Atlantic Sentinel

Category: Opinion

  • Redeeming Reform

    Does American history move in only one direction — toward government domination of every detail of our daily lives? Did we reach a high water mark of government power when Obamacare was signed into law? Or was that just the crest of a wave that will sweep away the few remaining decisions we can still make about the things that are most important to us? The answer may begin to take form this year.

    Do we want our physicians to be able to use their own best judgment about our care? Or shall we watch them suspend that judgment knowing their insurance reimbursements will be cut if they do not follow government protocols and “best practices”? Should we just sit back and watch the last of our freedoms waste away, or should we do something?

    Our first step must be to redeem the concept of reform. In the last century, those who have advocated reform have usually defined it as more government employees, more regulations, more agencies, more spending, more taxes, more special payoffs to the clients of political spoils systems, and more powers for government. Failures resulting from such “reform” have always been followed by calls for more government authority, spending and power.

    The Federal Reserve Bank was created nearly a century ago to end recessions, depressions, unemployment and inflation. As it has failed in all if these tasks, its authority and power have grown. Now we have calls for more financial “reform” to increase its powers and those of a host of other agencies. Government creations like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac destroyed the home mortgage market and are encouraged to intervene more. Meanwhile, the rapidly diminishing remnants of a free market take the blame.

    Medicare and Medicaid have an astonishingly consistent track record of wildly exceeding spending projections and failing to fund tens of trillions of dollars in liabilities. Fraud is uncontrolled. Yet the president and Congress have successfully used this disaster as the basis for assuming control of the remainder of private insurance. (Whatever you think of your insurance company, it has to find the income to pay medical bills. Congress can only pretend to do that by borrowing or printing the money.)

    That destructive course will only continue unless we transform the meaning of reform from what the government can do to what it must stop doing. We are being overcome by a towering wave of government that corrupts citizens and politicians alike, as surely as bread and circuses destroyed the Roman Republic. Before it is too late, we must reverse the tide. We must not submit to politicians who promise to take care of us if we surrender our freedom to them — we must throw them out of office.

    Americans must decide whether or not they will continue to surrender their personal choices about everything — health care, the education of their children, the energy and food they need to live, and the financial system so beautifully managed by the Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Treasury Department, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Congressman Barney Frank and Senator Chris Dodd.

    The era of ever diminishing freedom and ever increasing government must be brought to an end. We must start afresh and build a new Empire of Liberty. We must fight to take America back, and that battle can start with health care — in the courts and at the ballot box. It will be a long battle, but we must begin it now and fight one step at a time, for as long as it takes, if our lives and freedoms are to survive.

  • Challenge from the States

    American midterm primary elections for November are coming up this month in most states. This election, though not a presidential one, will be pivotal in determining the future direction of the country, perhaps even more so than those of 2012.

    The greatest political upset in many generations is about to take place because Americans are mad. It’s not just the jobs or the taxes or the government spending or even the economy as a whole, though that is certainly a part of it. The thing that has Americans most angry is the complete disregard for We the People. Our Constitution is no longer sacred to power hungry politicians and even less so to members of “Crime Inc.,” as Glenn Beck dubs the organized international effort to destroy the world economy and with it, freedom.

    There is nothing so fundamentally important to America as the Constitution. It is the standard of freedom, not for a country or for a society or for a culture but for individuals. It declares that individuals deserve equal protection under the law; it reins in the power of government, declares certain rights inviolable and brings peace and prosperity to all who follow its precepts.

    But with the federal government tromping all over the Constitution, what hope can there be now?

    That is why these elections are so important.

    First, in spite of the twisting of words, the American people know exactly who is responsible. People who are part of the problem in the House and Senate will be removed from office. And yes, that means Republicans as well as Democrats. We will still have a progressive Democratic president and most likely a conservative Republican Congress. This means that not much will done in the next two years and that is a very good thing. Government never makes law except when it takes away more freedom and expands the role of government while simultaneously increasing the national debt.

    But here’s why having an ineffective federal government for two years will really benefit America. Not only federal seats will be turned over to Independents and Republicans, but so will state governments go from ineffective or progressive leaders to truly conservative constitutionally responsible leaders.

    The threat to the federal government and the real change on the horizon will not come from within the system; it will come from the states. The various states, which have already begun to show their teeth to the Feds will gain more and more in power and confidence until their so far halting and disjointed efforts will reach a concerted change in the subservient relationship of the states to the federal government. The Constitution will be resurrected and as it is held up by the states, the federal government will be forced to return to its constitutional role, within the boundaries set by those states with enough guts to take it on.

    37 states are having governor’s races this year. There are also state legislators and local officials in towns and counties running for reelection. As these races take place, more Americans are more aware of the fundamental issues at stake than ever before and what’s more, it is in the primaries that their greatest effect will be felt. The candidate with the most constitutionally conservative stance will win in many districts and in many states. States that are strongly Democratic will go Republican or Independent. Those already in the hands of Republicans will change to different, more conservative, Republicans. No candidate running from the left will have any chance in most districts.

    The real challenge to the federal government will come from the states, but the federal government has no idea of what is coming. They are focused on national seats in the legislature. They think they have the states under their financial thumb.

  • Russian Foreign Arms Purchases Are Good for Regional Stability

    A great deal of ink has been spilled recently about how terrible it is that a number of European NATO members are considering selling arms and military equipment to Russia. Many commentators vehemently argue against such arms sales. The reasons for the opposition are rarely stated openly, but when they are they tend to focus on the fear that such deals would tie West European states more closely to Russia, preventing them from standing firm against Russian policies that the commentators oppose. A secondary reason is that these deals would improve Russian military capabilities.

    Both of these reasons are fundamentally misguided. First of all, countless studies have shown that greater ties between states reduce the likelihood of conflict between them. If France or Germany sell military equipment to Russia, they not only establish closer ties between their militaries, but they also make the Russian military more dependent on NATO military equipment. Cold warriors seem to think that the dependency argument only runs in one direction — Western states who sell to Russia wouldn’t want to lose sales, so they’ll do whatever Russia wants. But the road of mutual dependence is a two way street. If Russia starts buying certain categories of military equipment from abroad, its domestic defense industry will likely lose whatever capability it still has to produce that category of equipment. Russia will then depend on NATO states for the procurement (and perhaps maintenance) of its military equipment. In that situation, Russian leaders will have to think twice before undertaking any actions toward NATO that are sufficiently hostile as to result in it being cut off from access to such equipment. This form of dependence is much more serious. After all, if Russia gets upset with France and stops buying its military equipment, French arms manufacturers will lose some money and perhaps some French people will lose their jobs. But if France cuts off military sales to Russia in a situation where Russia is dependent on France for certain types of equipment, Russian security will suffer.

    Some analysts fear that Russia could use equipment purchased from NATO, such as the Mistral ships, to attack its neighbors. The 2008 Georgia war showed that even without NATO equipment the Russian military is plenty strong enough to defeat a small and weak army of the kind that just about all of its immediate neighbors possess. Western arms sales are not necessary for Russia to be able to successfully undertake hostile action against a country like Georgia. But again, if NATO arms sales to Russia become ubiquitous, Russia may well become more hesitant to undertake actions that could potentially result in the cut-off of such arms sales. In other words, Western leverage over Russian actions will actually increase.

    Second, if Russia starts using NATO equipment, this will improve interoperability between Russian and NATO military forces, making their efforts at military cooperation more effective. Since the two sides are much more likely to work together on potential issues such piracy, smuggling and counterterrorism than they are to actually fight each other, it seems to me that selling NATO equipment to Russia can only lead to improvements in security for NATO states.

    Russian leaders have recently contemplated a large number of potential arms purchases from abroad, including both basic equipment, such as uniforms, weaponry, such as sniper rifles, and major platforms, such as amphibious assault ships and armored vehicles. This shows that these leaders no longer trust the capabilities of Russia’s domestic defense industry to rebuild the Russian army, which is equipped almost entirely with aging Soviet era technology. They have come to understand that foreign ties are only way to rebuild their military capabilities in a reasonable time frame.

    Western leaders should encourage this trend, because it will only enhance regional and global security. Rather than “eroding the effectiveness of NATO policies toward Russia and in NATO’s own eastern neighborhood,” extensive arms sales by NATO states to Russia will increase Russian dependence on the West, decreasing the likelihood that Russia would take unilateral military action contrary to Western interests, while enhancing regional security by improving the ability of Russian forces to cooperate with NATO forces against threats to their mutual security.

    This story first appeared on Russian Military Reform, May 12, 2010.

  • Government Spending Didn’t End the Great Depression

    Given that our country is mired in a severe recession, the history of the Great Depression — especially the history of how we got out of it — is rightly regarded as relevant to fixing today’s problems.

    Some popular accounts would have us believe that the Great Depression ended via a) FDR’s New Deal and/or b) World War II. Translation: it was ended via a) a veritable government takeover of the economy, including massive wealth transfers to pay for make-work projects and/or b) an extremely costly war, both in money and in lives. Keynesian economists (and the politicians they influence) have used this supposed history to justify claims that more government spending, no matter what form, is the key to economic recovery.

    But economic historian Burton Folsom and his wife, Anita Folsom, have written a forceful Wall Street Journal piece debunking the popular mythology of the Great Depression.

    Here are some excerpts:

    Let’s start with the New Deal. Its various alphabet-soup agencies — the WPA, AAA, NRA and even the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) — failed to create sustainable jobs. In May 1939, American unemployment still exceeded 20 percent. European countries, according to a League of Nations survey, averaged only about 12 percent in 1938. The New Deal, by forcing taxes up and discouraging entrepreneurs from investing, probably did more harm than good.

    What about World War II? We need to understand that the near-full employment during the conflict was temporary. Ten million to twelve million soldiers overseas and another ten to fifteen million people making tanks, bullets and war materiel do not a lasting recovery make. The country essentially traded temporary jobs for a skyrocketing national debt. Many of those jobs had little or no value after the war.

    What was the solution? In large part, for the government to substantially reduce its intervention, especially through taxes and wealth transfers. After the war, Folsom writes,

    Congress reduced taxes. Income tax rates were cut across the board. FDR’s top marginal rate, 94 percent on all income over $200,000, was cut to 86.5 percent. The lowest rate was cut to 19 percent from 23 percent, and with a change in the amount of income exempt from taxation an estimated twelve million Americans were eliminated from the tax rolls entirely. Corporate tax rates were trimmed and FDR’s “excess profits” tax was repealed, which meant that top marginal corporate tax rates effectively went to 38 percent from 90 percent after 1945.

    […]

    By the late 1940s, a revived economy was generating more annual federal revenue than the United States had received during the war years, when tax rates were higher. Price controls from the war were also eliminated by the end of 1946. The United States began running budget surpluses.

    A lesson of this is that government spending is not economically necessary to end a downturn or depression; it is economic poison. In today’s economic context, the antidote is first and foremost a massive reduction in government spending (tax cuts are desirable, but only once our deficit is cut) which must include a phasing out of the welfare and regulatory programs that so much of government spending pays for.

    This story first appeared on Voices for Reason, April 20, 2010.

  • Liberal Wrongheadness on Greece

    In his column yesterday, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman demonstrates how wrongheaded liberal thinking on economics can be.

    Pointing to the fiscal problems being experienced by Greece, Krugman correctly points to the core of the problem: excessive spending and borrowing by the Greek government. Although he doesn’t point out that all that spending and debt is to pay for the ever growing expenditures of Greece’s welfare state, at least he recognizes that a government can spend and borrow too much. Indeed, he even recognizes that the situation can become so dire that investors don’t want to invest anymore in a government’s bonds because they fear a default, which is precisely what is now happening in Greece.

    But then Krugman goes awry, finding another culprit to blame for Greece’s debacle: deflation or even “excessively low inflation.”

    What he’s alluding to is that because Greece doesn’t have control over its money supply, the Greek government cannot do what the American government and other governments do to pay off excessive debt — simply print the money and paying off creditors in debased dollars.

    Krugman says that one possible solution to Greece’s problems is to slash spending and raise taxes. But of course slashing spending would involve major reductions in welfare benefits for the Greek citizenry, who are, by the way, protesting against any reductions in their dole. They take the same position as American dole recipients: that they have a right to their dole, come hell or high water, even if the government doesn’t have the money to continue paying them their dole. As Krugman observes, raising taxes will put more businesses out of business, raising unemployment and thereby aggravating the overall problem.

    Krugman suggests that another possible solution is to have other European countries guarantee Greece’s bonds. But as he suggests, German taxpayers are not excited about having their money taken from them so that Greek taxpayers can continue receiving their “free” welfare state dole.

    So, the obvious solution to his quandary, one that the American government’s Federal Reserve has long used, is simply to crank up the printing presses and pay off all that debt in depreciated, debased currency.

    But there’s one big problem, one that Krugman deeply laments: Since Greece is part of the eurozone, it doesn’t have the power to crank up the printing presses without the approval of the other EU countries, which are not likely to want to debase the euro for the sake of saving the welfare state dole for Greek citizens.

    That leaves Greece with the option of withdrawing from the eurozone and resorting to its own monetary system. But as Krugman points out, that might not be successful given that would likely be a rush of people to get their money out of the banks, along with a refusal by investors to buy bonds issued in the new currency.

    Needless to say, Krugman deeply laments the inability of the Greek government to inflate itself out of the crisis. Never mind that paying off creditors in debased currency constitutes an intentional default. That doesn’t seem to bother Krugman one whit. All that matters, obviously, is that the Greek welfare state be saved from collapse.

    Unfortunately, by not surprisingly, Krugman draws the wrong lesson for America from this Greek tragedy. He says that while the American government needs to be “fiscally responsible,” it should also “steer clear of deflation, or even excessively low inflation.”

    In the final analysis, Krugman gets it wrong. What has collapsed in Greece is the welfare state, and hanging on to this anchor is what is sending Greece to the bottom of the ocean.

    Americans need to take what has happened in Greece as a warning: Get off the dole road before it’s too late. Dismantle and repeal (that is, don’t reform or reduce) all welfare (and warfare) programs and departments, along with the taxes that support them.

    Moreover, don’t do what the Federal Reserve has done for decades — that is, don’t inflate. In fact, abolish the Fed, America’s engine of inflation, and restore sound money to America.

    This story first appeared on Hornberger’s Blog, The Future of Freedom Foundation, April 9, 2010.

  • Profits Are for People

    Those who advocate for government controls in medicine cry, “People, not profits.” They say profits are unacceptable in medicine because our health is so important. But it is precisely because our health is so important that profits must be vigorously defended. If quality health care disappears for Americans, it will have been killed by the perverse morality of those who want to destroy profits and replace them with government force. All free enterprise is considered an enemy of the people because it is based on the pursuit of individual happiness.

    If profits disappear from medicine, they will eventually be forced out of all aspects of the economy. For example, the President of the American Jewish World Service recently wrote in The New York Times to advocate for government control of world food production and distribution: “Food is a human right, yet we allow those in power to treat it as a commodity to be bought and sold by profiteers, interested in a quick buck.” Our model for abundant food must therefore be North Korea or Stalin’s collectivization of agriculture. This has always resulted in mass starvation, but power elites feel morally superior because they have eliminated profits.

    Such horrors are possible because the political and journalistic “conventional wisdom” is that profits are evil for everyone (except, of course, for law firms, lobbyists and Hollywood producers). Unprofitable firms are condemned and bailed out. Profitable firms are just condemned.

    Acceptance of an anti-profit morality will have the same devastating effects on medical care as it has on the diet of North Koreans. Life-saving new drugs and medical equipment will be forbidden if anyone is allowed a return on investments in them. Allowing patients to die while on waiting lists becomes morally superior to making a profit by saving a life. After all, wanting to save your own life or health is the ultimate “selfish” act.

    More opportunities for profits will bring down the cost of health care. Unlike government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, free-market enterprises, in their need for profits, ultimately reduce fraud and waste. As Wal-Mart and its competitors have shown by reducing drug prices and providing affordable walk-in clinics, better and more affordable health care rests on it being profitable. Competition — when the government does not forbid it — promotes better and more responsive care of patients, and the need for profits encourages savings.

    Can the government do better? The Department of Motor Vehicles and the United States Postal Service are not examples that suggest government will provide more comforting health services.

    A Gallup poll on ethics in November 2009 indicated that Americans trust members of Congress less than they trust car sales people. A CNN poll this year indicated that 86 percent of Americans think that government is broken. While Americans might think health care is broken — although many like their own care — do they think a broken government can fix health care?

    A front-page story in USA Today in December 2009 reported that fast-food chains have better food safety standards than school lunchrooms. Restaurants more vigorously test for and cook out bacteria and pathogens in beef and chicken than do public schools. Of course, school lunchrooms do not need to make a profit. Can government really be expected to do a better job with health care?

    Profits are an important American value without which life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are impossible. Forbidding profit in medical care replaces life with death, liberty with force, and the pursuit of happiness with self-sacrifice. Let’s not kill health care and our freedom at the same time.

  • Obamacare’s Assault on Individual Rights

    We’re told that Obamacare aims to make health care more affordable to more people, but in fact it threatens the rights of everyone involved in health care — doctors, patients, and health insurers — and thus the future of the industry.

    Before Congress greases up yet another ramp on the already slippery slope toward socialized medicine, let’s pause to identify those endangered rights and some of the destructive consequences.

    • Insurance companies are profit-making businesses, not social welfare agencies. They have the right to charge premiums that reflect actual risk. But Obamacare would force them to cover almost every American — no matter how sick they already are, no matter how bad their health habits, no matter how high the cost of their exotic treatments — and to raise everyone’s premiums accordingly.
    • Doctors are morally entitled to regard themselves as profit-making professionals, not public servants. They have the right to charge fees that reflect the value received by all parties to the transaction. But Obamacare, by driving down permissible fees, will force physicians into a deadly conflict of interest: Either lose money by doing everything necessary to meet patients’ needs, or make money by satisfying some minimum bureaucratic standard.
    • Patients are sovereign individuals, not particles in a social organism. They have the right to buy all the health care they deem necessary and can afford, without apologizing to those who can’t afford it. But under Obamacare, patients will have the moral status of beggars at a soup kitchen who must uncomplainingly accept whatever gruel from the health-care pot happens to land in their dish.

    Let Obamacare be seen for what it is: yet another offensive in the long-running assault on individual rights in medicine.

    This story first appeared on Voices for Reason, March 19, 2010.

  • Individual Run Health Insurance

    Responsibility is a necessary component of our existence. If we value something (anything), we will have to take care of it. If you own a car you need to make sure it receives regular oil changes and other maintenance. Yet people seem to be more proactive about inanimate objects like their car then they are about their own bodies and health.

    If you want to get something fixed on your car, you probably take it someplace to get repaired. You might also get multiple quotes on getting it repaired. You talk to friends and family about a good repair shop. And ultimately you make a decision based on all of these factors. What’s wrong with doing the same thing for your health?

    Those of us with Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) already do this, but when we call a doctor’s office (before going) and ask how much an office visit costs, most people are thrown aback. They get confused and ask, “Do you have health insurance?” We say “Yes, it is an HSA, but we still have to pay out of pocket up to a certain amount, and we want to get the best value possible.” Most of them (when they look for it) actually have this information. And most clinics are pretty inexpensive. The last clinic I went to was $90 plus a $20 prescription for a generic. Upon arriving at the office they actually asked me before doing any tests because they know that as the consumer I don’t want to be charged unnecessarily. And when the doctor only talked to me for fifteen minutes, I didn’t expect to see a charge for a two-hour consultation.

    Well, unfortunately if health-care legislation goes through, you won’t have the freedom to shop around at all. The government will charge you a percentage of your income to cover everyone’s insurance costs. That $90 visit is looking pretty good when compared to two or even 5 percent pulled out of your income. The only doctors you will be able to choose from will be selected by the government. And even if you can find a decent one, the best doctors will have closed down to find other, more profitable careers (or will have moved to freer countries).

    HSAs are one of the only steps in the direction toward individual responsibility. I’m surprised that there isn’t more discussion about consumer driven health-care initiatives in the health-care debate. Consumer driven plans mean that the consumer has the authority, not the government. It also means that people have to take responsibility for their own and their family’s health. It means that if they are irresponsible there will be serious repercussions, which in itself should be their primary motivator. If the government’s doctors are worse than our current physicians (and they will be), you are essentially putting yourself, your family and literally everyone you know at a higher health risk.

    But universal health care sounds pretty good, right? The names they throw around cast government run health care in a positive and almost otopian light: everyone gets health care. It is universal. Health care is a human right and the government is going to make sure you get it. People think that they are getting something for nothing, that this universal health care is a kind of free perk for being an American citizen. But we will pay for the health care in the form of higher taxes on our employers, income, property and purchases.

    If our employers are taxed more, they will pay us less. When a business has to pay effectively 120 percent of your wage (which they currently do) and you only take home 80 percent of it (which is also currently the case), there is a 40 percent gap that goes to Uncle Sam. This gap will widen as the size of government increases. They have to get their money from somewhere and 40 percent turns into 50 percent, 60 percent and so on. On top of that, you get taxed on your purchases (sales tax) and your property if you own any (property tax). We have seen how effective the government is at running things (they aren’t), yet people seem to be okay with adding another “health care” tax to businesses and individuals that will give the government more work to do.

    Then there are the extremists who say that health care is a human right. I would argue that we have the right to the pursuit of health care and health in general. Because the truth is, ideology doesn’t mean much to Mother Nature. Cancer, viruses and bacteria don’t discriminate, to say otherwise is delusional. And probably the best reason to prevent this from going through? The politicians that are debating this important issue won’t even be affected by it. You better believe they will continue to get the best health care on the public’s dime. They will certainly include special exceptions that allow them to get superior health care while the rest of us plebeians are stuck with a bureaucratic nightmare.

    A few technical details about HSAs: With an HSA, you still have a private health insurance plan called a High Deductible Health Plan (HDHP), but instead of a deductible, coinsurance and copays you just have a flat deductible. Meaning every year the maximum you ever pay out of pocket is that deductible. It is simple and it gives the consumer the power.

    The HSA is really a second component, even though everyone always talks about HSAs as an all inclusive thing. It is literally a special kind of savings account that you have to apply for after you have a HDHP. All of the money you put into the HSA is tax deductible but you can only use the money for health related expenses. And you are limited as to how much you can deposit per year. But you can also use the money to make investments for retirement and the interest accumulates tax free!

  • The Fallacies of Nuclear Power

    Nuclear power plants currently generate over 20 percent of the power in the United States. In other countries, like France, they power upward of 80 percent. There have been 884 coal mining related deaths since 1980 in the United States alone. Even wind turbines cause more deaths than the nuclear power industry, amounting to a total of sixty deaths (PDF) since the 1970s.

    In one case you have an industry that is guaranteed to cause death and severely lower the life expectancy of those involved. In the second, you have an alternative technology with a large number of accidental deaths. Third, you have a proven technology with a solid history of little to no problems and much fewer deaths. You do, however, have a word that can also be associated with powerful weapons of mass destruction. Nuclear as a word tends to scare people. We think of bomb drills and nuclear holocaust. But it’s really just a word like any other. Nuclear power need not be feared like the red death!

    This quote is from Greenpeace’s website. I decided to break up the summary against nuclear power into section to better analyze it:

    Despite what the nuclear industry tells us, building enough nuclear power stations to make a meaningful reduction in greenhouse gas emissions would cost trillions of dollars

    Building a nuclear power plant costs more than building a wind farm or a collection of solar panels, but the ratio of wattage output of a plant isn’t comparable on a per watt basis. Where did they get “trillions of dollars”? I’m at a loss about where to begin with that one. And besides, the implementation of nuclear power plants will decrease the need for old fossil fuel burning plants that output tremendous amounts of greenhouse gases. I personally could care less about greenhouse gas emissions, but since they do I’m surprised they forgot to mention that.

    Create tens of thousands of tons of lethal high level radioactive waste […]

    If disposed of properly, Mother Nature and radioactive half life do all the work for us. You just need a place to put the waste.

    I personally think we should launch it into space, but a more cost effective solution would be to use a massive mountain in a desert where you don’t have to worry about water runoff or a nearby population. In fact, such a site already exists, Yucca Mountain, although the project has recently been shut down. Which makes no sense considering instead of being stored in the best possible location, it will now be stored in higher risk locations, but I digress.

    […] contribute to further proliferation of nuclear weapons materials, and result in a Chernobyl-scale accident once every decade.

    The plants in operation today aren’t even remotely in the same class as the plant in Chernobyl, at least in the United States. And that is including the oldest plants in operation! And since they have been in operation for forty years (that would be four decades for all you non math folk), and there hasn’t been one Chernobyl scale accident, I would have to disagree.

    For Three Mile Island fans, there were no casualties and the radiation amounted to that of an X-Ray you would receive at the doctor’s. Did I already mention that if these organizations had left the industry alone, we wouldn’t have any older plants to deal with anyway? And we would already be off of foreign oil and fossil fuels? And our air would be cleaner?

    Perhaps most significantly, it will squander the resources necessary to implement meaningful climate change solutions.

    By resources I assume they mean money? I don’t understand that logic at all, considering it will be more expensive to create the same amount of energy with wind and solar, not to mention the existing loss in tax revenue due to the tax credits that have existed for quite some time.

    That said, I’m not against other technologies. In fact I love technology and new ideas. I love entrepreneurship. I do’’t love intangible promises from new technologies. Sure, a breakthrough could happen in solar and wind power that makes them the clear choice. But the same could happen in nuclear or even coal power too! In the short term, I would place my money on nuclear and get us off of reliance of foreign oil, something that inherently undermines our position in all things foreign policy and affects us in a tangible way every day.

  • The Decline of States’ Rights

    With a population of over three hundred million people and an increasingly diverse set of principles and opinions, the United States has a growth problem.

    The Founding Fathers predicted this issue and emphasized the importance of local governments. Their logic: that people with similar principles will congregate in similar areas. As members of the overall country, the process is made simple and requires no special passport or application. Smaller communities can take a stand on issues of importance and make an exception for their jurisdiction.

    The individual state, as originally intended as the largest of these communities, has now been subverted by an even larger national one. We are increasingly merging into the United State as opposed to a collection of United States. Just saying the “United State” sends 1984 chills down my spine.

    Here’s the problem; the federal government is growing. Just look at the latest bailout bill, national health-care legislation or TARP funds. It doesn’t end there either; just a few days ago another smaller $15 billion dollar billion “jobs bill” was passed.

    Do you believe in socialized medicine? You have a right to that belief, but why forces it on every other state instead of making it a priority in your own? Massachusetts attempted health-care reform and it didn’t work out too well. But they have a much better chance of successfully overhauling their system because they have a population of 6.5 million compared to three hundred million. Do you trust the government to efficiently run a project of that size?

    Then there is the issue of majority opinion. Even if they manage a 51 percent majority consensus on an issue like health care (which is impossible), wouldn’t you rather have a larger percentage? If every state had a different health-care initiative, people could rally more successfully for what they want. Why not take it a step further and bring it down to counties and cities. There would be less need to compromise on crucial issues and more chance of a higher ratio of majority acceptance. And best of all, your opinion and your voice are (literally) much more likely to be heard and appreciated.

    Look at your local proposals for the last few years; individual states and communities can actually make decisions with greater than a 60 percent popular vote! How likely is that on the national scale? In the local scenario you would have the freedom to go or move to another city, county or state if you really cared enough about certain issues. And you wouldn’t have to change your citizenship.

  • Will the Looted Just Shrug?

    The statist reaction to Republican senator Jim Bunning’s temporary block of a welfare bill shows what the welfare state has done to the American people.

    Everyone knows that federal spending is out of control. The feds are spending $1.4 trillion more than what they’re collecting in taxes. And that’s just for this year.

    Where are they getting the difference? They’re borrowing it, adding to the massive and ever-growing debt of the federal government. How is that debt going to be paid off? By American taxpayers. Your individual, average share as of right now is about $40,000. It’s growing every day because the feds are running up your credit card, which has no limit.

    So, Bunning blocks a welfare bill on the ground that the federal government shouldn’t be borrowing any more money. If it can’t afford to be providing the welfare, Bunning said, then it shouldn’t be spending more money.

    The statist crowd went ballistic. The attacks were the standard ones whenever anyone objects to any welfare state scheme: “He’s selfish, self-centered, and greedy. He hates the poor and loves the rich. He’s just grandstanding. The bill is only a small percentage of total spending and so it doesn’t make any difference in the larger scheme of things.”

    But the statist reaction to Bunning’s move goes much deeper than that and is a perfect reflection of what the socialistic welfare state has done to the American people. Having been born and raised under the welfare state, American recipients of welfare largess, including those on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment, education grants, mortgage guarantees, and bailout and stimulus monies, honestly believe that they are entitled to continue receiving it for as long as they “need” the money.

    That’s why they call much of this junk an “entitlement.” What the entitlement crowd is saying is: “I am entitled to your money because I want it and I need it. If you object, my statist associates and I will go on the attack against you and expose you for being a vicious, no-good, selfish hater of the poor and lover of the rich.”

    This is what the welfare state has done to America. It has produced a real war among the American people — between those who produce and own their wealth and those who are trying to get their hands on other people’s money through the force of the state. The nineteenth century French legislator Frederic Bastiat put it well when he indicated that under the welfare state, the government becomes a great fiction by which some people try to live at the expense of other people.

    Almost as bad has been what the welfare state has done to the mindsets of the American people. It has made so many Americans dependent on the government, not just financially but also emotionally and psychologically. People are on the dole have convinced themselves that they could never survive without their dole. And they absolutely freak out whenever someone talks about ending their dole. Even worse, they look upon the government as their daddy or, even worse, as a beloved deity.

    What is happening, not only here in the United States but in Greece, Portugal, Spain, England, and other welfare state countries, is that there isn’t enough wealth among the taxpayers to plunder to fund the massive, ever-growing number of people on the dole.

    Meanwhile, panicky over the potential crack up of the welfare state, liberals are blaming the economic woes on “freedom, deregulation, greed, the bankers, and free enterprise,” and they’re proposing their standard statist solution — more socialism and Keynesianism. They’re saying that the feds should just keep spending, spending, and spending, no matter how much they have to borrow or inflate to do so. The notion is that more spending will put unemployed people back to work, whose taxes can then fund the voracious and ever-growing wants of the parasitic sector of society.

    But as we libertarians have been saying for decades, ultimately the welfare state house of cards is going to crack apart, just as it did in Cuba and the Soviet Union. God has created a consistent universe, one in which immoral means will beget bad ends. The crack up has obviously already begun in such heavy-duty welfare state countries as Greece, Portugal, Spain, and England, where the base of wealth to plunder and loot is more limited than it is in the United States.

    But even here in the United States there is a limit to how much socialism the private sector can bear. And don’t forget: there is always the possibility that those who are being plundered and looted might just decide to go on strike, refusing to produce any more wealth and just “shrugging.”

    This story first appeared on Hornberger’s Blog, The Future of Freedom Foundation, March 4, 2010.

  • The Summit of Fantasy

    The president’s summit on health care revealed major schisms between public policy and reality. Those who feel that they must keep repeating to Americans that their health care is “broken” overlook a more fundamental problem.

    Most Americans, based on a lifetime of experience, don’t think the medicine practiced by their own physician is broken. So they don’t believe surveys conducted by the United Nations claiming health care is better in other countries. But more importantly, most Americans — 86 percent, in a recent CNN survey — indicate that they think government is broken. So whatever they think of their medical care, they are unlikely to think that a broken government can fix it.

    Yet, at the summit, the president and majority leaders behaved as if medical care would be best improved by a hundred or so new government agencies, boards and commissions to micro-manage most health-care decisions — from requiring physicians to administer patient treatments dictated by government protocols to requiring medical equipment manufacturers to pay fees for daring to invent new technologies.

    Additionally, prior to the summit the president had to propose the creation of a new “Health Insurance Rate Authority” to tell insurance companies what premiums they can charge after fifty states already tell them the same thing. (No thought was given to how eliminating some agencies would improve costs.)

    Not since Ayn Rand wrote Atlas Shrugged has anyone thought up more wasteful and destructive government agencies to control every aspect of the economy and our daily lives. At least Atlas Shrugged was fiction. Or in 1957 it was.

    Fiscal fantasy from the Senate, House of Representatives, and now from the White House, is evident with the claim that spending one or two trillion dollars (depending on how you don’t count it) will reduce the deficit. Of course the only way that this largest increase ever in the size and cost of government could reduce the deficit is by the largest tax increase in history. Americans don’t think that huge increases in the size of government are the best way to reduce deficits.

    The most amusing departure from reality was the idea that the president can proceed (and risk the political consequences) without bipartisan support. That assertion is nothing new — nothing has been bipartisan in Congress in the past year, not the bills passed by the Senate and House, nor the president’s recent proposals. That bipartisan ship sailed long ago. But the reality is that the president has not been able to proceed with Democratic support, which is more precarious than ever in the House of Representatives. When you have a large majority in the House — which requires only a simple majority to pass any bill — you cannot blame the Republicans if you fail. But they hope to force everything through, ignoring the meaning of recent elections as well as the next one.

    This failure to recognize realities has two major causes, both of which eliminate real and appropriate reform of health care. The first is ideological. Many in the majority cannot conceal their contempt for insurances companies, physicians as “profiteers,” drug companies (whose profits pay for new medications), for all business activity as such. Better no medical care than medical care fueled by a return on investment.

    The second cause is feeding the spoils systems of politicians who push for growth in government as the primary objective, for which health care is only the excuse. More government is good, but more specific pay-offs to your own political clients is better.

    The president’s summit was a perfect case of form without substance. But it did cast light on the root of our problems in health care.

  • Brain Dead Conservatism

    In The Washington Post, Steven Hayward lays out his argument that conservatism has become a brain-dead movement:

    Consider the “tea party” phenomenon. Though authentic and laudatory, it is unfocused, lacking the connection to a concrete ideology that characterized the tax revolt of the 1970s, which was joined at the hip with insurgent supply-side economics. Meanwhile, the “birthers” have become the “grassy knollers” of the right; their obsession with Obama’s origins is reviving frivolous paranoia as the face of conservatism. (Does anyone really think that if evidence existed of Obama’s putative foreign birth, Hillary Rodham Clinton wouldn’t have found it 18 months ago?) (more…)