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

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

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

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,

A Note to My Valued Visitors

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

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

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"

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.