flippantly and thoughtlessly people like Ms. Hohle are willing to throw away their freedom and the earnings and freedom of others in exchange for the “free lunch” of a “single-payer” healthcare dictatorship. Ms. Hohle brushes off “the same old cries of reducing costs by making providers more competitive”. But competition based upon the ability of consumers, providers, insurers and patients to act upon their own rational judgement and contract voluntarily with each other is called freedom. Does Ms. Hohle mean to discard “the same old cries” of a nation founded upon the concept of unalienable individual rights?

For more in depth analysis on the causes and solutions to the problems of American healthcare, read the following articles in The Objective Standard;

Moral Health Care vs. “Universal Health Care”

Mandatory Health Insurance: Wrong for Massachusetts, Wrong for America

The current semi-socialized system needs major reform. The only just and moral course to take on healthcare reform is to rid the industry of government interference, and establish a free market. Calls for freedom-crushing, ration-based central government healthcare planning as a cure for what government itself caused to begin with “is getting more tiresome to the public-at-large”, of which I am a charter member.

Comment by Mike Zemack — May 3, 2009 @ 4:15 pm

Other's Commentary:

The private insurance companies are scared of competing with the government. I thought they were all about free markets.

Comment by Dave Clark — May 4, 2009 @ 4:00 pm

My Response to Dave Clark

“The private insurance companies are scared of competing with the government. I thought they were all about free markets.”–Dave Clark

A free market is based upon the recognition of individual rights, in which physical force is banished; i.e., all associations are voluntary.

A “public health insurance option”, as it is deceptively called, is backed by the legal force of government, which can subsidize it through taxes, while setting legal restrictions and conditions on its private “competitors” through its tax and regulatory authority…etc. A private company has no coercive power, and must rely upon the voluntary private market…which the very existence of a government “insurer” distorts and undermines…while all along being subject to the coercive edicts of politicians bent on protecting their “public option”.

To pretend that there can exist “competition” between a government-run “insurer” and a private one is to say there is no difference between an armed mugger and his victims.

Comment by Mike Zemack — May 5, 2009 @ 3:37 pm

Collectivism In Medicine

2009-04-30T18:22:00.000-07:00

Health Care is Ailing, from the Star-Ledger Reader's Forum

Jason Fodeman rhetorically asks: "Is our health system really bad off?" in "Haste makes waste when fixing health care" (April 23). In a word, "yes."

According to a recent Commonwealth Fund Commission report, U.S. health care is the most expensive in the world, but does not meet critical benchmarks for quality, access, and other major performance measures. While America spends twice as much per capita on health care, it ranks lower than most other industrialized nations on numerous indicators of overall care; the U.S. score averaged 65 out of 100 over 37 categories, and fell to last for "preventing deaths through use of timely and effective medical care."

Can we afford covering the 47 million uninsured and the 50 million underinsured nationwide? Yes, we can. Currently, insurance companies have an overhead of approximately 30 percent, which is spent on marketing, administration, shareholders dividends and exorbitant CEO salaries. Medicare's overhead is approximately 3 percent. We could save about $350 billion annually, enough to cover the 47 million uninsured and the 50 million underinsured. Both the Congressional Budget Office and the General Accounting Office say the U.S. could insure everyone for the money we're paying now to insure seniors only.

-- Larry Siegel, Plainsboro

My Commentary:

Posted by Zemack on 04/30/09 at 7:39PM
Larry Siegal underscores the fundamental philosophical/moral conflict at the root of the healthcare debate...collectivism verses individualism. He asks:

Can we afford covering the 47 million uninsured and the 50 million underinsured nationwide?

Implicit in that question is the assumption that the wealth and earnings of a nation do not belong to those who produced it, but to the collective, as represented by the state. That primitive view holds that individual human beings have no value except as sacrificial fodder to the whims of the tribe. The representative of the tribe is whoever claims to speak for it, which in this case is the democratic majority as manifested in the government. Mr. Siegel simply assumes that "we" may dispose of the earnings and wealth (i.e., the lives) of whomever "we" please, for the unearned benefit of the "uninsured" or "underinsured" (whatever that means). This is the altruistic premise that individual self-sacrifice for the sake of others is the ideal, which is the moral root of all forms of tyranny, oppression, and predatory government.

America was founded upon the opposite premise...that every individual is a morally independent entity capable of charting the course of his own life by his own mind and effort, and in voluntary, uncoerced, rights-respecting association with others. This is the egoistic premise that each person is an end in himself, not the means to the ends of "humanitarians" wielding the legalized physical force of government, nor as a slave to the needs of other people. America's founding premises lead to a society based upon the inalienable rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness held equally, at all times, and protected by a government limited to that purpose.

Mr. Siegel's premise leads to socialized medicine. America's premise leads to a free market in healthcare.

Leaving aside the issue of statistics...which can be skewed any which way and which tell you nothing about the actual quality of American healthcare...and Medicare's alleged low administrative expenses...which is a myth ...I do sympathize with Mr. Siegel that our system has serious problems. Unfortunately, Mr. Siegel, like so many other advocates of medical tyranny, fails or refuses to consider how we got here. But cause and effect is where we must begin.

The fact is, the problems in American healthcare have grown in lock step with the growth of government intervention. The solution we are racing towards is to reward the culprit with full totalitarian control. The real solution is one that is not even being discussed in the political arena...a turn towards capitalism and free markets.

The only just and moral course to take on healthcare reform is to rid healthcare of government interference. America currently spends some $7500 per capita per year ($30,000 per family of four and rising) on healthcare. Almost that entire amount represents third parties spending other people's money. This is a fundamental part of the problem. That money comes from all of us in a myriad of ways, yet leaves us with little control over how it is spent. Leave that money in the hands of the people that earned it through some vehicle like HSAs, end government insurance mandates and the third-party-payer system, phase out existing "public" plans like Medicare, Medicaid, and SCHIP, and let people take personal responsibility for their own healthcare.

Advocates of socialized medicine (by whatever name you want to ascribe to it) like to take the moral high road, claiming compassionate concern for some downtrodden group. But they never see actual human beings, whom they are free to help through direct, voluntary charity. They give no consideration whatsoever to their fellow men as what they actually are...individual human beings with their own unique values and circumstances. Anyone who would trample the rights of others to act upon their own judgement with regard to their own healthcare deserves not a moral sanction but moral condemnation. Show me someone who would force others to pay for his "compassion" by depriving them of their earnings and their freedom, and I'll show you a phony.

The choice we face is not between a government-run healthcare dictatorship and the status quo. The choice we face is between being held hostage to government central planners, or liberating each of us...consumers, providers, patients, and insurers alike...to take control of our own healthcare in a truly free market.