Benevolence: Health Care and More

This summer while vacationing I had a civil, back-and-forth discussion with a neighbor about the raging health care debate:  I maintained that charity should be left to the charities.  His response was that the resources of the charities would be inadequate to provide health care to the truly needy.  I replied that an inadequacy of private benevolence should be no justification for coercing one's neighbor and further damaging the dreadful financial condition of the country.  It seemed a pretty harsh response to him despite the fact that for most of mankind's history, the poor have had to survive on their own, supported only by their wits and the voluntary benevolence of their neighbors.  (The discussion never reached the stage where we might address the factual assumptions supporting the argument for any legislation.)

My neighbor's position was a variation of the moral duty and "but what about . . ." arguments.  He did not understand why I felt no moral duty to coerce my neighbor to be benevolent, even though I patiently explained that there is nothing moral or benevolent about coerced giving.  His starting point was that society ought to take care of the poor, and he seemed blinded to any challenge to that assumption and was incapable of evaluating it on a deeper level.

A large part of the support for universal, taxpayer-funded health care is the prevailing notion of moral duty held by both the left and the right:  They believe that benevolence is something that is owed the recipient.  The difference between the left and the right seems to be that the right is inclined to limit the duty of benevolence to that which is practical.

As Stephen Hicks succinctly explains in "On 'Giving Back'," the origin of this idea lies in philosophy.  And it is their implicit philosophy which forms the foundation for the left's fervent belief that they are doing justice by imposing on "society" the cost of caring for the poor, the disadvantaged, the needy, the victims, etc., terms which seem to have floating definitions.  (As an aside, note that the health care bill proposed by the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee proposes to raise the definition of the poverty level by 50% in order to impose on the States the financial obligation for the new regime under Medicaid.  So much for the idea of the truly needy.)  This is an intractable problem for those of us who prefer to practice benevolence on an individual level and who object to bearing the cost of someone else's notion of social justice.  The problem is exacerbated by the lack of any serious public opposition to this dark concept of duty.

The idea that benevolence is "owed" has spawned a welfare state of gigantic proportions and an entire class of people (swiftly becoming a majority of voters) who believe that they have a rightful claim to society's surplus (whatever that is), and more; and the mere fact that they are victims or disadvantaged gives them that right. 

The claim to your "surplus" (and more) is facilitated by the collectivist fiction that it is not an individual that owes the duty, but the anonymous, faceless, collective "society." While many recipients of this kind of "benevolence" would shrink from pointing a gun at me and taking my money, they have no qualms about doing the same when they do not have to face me but use the guns of a surrogate (the government) and pretend that it is voluntary.

For decades few have effectively protested the coerced benevolence of the welfare state, probably because it was not sufficiently painful and because, frankly, many people don't mind parting with a little here and a little there to help the truly needy -- and the fact that taxation was involved didn't seem to bother them much.  But the foot was thus in the door.

Finally, however, people are becoming agitated about the size of "society's" recent and proposed  benevolence.  The government bailouts of private enterprise were justified by our presumed duty to keep people from suffering the consequences of risky behavior, poor judgment and fraud (rather than leaving them to seek recourse from the culpable).  The government's attempts to make housing affordable to those who could not afford it has crashed the economy.  And huge sums were paid to murky leftists with questionable backgrounds to assure that people had full access to the benefits of the welfare state and the ballot box, with predictable results: embezzlement, voter intimidation and fraud, and a takeover of neighborhoods by political outsiders.  Now comes the proposals to "reform" the entire health care system, with a huge price tag, justified by our "moral duty."

A great many people are aghast at the sweeping health care legislation being proposed and a majority of the voters are against it.   But, still, few challenge the basic justification underlying the entire matter, that "we" owe a duty to provide health care to those who cannot afford it (whatever that means).  Without such a challenge, opponents  of the legislation are left only to dicker about the price.

Further reading:  David Kelley, "Is There a Right to Health Care?"

Coercion, Pure and Simple

The Wall Street Journal today has more about health care legislation:

Chairman Max Baucus's bill includes the so-called individual mandate, along with what he calls a $1,900 "excise tax" if you don't buy health insurance. (It had been as much as $3,800 but Democrats reduced the amount last week to minimize the political sticker shock.) And, lo, it turns out that if you don't pay that tax, the IRS could punish you with a $25,000 fine or up to a year in jail, or both.

Under questioning last week, Tom Barthold, the chief of staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation, admitted that the individual mandate would become a part of the Internal Revenue Code and that failing to comply "could be criminal, yes, if it were considered an attempt to defraud." Mr. Barthold noted in a follow-up letter that the willful failure to file would be a simple misdemeanor, punishable by the $25,000 fine or jail time under Section 7203.

So failure to pay the mandate would be enforced like tax evasion, but Mr. Obama still claims it isn't a tax. "You can't just make up that language and decide that that's called a tax increase," Mr. Obama insisted last week to ABC interviewer George Stephanopoulos. Accusing critics of dishonesty is becoming this President's default argument, but is Mr. Barthold also part of the plot?

More . . .

Coercion, pure and simple (unless you agree with Harry Reid that paying taxes is voluntary).

Those with a thirst for detail will want to study the Kaiser Family Foundation's side by side comparison of the health care bills being proposed.  Seek truth from the facts, not from the statements of politicians.  Despite the shrill screams from the left,  Obama lies.  Look and see for yourself.

Racial Politics - The Double Standard

Mark Steyn discusses the double standard in racial politics in the National Review Online. (Hat tip to Robert Bidinotto.)

How can the left veer so far from their avowed principles and stretch the truth to paint conservatives with the racist brush?

It all boils down to philosophy.

It is really difficult for us regular folks to understand how all of this political correctness and interest groups based on race and gender came about.  How did this stuff suddenly appear on the scene, giving such far-out and/or corrupt people political power over us, our freedoms and our pocketbooks?  How do the member of Congress and their supporters justify what they are doing?  Where did the crazy ideas that they promote come from?  And make no mistake, it is the ideas and their unchallenged belief in them that energizes them -- the philosophy energizes them and gives them the conviction that they are "right" -- and deludes them into believing that they are entitled to subjugate the rest of us, like Martin Heidigger's philosophy justified the Nazis and gave the moral sanction for what they did.

You might remember that a couple of hundred years ago the fortuitous conjunction of grievances against English colonialism and the ascendency of Enlightenment philosophers such as John Locke produced a revolution and the construction of a limited government by united states in America based on individual rights.  Historians of philosophy have deemed that the "Modern" period.  But, it did not end there.  There is a subsequent "Postmodern" period of philosophy which now drives the humanities, journalism, political science, and related departments in our formerly great universities, who fill our children with twisted ideas and leave them with "mush for brains."  Modernism in these departments has been supplanted by Postmodernism. 

But what is "Postmodernism?"  To you, I am sure, the entire question is pretty much irrelevant and invisible.  But believe me, it is the fundamental thing that is driving us to ruin and placing us and our grandchildren on the Road to Serfdom.  You need to understand it in order to decide whether you ought to oppose it.  

A few years ago The Atlas Society funded a project by a young philosopher, Stephen Hicks, to write a book explaining Postmodernism.  It is remains in my top 10 books on philosophy -- of course behind Aristotle, Locke, Rand and some others, but there, nevertheless -- because it is both comprehensive and succinct.  It has been available on Amazon and elsewhere for a few years, and I have passed out many copies on my own.  You need to read and understand it.  

Dr. Hicks is posting the book on the web for free at http://www.stephenhicks.org/2009/09/18/explaining-postmodernism-chapter-one-online/.  Please explore what he has to say about the development and nature of Postmodern philosophy and the left's use of it as a pretext to gain political power.  The philosophy is seriously flawed, yet it forms the unstated basis for the development of a very, very dark political and financial future for us, our children, our grandchildren and beyond.  We don't want that to happen.  And we need to gird ourselves, intellectually, for a major battle so that we can recognize and credibly oppose government encroachments cloaked in language such as "diversity" and "equality" when they are intended only to suppress and tax people who produce better than others and to distribute their hard-earned wealth to the favorites of government – a captive population of ignorant followers.

Which is More Unreal?

Mark Steyn in the Orange County Register offers the answer to this rhetorical question when evaluating the speeches of President Obama and Moamar Gadhafi at the U.N. this week:

Barack Obama is not to blame for whichever vagary of United Nations protocol resulted in the president of the United States being the warm-up act for the Lunatic-for-Life in charge of Libya. But it is a pitiful reflection upon the state of the last superpower that, when it comes to the transnational mush drooled by the leader of the free world or the conspiracist ramblings of a terrorist pseudo-Bedouin running a one-man psycho-cult of a basket-case state, it's more or less a toss-up as to which of them is more unreal.

Read the entire article here.

A Moral Duty

Politico reports the latest tag team effort between Bill Clinton and Al Gore to drum up support for Obama Care. Speaking at the Tennessee Democratic Party's annual Jackson Day dinner, Gore, "Playing off the focus of the Kennedy funeral on the Gospel of Matthew’s parable of Jesus taking care of “the least of us,” thundered that the country has “a moral duty to pass health care reform. This year.”

A moral duty.

Last year I warned you not to let the political left claim the moral high ground. So here we are at the point where they are attempting to do exactly that. It is their ultimate argument. Those who are not armed with an understanding of morality are defenseless. And that is likely to include the Republicans and conservatives who are not able to see that there is no morality in being your brother's keeper if you are forced to do it. To the contrary, it is coercing your neighbor into being his brother's keeper that is immoral.

The health care debate can only be won permanently if it is taken to the fundamental level. Gore's assertion provides the opportunity to do that. If it remains unchallenged, a defeat of the current proposal to have government controlled health care will be only a temporary bump on the road to serfdom.

Please study "Let's Have Some Real Change for a Change" and confront this issue directly and publicly.

You Are Still the Enemy of the State

In November, I advised you that you are the enemy of the State (the Government). Please revisit that post. Nothing much has changed.

The U.S. District Court in New York has now ruled that the Fed must disclose the recipients of its loans and also identify the garbage assets that it swapped at par for Treasuries. Predictably, the Fed is still resisting disclosure (belying its lip service to transparency), arguing that they don't want depositors to know how bad off their banks are and they don't want the banks' shareholders to know either. See Quelle Surprise! Fed Uses Scare Tactics to Try to Forestall Loan Disclosures by Yves Smith on Naked Capitalism. These people have no shame. It is like the postmodern criminal who killed his mother and father and threw himself on the mercy of the court because he was an orphan.

And now the Obama Administration has announced that it will appoint Helicopter Ben Bernanke to another term as head of the Fed. This guy is a criminal who, you may recall, I suggested, should be accorded the same status in society as a child molester, robber or rapist who preys upon the innocent and unsuspecting. And apparently he and Henry Paulson are being given a pass by the SEC. Bernanke's reappointment is consistent with other Obama appointments.

Some in the fawning media are saying that President Obama should inherit the Camelot mantle. Even if you were one of those who pines for the return of the glamor and mystique of the Kennedys, you ought not to buy in to this suggestion. First and foremost, President Obama has not surrounded himself with the intellectual firepower that John Kennedy did. To the contrary, Obama has surrounded himself with second-rate radical left-wing ideaogues bent on ending economic and political freedom and growing the size of the federal government and its power over the individual.

Consider, for example, Ezekiel Emanuel, an Administration health care policy advisor. This person is truly scary. He would have a government board place the interests of "society" over the interest of an individual and have the government makes the individual's health care choices. This is what socialism is all about: elevation of "society" over the individual. But to articulate the interests of "society" you need an authority, a leader. While the promoters of socialism believe that such authorities will be benevolent, we know better -- they will be benevolent to some at the expense of others. Now you know why protesters are worried about "Nazis" in the Administration.

Raw Footage Exposes AARP and Many Others

Please See AARP Organizers Cancel ‘Listening Session’ After Participants Refuse to ‘Keep Their Comments Quiet’

The headlines in today's Drudge Report reveal more than a few nationwide grumblings about proposals to nationalize health care:

Tampa: Protests, passions roiling town hall meeting on health care
St. Louis: Six people, including P-D reporter, arrested at Carnahan meeting
Little Rock: Rowdy crowd grills congressmen over healthcare reform
Miami: Tempers flare in South Florida over healthcare overhaul
Simsbury, CT: Protesters Confront U.S. Representative At Simsbury Supermarket Meeting
Utica: Man Yells "You're A Liar" To House Leader Steny Hoyer: *** "You're lying to me," said Don Jeror as he loudly interrupted Hoyer. "Just because I don't have sophisticated language, I can recognize a liar when I see one." *** "Why would you guys try to stuff a health care bill down our throats in three to four weeks, when the President took six months to pick a dog for his kids?!"
Houston: Physicians speak out on health care bill
Michigan: Tempers flare over health care plan
Denver: Pelosi's visit to Denver a lightning rod

A man in Little Rock raised the John Galt solution: "You Need To Get The Government The Hell Out Of Our Way."

The politicians are fighting back. President Obama has launched a White House Program, which is probably illegal, to identify the individuals who send suspicious e-mails opposing the Democrats’ health care proposals, by asking citizens to rat out their fellow citizens. The White House Press Secretary accused a reporter who asked about the program of “hatching a nefarious plot.” The Democratic National Committee has launched a media (propaganda) campaign, including ads that attack the protesters at town hall meetings. And they have been controlling the debate by retreating from town meetings in favor of conference calls.

It seems that, rather than selling their health care on the merits of change, the Democrats are attacking the opponents of government control with a well-worn but deplorable debating tactic: when you have no arguments on the merits, attack the speaker personally. Nancy Pelosi complains that the opponents of government health care are “carrying swastikas.” (There were some swastikas but they were used by the protesters to compare ObamaCare to Nazism. Pelosi was insinutaing that the protesters are Nazis.). Rep. Brian Baird also conjures up Nazis by accusing protesters of using “Brown Shirt” tactics. Harry Reid “accused the protesters of trying to "sabotage" the democratic process.” And others go after the usual suspects:

The White House and Democrats have called the protests an orchestrated "mob" driven by Republican- and industry-backed groups and conservative talk radio and television hosts.

"They have been sent by their corporate and lobbyist bankrollers to disrupt, heckle and block meaningful debate. This is a desperation move, meant to slow the momentum for change," said Richard Trumka, secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO labor group.

But the discontent is neither faked nor staged by the GOP.

Aside from the merits of any proposal, the level of complexity and the vast implications of changing 15% of the economy in a rush by government fiat with an unread 1,000-page Bill – especially the one sector of the economy that is the most personal – simply unnerves people. Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal, seems to have put it succinctly: “You are terrifying us.” In the same article, she also makes an astute observation:

In an odd way [President Obama] sometimes seems not to have fully absorbed the awesome stature of his office. You really, if you’re president, can’t call an individual American stupid, if for no other reason than that you’re too big. You cannot allow your allies to call people protesting a health-care plan “extremists” and “right wing,” or bought, or Nazi-like, either. They’re citizens. They’re concerned. They deserve respect."

Politically Mean-Spirited and Dangerous

"Depicting the president as demonic and a socialist goes beyond political spoofery," says Hutchinson [Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable President Earl Ofari Hutchinson], "it is mean-spirited and dangerous." That was the cry of the Obama supporters in L.A. who objected to the picture of President Obama made up as The Joker with the caption, "Socialism."

So why do the socialists object to being called socialists? Please revisit my previous answers to this question at "Healthcare Bill: Socialism?" and "What's So Bad about Socialism?"

A rose by any other name is still a rose. Even those who deserve the appellation view it as an epithet. [Update 8-12-09:] Now the main stream media is moving to persuade people to be more reluctant to toss around the word.

I make an 8-hour round-trip trek to from Annapolis to New Jersey at least monthly and use the time in my car to sample Talk Radio -- Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingalls, Michael Savage and others. You are no doubt aware that liberal talk shows have been singularly unsuccessful and "conservative" talk shows have been wildly successful. The reason is that the message of the "conservatives" -- individual liberty and limited government -- resonate with those who are interested in ideas, and who listen.

Today's trip was filled with revealing and thoughtful discussions about the Democrats' attempt to nationalize 15% of the economy and to control among many other things, in the President's words, your "end of life decisions."

ARE YOU LISTENING TO THIS! --- THEY WANT THE BUREAUCRACY TO CONTROL YOUR END OF LIFE DECISIONS!

So what's so bad about socialism? Well, there you have it: they presume to control your life -- and death.

Your Congressman is home this month. If you don't find a way to reach him, through town meetings or otherwise, to tell him to oppose further government involvement in the health care system, you and your children will suffer their decisions about when you live and when you die. Does it sound important? Does it sound like you need to get politically active? Or have you given up?

Demonize and Divert

Nancy Pelosi has attacked the insurance industry, an easy target for demagogues. It is so obvious: demonize and divert, a well-known tactic of power-seeking extremists who cannot persuade using reason and facts. That was why Hitler targeted the Jews.

Every time Pelosi makes a pronouncement, it is an embarrassment to the position of Speaker of the House. I am no fan of contemporary politicians or the role that they have assumed to run our individual lives and take our money to do it. But there have been many solid people, even if they were liberals, who held the position that were respected by the public and their peers -- Sam Rayburn, John McCormack and Tip O'Neill, for example. None of them were loudmouths. Most exercised quiet leadership. And none of them stood before the public and spewed such silly, irrelevant nonsense. She is a caricature, a stereotypical radical left-wing demagogue. Even Ted Kennedy's style is more reserved these days.

I have never been a fan of insurance companies either. My bias comes from sad and extensive experience with them in the area of commercial liability insurance, where the companies' written procedures revealed their dark side in surprisingly candid terms: they were in business simply to take your money, keep it and give you nothing in return.

My experience with major liability carriers was especially revealing. Once I sued 18 of the largest carriers in the United States; and, because it was clear that they were denying my client's claims with no justification whatsoever, we were able to force them to settle the claims -- but only after a protracted battle in which they attempted to overwhelm the client with legal costs. It did not hurt our case that a key public decision of a state insurance commissioner, which had mysteriously vanished from the commission's files, somehow appeared in the confidential files of the insurance industry's trade association. The resulting implication that insurance companies might steal official files or otherwise not engage in honest litigation or practices left me with a life-long bias that "insurance companies are evil." When representing a client, I need to be persuaded otherwise.

But it would be an over generalization to extend my bias against liability carriers to, for example, automobile insurance (where my experience has been positive) and health insurance (where I have had only a few minor negative experiences). And any bias, whether against liability insurance carriers or others, needs to be regularly confirmed by the contemporaneous facts.

Too many of us, even (and perhaps especially) in the area of health insurance have bitter memories that still make our blood boil. Do you think this will get better or worse if a government bureaucracy is placed in charge? Pelosi is pandering to people's anger at the petty, misguided bureaucrats who gave us such a hard time about intensely personal matters. But in recent years, in my experience, health insurers have done a better job at communicating in advance what they cover, which leads to improved understanding and less contention. But even if the insurance companies were perfect, it wouldn't fix the system.

When interviewed recently Nancy Pelosi said, "Let me assure you: There will be a health care reform bill passed and it will make a big difference in the lives of the American people." No doubt, if a bill is passed, her prediction will be correct, except that the difference will not be positive when compared to the existing system.

As explained by Shikha Dalmia, except for those without health insurance (who use the emergency rooms for free), our health care payment system is a private insurance system which removes from the consumer the responsibility for negotiating the price or controlling the cost directly. She compares the systems in France, Germany and the USA:

For the same flat fee—regardless of whether it is paid for primarily through taxes as in France in Germany or through lost wages as in America—patients in all three countries effectively get an ATM card on which they can expense everything (barring co-pays) regardless of what the final tab adds up to. (Catastrophic coverage plans are available in America, but the market is extremely limited for a number of reasons, including the fact that most states have issued Patients Bill of Rights mandating all kinds of fancy benefits even in basic plans.)

Thus, in neither country do patients have much incentive to restrain consumption or shop for cheaper providers. In America and Germany, patients don't even know how much most medical services cost. In France, patients know the prices because they have to pay up front and get reimbursed by their insurer later—a lame attempt to ensure some price consciousness. But since there is no cap on the reimbursed amount, the French sometimes shop for doctors based on such things as office decor rather than prices, according to a study by David Green and Benedict Irvine, researchers at Civitas, a London-based think tank. (Green and Irvine reported this as a good thing.)

The health care system in the U.S. needs to be fixed to enable the consumers to pay for and control the cost of their own health care and for physicians to treat their patients without the state dictating the terms, access or methods. In other words, the government should get out of the way rather than imposing more control. Cliff Asness, in a lengthy article (see Health Care Mythology), which is worthy of study, has said it better than all others.

It appears that the Senate will approve a health care bill. Then it ultimately will end up in Conference where the bill will be changed to one that can be subscribed to by both houses. The problem with Conference is that negotiations between members of the two houses are behind closed doors. The phrase, "Nellie, bar the door," comes to mind. If they get out, "it will make a big difference in the lives of the American people."

This is not a time to be a sheeple unless you want your children and grandchildren to be sent like lambs to the slaughter. It is time to become politically active and persuade others so that many, many respectable voting citizens can have their voices heard. Remember, numbers is the only thing your elected representatives respect.

SIGTARP Shines the Light of Day on the Cost of Bailouts

The Special Investigator General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, known as SIGTARP, reported to Congress last week that the total cost of the combined TARP bailouts could reach as high as $23.7 Trillion! His report was quickly criticized and disputed by the murky Treasury Department, of course. Read all about it, including links to the SIGTARP's Report and testimony in the American Spectator.

Lobbying And Health Care Reform

I received a recorded telephone message from the AARP this week. I hung up as soon as I heard "This is the AARP." As a retired person, I probably should have listened; but I knew what the message was going to be -- support the health care bill. The AARP has spent more that $6 billion lobbying health care since April 1.

The Lobbyists have opened their checkbooks. Those who hope to gain big from regulation and wealth transfer are on the front lines.

The Congressional response to the credit crisis and the effort to nationalize health care, which represents over 15% of the economy, are just two examples of a government that recognizes no bounds. The presumption of government power that has most recently accelerated to a level never (in their wildest imaginations) contemplated by the Founders creates a nasty scramble for the fruits of your labors, which Dr. Edward Hudgins has described as a war of all against all:

To understand the paths to social conflict and harmony respectively, we must understand that all ideologies—and the governments on which they rest—are not created equal.

The government devised by America’s Founders sought to protect the lives, liberties, and property of the citizens, that is, to ban the initiation of force—the essence of conflict—by individuals against one another. All relations between people should be based on mutual consent. In the economic realm this means that individuals must produce and trade goods and services voluntarily with one another. The situation is not a zero-sum game. The only way I can prosper is to convince you to part with your money by offering you something you want.

But when government is allowed to manage and manipulate the economy and to redistribute wealth from one individual or group to another—the essence of Obama’s policies—we have a system that is by its nature contentious. You win only because I lose.

****

This is a politicized economy. Decisions about our economic lives and affairs are taken out of our hands and decided by raw political power, pitting us against one another, creating winners at the expense of losers.

Individuals look more often to government—that is, to their fellow citizens—to help them meet the economic challenges in life that should be their responsibility as individuals—education, career, financing a house, saving for retirement. We become burdens on our neighbors or they foist burdens on us.

There is nothing wrong with lobbying per se. The Founders established it as a First Amendment Right. But it was established in the context of a constitutional scheme of limited government. DeToqueville warned that the American system of democracy was subject to abuse and could lead some day to the majority's voting money out the pockets of the minority. And it has now come to pass. The right to petition the government for a redress of grievances has spawned a huge industry that corrupts the political process and causes citizens to assume that everyone in Congress is a crook. Big money flows into the coffers and elsewhere for the benefit of someone's re-election campaign. It happens because of the huge resources the government commands (taxation and inflation) and its presumed power to do just about anything.

The solution to this mess is to restore a government with limited functions, reduce taxes, balance the budget and have a currency that cannot be inflated.

Professor Michael S. Rozeff observes that there are some good lobbyists -- those who advocate that the government should do less, who oppose government transfer of money from those who earned it to those who didn't, and who resist the imposition of restrictions on voluntary trade and property rights, such as the NRA and National Federation of Independent Businesses. And there are some "bad lobbyists," one of them being the AARP:

The AARP’s lobbying is directed against budget caps, against entitlement caps, against cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, and veterans’ benefits. It is for the prescription drug entitlement. It is against any privatization of Social Security, including voluntary or mandatory personal retirement accounts. It supports the progressive income tax. The AARP looks upon tax measures in terms of their impact on government budgets (that is, tax cuts have a "cost"). It favors the income tax at the federal level. It favors reducing "tax expenditures," that is, revenue losses to the government that arise from deductions, exclusions, and credits, etc. In other words, it favors tax increases from this source. The AARP takes "the need to fund national spending priorities" as a given, for which Congress "must ensure an adequate revenue base." (AARP manages to use the words "need" and "must" in the same sentence.) AARP favors taxing capital gains at the same rate as ordinary income.

The AARP has positions on many more general areas such as housing, transportation, education, social services and utilities. As in the cases of entitlements and taxes, its positions are monotonously of one stripe – the government should do this and do that and do the other thing. It should regulate and control. Such an animal as a market solution that is unassisted or undirected by a government directive does not seem to exist in its view. In short, the AARP’s lobbying is thoroughly and one-sidedly in favor of big and bigger government.

The AARP lobby is unabashedly socialist, for it advocates controlling the income produced by the productive efforts of others. If one controls, one owns. The amazing thing about its calls for more and more and more directed to the "elderly" is that there is seemingly no upper bound. Economists tell us that wants are insatiable. They usually analyze cases where freedom to choose is present. We learn from the AARP that coercive satisfaction of wants also is insatiable. No matter how much misery is caused to those paying the bills, the master seeks to extract more from the slave. This seems irrational, so maybe there is an upper bound. The AARP hasn’t hit it yet.

And that is why I don't care to listen to the AARP's recorded messages.

Lighten Up. Take a Break from Seriosity

I have loaded my iPod (a gift from my daughter) with a wide variety of music -- classical, big bands, Sousa marches, rock & roll, bluegrass, blues, easy listening, and country. I use music to be uplifted and entertained, to give me a break from the demands the bad guys impose on us hourly.

Izhak Perelman's recording of Beethoven's violin concerto in D is my favorite. I refused to buy a CD player until it was issued as a CD. Then I added all of the Mario Lanza archives and the Three Tenors. Then Souza, a big time inspiration, especially the piccolo solo in the Stars and Stripes Forever. Wow! What memories of marching in those midshipman parades! And The Seldom Scene -- how much they evoke the images of my college days when the Anchormen appeared in national TV on Hootenany in Annapolis. Time passes -- one 0f the Anchormen, Connie Lautenbacher, is now a retired Vice Admiral (class of '64's last man ashore) and head of NOAA; but I have no doubt that he still plays a mean Dobro.

You undoubtedly have your own imbedded memories. Music takes us back and makes us laugh.

Recently (when you are over 65, 10 years ago is recent), I began to listen to country music again -- after a 50 year hiatus -- because I had ceased to enjoy the other popular formats. Quite a few contemporary country songs satisfied my preference for rational audio arts: melody, harmony, rhythm, intelligibility and lyrics. Many country lyrics are especially entertaining -- not because they are about mama, and trucks, and divorce, and jail, and trains, and getting drunk, but because they tell a story and are often humorous. And not infrequently they contain good poetry. I don't necessarily subscribe to much of the populist and hedonistic philosophy inherent in these songs, but I am discerning enough to overlook that and enjoy them as they are.

Poetry? Consider Toby Keith's Rodeo Moon. Here are a couple of kids who have struck out in their truck to earn their way in the Rodeo circuit. "Sometimes we stay at a hotel when we are riding that hot band of luck. Sometimes we crash at a friend's house. Sometimes we just sleep in the truck." But Keith creates images: "Our windshield's a painting that hangs in our room. It changes with each mile like a radio tune." There are many poetic country songs that can be appreciated as art and many more that are just plain fun.

And many blues songs also are full of good humor -- B. B. King's especially.

So, take a break. It's 5 O'Clock Somewhere. Download iTunes. Sample Toby Keith, Jimmy Buffet, Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson, Confederate Railroad, Brad Paisley, Kenney Chesney and many other contemporary country singers. They're a hoot.

The Velvet Glove Contains an Iron Fist

Coercion, pure and simple.

Robert Bidinotto, award-winning, independent author, sent a letter to his Congressman objecting to the health care bill. He explained his personal choice not to have health insurance, which for many thoughtful Americans is a personal decision about risks and individual circumstances. In his letter he said, "I currently opt not to have health insurance, for financial reasons. But all the pending proposals would force me by law to take on this additional burden, or pay a tax penalty -- or, I assume, go to jail if I refused to pay the penalty. That is simply tyrannical."

Bidinotto's concern is not mere rhetoric.

In a recent town meeting Robert's U. S. Senator, Ben Cardin, declined to say that you will not be fined (you go to jail if if you don't pay your fines) if you don't buy health insurance. As reported by WUSA9 ("Cardin Town Hall Meeting On Health Care Gets Angry"):

Perhaps the most controversial [question], came from Robert Broadus of Clinton, Maryland, an audience member who had lost his job and replaced it with one that paid him far less money.

"I decided not to get the health insurance. That's working out for me because I'm able to save that extra money and give it to my family members and use it on myself. Senator Cardin, I want to know are you going to tell me an individual...that I have to buy health care or else you're going to fine me $2,500 every year I don't get it? Our founding fathers assured us we have a Bill of Rights and I want to see you uphold that," Broadus said in an increasingly emotional voice and to scattered applause.

Cardin responded by asking Broadus what would happen if he became sick, broke a bone, had a car accident and ended up in an emergency room.

"You don't pay. You are part of the population that shifts its costs over to a person who does pay, and they're paying for you," Cardin said.

Explaining how hospitals have often to absorb those costs, Cardin said many hospitals would chose simply to leave the community.

"I just think the overriding public interest is to require you and everyone in this country to have health insurance," Cardin said.

It's about control, people. You WILL DO what they tell you to do, or else -- because they know how to run your life better than you do -- YOU IGNORANT STUPID DROOLING IDIOT.

Cardin's argument for restricting individual freedom to choose is a regurgitation of the helmet law argument: The State pays for the support of your family if you are injured because you did not wear a helmet. Therefore, the State may require you to wear a helmet to minimize its potential costs.

Check your premises, people. Why does the State (the taxpayers) need to support the families of injured cyclists, and just exactly how many families of injured cyclists did they actually have to support before restricting the liberties of responsible people? The truth is that helmet laws were passed on theoretical assumptions with no factual support. And no one challenged the basic premise that the State must support the families of injured cyclists, which they don't.

By the same token the proponents of universal health care and this bill argue that because the government underwrites much of the cost of health care, it can control and configure the entire health care system. But too few challenge the basic premise that the government should pay for any health care in the first place.

When I was growing up in the '40s and '50s, we had no health insurance. My mother was widowed in 1942 and was was left with my two older sisters and not much more when I was 4-months old. But she responsibly assured that my sisters and I remained sufficiently healthy to become self-supporting adults. She paid her bills. And the family doctor was a friend, not a Medicare Provider or an adversary.

My mother's uncle was a country doctor during the Great Depression. He was a professional. He took care of his neighbors and trusted them to pay him for his services in whatever way they could -- cash, chickens, hams (by the way, Tennessee country ham is better than gold), labor, etc. No Medicare paperwork, just eyeball to eyeball trust. And the system worked.

So if health care was not a right then, why is it a right now? If you believe that the concept of "rights" is relative to time or contexts, you have a flawed philosophy, or no philosophy, which is a deadly circumstance to be in.

Government does not have to be involved in health care at all. In any respect. Period. Do you want them involved? To decide who your physician is? To decide when or if you have an X-ray, a blood test, a mammogram, a colonoscopy, a knee replacement or whatever? Do you really want someone to preempt and make your personal/financial choices for you about these intensely personal matters? Or, are you the kind of person who wants it all, free, at the expense of someone else?

Turning those decisions over to the Government, whose ultimate recourse is coercion and force, after all, is an ethical decision. Will you turn the guns of the Government toward your neighbor, deny them the right to choose, and force them to pay for your medical care and the care of the people who those in charge deem entitled to receive it?

We started out with our freedoms protected. The only way to lose them is for a majority to give them up voluntarily. Are you willing to answer to your grandchildren that you were too timid to speak out to protect them?

Healthcare Bill: Socialism?

Michael Steele, Chairman of the Republican National Committee, when asked this week if Obama's healthcare proposal is socialism, responded, "Yes. Next question." A brouhaha in the press ensued as if the President had somehow been disparaged by the Republicans.

The term, with good reason, has achieved the status of an epithet because, it is widely acknowledged, socialism punishes individual productivity and achievement and rewards incompetence and sloth, killing the goose that laid the golden egg (i.e., a rising standard of living for everyone). Even the former head of the KGB, Vladimir Putin, warns that socialism doesn't work:

Excessive intervention in economic activity and blind faith in the state's omnipotence is another possible mistake.

True, the state's increased role in times of crisis is a natural reaction to market setbacks. Instead of streamlining market mechanisms, some are tempted to expand state economic intervention to the greatest possible extent.

The concentration of surplus assets in the hands of the state is a negative aspect of anti-crisis measures in virtually every nation.

In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state's role absolute. In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive. This lesson cost us dearly. I am sure nobody wants to see it repeated.

Nor should we turn a blind eye to the fact that the spirit of free enterprise, including the principle of personal responsibility of businesspeople, investors and shareholders for their decisions, is being eroded in the last few months. There is no reason to believe that we can achieve better results by shifting responsibility onto the state.

Do not be intimidated by those who want the Government (i.e., you) to pay for health care for the poor. Implicit in their justification -- and you are well aware of it -- is their presumed moral superiority for pursuing the notion that you should be your brother's keeper. But moral arguments used to justify socialism are simply wrong. Morality is about free will. There is no superior morality in being forced to be your brother's keeper. Please revisit What's So Bad about Socialism? Challenge the unstated assumptions of your friends who support socialist programs. Don't cede the high ground to them.

The main objection to making our health care system more socialist (than it is already is) is not that it will launch yet another permanent entitlements program which, together with Social Security and Medicare, is unafordable and will burden future generations. And it is not that the government rationing of health care will result. And it is not that your doctor will retire (shrug) in the face of new burdensome regulations and lower income. And it is not that you will lose the ability to pay for better health insurance or lose your present coverage. The main objection is moral. It takes money from those who earned it and gives it to those who didn't. Expropriation (thievery) and coercion are the hallmarks of socialism.

If you subscribe to the ideals of the Founders and the original concept of the U.S. Constitution -- individual rights and limited government -- the initiatives of the Democrat Congress and the Obama administration must alarm you.

For many decades our elected officials have drawn the population increasingly away from personal responsibility and toward dependence on government, making parasitism an institution. But the current moves to accelerate the trend are way over the top. If you don't object, loudly and publicly, you will contribute to the unraveling of the American Revolution.

Cap and Tax

Cap and Trade has been passed by the House and is before the Senate for approval.

Those who don't know what cap and trade is need to educate themselves. Read the Wikipedia article. The Bill is an attempt to reverse the effects of global warming by curtailing carbon emissions from man-made sources by legislating limits on emissions. It also establishes a market for trading emission allowances to encourage those who comply with the limitations to reduce emissions further so that they can sell their allowances. Wikipedia also discusses that.

To those who think that Al Gore deserves a Nobel Peace Prize, the scheme -- which the Europeans have already adopted -- is one of the key solutions to global warming. But let's check our premises: (1) An epochal change in the earth's climate, global warming, is taking place that is outside of the normal range of the earth's cyclical climate change (if such a thing is determinable), and (2) this unusual change is caused by mankind's industrialization of the planet, which produces carbon emissions that cause the greenhouse effect that will warm the planet to a disastrous extent -- to such an extent that it now requires emergency action to control industry. If you evaluate all of the scientific evidence and are objective, you must acknowledge that neither of these has been scientifically proven. So the logical foundations of the entire idea of man-made global warming have not been established.

To those supporting the legislation, the notion that global warming needs to be proved by objective evidence to a gnat's eyebrow is silly -- and worse, the calls for proof are part of the capitalists' schemes to escape government oversight so that they can continue to ravage Mother Earth for individual greed, a short-sighted, selfish, sociopathic attitude that is endemic to the capitalist creed: run roughshod over the powerless for personal profit. But rhetoric aside, the legislation establishes a new massive and expensive regulatory construct for which the taxpayers and consumers will have to pay -- based upon unproven premises. And this, at a time when the economy is faltering.

There are many reasons why this Bill should be defeated, not the least of which it its potential to create another bubble. The Heritage Foundation's site catalogues the criticisms of it in great detail.

Al Gore thinks that passage of the Bill will help bring about "global governance." But Sarah Palin agrees with Warren Buffet that "poor people are going to pay a lot more for electricity." (Hat tip to Robert Bidinotto.)

Too much big government is being rammed through Congress without due deliberation. The Democrats, led by Harry ("taxation is voluntary") Reid and Nancy ("Oh happy day, tax the rich") Pelosi, should cease being driven by fascist and socialist idealogues who yearn to bring down the successful and productive, and address the cost of Medicare and Social Security before they throw out more pork to buy the votes of illegal immigrants.

You have read on these pages that the profligate printing of money and out of control deficit spending will create price inflation to an extent not seen since the days of the Continental dollar. And it can happen in the midst of a deep recession or a depression because hyperinflation is a currency event, not an economic event. As wages and prices increase in response to a depreciating currency, taxpayers will experience something called "bracket creep." As your wages increase in a race to keep up with costs, it will push you up into a higher tax bracket so that a larger percentage of your earnings will be claimed by the government, even though you are receiving less value in your paycheck. And, guess what? You will be among the "rich" that have been tapped to pay for the Democrats' expensive new populist pork.

No one who knows anything about Washington believes the balderdash about taxing the rich. Even absent bracket creep, the estimates of the costs of these brave new permanent regulatory and entitlement programs is invariably, grossly understated. When the real figures come in, the Congress will simply raise everyone's taxes or lower the definition of who is rich, or both.

As Yogi might have said, if it doesn't stop somewhere, it will never end.

Capitalism, The Culprit?

A well used, and ultimately effective tactic in debates is to use the language in ways that it denies the opponent a means to succinctly refer to his position. In effect you steal the opponent's terms and redefine them to suit your purposes. Too many debaters fail to jump on the tactic because it would drag the debate into a philosophical discussion of epistemology, a subject with which precious few are conversant.

A good example is "capitalism." The classic economic definition of the term is private ownership and private control (i.e., no government control) of the means of production. Today, the enemies of individualism and private ownership and their willing accomplices in the press have (many intentionally) so perverted the use of the term, that they are now in a position to blame the credit crisis and our deteriorating economic woes on "capitalism." See my discussions in the archive: "Blame Capitalism?" and "Look Who's Blaming Capitalism." Also read George Reissman's essay, The Myth that Laissez Faire is Responsible for Our Financial Crisis. What they have done by corrupting the language is divert the blame in the opposite direction so that the culpable parties are in a position to do even more damage in the name of saving the economy. Government involvement created this mess and now they want more government involvement to reverse the excesses of "capitalism."

The latest example is another Michael Moore movie. If Thor Halvorssen were as outrageous as Michael Moore, he might get more press, but it seems that the integrity of libertarians keeps them intellectually honest, so they avoid the Big Lie and other public deceptions in favor of reason and truth. (Support Halvorssen, by the way.)

Moore's new movie is entitled "Capitalism: A Love Story." According to the releases, including the one on TheMovie.net --

Oscar winning documentary filmmaker Michael Moore has revealed the title for his latest film. On October 2 Capitalism: A Love Story, which addresses the causes of the global economic meltdown, will arrive in theaters.

In the announcement Moore said “It will be the perfect date movie”. “It’s got it all. lust, passion, romance and 14,000 jobs being eliminated every day. It’s a forbidden love, one that dare not speak its name. Heck, let’s just say it: It’s capitalism.”

The film is described as focusing on “the disastrous impact that corporate dominance and out-of-control profit motives have on the lives of Americans and citizens of the world. The film’s release date comes a year and a day after the U.S. Senate voted to approve a $700 billion bailout of Wall Street.

The opponents of capitalism, including Moore and the controlling socialists and fascists in the Bush and Obama administrations are bent on eradicating economic freedom for individuals so that they can divert whatever is left of the wealth in the country to their cronies and the drooling masses, the end of which is to buy more votes, to amass more political power, more control and more wealth appropriation, ad nauseum. But in the end it won't work. Who will create the wealth that these clowns want to steal? Ask Mr. Putin -- he knows. And so did Ayn Rand. Read Atlas Shrugged.

Capitalism, the "unknown ideal" is laissez faire capitalism. When you hear "capitalism," substitute "laissez faire" (and know what that means). If it makes no sense, someone is misusing the term, corrupting the language, misleading the population, selling you down the river and destroying the engine of wealth and human prosperity. Corruption of the language is serious business. It can ruin us all, and everything we have built. When you see it happening, speak out; don't be one of the sheeple.

No Sanction from This Hedge Fund Manager

Cliff Asness is a bona fide hedge fund manager -- 20 billion dollars worth.  But unlike most other hedge fund managers, he is not cowering in the shadows with his head low, hoping to go unnoticed by the bullies in Washington.  Here is a man with solid principles who is not about to be dragged down the road to serfdom without protest.  Last fall the New York Times published his views on the short selling ban in "Cliff Asness is Mad as Hell." His latest is an essay posted on his blog entitled "Unafraid in Greenwich Connecticut in which he refuses to accept President Obama's attack on hedge funds for "endangering Chrysler's future by refusing to sacrifice like everyone else." (CBSNews.com has the complete story, "Chrysler Bankruptcy Exposes Dirty Politics.)

Obama's call for for the hedge funds to sacrifice, Asness points out,  means simply that hedge fund managers are being called upon to steal from their investors, who did not invest their funds to be sacrificed to President Obama's political ends.  

The ethic of sacrifice is carried to its logical conclusion in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, a novel that describes today's economic predicament in philosophical terms.  Not only doesn't sacrifice work, it is downright evil and it will unravel the American Revolution.  Asness is a trustee of The Atlas Society and has read the book.  No wonder he is willing to stand up and speak out passionately and with moral certainty.

They Lied about Waterboarding

Nancy Pelosi says that the CIA lied to her about the use of waterboarding. See http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124231488742119859.html and http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090514/D9865AJO0.html

The acid test is this: Will Pelosi file a criminal complaint against these people for lying to Congress? Or is her assertion a PR ploy without substance -- i.e., is Pelosi the liar or is she willing to go to the mat?

It is easy to lie to the press. There are no significant consequences. Lying under oath before a Congressional committee is a different matter altogether. You could go to jail. So one should not expect an employee of a government agency to place his employment, retirement, financial well-being and liberty in jeopardy by lying to Congress. On the other hand, politicians readily lie to the press because there are no consequences other than the occasional lapse in credibility -- if the politician values credibility in the first place.

Thus, the logic of the situation favors the government employee. Accordingly, the burden of proof is on Pelosi.

Shame, shame, shame, that she should go to the press to defend herself. Any respectable Congressperson who was lied to by a civil servant under oath should vigorously pursue an indictment -- crunch those who would lie to the people. So let's see -- will Pelosi seek an indictment, or is she posturing (lying) to deflect the truth: that she was aware of waterboarding and, in the context of the times, like everyone else in Washington, overlooked the ethical issues. These clowns are so stupid that they can't see that ethical issues are always contextual. You have principles and you have the contexts in which those principles are applied. Their stupidity will kill us all.

How far a government ought to go in defending its citizens against attack is another question which we shall explore later in this blog. It is not easy to parse morality, legality, defense obligation and necessity. Those who think that bright lines can be drawn are deluding themselves.

Charles Krauthammer has an opinion. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/30/AR2009043003108.html?hpid=opinionsbox1. And he has critics. http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/joshua/139421/charles_krauthammer's_tortured_defense_of_torture/?comments=view&cID=1203881&pID=1203319.

Let's not make light of these issues or politicize them. The Pelosis of the world are clueless and without a foundation in principles that would enable them to make judgments when faced with with real world situations. And judgments, applying principles in factual contexts are what counts.

I am getting very tired of Harry Reid's and Nancy Pelosi's laughable attempts to justify their irrational positions. What's the point? No one believes them anyway. Both are "trivial politicians" (thanks for the apt description, Newt).

Two Criminals Much Worse than Nixon

You have read on these pages a consistent adherence to civil discourse and reasoned positions. So it should get your attention when I assert that Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke are criminals much worse than Richard Nixon.

Now I am not making wild assertions like some knee-jerk, attention-getting radical. I am, among many other things, a career corporate and securities lawyer who knows a patent criminal securities law violation when he sees one. Caroline Baum, who is one of most forthright commentators on Bloomberg.com, a respected financial reporter, reports as follows:

The latest example of what happens when the business of government is business was last week’s release of testimony from Bank of America Chief Executive Officer Kenneth Lewis to New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. In it, Lewis says he was strong-armed by former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to seal the deal to buy Merrill Lynch without telling his shareholders about the brokerage’s mounting fourth-quarter losses, which came to $15.4 billion.

According to the letter Cuomo sent to Congress and regulators, Lewis wanted to invoke the “material adverse event” clause to back out of the merger, but the bazooka-toting Paulson told him to stay mum and threatened to give him and his board the boot.

Paulson said via a statement that while the words were his, the sentiment was “what he knew to be the Fed’s strong opposition to Bank of America” backing out of the deal.

“No one at the Federal Reserve advised Ken Lewis or Bank of America on any questions of disclosure,” said Fed spokeswoman Michelle Smith.

Of course not, not in those terms. Lewis surely never asked Bernanke directly if Bernanke wanted him to conceal the truth from his shareholders and the Fed never directly advised him. But the deal was clear. Hey, folks, put it to a jury in a shareholders' suit and let's see what the people say to the nefarious activities of the Princeton and Goldman pukes. (I'm sorry, but do I sound extremely disgusted?)

It has never been part of our system of justice that any man is above the law, and that includes Treasury Secretaries, Federal Reserve Chairmen and Presidents. According to Bank of America Chairman Lewis in sworn testimony, Paulson and Bernanke solicited him to violate the securities laws by concealing material information from the bank's shareholders and the securities-buying public. He complied. In legal terms that is aiding and abetting and conspiracy to violate the securities laws of the United States. Forget their official positions or national emergencies or crises; they are not legally relevant. Ask any Bank of America shareholder who held or bought shares during the period and they will confirm that they expected to be informed.

Here is what Mike Shedlock has to say http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2009/04/let-criminal-indictments-begin-paulson.html

If Beranke and Paulson -- and for that matter all of the others who ran roughshod over the law to save their bretheren from self-induced financial ruin with government power -- succeed in ducking culpability for their crimes, the politicization of justice in the United States will mark the end of the 200-year American experiment in popular government based on individual rights.

While they may not view themselves as such, these two guys (and others) are criminals who should be accorded the same status in society as child molesters, robbers and rapists who prey upon the innocent and unsuspecting.

If they disagree, they should sue me for libel. Let's go to the mat and see who an American jury will accord the most credibility.

Update June 15, 2009: The Washington Post reports that the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will be looking at this issue and has subpoenaed the Fed's records. The Associated Press also has a story on the matter. Better late than never guys.