Dec-19-07 Governor Corzine Expands Access to NJ Familycare Program
Español NEWS RELEASE
Governor Jon S. Corzine
December 19, 2007
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609-777-2600
GOVERNOR CORZINE EXPANDS ACCESS TO
NJ FAMILYCARE PROGRAM
Children in Families Above Current Guidelines Can Enroll For Monthly Premium
WOODBRIDGE - Governor Jon S. Corzine today announced a new initiative that provides universal, affordable access to health insurance for New Jersey children. Through the existing FamilyCare program, children whose family income currently exceeds eligibility guidelines will now be able to enroll in the program for a monthly fee, in early 2008. It is estimated that as many as 15,000 uninsured children may qualify to enroll in this program.
"Ensuring that children have access to quality medical care is a top priority of my administration," said Governor Corzine. "We have enrolled more than 100,000 children in the NJ FamilyCare program since I took office and today we are expanding access to this critical and successful health insurance program with a new 'buy-in' program that will provide every family in New Jersey with an affordable health care option for their children. Healthier children will mean a healthier New Jersey."
Under the new "buy-in" provision of the NJ FamilyCare program, children in families whose annual family income exceeds current eligibility limits - $72, 275 annual income for a family of four (350 percent of the federal poverty guidelines) can enroll in the program. These children will receive the same services available to NJ FamilyCare recipients, such as coverage for doctor visits, prescription drugs, and hospitalization.
The program is budget neutral for the state and is not dependent upon the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) funding. Families must pay the following monthly premiums: $137 for a family with one child; $274 for a family with two children, and $411 for a family with three or more children. Thanks to the state's purchasing power with insurers, the costs are significantly lower than private health insurance premiums.
There are few restrictions to the buy-in program: families with more than one child must enroll all children and families must demonstrate that their children did not have health care coverage for the previous six months. This is to prevent individuals who currently have insurance from dropping their coverage to enroll in the program.
"There are simply too many children in New Jersey without health care insurance," said Department of Human Services Commissioner Jennifer Velez. "Today, thanks to the leadership of Governor Corzine and the Legislature we have one more way to enroll them."
"When I wrote the law creating this new program, I believed then, as I do now, that affordable universal healthcare access for all children is a fundamental right, and an example of how as a state we can move toward a similar program for our 700,000 uninsured adults," said Senator Joseph F. Vitale (D-Woodbridge), the prime sponsor of the legislation.
"Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey is delighted to play a part in covering additional uninsured children through the expansion of New Jersey FamilyCare, a program the company has participated in since its inception," said Karen Clark, President and Chief Operating Officer of Horizon NJ Health, a Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey company.
Beginning January 2008, Horizon Health Care of New Jersey will begin offering the buy-in program.
"I want to commend Horizon for its admirable display of citizenship and civic responsibility demonstrated by its willingness to be the provider for this new program," said Banking and Insurance Commissioner Steven M. Goldman. "This is an important additional step in reducing the ranks of New Jersey's uninsured children. We hope this is the first of many such steps moving toward the reduction of New Jersey's uninsured."
For more information on the NJ FamilyCare program, visit www.njfamilycare.org or call 1-800-701-0710.
Original Referenced Link
From the New Jersey Star Ledger, 12/21/07
Senator works to insure kids first
Posted by Tom Moran December 21, 2007 1:30AM
Just in time for Christmas, we have a winner of the coveted Legislator of the Year Award. It's a new honor, conceived just now. And the selection process was untainted by input from anyone other than this columnist.
The 2007 award goes to Sen. Joe Vitale, the owner of a small family business, and the man who is driving health care policy in the state.
Vitale clinched the win by finding a way to help middle-class families get health care for their children at about one-third the normal price - without costing taxpayers a dime.
These days, that is the trick. The state is caught in a never-ending budget nightmare, so we have to find clever ways to meet our needs on the cheap. And that is Vitale's game.
"He's very sophisticated in his thinking about these issues," says Joel Cantor, head of the Rutgers Center for State Health Policy. "These things are enormously complex, and he's a master."
Understand that it's beyond unusual for academics to talk about legislators like that. Normally, the policy wonks wonder how these part-time politicians can be so thick-headed.
For Vitale, a Democrat from Woodbridge, the ultimate goal is universal coverage in New Jersey. His plan shares a lot with one in Massachusetts signed by then-Gov. Mitt Romney in the days when he was acting the part of a liberal.
The basic idea is to require that everyone buy health insurance, and to provide subsidies to those who can't afford it on their own.
New Jersey can't make that leap now because the subsidies would be too expensive. So Vitale is tacking toward his goal, one move at a time.
This week, he joined the governor at a mall in Woodbridge to announce the middle-class discounts. The target is families who earn too much to qualify for existing government programs, but not enough to buy coverage on their own.
This group is getting killed on the open market, where family plans cost roughly $12,000. So Vitale basically used the state's bargaining power on their behalf, winning a group discount just as a large employer might.
The beauty of this is that the state is not on the hook for any costs. Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield will arrange the care, and the middle-class families will pay the premiums. Vitale expects 20,000 children to get coverage, one more step toward his goal.
"This makes great sense," says Sen. Diane Allen, a Burlington County Republican who sits on the health committee. "Joe has the respect of all the Republicans on the committee. We don't always agree. But we know that we've been heard."
Pretty soon, it'll get tougher. Because Vitale wants to press the case for universal coverage in 2008. He wants his committee to consider a mandate requiring parents to get coverage for their children. And he wants to offer new coverage to adults earning up to twice the poverty level.
The cost would be small, he says, because the state's bill for covering the uninsured in hospitals, now more than $700 million a year, will drop.
"That money is just wasted," Vitale says.
The man is on a mission. He views health care as a basic right, like education, a view that crystallized for him nearly 20 years ago when he was traveling in the Dominican Republic with a church group. They saw a woman in a small town run from her home with a child burned by boiling water. She was putting Vaseline on the burns.
"That's exactly the wrong thing to do," Vitale says. "They had no doctors, no nurses. They had children with all kinds of illnesses. And access to care was at best an hour away."
His church group wound up establishing a small hospital in the town, staffed mostly by volunteers, and supplied mostly by charity. The church group, with the help of the locals, found a practical solution.
For Vitale, it's become a habit. So this prestigious award goes to him.
Original Referenced Link
Commentary on these articles
Friday, May 16, 2008
Monday, May 12, 2008
Commentary 29- The Wreck of EMTALA
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The wreck of the good ship, EMTALA
Published May 8th, 2008 in Uncategorized.
EMTALA, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, was passed in 1986. For those who aren’t familiar with yet another acronym, EMTALA is a federal law that was enacted to keep poor, uninsured patients from being ‘dumped’ on indigent-care hospitals, or any other facility, for financial reasons. Although it was a good idea, it soon grew fangs, tentacles, claws, rose up to several hundred stories in height and developed a surly attitude and bad breath. It is, in fact, one of the largest unfunded mandates the US legislative branch has ever gifted on its subjects.
For those of us who practice emergency medicine, and by now any medicine in a hospital that accepts Medicare payments, no one can be turned away for financial reasons. On the surface, this seems fair. Certainly, the potential exists for gross harm and injustice if we refuse to care for the most needy in our populations because we aren’t getting paid. ‘Your child is having non-stop seizures, eh? Well, pony up $400 we’ll see what we can do!’ It makes sense to have a provision of protection.
However, because this law basically forbids hospitals and physicians from saying ‘no,’ (without a complex, time consuming, legally perilous screening exam that is rarely worth the effort), we see all those who come through the door. And because the ‘cat is out of the bag’ and has been for a while, many of our patients know this. So, we have these conversations.
Doctor: ‘I see you have a toothache. Have you seen your dentist?’
Patient: ‘No, I owe him money.’
or
Doctor: ‘You know, you’ve been here every week for the last six months for chest pain, and you’ve had every test we can do. It isn’t anything dangerous, yet you keep asking for pain medication, you refuse to follow up with anyone, and now owe our group $7000.’
Patient: ‘Right, interesting. So, today it goes around my back, to my ear, down my arm and into my testicle. What do you think it is?’
It isn’t that we don’t take people seriously, because we do. It isn’t that we don’t want to help, because we do. But medicine being our business, money is often part of the transaction after the smoke has cleared.
Equally problematic, surgeons, neurologists, cardiologists, otolaryngologists and just about every other ‘ist’ is burdened with the same issue. The people they see in the ER, admit to the floor, or take to surgery or the cardiac cath lab will frequently be unable to pay anything, but then still be able to sue for millions of dollars. It’s hard for specialists to run practices when large numbers of patients pay nothing for their care. I understand their issues here. I don’t blame them a bit for being angry.
And of course, hospitals are providing care that isn’t reimbursed to patients who can’t, or intend never to pay them. Nurses and other staff are cut. Rooms aren’t available, needed additions aren’t built, new technologies are hard to afford, other specialists can’t be recruited, and before you can blink a hospital is closing or reducing it’s capacity. And to top it off, we can’t even get the Smucker’s peanut butter cups we all used to scarf from the patient supply cabinet while seeing sick people! Woe is me!
Across America, small and medium sized emergency departments and hospitals are closing. Trauma centers and teaching hospitals are struggling and overwhelmed. And specialists are simply leaving hospital care in order to avoid being on call, and the attendant EMTALA responsibilities that call entails. They’re working in surgery/outpatient centers. They’re leaving the setting where they are compelled to give care away, and where they are constantly overwhelmed by more and more demand, less and less payment.
Our own group sees increased volume every time we increase staffing. The numbers, the lack of control, the degree of genuine illness, and the degree of ridiculous visits for life crises, narcotic abuse, work excuses or just ‘because I was here with my friend anyway,’ keep rising. Can we say no? Not much, not often.
You see, the federal government thought EMTALA seemed like a nice, friendly, warm-hearted way to help America’s indigent populations. It also thought it seemed like a cheap way to do it, since EMTALA didn’t come with any money for providers or hospitals to do this epic work of securing the ‘health-care safety net.’ Like so many government programs it consists of untold numbers of legislators and government functionaries patting themselves on the back for helping the poor by having someone else pay for it and do the work; that is, America’s hospitals and physicians.
But here’s the final irony. EMTALA has created the very conditions it sought to avoid. Now, with specialists unavailable, hospitals full, transfers always difficult and no lack of genuinely sick and dying patients, there’s often 1) no one to care for them and 2) no place to put or send them. EMTALA, the federal mandate to save the poor from sickness has begun to crumble at its foundations, and leave untold numbers of patients, poor and paying, without care.
This isn’t meant to be a tirade about payment, though non-medical readers may see it that way. What I’m getting at is that our system, our government mandated system, is a failure.
You might make the argument that nationalized health-care can fix this with money, but as we see in so many problems, money doesn’t do much. Money in the school system still leaves us with staggering drop-out rates and high-school illiteracy. Money, in the hands of an irresistible, un-yielding, entitlement crazy, grandiosity-leaning government system will probably result in an even greater disaster than EMTALA.
My suggestion? Get the government out of it all. If you do, the poor will likely get better care, since we’ll be able to screen out and turn away those who abuse their privilege. And doctors, that pesky, generally unimportant part of the medical equation, will actually return to hospitals and be available; out of a sense of duty, professionalism, entrepreneurial spirit and genuine compassion without federal compulsion.
It’s unlikely to happen, but a doctor can dream. ‘And then I saw a scarecrow and some flying monkeys and a witch, and a hospital where I was in charge and could always do what I thought was right, oh Auntie Em, it was wonderful!’
Yours,
Edwin
Original Referenced Link
My Commentary:
Mike Zemack
May 13th, 2008 at 1:51 am
The “silent protest” by doctors and specialists walking away from hospital practice is certainly appropriate and moral. And I agree fully that we should “Get the government out of it all.” But it doesn’t have to be just a dream.
The real power in the health care arena is the doctor, and he should use it. Fleeing the hospitals for surgery/outpatient centers or some other means of practice is only a short-term fix. The politicians will eventually go after them wherever they go.
The best, and likely the only, way to turn the tide toward a full-fledged government-run health care dictatorship is for the doctors to stand up en masse for their rights. Doctors are “that pesky, generally unimportant part of the medical equation” only so long as they allow this to be the case. An uncompromising and principled stand against the state would stop socialized medicine dead in its tracks.
That is my dream.
The wreck of the good ship, EMTALA
Published May 8th, 2008 in Uncategorized.
EMTALA, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, was passed in 1986. For those who aren’t familiar with yet another acronym, EMTALA is a federal law that was enacted to keep poor, uninsured patients from being ‘dumped’ on indigent-care hospitals, or any other facility, for financial reasons. Although it was a good idea, it soon grew fangs, tentacles, claws, rose up to several hundred stories in height and developed a surly attitude and bad breath. It is, in fact, one of the largest unfunded mandates the US legislative branch has ever gifted on its subjects.
For those of us who practice emergency medicine, and by now any medicine in a hospital that accepts Medicare payments, no one can be turned away for financial reasons. On the surface, this seems fair. Certainly, the potential exists for gross harm and injustice if we refuse to care for the most needy in our populations because we aren’t getting paid. ‘Your child is having non-stop seizures, eh? Well, pony up $400 we’ll see what we can do!’ It makes sense to have a provision of protection.
However, because this law basically forbids hospitals and physicians from saying ‘no,’ (without a complex, time consuming, legally perilous screening exam that is rarely worth the effort), we see all those who come through the door. And because the ‘cat is out of the bag’ and has been for a while, many of our patients know this. So, we have these conversations.
Doctor: ‘I see you have a toothache. Have you seen your dentist?’
Patient: ‘No, I owe him money.’
or
Doctor: ‘You know, you’ve been here every week for the last six months for chest pain, and you’ve had every test we can do. It isn’t anything dangerous, yet you keep asking for pain medication, you refuse to follow up with anyone, and now owe our group $7000.’
Patient: ‘Right, interesting. So, today it goes around my back, to my ear, down my arm and into my testicle. What do you think it is?’
It isn’t that we don’t take people seriously, because we do. It isn’t that we don’t want to help, because we do. But medicine being our business, money is often part of the transaction after the smoke has cleared.
Equally problematic, surgeons, neurologists, cardiologists, otolaryngologists and just about every other ‘ist’ is burdened with the same issue. The people they see in the ER, admit to the floor, or take to surgery or the cardiac cath lab will frequently be unable to pay anything, but then still be able to sue for millions of dollars. It’s hard for specialists to run practices when large numbers of patients pay nothing for their care. I understand their issues here. I don’t blame them a bit for being angry.
And of course, hospitals are providing care that isn’t reimbursed to patients who can’t, or intend never to pay them. Nurses and other staff are cut. Rooms aren’t available, needed additions aren’t built, new technologies are hard to afford, other specialists can’t be recruited, and before you can blink a hospital is closing or reducing it’s capacity. And to top it off, we can’t even get the Smucker’s peanut butter cups we all used to scarf from the patient supply cabinet while seeing sick people! Woe is me!
Across America, small and medium sized emergency departments and hospitals are closing. Trauma centers and teaching hospitals are struggling and overwhelmed. And specialists are simply leaving hospital care in order to avoid being on call, and the attendant EMTALA responsibilities that call entails. They’re working in surgery/outpatient centers. They’re leaving the setting where they are compelled to give care away, and where they are constantly overwhelmed by more and more demand, less and less payment.
Our own group sees increased volume every time we increase staffing. The numbers, the lack of control, the degree of genuine illness, and the degree of ridiculous visits for life crises, narcotic abuse, work excuses or just ‘because I was here with my friend anyway,’ keep rising. Can we say no? Not much, not often.
You see, the federal government thought EMTALA seemed like a nice, friendly, warm-hearted way to help America’s indigent populations. It also thought it seemed like a cheap way to do it, since EMTALA didn’t come with any money for providers or hospitals to do this epic work of securing the ‘health-care safety net.’ Like so many government programs it consists of untold numbers of legislators and government functionaries patting themselves on the back for helping the poor by having someone else pay for it and do the work; that is, America’s hospitals and physicians.
But here’s the final irony. EMTALA has created the very conditions it sought to avoid. Now, with specialists unavailable, hospitals full, transfers always difficult and no lack of genuinely sick and dying patients, there’s often 1) no one to care for them and 2) no place to put or send them. EMTALA, the federal mandate to save the poor from sickness has begun to crumble at its foundations, and leave untold numbers of patients, poor and paying, without care.
This isn’t meant to be a tirade about payment, though non-medical readers may see it that way. What I’m getting at is that our system, our government mandated system, is a failure.
You might make the argument that nationalized health-care can fix this with money, but as we see in so many problems, money doesn’t do much. Money in the school system still leaves us with staggering drop-out rates and high-school illiteracy. Money, in the hands of an irresistible, un-yielding, entitlement crazy, grandiosity-leaning government system will probably result in an even greater disaster than EMTALA.
My suggestion? Get the government out of it all. If you do, the poor will likely get better care, since we’ll be able to screen out and turn away those who abuse their privilege. And doctors, that pesky, generally unimportant part of the medical equation, will actually return to hospitals and be available; out of a sense of duty, professionalism, entrepreneurial spirit and genuine compassion without federal compulsion.
It’s unlikely to happen, but a doctor can dream. ‘And then I saw a scarecrow and some flying monkeys and a witch, and a hospital where I was in charge and could always do what I thought was right, oh Auntie Em, it was wonderful!’
Yours,
Edwin
Original Referenced Link
My Commentary:
Mike Zemack
May 13th, 2008 at 1:51 am
The “silent protest” by doctors and specialists walking away from hospital practice is certainly appropriate and moral. And I agree fully that we should “Get the government out of it all.” But it doesn’t have to be just a dream.
The real power in the health care arena is the doctor, and he should use it. Fleeing the hospitals for surgery/outpatient centers or some other means of practice is only a short-term fix. The politicians will eventually go after them wherever they go.
The best, and likely the only, way to turn the tide toward a full-fledged government-run health care dictatorship is for the doctors to stand up en masse for their rights. Doctors are “that pesky, generally unimportant part of the medical equation” only so long as they allow this to be the case. An uncompromising and principled stand against the state would stop socialized medicine dead in its tracks.
That is my dream.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Commentary 28- Fran Wood on Jon Shure's "Investments"
From the New Jersey Star Ledger
A case for investing our way out of fiscal problems
Posted by Fran Wood May 07, 2008 6:21AM
Categories: Policy Watch
Question: What is the most reliable way to solve New Jersey's fiscal problems?
A. Cut waste, fraud and abuse.
B. Invest in programs that benefit the state.
No doubt you answered A. You've been hearing that mantra for years, after all, so it must be the right answer.
Who would choose B in any event? Investing means spending, doesn't it? What justification is there for spending in a state as deeply in debt as New Jersey? Isn't that how our problems began?
Actually, no, says Jon Shure, president of New Jersey Policy Perspective, an organization that researches and analyzes state issues from the progressive side.
Our really serious current problem began, he says, with "the repeal of a sales tax increase in the early 1990s, then cutting the in come tax."
To make up for the lost revenue, he said, the state used money ticketed for the pension fund and retiree health benefits. This launched a "shell game" in which new programs were created with money from existing programs, all topped off by "excessive borrowing ... to cover it all up."
The result: "New Jerseyans are looking down the barrel of a budget that cuts services and threatens the state's quality of life."
Gov. Jon Corzine, in his 2008 budget speech, acknowledged the problems, then presented his own diagnosis: "New Jersey is addicted to spending."
So Corzine's proposed budget cuts spending, sometimes dramatically, in areas like parks, hospitals, human services, agriculture, scholarships and so on.
The fate of that budget is still undecided. Shure, for one, hopes major parts of it don't pass.
"It takes New Jersey in the wrong direction," Shure says, down a road that will worsen, not solve, our problems. And the only way to avoid that course, he says, is to "change the discussion."
Enter his Better Choices Budget Campaign, launched last month and now on a statewide road trip with an upcoming stop near you. His goal, he says, is to ex plain the long-term impact of the actions we take today.
Cutting "vital services" may get the budget balanced by the due date, he says, but such cuts "will weaken our communities, continue the relentless increase in property taxes, undermine the future for our families and hurt our children, our seniors and our most vulnerable residents."
As it stands, he says, the proposed budget "will make it impossible to provide the good education, health care and basic services our families expect and deserve."
If we're not going to spend less money, of course, we will need to raise more money, which leads to, yes, the dreaded T-word.
Shure admits any plan that includes more tax money is, to say the least, a tough sell. But he stresses that any talk of taxes should not imply an unfair burden on those least able to pay. He's for a "broadly shared" revenue burden, he says, including "ending tax breaks and subsidies to corporations that still lay people off or leave New Jersey when some other place gives them a higher offer."
Moreover, says Shure, our own legislators need to be reminded that voters have not always reacted negatively to taxes.
"They forget Gov. Byrne got re- elected after he got the income tax passed," he says. "Gov. Kean got re-elected in a landslide after he raised the income tax. And Gov. Florio lost (his re-election bid after raising taxes) by only 1 percent of the vote."
"You have to break through the psychology in New Jersey," he says. "We have the highest percentage of millionaires of all 50 states, yet we drastically underfund our state."
That's where he's trying to shift people's focus.
"If the governor and legislators think the only voices in New Jersey are the ones saying 'cut,' we're here to tell them there are others saying 'invest.'"
Those others (all listed at www.betterchoicesfornj.org) include at least two dozen organizations that understand, says Shure, the devil's in the details of Cor zine's proposed budget.
Its cuts to municipal aid, he says, will result in higher property taxes.
Its cuts in higher education aid will result in higher tuition at state colleges and universities.
Its cuts in medical subsidies will lead to higher costs for medical services.
"You can't make shortsighted cuts and end up with a good future and better quality of life for New Jerseyans," says Shure. Investment is "a more honest and, in the long run, profitable way for the state to deal with its problems."
Original Referenced Link
My Commentary:
Posted by Zemack on 05/07/08 at 9:41PM
Mr. Shure wants to benefit "the state" by making "investments" in education and healthcare, in order to "provide [what] our families expect and deserve"...to be paid for, of course, by those very same "families" courtesy of the taxing power of the state.
This is the classic arrogance of the tax-and-spend mentality, dressed up in brand new "investment" garb, that has gotten New Jersey into the economic death spiral it is now in.
Rather than benefit the state by raising taxes and dependence on government, how about "investing" in actual human beings by simply getting the state out of their way.
Here are two proposals along those lines:
1. Institute full tax credits for education, equal to the amount paid by individuals in local school property taxes, as well as the portion of sales and income taxes dedicated to state "aid" to local school districts. Extend the credits to all taxpayers, so everyone can direct their education tax dollars according to their own judgement, whether to the education of a child, grandchild or other family member, or even to a scholarship fund for private schooling for gifted, poor, or special needs children lacking adequate tax credits, or back to the public schools.
This would liberate education from the suffocating government-run monopoly and lead to an explosion of private alternatives to the public schools.
2. Liberate the health insurance market by repealing all coercive state mandates, including benefit coverage, community rating, and guaranteed issue health insurance mandates. These government-imposed directives violate the rights of individuals and insurance companies by forbidding them from entering into voluntary contractual agreements to mutual advantage. In addition, these mandates are a magnet for special interests seeking to impose coverage for specific ailments or medical procedures that force people to pay for insurance services that they do not want and wouldn't otherwise buy. This is a prime reason for skyrocketing health insurance costs.
Another reason for exploding costs is the lack of competition. In this regard, anyone actually interested in better healthcare for New Jersey residents should support passage of Morris County assemblyman Jay Webber's New Jersey Healthcare Choice Act. This act would remove the legal restrictions on the purchase by state residents of health insurance policies available in other states, thus opening the New Jersey market to national competition.
Together, these proposals would dramatically lower the cost of health insurance while greatly expanding the available choices by restoring the rights of individual NJ residents and families to tailor policies according to their own needs, affordability, and judgements, rather than the arbitrary whims of Trenton politicians and busybody do-gooders.
Jon Shure and his "progressive" ilk would never go for these truly progressive ideas, of course. They instead dream of all of the "investments" they could make, and the "prestige" they can acquire, with other peoples' tax money. The idea of people "investing"...i.e., acting on their own judgement...with their own earnings horrifies the "progressives", who see only helpless, parasitical incompetents waiting for government to "provide" for them.
But the "progressives" have it wrong. The best investment that can be made in healthcare and education is to liberate those fields from state interference, recognizing the individual rights of New Jersey's residents to manage their own affairs.
A case for investing our way out of fiscal problems
Posted by Fran Wood May 07, 2008 6:21AM
Categories: Policy Watch
Question: What is the most reliable way to solve New Jersey's fiscal problems?
A. Cut waste, fraud and abuse.
B. Invest in programs that benefit the state.
No doubt you answered A. You've been hearing that mantra for years, after all, so it must be the right answer.
Who would choose B in any event? Investing means spending, doesn't it? What justification is there for spending in a state as deeply in debt as New Jersey? Isn't that how our problems began?
Actually, no, says Jon Shure, president of New Jersey Policy Perspective, an organization that researches and analyzes state issues from the progressive side.
Our really serious current problem began, he says, with "the repeal of a sales tax increase in the early 1990s, then cutting the in come tax."
To make up for the lost revenue, he said, the state used money ticketed for the pension fund and retiree health benefits. This launched a "shell game" in which new programs were created with money from existing programs, all topped off by "excessive borrowing ... to cover it all up."
The result: "New Jerseyans are looking down the barrel of a budget that cuts services and threatens the state's quality of life."
Gov. Jon Corzine, in his 2008 budget speech, acknowledged the problems, then presented his own diagnosis: "New Jersey is addicted to spending."
So Corzine's proposed budget cuts spending, sometimes dramatically, in areas like parks, hospitals, human services, agriculture, scholarships and so on.
The fate of that budget is still undecided. Shure, for one, hopes major parts of it don't pass.
"It takes New Jersey in the wrong direction," Shure says, down a road that will worsen, not solve, our problems. And the only way to avoid that course, he says, is to "change the discussion."
Enter his Better Choices Budget Campaign, launched last month and now on a statewide road trip with an upcoming stop near you. His goal, he says, is to ex plain the long-term impact of the actions we take today.
Cutting "vital services" may get the budget balanced by the due date, he says, but such cuts "will weaken our communities, continue the relentless increase in property taxes, undermine the future for our families and hurt our children, our seniors and our most vulnerable residents."
As it stands, he says, the proposed budget "will make it impossible to provide the good education, health care and basic services our families expect and deserve."
If we're not going to spend less money, of course, we will need to raise more money, which leads to, yes, the dreaded T-word.
Shure admits any plan that includes more tax money is, to say the least, a tough sell. But he stresses that any talk of taxes should not imply an unfair burden on those least able to pay. He's for a "broadly shared" revenue burden, he says, including "ending tax breaks and subsidies to corporations that still lay people off or leave New Jersey when some other place gives them a higher offer."
Moreover, says Shure, our own legislators need to be reminded that voters have not always reacted negatively to taxes.
"They forget Gov. Byrne got re- elected after he got the income tax passed," he says. "Gov. Kean got re-elected in a landslide after he raised the income tax. And Gov. Florio lost (his re-election bid after raising taxes) by only 1 percent of the vote."
"You have to break through the psychology in New Jersey," he says. "We have the highest percentage of millionaires of all 50 states, yet we drastically underfund our state."
That's where he's trying to shift people's focus.
"If the governor and legislators think the only voices in New Jersey are the ones saying 'cut,' we're here to tell them there are others saying 'invest.'"
Those others (all listed at www.betterchoicesfornj.org) include at least two dozen organizations that understand, says Shure, the devil's in the details of Cor zine's proposed budget.
Its cuts to municipal aid, he says, will result in higher property taxes.
Its cuts in higher education aid will result in higher tuition at state colleges and universities.
Its cuts in medical subsidies will lead to higher costs for medical services.
"You can't make shortsighted cuts and end up with a good future and better quality of life for New Jerseyans," says Shure. Investment is "a more honest and, in the long run, profitable way for the state to deal with its problems."
Original Referenced Link
My Commentary:
Posted by Zemack on 05/07/08 at 9:41PM
Mr. Shure wants to benefit "the state" by making "investments" in education and healthcare, in order to "provide [what] our families expect and deserve"...to be paid for, of course, by those very same "families" courtesy of the taxing power of the state.
This is the classic arrogance of the tax-and-spend mentality, dressed up in brand new "investment" garb, that has gotten New Jersey into the economic death spiral it is now in.
Rather than benefit the state by raising taxes and dependence on government, how about "investing" in actual human beings by simply getting the state out of their way.
Here are two proposals along those lines:
1. Institute full tax credits for education, equal to the amount paid by individuals in local school property taxes, as well as the portion of sales and income taxes dedicated to state "aid" to local school districts. Extend the credits to all taxpayers, so everyone can direct their education tax dollars according to their own judgement, whether to the education of a child, grandchild or other family member, or even to a scholarship fund for private schooling for gifted, poor, or special needs children lacking adequate tax credits, or back to the public schools.
This would liberate education from the suffocating government-run monopoly and lead to an explosion of private alternatives to the public schools.
2. Liberate the health insurance market by repealing all coercive state mandates, including benefit coverage, community rating, and guaranteed issue health insurance mandates. These government-imposed directives violate the rights of individuals and insurance companies by forbidding them from entering into voluntary contractual agreements to mutual advantage. In addition, these mandates are a magnet for special interests seeking to impose coverage for specific ailments or medical procedures that force people to pay for insurance services that they do not want and wouldn't otherwise buy. This is a prime reason for skyrocketing health insurance costs.
Another reason for exploding costs is the lack of competition. In this regard, anyone actually interested in better healthcare for New Jersey residents should support passage of Morris County assemblyman Jay Webber's New Jersey Healthcare Choice Act. This act would remove the legal restrictions on the purchase by state residents of health insurance policies available in other states, thus opening the New Jersey market to national competition.
Together, these proposals would dramatically lower the cost of health insurance while greatly expanding the available choices by restoring the rights of individual NJ residents and families to tailor policies according to their own needs, affordability, and judgements, rather than the arbitrary whims of Trenton politicians and busybody do-gooders.
Jon Shure and his "progressive" ilk would never go for these truly progressive ideas, of course. They instead dream of all of the "investments" they could make, and the "prestige" they can acquire, with other peoples' tax money. The idea of people "investing"...i.e., acting on their own judgement...with their own earnings horrifies the "progressives", who see only helpless, parasitical incompetents waiting for government to "provide" for them.
But the "progressives" have it wrong. The best investment that can be made in healthcare and education is to liberate those fields from state interference, recognizing the individual rights of New Jersey's residents to manage their own affairs.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Commentary 27- School Indoctrination
From the blog Shooting From The Right
National Day of Silence: NOT ME!
By Kris | Apr 28, 2008
Last Friday was the “National Day of Silence”, in which hundreds of secondary schools and colleges around the country celebrated homosexuality. That’s right, our school systems have become nothing more than a social platform for the left wing of this country. I know you already knew that, but this is just another prime example. The idea was that people in the schools would take a “vow of silence” to show solidarity with the homosexuals who have to remain silent for fear of persecution. All students were encouraged to participate.
This movement makes the error of equating speaking out against homosexuality with racism and bigotry. So, those who refused to participate in the “Day of Silence” are marked and persecuted for being “homophobic”. Isn’t that kind of against the very principle they claimed to be promoting? It is a typical liberal ploy: You can have free speech, and you can proclaim your message to the masses…as long as you agree with us.
Well, I for one, will not agree. I thought it was great that there were protests all over the country against this lunacy. Of course, it won’t make the news, as that would be against the principles of the liberal media, but it happened. There was an article in the Seattle Times that related what happened in the Mt. Si School District. It turns out that “Day of Silence” was far from silent. Ken Hutcherson, who speaks out against granting homosexuals special rights, organized a protest at the school. He and at least 100 supporters showed up to protest the activities of the Gay Straight Alliance. About 40 students tried to counter demonstrate, by trying to shout down the protesters and beating on drums. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t seem to fit in with the whole “Day of Silence” motif. Other students blared radios with gay-favorable music and shouted at the group of protesters. Again…where does “silence” come into this?
By reading this article, you will see the difference between two mindsets. Those opposed to the “Day of Silence” proposed some activity outside of school, and school hours. The point is that such indoctrination of the lefts lack of morality is not appropriate for the school system! How can it possibly be appropriate to teach that it is ok to be a homosexual in our schools, but not ok to teach against it? It is not the school’s role to teach morality to my children at all–they are supposed to be instructing our kids in reading, writing and arithmetic.
On the other hand, those involved in this “Day of Silence” show just how much they think a political and social agenda is a part of their teaching responsibility. In fact, according to this article, one complaint from previous years was that teachers participated, thus remaining silent and NOT TEACHING!
Some teachers also chose to remain silent, drawing objections from students who said they were there to learn. Otherwise, last year’s event occurred largely without incident.
Administrators directed teachers to teach this year and said that students should respond if called upon in class.
So, the school sponsors the event, and then tells the teachers and students not to participate. Obviously, they were not as dedicated to the cause as they tried to act. But, also involved in many of the statements is the reflection that disagreement is not acceptable. Funny how the mantra of the liberal is “tolerance”, but only when you agree with them. One student carried a sign saying “I believe in the separation of church and hate.” That indicates that if you don’t agree with them, then you hate.
Judging from this school, all we see is that one whole day of school was lost. The president of the GSA called this a success. We wonder why our students can’t compete with the rest of the world. This is one reason…this totally wasted day is what is classified as “a success” by liberals. And they want to blame President Bush…
Original Referenced Link
My Commentary:
Zemack April 30, 2008 8:35 pm
“The point is that such indoctrination of the lefts lack of morality is not appropriate for the school system!”
I agree whole-heartedly that this “program” represents indoctrination and has no place in the schools. There is also a broader point here, as well. The “teaching” of current events in general has no place in the schools, especially the elementary and middle levels. Political and social issues are way beyond the ability of school age children to grasp, understand, and form opinions on. They simply don’t have the depth of knowledge, life experience, or mental maturity to deal with these issues.
The purpose of primary education should be, but is not, to teach the child to use the cognitive functions of his brain…i.e., to learn how to think. This means, for example, to not only absorb facts but to understand and integrate the factual knowledge he acquires, to understand the proper hierarchy of that knowledge, and to organize it in his brain via writing. Regardless of one’s position on the homosexual or any other issue, no one who really cares about education should support injecting current events into the curriculum of school children too young to be able to develop informed opinions and to be able to back them up with their own reasoned, coherent logic.
The sad fact is, though, that our public schools have become indoctrination camps. They have become the focal point of all kinds of pressure groups seeking to impose some social or political agenda. Therefore, I now advocate full tax credits for education, giving parents full control over the choice of their children’s school, educational content and standards, with the goal of breaking up the government’s public school monopoly. The ultimate solution to our education woes is to abolish the public schools, ending government’s role in running them. Government-run schools are not consistent with the principles of a free society or of individual rights.
National Day of Silence: NOT ME!
By Kris | Apr 28, 2008
Last Friday was the “National Day of Silence”, in which hundreds of secondary schools and colleges around the country celebrated homosexuality. That’s right, our school systems have become nothing more than a social platform for the left wing of this country. I know you already knew that, but this is just another prime example. The idea was that people in the schools would take a “vow of silence” to show solidarity with the homosexuals who have to remain silent for fear of persecution. All students were encouraged to participate.
This movement makes the error of equating speaking out against homosexuality with racism and bigotry. So, those who refused to participate in the “Day of Silence” are marked and persecuted for being “homophobic”. Isn’t that kind of against the very principle they claimed to be promoting? It is a typical liberal ploy: You can have free speech, and you can proclaim your message to the masses…as long as you agree with us.
Well, I for one, will not agree. I thought it was great that there were protests all over the country against this lunacy. Of course, it won’t make the news, as that would be against the principles of the liberal media, but it happened. There was an article in the Seattle Times that related what happened in the Mt. Si School District. It turns out that “Day of Silence” was far from silent. Ken Hutcherson, who speaks out against granting homosexuals special rights, organized a protest at the school. He and at least 100 supporters showed up to protest the activities of the Gay Straight Alliance. About 40 students tried to counter demonstrate, by trying to shout down the protesters and beating on drums. I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t seem to fit in with the whole “Day of Silence” motif. Other students blared radios with gay-favorable music and shouted at the group of protesters. Again…where does “silence” come into this?
By reading this article, you will see the difference between two mindsets. Those opposed to the “Day of Silence” proposed some activity outside of school, and school hours. The point is that such indoctrination of the lefts lack of morality is not appropriate for the school system! How can it possibly be appropriate to teach that it is ok to be a homosexual in our schools, but not ok to teach against it? It is not the school’s role to teach morality to my children at all–they are supposed to be instructing our kids in reading, writing and arithmetic.
On the other hand, those involved in this “Day of Silence” show just how much they think a political and social agenda is a part of their teaching responsibility. In fact, according to this article, one complaint from previous years was that teachers participated, thus remaining silent and NOT TEACHING!
Some teachers also chose to remain silent, drawing objections from students who said they were there to learn. Otherwise, last year’s event occurred largely without incident.
Administrators directed teachers to teach this year and said that students should respond if called upon in class.
So, the school sponsors the event, and then tells the teachers and students not to participate. Obviously, they were not as dedicated to the cause as they tried to act. But, also involved in many of the statements is the reflection that disagreement is not acceptable. Funny how the mantra of the liberal is “tolerance”, but only when you agree with them. One student carried a sign saying “I believe in the separation of church and hate.” That indicates that if you don’t agree with them, then you hate.
Judging from this school, all we see is that one whole day of school was lost. The president of the GSA called this a success. We wonder why our students can’t compete with the rest of the world. This is one reason…this totally wasted day is what is classified as “a success” by liberals. And they want to blame President Bush…
Original Referenced Link
My Commentary:
Zemack April 30, 2008 8:35 pm
“The point is that such indoctrination of the lefts lack of morality is not appropriate for the school system!”
I agree whole-heartedly that this “program” represents indoctrination and has no place in the schools. There is also a broader point here, as well. The “teaching” of current events in general has no place in the schools, especially the elementary and middle levels. Political and social issues are way beyond the ability of school age children to grasp, understand, and form opinions on. They simply don’t have the depth of knowledge, life experience, or mental maturity to deal with these issues.
The purpose of primary education should be, but is not, to teach the child to use the cognitive functions of his brain…i.e., to learn how to think. This means, for example, to not only absorb facts but to understand and integrate the factual knowledge he acquires, to understand the proper hierarchy of that knowledge, and to organize it in his brain via writing. Regardless of one’s position on the homosexual or any other issue, no one who really cares about education should support injecting current events into the curriculum of school children too young to be able to develop informed opinions and to be able to back them up with their own reasoned, coherent logic.
The sad fact is, though, that our public schools have become indoctrination camps. They have become the focal point of all kinds of pressure groups seeking to impose some social or political agenda. Therefore, I now advocate full tax credits for education, giving parents full control over the choice of their children’s school, educational content and standards, with the goal of breaking up the government’s public school monopoly. The ultimate solution to our education woes is to abolish the public schools, ending government’s role in running them. Government-run schools are not consistent with the principles of a free society or of individual rights.
Monday, April 28, 2008
Commentary 26- NJHCC Act
Healthy competition best way to fix problem of uninsured
By JAY WEBBER • April 15, 2008
New Jersey Democrats recently unveiled the latest in a long line of big-ticket spending items: a universal health insurance mandate for New Jersey.
The plan would require every New Jerseyan to buy a health insurance policy, and if a person cannot afford a policy, the state would subsidize its cost. The initial annual price for this expansion of government is $1.7 billion. Gov. Corzine has acknowledged taxpayers simply cannot afford the proposal.
And when was the last time we saw a government program come in under budget in New Jersey? Audits already have found wasteful spending, poor oversight and downright fraud in the state's existing healthcare program.
Our state needs health-care reform, to be sure, but there is a better alternative to a taxpayer-funded, bureaucracy-based proposal. I have proposed the New Jersey Healthcare Choice Act, which would lower the cost of health insurance, slash the number of the 1.2 million New Jerseyans now uninsured and require no government subsidy. It is not another massive government program.
One commentator remarking on past attempts at health-care reform called New Jersey "the poster child for how to destroy a health insurance market." How did the state fail so spectacularly?
New Jersey law permits individuals to buy only high-end policies subject to our state's cumbersome and expensive regulations, which may be the most burdensome in the nation. Micromanaging lawmakers have locked us into a Hobson's choice of purchasing gold-plated, one-size-fits-all health coverage or living with no coverage at all.
The government's hyper-regulation of the health insurance market means we pay as much as three times more for coverage than our neighbors in Pennsylvania. For example, a single woman, 29, living in Montville might pay $2,040 annually for a bare-bones health policy. Across the Delaware River in Lansdale, Pa., the same individual would pay $810 for basic health coverage. A family of four living in Parsippany that pays $7,835 a year for low-end coverage would pay $3,172 in Blue Bell, Pa.
The New Jersey Healthcare Choice Act would permit New Jerseyans to access lower prices available in other states by buying health insurance from insurers approved to sell insurance in other states. Individuals, families and small employers would have the right to look for health insurance policies anywhere in the nation to best suit their needs and budgets. Nothing would force New Jerseyans into buying insurance outside New Jersey. Any consumer still would be free to buy New Jersey policies.
But many will not continue to shop only in the Garden State. Policies in our neighboring states are not inferior to those sold here. They just are less encumbered by government regulation. Those policies span a much greater range of affordability. Think of it this way: New Jersey requires everyone who has health coverage to own a Cadillac policy, while other states permit residents to choose from Honda, Chevrolet or Cadillac policies.
That increased accessibility encourages more uninsured people to buy health insurance without costing taxpayers a dime. Health-care choice would help people who lost insurance because they are temporarily out of work. An estimated 45 percent of uninsured people lack insurance for six months or less, most because they are between jobs.
Opening our market to out-of-state insurers would lower the cost of health coverage for those families by as much as 60 percent and woul allow them to maintain health coverage during a tough time, without government assistance. Costs also would plummet for small employers, who often would provide health coverage for their employees but cannot afford it.
Liberating state health insurance markets is a trend across the country. Legislators in Maine, Wisconsin, Georgia, Colorado and California are in various stages of crafting proposals to permit their citizens to go out of state to buy insurance. A bill pending in Congress would accomplish this nationwide.
We live in a state that likes to consider itself progressive and cutting edge. If we are as ahead of the curve as we believe ourselves to be, then let us be the first to open our health insurance market to genuine competition. By loosening state government's iron-fisted grip on our citizens' insurance choices, we can make progress on an important social goal and save taxpayers from a mammoth and counterproductive health insurance mandate we cannot afford.
Assemblyman Jay Webber is a Republican from Morris County.
Original Referenced Link
My letter to Assemblyman Weber:
From: mal.atlas@patmedia.net [mal.atlas@patmedia.net','','','1')">mal.atlas@patmedia.net]
Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2008 9:04 PM
To: Webber, Asm. D.O.
Subject: NJHCC Act
Assemblyman Jay Weber,
I strongly support your New Jersey Health Care Choice Act. A very
damaging myth that is pushing America piecemeal toward a government
takeover of healthcare is that our "free market" system has failed. In
fact, the problems in healthcare have grown in lockstep with
government's steadily increasing intrusions over the decades. Today,
except for bits and pieces here and there, no free market any longer
exists. Consequently, it is government controls, not the non-existent
free market that has failed in healthcare.
The NJHCC act addresses one key piece of a much bigger issue. The proper
approach would be for the Republican Party to get behind a
comprehensive, even radical, plan to liberate the insurance market
nationally, including ending the third-party-payer system that stands as
a "Berlin Wall" between individuals and insurers. Republicans should
give Americans "a choice, not an echo" this November. If America rejects
healthcare freedom in favor of socialized medicine, they should at least
have a firm idea of what they are giving up.
Nevertheless, with options limited at the state level, NJHCC is a very
good start to restoring free market medicine. Let those Trenton
politicians who would oppose this act explain why they are standing in
the way of individuals and insurers exercising their rights to agree on
policies without government's coercive interference.
PS: There is an organization called We Stand FIRM (Freedom and
Individual Rights in Medicine) that should provide valuable intellectual
ammunition for healthcare freedom's advocates. It might interest you.
Here is the link to their website:
http://www.westandfirm.org/blog/index.html
Thank You,
Michael and Kathleen Zemack
Assemblyman Weber's Response:
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Zemack
Thank you for your kinds words and support for the New Jersey Health
Care Choice Act. You're right -- we need market-based solutions to
health care issues, and I'm glad to see that you have linked to your
organization's website.
Thanks again for taking the time to contact me. Your input always is
appreciated and welcomed, and please stay in touch.
Sincerely,
Jay Webber
Assemblyman, 26th District
Chairman, Taxpayer Protection Caucus
101 Gibraltar Dr., Suite 1-A
Morris Plains, NJ 07950
(973) 984-0922
By JAY WEBBER • April 15, 2008
New Jersey Democrats recently unveiled the latest in a long line of big-ticket spending items: a universal health insurance mandate for New Jersey.
The plan would require every New Jerseyan to buy a health insurance policy, and if a person cannot afford a policy, the state would subsidize its cost. The initial annual price for this expansion of government is $1.7 billion. Gov. Corzine has acknowledged taxpayers simply cannot afford the proposal.
And when was the last time we saw a government program come in under budget in New Jersey? Audits already have found wasteful spending, poor oversight and downright fraud in the state's existing healthcare program.
Our state needs health-care reform, to be sure, but there is a better alternative to a taxpayer-funded, bureaucracy-based proposal. I have proposed the New Jersey Healthcare Choice Act, which would lower the cost of health insurance, slash the number of the 1.2 million New Jerseyans now uninsured and require no government subsidy. It is not another massive government program.
One commentator remarking on past attempts at health-care reform called New Jersey "the poster child for how to destroy a health insurance market." How did the state fail so spectacularly?
New Jersey law permits individuals to buy only high-end policies subject to our state's cumbersome and expensive regulations, which may be the most burdensome in the nation. Micromanaging lawmakers have locked us into a Hobson's choice of purchasing gold-plated, one-size-fits-all health coverage or living with no coverage at all.
The government's hyper-regulation of the health insurance market means we pay as much as three times more for coverage than our neighbors in Pennsylvania. For example, a single woman, 29, living in Montville might pay $2,040 annually for a bare-bones health policy. Across the Delaware River in Lansdale, Pa., the same individual would pay $810 for basic health coverage. A family of four living in Parsippany that pays $7,835 a year for low-end coverage would pay $3,172 in Blue Bell, Pa.
The New Jersey Healthcare Choice Act would permit New Jerseyans to access lower prices available in other states by buying health insurance from insurers approved to sell insurance in other states. Individuals, families and small employers would have the right to look for health insurance policies anywhere in the nation to best suit their needs and budgets. Nothing would force New Jerseyans into buying insurance outside New Jersey. Any consumer still would be free to buy New Jersey policies.
But many will not continue to shop only in the Garden State. Policies in our neighboring states are not inferior to those sold here. They just are less encumbered by government regulation. Those policies span a much greater range of affordability. Think of it this way: New Jersey requires everyone who has health coverage to own a Cadillac policy, while other states permit residents to choose from Honda, Chevrolet or Cadillac policies.
That increased accessibility encourages more uninsured people to buy health insurance without costing taxpayers a dime. Health-care choice would help people who lost insurance because they are temporarily out of work. An estimated 45 percent of uninsured people lack insurance for six months or less, most because they are between jobs.
Opening our market to out-of-state insurers would lower the cost of health coverage for those families by as much as 60 percent and woul allow them to maintain health coverage during a tough time, without government assistance. Costs also would plummet for small employers, who often would provide health coverage for their employees but cannot afford it.
Liberating state health insurance markets is a trend across the country. Legislators in Maine, Wisconsin, Georgia, Colorado and California are in various stages of crafting proposals to permit their citizens to go out of state to buy insurance. A bill pending in Congress would accomplish this nationwide.
We live in a state that likes to consider itself progressive and cutting edge. If we are as ahead of the curve as we believe ourselves to be, then let us be the first to open our health insurance market to genuine competition. By loosening state government's iron-fisted grip on our citizens' insurance choices, we can make progress on an important social goal and save taxpayers from a mammoth and counterproductive health insurance mandate we cannot afford.
Assemblyman Jay Webber is a Republican from Morris County.
Original Referenced Link
My letter to Assemblyman Weber:
From: mal.atlas@patmedia.net [mal.atlas@patmedia.net','','','1')">mal.atlas@patmedia.net]
Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2008 9:04 PM
To: Webber, Asm. D.O.
Subject: NJHCC Act
Assemblyman Jay Weber,
I strongly support your New Jersey Health Care Choice Act. A very
damaging myth that is pushing America piecemeal toward a government
takeover of healthcare is that our "free market" system has failed. In
fact, the problems in healthcare have grown in lockstep with
government's steadily increasing intrusions over the decades. Today,
except for bits and pieces here and there, no free market any longer
exists. Consequently, it is government controls, not the non-existent
free market that has failed in healthcare.
The NJHCC act addresses one key piece of a much bigger issue. The proper
approach would be for the Republican Party to get behind a
comprehensive, even radical, plan to liberate the insurance market
nationally, including ending the third-party-payer system that stands as
a "Berlin Wall" between individuals and insurers. Republicans should
give Americans "a choice, not an echo" this November. If America rejects
healthcare freedom in favor of socialized medicine, they should at least
have a firm idea of what they are giving up.
Nevertheless, with options limited at the state level, NJHCC is a very
good start to restoring free market medicine. Let those Trenton
politicians who would oppose this act explain why they are standing in
the way of individuals and insurers exercising their rights to agree on
policies without government's coercive interference.
PS: There is an organization called We Stand FIRM (Freedom and
Individual Rights in Medicine) that should provide valuable intellectual
ammunition for healthcare freedom's advocates. It might interest you.
Here is the link to their website:
http://www.westandfirm.org/blog/index.html
Thank You,
Michael and Kathleen Zemack
Assemblyman Weber's Response:
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Zemack
Thank you for your kinds words and support for the New Jersey Health
Care Choice Act. You're right -- we need market-based solutions to
health care issues, and I'm glad to see that you have linked to your
organization's website.
Thanks again for taking the time to contact me. Your input always is
appreciated and welcomed, and please stay in touch.
Sincerely,
Jay Webber
Assemblyman, 26th District
Chairman, Taxpayer Protection Caucus
101 Gibraltar Dr., Suite 1-A
Morris Plains, NJ 07950
(973) 984-0922
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Commentary 25- Heidi Moore on Ayn Rand
April 11, 2008, 5:51 pm
Capitalism Shrugged: Should Ayn Rand Be Required Reading?
Posted by Heidi Moore
As we head into the weekend, we’re thinking about Ayn Rand. And you should be, too, if you’re worried about the current state of capitalism.
That’s because BB&T, a North Carolina bank, has donated over $30 million to 27 universities, including the University of North Carolina Charlotte, with the understanding that “Atlas Shrugged” would become required reading for students, according to Bloomberg. Last month BB&T agreed to donate $2 million to the University of Texas at Austin to create a chair in Objectivism, which would be the first in the country.
Some will applaud, and some will shudder. Rand is the uncompromising author of individualist screeds that all came together under the philosophy of “Objectivism.” Should Rand be part of the American canon? If you’ve read “Atlas Shrugged” or “The Fountainhead,” you’re already familiar with Rand’s instructive, demanding tone that selfishness is the highest good. (It’s also a play on the American qualities of independence and individuality, best expressed by Walt Whitman in his book of poetry, Leaves of Grass. The book includes the poem “Song of Myself” and was frequently given to impressionable females by a famous individualist, former president Bill Clinton.)
There’s no question that Rand’s influence is already pervasive. By now, you know that Alan Greenspan was a disciple of Rand’s. The famous Gordon Gekko speech in Wall Street — though it was not written by Rand at all — was Randian in its philosophy: “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good… Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms — greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge — has marked the upward surge of mankind.”
Rand’s actual writing is not too far off from that, and you could probably mine her work for some bitterness against, say, the Fed’s abnormally strong intervention in the J.P. Morgan-Bear Stearns situation: “Government ‘help’ to business is just as disastrous as government persecution… the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off,” for instance.
(Personally, we believe Rand is a better spokeswoman for architecture than anything else; we know two people who attended architecture school after being inspired by “The Fountainhead.”)
Rand’s work has thrived even though it can be an obstacle to romance; this light essay on love noted that some women are turned off by men who claim Rand among their favorites.
But Rand has a bit of a reputation problem among those who have not drunk the Kool-Aid. Greed and selfishness generally get a bad rap, no matter how you try to redefine them. And there’s a my-way-or-the-highway absolutism about Rand’s work — “There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil,” she once wrote — that may be at odds with today’s cooperative, interlocked financial system, where codependency is the rule. When a firm does refuse to go along with the others — think Bear Stearns at the time of Long-Term Capital Management — the grudge lasts for years and, according to some, may hold the seeds of their eventual destruction. For every individualist aficionado of Atlas Shrugged, there’s an ABC After-School Special that shows people doing whatever the cool kids are doing — like, say, lending money they can’t afford for $26 billion leveraged buyouts, or buying up mortgage securities they don’t understand.
Deal Journal readers, we put the question to you: Should there be more Ayn Rand to instruct young, impressionable minds? Or is the problem with capitalism today too much Rand already?
Original Referenced Link
My Commentary:
“And there’s a my-way-or-the-highway absolutism about Rand’s work — ‘There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil,’ she once wrote.”
To understand the proper context of Ms. Moore’s quote, the following statement by Rand should be added:
“There can be no compromise on moral principles”
Unless, of course, one believes it is wrong to steal, except to do it once in a while is fine, just as a compromise. Or that honesty is good, except dishonesty is okay once in a while, just as a compromise. Or that freedom is good, except that it is okay to give it up, bit by welfare state bit, just as a compromise.
To compromise… i.e., to seek a middle ground… is acceptable, according to Objectivism, when dealing with specific, concrete issues that don’t involve violation of one’s principles. For example, negotiating the terms of a contract on the sale of a property, or deciding which movie or restaurant to attend with a spouse or friends, or determining the choice of a job, etc. The “absolutism about Rand’s work” involves basic principles and fundamental moral issues. Would you say that there is a middle ground between a life of theft and a life of productive work? Or between honesty and deception or fraud? Or between freedom and slavery? On basic principles, “the middle is always evil” because it implies that there is no distinction between right and wrong. “In any compromise [middle ground] between good and evil,” Rand writes, “it is only evil that can profit.” (For a wider discussion on this, see Rand’s essay “Doesn’t life require compromise?” in her book, The Virtue of Selfishness.)
Of course, it is the moral absolutism of Ayn Rand’s philosophy that must be discredited by power-lusters and seekers of the unearned. It is the Objectivists’ absolute, uncompromising, and selfish defense of the moral principle of inalienable individual rights that threatens the steady growth of welfare statism in America. It is the middle-of-the-roaders seeking compromise between government controls and inalienable rights who are responsible for the steady erosion of freedom and subsequent growing social and economic problems in America (which no longer has a Capitalist, but a mixed economy)
It has now been some 40 years since first reading Ayn Rand, and I have discovered that there is one common tactic shared by most of Rand’s critics. First misrepresent, then attack, her views. Heidi Moore is a master at this.
It seems very few people are willing (or able) to present her ideas honestly and objectively before critiquing them.
The problem is not too much Rand or not enough Rand, but understanding Rand.
Comment by Zemack - April 12, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Capitalism Shrugged: Should Ayn Rand Be Required Reading?
Posted by Heidi Moore
As we head into the weekend, we’re thinking about Ayn Rand. And you should be, too, if you’re worried about the current state of capitalism.
That’s because BB&T, a North Carolina bank, has donated over $30 million to 27 universities, including the University of North Carolina Charlotte, with the understanding that “Atlas Shrugged” would become required reading for students, according to Bloomberg. Last month BB&T agreed to donate $2 million to the University of Texas at Austin to create a chair in Objectivism, which would be the first in the country.
Some will applaud, and some will shudder. Rand is the uncompromising author of individualist screeds that all came together under the philosophy of “Objectivism.” Should Rand be part of the American canon? If you’ve read “Atlas Shrugged” or “The Fountainhead,” you’re already familiar with Rand’s instructive, demanding tone that selfishness is the highest good. (It’s also a play on the American qualities of independence and individuality, best expressed by Walt Whitman in his book of poetry, Leaves of Grass. The book includes the poem “Song of Myself” and was frequently given to impressionable females by a famous individualist, former president Bill Clinton.)
There’s no question that Rand’s influence is already pervasive. By now, you know that Alan Greenspan was a disciple of Rand’s. The famous Gordon Gekko speech in Wall Street — though it was not written by Rand at all — was Randian in its philosophy: “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good… Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms — greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge — has marked the upward surge of mankind.”
Rand’s actual writing is not too far off from that, and you could probably mine her work for some bitterness against, say, the Fed’s abnormally strong intervention in the J.P. Morgan-Bear Stearns situation: “Government ‘help’ to business is just as disastrous as government persecution… the only way a government can be of service to national prosperity is by keeping its hands off,” for instance.
(Personally, we believe Rand is a better spokeswoman for architecture than anything else; we know two people who attended architecture school after being inspired by “The Fountainhead.”)
Rand’s work has thrived even though it can be an obstacle to romance; this light essay on love noted that some women are turned off by men who claim Rand among their favorites.
But Rand has a bit of a reputation problem among those who have not drunk the Kool-Aid. Greed and selfishness generally get a bad rap, no matter how you try to redefine them. And there’s a my-way-or-the-highway absolutism about Rand’s work — “There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil,” she once wrote — that may be at odds with today’s cooperative, interlocked financial system, where codependency is the rule. When a firm does refuse to go along with the others — think Bear Stearns at the time of Long-Term Capital Management — the grudge lasts for years and, according to some, may hold the seeds of their eventual destruction. For every individualist aficionado of Atlas Shrugged, there’s an ABC After-School Special that shows people doing whatever the cool kids are doing — like, say, lending money they can’t afford for $26 billion leveraged buyouts, or buying up mortgage securities they don’t understand.
Deal Journal readers, we put the question to you: Should there be more Ayn Rand to instruct young, impressionable minds? Or is the problem with capitalism today too much Rand already?
Original Referenced Link
My Commentary:
“And there’s a my-way-or-the-highway absolutism about Rand’s work — ‘There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil,’ she once wrote.”
To understand the proper context of Ms. Moore’s quote, the following statement by Rand should be added:
“There can be no compromise on moral principles”
Unless, of course, one believes it is wrong to steal, except to do it once in a while is fine, just as a compromise. Or that honesty is good, except dishonesty is okay once in a while, just as a compromise. Or that freedom is good, except that it is okay to give it up, bit by welfare state bit, just as a compromise.
To compromise… i.e., to seek a middle ground… is acceptable, according to Objectivism, when dealing with specific, concrete issues that don’t involve violation of one’s principles. For example, negotiating the terms of a contract on the sale of a property, or deciding which movie or restaurant to attend with a spouse or friends, or determining the choice of a job, etc. The “absolutism about Rand’s work” involves basic principles and fundamental moral issues. Would you say that there is a middle ground between a life of theft and a life of productive work? Or between honesty and deception or fraud? Or between freedom and slavery? On basic principles, “the middle is always evil” because it implies that there is no distinction between right and wrong. “In any compromise [middle ground] between good and evil,” Rand writes, “it is only evil that can profit.” (For a wider discussion on this, see Rand’s essay “Doesn’t life require compromise?” in her book, The Virtue of Selfishness.)
Of course, it is the moral absolutism of Ayn Rand’s philosophy that must be discredited by power-lusters and seekers of the unearned. It is the Objectivists’ absolute, uncompromising, and selfish defense of the moral principle of inalienable individual rights that threatens the steady growth of welfare statism in America. It is the middle-of-the-roaders seeking compromise between government controls and inalienable rights who are responsible for the steady erosion of freedom and subsequent growing social and economic problems in America (which no longer has a Capitalist, but a mixed economy)
It has now been some 40 years since first reading Ayn Rand, and I have discovered that there is one common tactic shared by most of Rand’s critics. First misrepresent, then attack, her views. Heidi Moore is a master at this.
It seems very few people are willing (or able) to present her ideas honestly and objectively before critiquing them.
The problem is not too much Rand or not enough Rand, but understanding Rand.
Comment by Zemack - April 12, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Friday, April 4, 2008
Commentary 24- Entitlement Mentality
Entitlement Mentality is Wrecking Economy
By Jonathan Hoenig
FROM WELFARE TO food stamps to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, our country now marshals a massive network of trillion-dollar entitlement programs colloquially known as the "social safety net." Many Americans, including a few of those running for president, see these bureaucracies as defining achievements of a nation where "nobody is left behind."
Forget the fact that the entitlements, many of which began with the goal of providing "basic minimum benefits" have grown into a gargantuan burden costing over $1.5 trillion a year and careening toward total collapse. For example, payouts will begin to exceed the revenues into Social Security in just nine years and current estimates have the entire system going belly up in 2041.
The fundamental problem with the social safety net, however, isn't bankrupt economics but bad philosophy.
A government can only provide a safety net insofar as the wealth that net consists of — food, clothing, shelter, medical services — has been created by productive individuals. The freebies government is so eager to expropriate don't grow from the ground, but must be produced by entrepreneurial individuals who create corporations, raise cattle, invest in financial markets, run restaurants, develop pharmaceuticals, and so on. From the creation of kidney dialysis to the transportation of affordable food, it's the reasoning mind that produces the wealth that makes our lives secure, not a bloated government bureaucracy.
As I've written before, it is America's historical commitment to capitalism and individual rights that has differentiated our prosperous economy from the socialist basket cases of North Korea, China and communist Cuba. When economic freedom is protected, societies see vast increases in productivity that result in higher-quality, lower-cost products.
One only need look at the least-regulated sectors of our economy — electronics, computers and food, all of which have declined in price — to see that phenomenon occur. Yesterday's luxuries, like huge flat-panel TVs from Best Buy (BBY: 42.89, +0.36, +0.84%), become affordable mass-market items in just a few years.
This is true even in health care, which proponents of the entitlement safety net argue is uniquely vital enough to require governmental interference. Procedures like laser eye surgery that are not part of the government safety net have dropped in price and improved in quality in a short period of time. This is precisely what would happen if our entitlements were eliminated: Less-wealthy individuals would not go without care, but would become the eager focus of entrepreneurial businessmen competing to offer them cheap, quality health care...or education...or anything else.
In reality, skyrocketing health-care costs are a government-created phenomenon, where someone besides the patient (usually the government) pays the bills and insurance is assumed to be infinite. So there's no need for the producers of advanced medical devices to cut costs because such treatments quickly become a "right" under government-regulated health plans. If an innovative chemotherapy or AIDS treatment immediately has a huge, state-provided market, why focus on cutting costs? You'll note that the producers of notebook computers or hamburgers have no such disincentive.
Most disturbing is the reality that the "security" promised by the safety net is anything but secure. Unlike a mutual fund or checking account, there's no actual investment or savings when it comes to Social Security. It is, at its core, a Ponzi scheme in which the government loots your money today for the benefit of retirees and promises to do the same to future generations on your behalf.
So there is no real account with your name on it. In fact, the Supreme Court has ruled that the government does not owe us Social Security benefits by law, meaning that Congress is perfectly able to modify or cut benefits, which it has already done well over a dozen times since the program began.
At the heart of the social safety net is the moral belief that the government is responsible for our lives, and that, as Barack Obama has often said, "We are our brothers' keeper." Under this altruist sensibility, we are duty-bound to serve the needs of others, meaning that anyone needy has an inherent claim on anyone better off. The wealthy aren't merely able to deal charitably with those in need, but are legally obligated to sacrifice their earnings for the benefit of those they might not voluntarily wish to support.
As entitlements grow, so does regulatory authority. As I wrote a few weeks back, the Federal Reserve is now getting explicitly in the business of being the de facto risk manager of the nation's largest banks. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's new mandate to overhaul oversight of U.S. financial markets moves us more toward a controlled society where individual choice is subordinate to "the public good," whatever the ruling class believes that to be at the time.
Moral bankruptcy eventually leads to financial collapse as well, and the evidence is growing more obvious with each passing day. As noted in Barron's over the weekend, the future obligations of Medicare are now so staggering that liquidating all the residential real estate in the country — a sum of almost $12 trillion dollars — wouldn't even cover the costs. The Social Security tax rate, which began at 2% in 1935, has been raised consistently since, with the system's trustees suggesting the payroll tax will need to be increased to 16% by 2041 in order to maintain benefits — higher if life expectancy rates continue to climb. The same suffocating scenario will inevitably play out for insurance, health care, housing or any other government-controlled efforts to redistribute wealth from those who've earned it to those who haven't.
It's more than evident that a government "safety net" is anything but safe. Instead of the altruist philosophy that only the needy matter, our country desperately needs to return to the notion of rugged individualism under which we are each responsible for and capable of achieving our own security without the immoral coercion of publicity-seeking politicians. Any alternative leads to dependency, stagnation and economic despair.
Original Referenced Link
Comments
My Commentary:
Judging by some of the commentary here, it seems that certain basic points have to be made.
Money is not wealth. The idea that simply “circulating” money away from those who earned it and may invest in future production through their savings to those who didn’t earn it and who will thus consume the economy into prosperity is absurd. When you receive money for your work (i.e., the wealth you produced), you have not received wealth in return. You have merely received something that you hope can be exchanged for real wealth. When you are ready to make the exchange, you had better hope that there are people out there “greedy” and “selfish” enough to have produced the wealth that you desire and did not produce, but which gives your money value. This leads to the next point.
Production comes before consumption and need. This I think is one of the main points of Mr. Hoenig’s essay. I would call it an axiom. The great virtue of the Gateses and Buffetts of the world is the production of the fortunes…the wealth…that they accomplished. Their philanthropic endeavors are merely a consequence and are minor by comparison. This same principle applies to productive people at all levels of income. Anyone who reverses this axiom is advocating mass destitution and poverty and thus cannot claim any kind of compassion or concern for those in need. Need doesn’t produce wealth. If it did, the world would be awash in prosperity, without any human effort what-so-ever. Capitalism is the only social system that recognizes production for personal gain as the primary virtue, which is key to its success at alleviating poverty. Which leads me to the next point.
Freedom from force, including governmental force, is a necessary pre-condition of human production. This means individual rights. Need is everywhere, but wealth production is not. To the extent that individuals are free to pursue their own welfare and happiness, is the extent to which a country prospers. Failing to recognize the destructive nature of physical force in human relationships is an evasion of all of human history. Equating the voluntary charitable efforts of Gates and Buffett with the coercive efforts of those seeking to “do good” with other peoples tax money through government programs obliterates the very concept of moral action.
I applaud Mr. Hoenig’s courageous stand for individual rights and the productive members of society, and he does not deserve the vitriol of some of the commentators here. His stand against the growth of welfare statism in America is the truly compassionate stand.
By Jonathan Hoenig
FROM WELFARE TO food stamps to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, our country now marshals a massive network of trillion-dollar entitlement programs colloquially known as the "social safety net." Many Americans, including a few of those running for president, see these bureaucracies as defining achievements of a nation where "nobody is left behind."
Forget the fact that the entitlements, many of which began with the goal of providing "basic minimum benefits" have grown into a gargantuan burden costing over $1.5 trillion a year and careening toward total collapse. For example, payouts will begin to exceed the revenues into Social Security in just nine years and current estimates have the entire system going belly up in 2041.
The fundamental problem with the social safety net, however, isn't bankrupt economics but bad philosophy.
A government can only provide a safety net insofar as the wealth that net consists of — food, clothing, shelter, medical services — has been created by productive individuals. The freebies government is so eager to expropriate don't grow from the ground, but must be produced by entrepreneurial individuals who create corporations, raise cattle, invest in financial markets, run restaurants, develop pharmaceuticals, and so on. From the creation of kidney dialysis to the transportation of affordable food, it's the reasoning mind that produces the wealth that makes our lives secure, not a bloated government bureaucracy.
As I've written before, it is America's historical commitment to capitalism and individual rights that has differentiated our prosperous economy from the socialist basket cases of North Korea, China and communist Cuba. When economic freedom is protected, societies see vast increases in productivity that result in higher-quality, lower-cost products.
One only need look at the least-regulated sectors of our economy — electronics, computers and food, all of which have declined in price — to see that phenomenon occur. Yesterday's luxuries, like huge flat-panel TVs from Best Buy (BBY: 42.89, +0.36, +0.84%), become affordable mass-market items in just a few years.
This is true even in health care, which proponents of the entitlement safety net argue is uniquely vital enough to require governmental interference. Procedures like laser eye surgery that are not part of the government safety net have dropped in price and improved in quality in a short period of time. This is precisely what would happen if our entitlements were eliminated: Less-wealthy individuals would not go without care, but would become the eager focus of entrepreneurial businessmen competing to offer them cheap, quality health care...or education...or anything else.
In reality, skyrocketing health-care costs are a government-created phenomenon, where someone besides the patient (usually the government) pays the bills and insurance is assumed to be infinite. So there's no need for the producers of advanced medical devices to cut costs because such treatments quickly become a "right" under government-regulated health plans. If an innovative chemotherapy or AIDS treatment immediately has a huge, state-provided market, why focus on cutting costs? You'll note that the producers of notebook computers or hamburgers have no such disincentive.
Most disturbing is the reality that the "security" promised by the safety net is anything but secure. Unlike a mutual fund or checking account, there's no actual investment or savings when it comes to Social Security. It is, at its core, a Ponzi scheme in which the government loots your money today for the benefit of retirees and promises to do the same to future generations on your behalf.
So there is no real account with your name on it. In fact, the Supreme Court has ruled that the government does not owe us Social Security benefits by law, meaning that Congress is perfectly able to modify or cut benefits, which it has already done well over a dozen times since the program began.
At the heart of the social safety net is the moral belief that the government is responsible for our lives, and that, as Barack Obama has often said, "We are our brothers' keeper." Under this altruist sensibility, we are duty-bound to serve the needs of others, meaning that anyone needy has an inherent claim on anyone better off. The wealthy aren't merely able to deal charitably with those in need, but are legally obligated to sacrifice their earnings for the benefit of those they might not voluntarily wish to support.
As entitlements grow, so does regulatory authority. As I wrote a few weeks back, the Federal Reserve is now getting explicitly in the business of being the de facto risk manager of the nation's largest banks. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's new mandate to overhaul oversight of U.S. financial markets moves us more toward a controlled society where individual choice is subordinate to "the public good," whatever the ruling class believes that to be at the time.
Moral bankruptcy eventually leads to financial collapse as well, and the evidence is growing more obvious with each passing day. As noted in Barron's over the weekend, the future obligations of Medicare are now so staggering that liquidating all the residential real estate in the country — a sum of almost $12 trillion dollars — wouldn't even cover the costs. The Social Security tax rate, which began at 2% in 1935, has been raised consistently since, with the system's trustees suggesting the payroll tax will need to be increased to 16% by 2041 in order to maintain benefits — higher if life expectancy rates continue to climb. The same suffocating scenario will inevitably play out for insurance, health care, housing or any other government-controlled efforts to redistribute wealth from those who've earned it to those who haven't.
It's more than evident that a government "safety net" is anything but safe. Instead of the altruist philosophy that only the needy matter, our country desperately needs to return to the notion of rugged individualism under which we are each responsible for and capable of achieving our own security without the immoral coercion of publicity-seeking politicians. Any alternative leads to dependency, stagnation and economic despair.
Original Referenced Link
Comments
My Commentary:
Judging by some of the commentary here, it seems that certain basic points have to be made.
Money is not wealth. The idea that simply “circulating” money away from those who earned it and may invest in future production through their savings to those who didn’t earn it and who will thus consume the economy into prosperity is absurd. When you receive money for your work (i.e., the wealth you produced), you have not received wealth in return. You have merely received something that you hope can be exchanged for real wealth. When you are ready to make the exchange, you had better hope that there are people out there “greedy” and “selfish” enough to have produced the wealth that you desire and did not produce, but which gives your money value. This leads to the next point.
Production comes before consumption and need. This I think is one of the main points of Mr. Hoenig’s essay. I would call it an axiom. The great virtue of the Gateses and Buffetts of the world is the production of the fortunes…the wealth…that they accomplished. Their philanthropic endeavors are merely a consequence and are minor by comparison. This same principle applies to productive people at all levels of income. Anyone who reverses this axiom is advocating mass destitution and poverty and thus cannot claim any kind of compassion or concern for those in need. Need doesn’t produce wealth. If it did, the world would be awash in prosperity, without any human effort what-so-ever. Capitalism is the only social system that recognizes production for personal gain as the primary virtue, which is key to its success at alleviating poverty. Which leads me to the next point.
Freedom from force, including governmental force, is a necessary pre-condition of human production. This means individual rights. Need is everywhere, but wealth production is not. To the extent that individuals are free to pursue their own welfare and happiness, is the extent to which a country prospers. Failing to recognize the destructive nature of physical force in human relationships is an evasion of all of human history. Equating the voluntary charitable efforts of Gates and Buffett with the coercive efforts of those seeking to “do good” with other peoples tax money through government programs obliterates the very concept of moral action.
I applaud Mr. Hoenig’s courageous stand for individual rights and the productive members of society, and he does not deserve the vitriol of some of the commentators here. His stand against the growth of welfare statism in America is the truly compassionate stand.
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