This is written as the Supreme Court is weighing the constitutionality of ObamaCare – in particular, it is considering whether the federal government has the authority under the Constitution to force people at gunpoint to buy a health insurance policy from a private, for-profit business. That this is even being discussed – as opposed to dismissed out of hand – tells us just how far down the slippery slope we’ve already slid. But what most people – especially people who support the mandate – may not have considered is where the precedent about to be established will take us. 
In law, precedent is everything. Because it becomes practice.
Once a given thing is countenanced by the courts, it becomes the basis for countenancing other, similar-in-principle things. Some 25 years ago, when the courts ruled it was within the government’s constitutional authority to stop motorists at random, without even the pretext of probable cause (as clearly demanded – without qualification – by the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution), a precedent was established. Today, we are subject to random stops – and random searches – at any time, just about. It has become a routine – and routinely accepted – practice.
If the government has the authority to force each of us to buy a health insurance policy on the basis of “interstate commerce” or some appeal to the collective greater good – then a new precedent will have been established. Why, having gone this far, stop there? Do you imagine the government will stop there? Has it ever once, having expanded its authority, failed to expand upon that authority?
Why not also force people at gunpoint to buy life insurance? As things stand, there are families left without a breadwinner – and the breadwinner’s income – following an untimely death. Perhaps some people cannot afford to buy life insurance. Surely life insurance is just as vital to interstate commerce – and the “security” provided by a policy just as much a “right” as the “right” to health care? Precisely the same arguments can – and will – be used. You are a fool if you don’t see it coming. And it will not come because of the government’s concern for you. It will come because of the concern over the money (and power) to be had – the two things really driving the individual mandate of Obamacare. 
Private (an increasingly meaningless term) businesses have had an epiphany. They have come to realize that it’s in their interests to crawl under the sheets with the government. Because government can force people to buy the businesses’ product or service. Why compete for customers’ dollars when you can use the police power of the state to compel them to hand over the loot? And even better, you (the “private” business) no longer need worry much about quality, efficiency or customer service. After all, what are your customers going to do? They have to buy what you’re selling – or else.
As bad as HMOs and PPOs are – as Soviet and DMV-like as the staff at your doctor’s office may be – at least they cannot put a gun to your head. At least, you have the option of telling them what you think – and walking out the door. Shortly, that may change. And the only thing that will change is the threat of violence for noncompliance. The Soviet and DMV-like experience will be the same – no, it will grow worse. Because you won’t be able to say no – or walk out the door.
Not without the NKVD stepping in to correct you.
And then the precedent will be expanded – and become the general practice.
Life insurance. Home insurance (even if you’ve paid off your home and would rather save the $800 a year that is typically charged). And since this is a car-minded column, let’s not forget cars.
GM and Ford and the rest of them are having a heck of time selling the American consumer on the merits of electric and other “green” cars. Surely, it is in the interests of the furtherance of interstate commerce and the Greater Good that Americans be required to purchase a “green” vehicle… . It would help the car companies. It would be an investment in “our future.” Surely, we cannot afford to allow selfish and irresponsible people to avoid paying their fair share….
I wish this were farce. But if the Supremes hold ObamaCare “constitutional” then we no longer have a Constitution. What we will have is the precedent of unlimited, open-ended federal authority – which in short order will become the routinized practice of forcing each of us to do (and buy) literally anything. The flower will have blossomed. America will cease to exist.
But we’ll have “health care.”
And much more besides…
Throw it in the Woods?
The concept of “class” is used by our owners to keep us all fighting with each other and therefore enslaved…like white/blue collar, blue/red states, Dumobrat/Repulsican – that they shove down are collective throats via their broadcast media and public schools.
Stefan Molyneux at FreeDomainRadio provided the concept of Countries as “Tax Farms” and we are all “Tax Livestock” and the politicians/counterfeit-money-makers are our Farmers/Owners.
Free-Range tax livestock = We can choose our occupations and can live and work were we choose…This keeps us kinda happy and productive as the farmers steal 70-80% of out earnings thru taxes and inflation.
Read Weishaupt’s Illuminati.
They don’t want Serfs…They want “free-range” tax cattle that produce – and more importantly, innovate. They have the means to exterminate anyone and everyone with near zero effort. They only lack lasers from space for global surgical strikes. they will have that soon.
@DD–I have! Nasty little shit, was Wieshaupt.
But they’re not getting true (I like your phrase) “free-range tax cattle”. They’re penning us as fast as they can; and they’re going to produce the same mindset that plagued, and ultimately destroyed, the Soviet Union–
“They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work.”
They’re destroying the incentives to innovate. They’re destroying the freedom to innovate; have you looked into what it takes to open a manufacturing business in Amerika today? I suppose there’s still the tech-company lottery; but by some accounts Zuckerberg (sp?) and Facebook were anything but organic. Hint hint, CIA. And those software fortunes–that’s about the only unregulated industry left. Have you heard of any recent manufacturing fortunes?
Which leads to exactly what BrentP cogently observed. That is, the high-tech production, bereft of economies of scale, collapses. The literally billions of pieces of technology required to sustain this level of technology gradually decay.
For examples: the latest CPU’s, with nigh on a billion transistors in a space the size of a fingernail. The exquisitely crafted single-crystal uber-exotic alloy fan blades in a modern jet engine. The alu-sil high-silicon bores of an aluminum engine block that will run for billions of cycles with virtually no wear.
Forget that stuff. Have ya’ll read Leonard Read’s “I, Pencil”? To summarize, he details every facet of a simple pencil–the eraser, the metal band, the paint, the wood, the graphite–and points out that no-one involved in its manufacture could even comprehend all the thousands of steps in the making of the whole.
The Elites are in for a very nasty surprise when they’re ensconced in the embrace of a craptacular future Zil limousine, replete with fetidly stinking half-cured leather and an unintentionally oil-burning engine.
I read “I, Pencil” back in the late 90s and that one essay, more than anything else, made me grow up and unplug from Matrix Cloverdom…Also Frank R. Wallace essays at Neo-Tech was a huge help.
I think they are dragging us all down in order to construct their NWO and then they will let us up…Up just enough so we WANT to produce and innovate. It is like a child that needs a shot of antibiotic for an infection…The doctor staff holds the screaming child down just long enough to give the shot then they let him up. They want an American Union and they are starting with the North American Union phase right now.
Free Range Tax Cattle!? Now that’s a phrase destined for fame. I think you’ve defined a new social class, maybe a whole new way of looking at socio-economic structures. Have you thought about really comparing and contrasting “free range tax cattle” to the traditional understanding of “middle class”?
I can see similarities and differences just based on the labels but I wouldn’t presume to interpret your meaning for you. It’s a very attractive project though 🙂
“Free Range” gets my attention; no physical boundaries, just regulatory ones? Make sure they can go just so far (economically) then bring ’em back into the herd? I like it, it meshes well with progressive taxation, which I think is the principal means of controlling upward mobility in western societies today.
I think there’s a pony in that room! Good term.
In case you have missed the last 50 or so Bilderberg, CFR, Tri-Lat meetings….
The global thieving bogus-money counterfeiters are dividing the globe in 4…America, Euro/Africa, Asia, Oceania so moving to south america is a bit pointless unless you are trying to get far away from the violent and powerful terrorist group in DC…which is smart.
3 rules for living in an advanced socialist shithole:
1. Live someplace warm with pretty people.
2. Be the Parasite (taxtaker) and not the Producer (taxpayer).
3. There are no exceptions to 1 & 2.
Columbia is your best bet in the America Zone.
Here’s what still puzzles me.
Let’s say you’re one of the real Elite; a Nick Rockefeller, or a Nathan Rothschild (the younger one).
You know pretty well how the world works. You like your playthings; Lambos are nice on Sundays, and the G is a sweet plane. Life extension’s around the corner, if only the damn slaves would hurry it up. You’re eagerly looking forward to the Great Day when you carry your KMA card (Kiss My Ass, formerly known as the get-out-of-jail-free card), while the schlubs you lord it over live in mortal fear of pissing off The Machine and getting their card deactivated…leading to utter banishment and probably starvation.
You’re hell-bent on eugenics and getting rid of the Useless Eaters (as we’re known).
Let’s say your goal of 500 million people comes about. Let’s revel in the thought of them packed into miserable Brazil-like dystopian mega-cities; a genuine neo-feudalism to thrill the loins of the worst sociopath.
What happens next? Sure, it’s fun lording it over them; a bit of blood-sport here and there, snuff films to titillate the most jaded tastes, more Lambo’s and G’s than you have digits to count.
But the advancement STOPS.
Because even with 500 million serfs, they’re still serfs.
Look at history. Look at the utter stagnation of every, single, solitary totalitarian socialist/communist/fascist system. Not one produced great technologies or goods. The best any of them did–Germany, WWII, some nifty military stuff. The Soviets; mediocre military stuff, mostly plagiarized.
There’s just no incentive.
So tell me, Mr. Elite, what next? What were you hoping for?
Or do they think it will be fine stuck for the next 1,000 years with today’s technology, lording it over (artificially made so) ignorant chemically deformed serfs?
I’ve had the same thought. But a little bit differently. If they achieve that goal, how are they even going to maintain their lifestyle? Much of the wealthy enjoy is only feasible through market forces that continually drive costs down and have scale.
I know they think they can afford the dark ages craft society, but I believe they can’t do that on a 21st century technological level. Tooling, manufacturing equipment, etc is enormously expensive. Once they kill off the customers both physically and economically there’s no justification for it. It can’t pay back.
Without the mass market items most luxury items will cease to be created. Will ruling class buy Lambos that cost a few billion each to produce because there aren’t Fiats to justify the stamping machines, the injection molding machines, the foundries, etc?
21st century life will collapse for the elite. They will ‘rule in hell’ so to speak, but their lifestyle will never be the same as it is today. It will be better than us serfs, but it too will decline. The rulers of various totalitarian countries only lived in the luxury they did by purchasing goods from free countries. When there’s no more free countries, where is the stuff going to come from?
But it goes further, what of the infrastructure? The infrastructure they depend on for their lifestyle also vanishes. The roads, the airports, the utilities, and so on. Sure they can have their own private facilities to an extent. They could use military facilities to an extent. Good luck finding a road outside their own private race track to drive that Lambo on though.
It’s not a well thought out plan. Sure it’s a long term plan but it seems nobody ever asked that question, “Then, what?”.
I think they are simply seriously disconnected from the realities of life. They believe their own BS. They have no idea what work it takes just to provide indoor plumbing. Good luck having someone whittle them pipes out of wood or something. Romans had pipes, they had to use lead because that’s what they could make them out of. That turned out well, not.
Technology will collapse. Not right away. New production will stop first. Then things will start wearing out. They can’t be replaced. That’s what happens in totalitarian countries. There these old battered buildings, cars, etc from the before time. They are often pushed well beyond end of life but they eventually fail once and for all.
So, I am with you, “what, then? mr. elite?”
Methyl, I think you’re missing the effect of “wealth concentration”. In a nutshell, one “elite” needs maybe a few million people at designated social levels to survive in absolute luxury. Add more elite’s you need more servants. I think someone proposed a formula for the sustainable ratio of elites to slaves in any society. Bill Ross?
What we need to pay attention to is the concentration of wealth, not it’s presence. In other words, the Upper Middle Class is your friend. When it disappears, they start eating the drones.
Right now we’re all suffering from “regulatory capture”; those in poser are using the facilities of Law (aka Government) to control upward mobility. It’s a very old contest and it didn’t end miraculously in 1776 🙂 Age old battle, endless, all that stuff…
So when the real masters return from Orion to lord it over us again as gods in Dec 2012, they’ll be looking for a large, easy to procure, protein-based biomass for their onward journey. They’ll need local Quisling overlords to handle the details – FEMA camps, processing plants etc. A well-ordered NWO should guarantee the elite will survive the visit. 😉
The precedent was set when people were forced to buy into Social Security. The only difference is that this statute will require people to buy the insurance from “private” companies instead of the government.
This nation crossed all the lines long ago. For example, in addition to the above, minimum wage laws and drug laws. The general principle is that the government has the right to tell us what we can do, what we cannot do and what we have to do.
We are no longer free, and we have not been free for a long time.
Yup – but this is another Great Leap Forward. The first time that people will be forced at gunpoint to purchase the product of a private company, with no way to legally opt out.
BrentP sez: “I think the true Rubicon was crossed three weeks ago, with Panetta announced to the Senate that the Executive doesn’t need Congress to approve war any more; that’s the UN and NATO’s prerogative now,”
—–
From http://personalliberty.com:
Most Americans, like [Jeff] Sessions, likely would be outraged to know that the Administration takes its marching orders from international interests. But, as Republic Magazine notes in a recent article, this is nothing new:
On December 20, 1945, Truman signed a measure entitled the United Nations Participation Act of 1945 (UNPA), which effectively abolished Congress’s constitutional function in declaring war. Under the UNPA, the U.S. President can “negotiate a special agreement or agreements with the Security Council” concerning the use of American military personnel and facilities for UN “peacekeeping” and “peace enforcement” missions.
UNPA has been used by Truman and his successors — most recently by George W. Bush and Obama — to violate Article 1, Section 8, Clause 11 — which grants Congress sole power to declare war — and engage the United States in perpetual and unConstitutional war.
Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul was outraged by Panetta’s assertions and responded on Friday:
For President Obama’s head of the Defense Department to state that international permission, rather than congressional approval, is what would be needed as a legal basis to initiate a no-fly zone over Syria flies in the face of the guidelines established by our Founders… But such actions should no longer come as a surprise. During the conflict in Libya last year, we saw exactly what this President thinks of following the rule of law. President Obama consulted NATO, the United Nations, and the Arab League for permission and authorization to use U.S. military force against Libya. But he utterly ignored the one body that has the legal authority to grant that permission—the U.S. Congress. That was, and still is, unacceptable.
Another lawmaker, Representative Walter B. Jones (R-NC) is also angered by Panetta’s remarks and introduced a resolution (House Concurrent Resolution 107) declaring that the President should be impeached for using the military without the consent of Congress.
The resolution, which is currently in the House Committee on the Judiciary, reads:
“Expressing the sense of Congress that the use of offensive military force by a president without prior and clear authorization of an act of Congress constitutes an impeachable high crime and misdemeanor under Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution.
Whereas the cornerstone of the Republic is honoring Congress’s exclusive power to declare war under article I, section 8, clause 11 of the Constitution: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That it is the sense of Congress that, except in response to an actual or imminent attack against the territory of the United States, the use of offensive military force by a president without prior and clear authorization of an act of Congress violates Congress’s exclusive power to declare war under Article I, Section 8, clause 11 of the Constitution and therefore constitutes an impeachable high crime and misdemeanor under Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution.”
I don’t find an update on the whereabouts of this resolution. It may come to nothing, Congressional politics being what it is.
Do you realize just how stupid the little Europeans are?
Their political owners steal 70% of their income and thats before you count the inflation tax.
Only the seriously stupid people in Europe work for a living.
The Greeks are NOT the fools!
Yup – and it’s becoming like that here.
The incentives to work – and to not become a maggot – are becoming weaker all the time, while the incentives not to work (and to become a maggot) multiply at a seemingly exponential rate.
What’s the threshold?
Probably when it exceeds 50 percent of whatever you earn/have – and we’re pretty close to that already.
Allopathic medicine is all a con. All doctors can do is cut you or act as shills for the toxic pharma industry. The only thing that cures you of disease is lifestyle adjustment and your immune system. Insurance is a cop out that rationalises why you live an imprudent life, whether it is in the food you eat, way you drive, whatever. Government take over of insurance, converts it into what it always wanted to be, a ponzi scheme. Educate yourself on natural health, avoid the processed, soy laden, sugared up pablum the powers that be would have you eat and take control of your own health. Oh, and take a personal stand on Obamacare and opt out by refusing consent. Meet ya in the FEMA camps when they round us all up. http://www.lewrockwell.com/sardi/sardi-arch.html http://www.lewrockwell.com/mercola/mercola-arch.html http://www.lewrockwell.com/sisson/sisson-arch.html http://www.lewrockwell.com/durst/durst-arch.html
Thorfinnss – Excellent summary of what is wrong with “heaf care” in this country. We are subsidizing a drive-thru society with our money. I would like to have health insurance for catastrophic illnesses only like car accidents or life threatening conditions. On the other hand, conditions like type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, and certain autoimmune conditions can be reversed with dietary changes, chiropractic visits and exercise. While I am a subscriber to Mercola’s site and others, you can’t protect yourself from ALL of the potentially harmful things in the current system – EM fields, etc, eliminating or substantially reducing bad substances from your diet (sugary sweets, transfats, diet sodas, conventional meat), chiropractic adjustments and exercise can cut your healthcare bills by at least 70 percent over a lifetime. Removing Flouride as much as you can will improve health as well.
People are ignorant on what they can do and a large portion don’t really care.
You spelled it out well in the first sentence. Allopathic medicine is a con, a con of the highest order. I, for one, refuse to support it inasmuch as possible.
Henry –
It is (a con).
Here’s a case in point: My mother-in-law is going to have knee replacement surgery soon. But her real problem isn’t bad knees; it’s that she’s obese, sedentary and eats shit food. Twenty years of that turned her from slim and in good health to a fat, prematurely old (and partially crippled) woman who will now incur a bill of $50,000 or more to get her knees replaced with artificial joints. Had she not become obese, had she eaten reasonably and exercised, it is almost certain her knees would not require replacement. But since her heaf cayuh is “free” (that is, paid for by others) there’s no incentive for her to change her habits – so she did not change her habits.
Naturally, she is a supporter of ObamaCare.
As long as they have a diet coke at McDonald’s they’re doing their part.
Glimpse into the future:
“Allopathic medicine is all a con”
You’re 99% right. It’s one reason I left medicine 15 years ago to pursue an as-yet unregulated profession (software).
The medical school curriculi are largely written by the drug companies; most conditions are treated as a chronic lack of pharmaceuticals. At the time, while you’re in school, it all seems so logical. But once you enter your clinical years, it becomes so grossly apparent that 90% of illness is purely diet and lifestyle.
What’s worse, the dietary recommendations from On High (FDA, CDC, USDA, DHHS, etc) are exactly the opposite of the correct practice. They make us sicker and fatter!
It’s NOT an accident. The Rockefellers co-opted medicine in the early 1900’s and pushed allopathic schools at the expense of competing philosophies in medicine…and voila, here we are. Big Pharma kills between 100,000 and 200,000 people a year–and that’s taking the drugs as directed. Chemo is so useless 80% of oncologists wouldn’t use it themselves or for their family.
I’m not a Luddite. I believe fervently in science. But what’s practiced in medicine today is not pure science; it’s so heavily biased and bought that it will take decades to unravel the orthodoxy and get back to real science.
That said–there are several areas of modern medicine that remain valuable. I’m damn glad for endoscopic surgery, so my appendectomy last year left three invisible dots on my abdomen instead of a giant gash…and the anesthesia that went with it was a relief, too!
My dad’s a retired surgeon. He always reminded me while I was in school–
*Thorfinnss–that last 1% is why I said you’re 99% right 🙂
That’s the cut you part. so ‘all’ should be ‘mostly’ a con.
Looking into the future a small ways we can expect the Club of Rome to bring down some more benedictions in restricting access to ‘non-traditional’ treatments (sic for 5,000 year old acupuncture, ayurvedic medicines and herbal naturopathy etc), as they have already done in Europe and Australia. And it really is the Rockefeller / Rothsschild plan rather than Obamacare. McCain put a bill before the Senate to prohibit vitamins except on a physician’s presecription. He backed out due to the hubbub, but Obamacare or otherwise will soon re-implement it ‘for your health’. Some false flag poisoned vitamins are likely to appear. Stock up on your 50,000 IU Vit C while you can. (https://www.prohealth.com/shop/product.cfm?Product__Code=PH324&B1=GGLD3EXTR&gclid=CKLB3ICVlq8CFYgifAodlXGnww)
I agree with Thorfinnss. Unfortunately, our government, by what they choose to allow and subsidize vs. what they choose to prohibit and regulate into oblivion, continues to make it harder for people to live a healthy lifestyle. I am in favor of a basic catastrophic health insurance to cover things such as car accidents, in conjunction with removing from our environment the toxic junk that is difficult to avoid. Too many people are brainwashed and just don’t get the connection between lifestyle choices, environmental toxins, and health. ObamaCare is just one more incidence of the government forcing us to pay for and accept its attempts to protect us from ourselves, whether we want it or not.
Following are excerpts from an essay in The Freeman Online written in 2008.
——–
Economist Joan Robinson (1903–1983) wrote, “The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of readymade answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.”
A better reason to study economics is to avoid being deceived by politicians … [U]nderstanding basic economics is a matter of survival. Without such an understanding one is an easy mark.
What we call medical care/insurance is a bundle of goods and services that have to be produced … The people engaged in this production are (so far) free to do other things if they choose. They can’t be compelled to practice medicine, run hospitals, invent medicines, or offer insurance policies.
However, one group can be compelled to participate in a government plan: the American people … This is the key to any political “solution.” That’s why Hillary Clinton insists against Barack Obama that any program must be mandatory. Without compulsion, any government program must fail even on its own terms.
The problem for those who promise universal and affordable health care is that medically we are not all created equal … Real insurance lets people hedge against financial ruin by pooling their risk of misfortune with others.
Clinton declares, “I want to stop the health-insurance companies from discriminating against people because they’re sick.” If an “insurer” is allowed to charge only one price regardless of risk, it would have to set the price high in order to be able to cover the riskiest customers. But that would not honor the politicians’ promise of affordable coverage. So inevitably, the Clinton principle must lead to price controls.
We know what price ceilings bring: shortages. Why would a company that cannot charge enough to cover its costs and earn a competitive profit continue in business? Thus the principle of nondiscrimination combined with price controls would inevitably dry up the supply of private “insurance.” At that point, the politicians would declare that the “free market” failed and that government must step in to be the sole health insurer. Then government could have full control over who gets what kind of medical attention. It would also dictate prices to doctors, hospitals, and drug companies, speeding up the exodus from that profession and those industries. As supply withered and demand inflated (because of the illusion of low prices), government would impose more and more draconian controls.
There’s a lesson here. When the government seeks to enforce a counterfeit right — such as the “right” to medical care — no expansion of freedom results. Instead, government power expands, to everyone’s detriment.
One way for politicians really to keep their promise of lower medical costs would be to uncover all the ways the government artificially raises costs today. It does this in a variety of ways: restricting supply through licensing and patents, boosting demand by lowering the apparent price of services, promoting third-party payment for even expected routine services, raising drug-research expenses, imposing coverage mandates on insurers, forbidding interstate competition in insurance, and on and on.
But politicians don’t talk about those things. They presumably wouldn’t get credit merely for repealing destructive interventions and letting the competitive free market provide universal affordable medical care—as it has provided so many other things universally and affordably.
You can read the whole article here:
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/peripatetics-health-care-cons
This might be totally off-topic… but back to Obamacare for a moment.
If it is such a ggod idea, why, according to DHHS, has the Obama administration issued Obamacare WAIVERS in the last two years, excluding over 1,200 companies and their 4,000,000 plus employees? Why? Riddle me that.
These give-aways are a loss leader. They surrender part of your hard won loot today so they have more power tomorrow. Thats why our owners are the best owners.
Back off topic: This dog shows why he is man’s best friend a and refuses to accept a treat from Barack Obama.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=0a1_1333142551
“You Mutha Fukka” said Michael Reichert.
That video of Officer Michael Reichert of Collinsville, IL PD (Eastern Suburb of East Saint Louis) is a master class of how the financial police state of American Hegemony plays out from Mayberry to Mexico City.
At this point, these Dark Knights of Nihilism just make me laugh.
It seems by making this fun, the rally keeps growing.
This site has 223 backlinks already and is nearly a top 1000 site in several major U.S. cities
The harder they press for full spectrum dominance of the land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace, the more they reveal the pointlessness of trying to accommodate them and sow the seeds of their destruction and replacement.
1
The post before this is in response to Eric’s post Watch this thug cop halfway up the page.
2
There is getting to be a whole lotta Theys trying to force us to buy all kinds of crap. (Reference to the Title of this post)
New Black Panthers video says no more Beer Summit, offers $1 million for the Sanford Florida neighborhood watch guy.
Indeed!
Cockroaches scurry in the bright light…
Canadian “free” medical care = free access to waiting lists.
That’s why Buffalo General Hospital has so many Canadian tag cars in their parking lots. Americans are too stupid to be free just like all the little runts in the Western World and Japan. Statist parasite voters make me sick…like all humanoid parasites that claim to own me and my income.
Same here – but having this little corner of the Internet where Cloverism is not welcome makes me feel a little better. To know there are still some non-statist people out there who despise parasitism and bullying as much as I do.
Did you happen to see the recent movie, Limitless? It’s about an IQ-raising pill. The guy uses it to make a fortune. I’d change the plot: Use the pill to develop an interstellar engine. A craft big enough to accommodate a sufficiently large gene pool of non-Clovers. And then, sayonara Earth – hello terra nova… wherever it may be.
That sounds like the plot to a good book. How about this for a title:
Sayonara Earth
Or A World Without Clovers.
Thank you.
I’m glad I’m not the only one saying that.
Nibble, nibble, they go, always eating at our liberties while expanding their ability to compel us to submit.
The time will come when they need to grab the guns before their really reppellant powergrab & I can’t wait to see how those bureaucratic bastards plan on accomplishing that task!
I think we’re going to find out pretty soon, unfortunately….
You are all lucky the political terrorists let you live…let alone allow you to bitch about their ownership of you without being kidnapping and caging. Are you prepared to exterminate any parasite that claims to own you? Just be good little tax cattle.
Like so many other real Americans, I despise the the thought of obamacare, and have sought to do something about it.
My solution was to come out of retirement, and offer various types of policies to individuals to protect them, inexpensively, from the disasterous costs of serious human illnesses and accidents that would leave them unprotected and vulnerable to loss of assets or worse.
First of all, by offering these products as entirely voluntary, but through a payroll deduction program, I was quite surprised at the number of employers that refused to accommodate their employees in offering pre-tax payroll deductions, even though it actually would improve the employers bottom line costs. At first glance one would think that their reason was “all the added work associated with extra payroll detail.” That is not factual in most cases because these employers farm all there payroll work out to payroll service companies who charge nothing extra for this.
Surprising to me, was how many employees think that the best source for healthcare is the “free” services of clinics or the ER. While that line of thinking is not that of the majority, it is quite large in the population of recently arrived workers from other countries. Hence, they have no motivation to purchase protection for themselves.
Now admittedly, my story is hardly a scientific poll of the masses in our country, but it has opened my eyes to the thinking of many hundreds of companies and their employees, perhaps this could be considered a microcosm for our healthcare situation.
Remember, I was offering inexpensive coverage which individuals could select, cafeteria style, at an minimal cost, much lower than traditional health insurance, and paid for by the person selecting the product, but in most cases neither the individual nor the employer had any interest in obtaining this protection. While I totally reject the idea of obamacare, there is a large number of people in this coutry that are willing to feed from the trough of “free” healthcare if it so benefits them.
Judge Nap has a column in today’s LRC explaining how SCOTUS might rule in favor of Obamacare, here:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/napolitano/napolitan47.1.html
Napolitano’s right – the subtext, the reason for Obamacare is to establish in law the absolute authority of the federal government over every aspect of our lives; ti eliminate whatever limited exercise of free choice remains. Specifically, to criminalize mere avoidance – for instance, declining to see a regular doctor, or declining to follow the advice of one. Everything we do – including our recreations as well as what we eat, will become matters for federal oversight via some local gauleiter.
This may be our Rubicon Moment. If Obamacare is ruled “constitutional,” then the Constitution is formally null and void. It is the equivalent of Hitler’s 1932 accession to the chancellorship. It is our signal to leave. While it is still possible to do so….
I know there are huge differences of opinion on this topic, but can anyone suggest a small HG suitable for CC by a left-hander? I’m thinking it’s (past) time to start toting, at least here at home.
My advice would be to visit a good gun shop (ask around; find one with knowledgeable people behind the counter and a large inventory for you to check out). I know a number of manufacturers make wrong-hand versions (hey, I can say that – my wife is wrong-handed!) of their popular models.
For some specifics: Check out the Bersa Thunder series; inexpensive but nicely made and very reliable. The .380 is also a great CC piece.
If money’s less important, check Sig and Kahr. I have a P220 .45 and it’s a really nice pistol. Extremely accurate and (for a .45) fairy compact. Single stack mag like a 1911, but much smaller frame.
thanks, eric. the handedness issue is more a problem with the location of the safety than location of the breach and all that. that’s why i always thought that a model w/o a proper safety (like glock) might be a place to start. Will look at the models you suggest though.
Np!
Also, I forgot to add: You might consider a wheelgun rather than an auto-loader. No safety (or breech) issues; the only “right hand” element is the barrel release. You also get more for your money with a wheelgun. $300-400 or so will buy you a really nice one.
I got my wife a small-frame .38 – it packs more punch than the .380 and it’s dead-reliable, too.
I second Eric’s motion on the small frame wheelgun. The S&W Model 60 (the stainless equiv. to the Model 36) is an excellent choice, but the price is a bit high nowadays. The Taurus Model 85 is equivalent to the Model 60 S&W, for a more palatable price.
As Eric accurately stated, the .38 Special loaded with a good self defense round (I prefer the old standard: Federal Hydroshok Plus P) has more than enough power to change an assailant’s mind.
You may find some good deals at gun shows (just from people walking around, which translates into “off paper”) on used revolvers. Just be sure that any used wheelgun you consider is tight, indexes and locks up properly. I’ve seen some that had a lot of rounds through them and based on how sloppy they were, probably mostly Plus P’s (don’t use those for target practice, only standard loads). So if you’re not real familiar with revolvers, you are probably better off buying new. Both S&W and Taurus have good warranties, so if you did buy a lemon it would be taken care of by the mfr. for you.
Granted, you do sacrifice capacity for compactness with these revolvers, since they only hold 5 rounds. But as a general rule, if you find yourself in gun fight that requires more than 2 or 3 rounds to settle, you probably should’ve brought a rifle…
Concur on the wheel gun..
Rugar SP 101 perhaps. 5 rounds of .357 hollow points with a speed loader for another 5 isn’t a bad set up. Smallish but heavyish frame. I folks that carry this as a backup when hunting hogs…
And revolvers dont eject evidence at the scene. In case you need to “shoot and scoot”
and revolvers never jam. A friend of mine just bought a brand new sig .22 and it jammed a least 30% of the time. he wound up taking it back and exchanging it for another one.
My older brother used to be an Assistant DA, and he always carried a semi-auto. One day one of the people he was going to prosecute tried to assault him, his semi-auto jammed and he almost got killed. He since switched to a revolver and has never had another gun problem.
In America there are over 100 million gun owners and just as many opinions about which guns are the best, what calibers, and why.
If you’re new to guns, find a gun shop or range which lets you rent and shoot guns. Shoot plenty of them until you find something that you really like and can handle, and get that. But do all of that preferably AFTER you get some good gun training. And unless the gun salesman at the gun store is a personal friend of yours, I would disregard the opinion of most gun store salespeople – as they all generally seem to espouse the opinion of “but the biggest caliber gun that holds the most bullets that you can handle”. Instead remember that the FBI states that the average amount of rounds fired in the US in any self defense encounter is less than three.
Unless you’re a cop “defending” yourself, in cases like the Jose Guarena SWAT raid…in which case you fire 72 rounds (1/6 hitting the target) and poop your pants.
If the consequences weren’t so tragic their foolishness and cowardice would be almost comical.
I think the true Rubicon was crossed three weeks ago, with Panetta announced to the Senate that the Executive doesn’t need Congress to approve war any more; that’s the UN and NATO’s prerogative now.
A few Senators had the decency to actually gasp and stutter.
They’ve even started impeachment proceedings, and a bill that threatens impeachment if Obama acts on this arrogation of the war power. You didn’t hear a peep of it on the Dinosaur Media though.
The sheer volume, nay, the avalanche of absolutely tyrannical rulings over the last two years shocks even me.
I don’t know any more which of them is “the line in the sand”. If you’d asked me twenty years ago, any one of them–Patriot, NDAA, TSA, Obamacare–I’d have told you people would have marched on Washington and physically removed the miscreants.
Today?
Nah. Fuuuuuuuuuhhhhballll
Hitler (and Kaiser Wilhelm) proved in 1938 that if you plunge a society into economic turmoil you can steal the silverware and nobody will complain.
It’s incredible, isn’t it?
A mere 20 years ago – not even 20 years ago – the president was almost forced from office because he lied about getting a blowjob.
And today?
A president can announce he has arrogated unto himself the authority to have American citizens killed by his command, and it barely causes a blip on the radar screen.
I point my finger at The Chimp. He made sociopathy “normal.” And (as noted in Political Ponerology) this is a key moment in a society’s turn toward absolute tyranny. The fish does indeed rot from the head down. Once an open sociopath – and sociopathic policies – comes to the fore and these are not rejected – the public comes to embrace sociopathic norms. Nazi Germany provides the best example of this phenomenon. “Intelligent” and “cultured” Germans cheering an obvious psychopath – and becoming thereby psychopaths themselves.
This is the road we’re on.
For those who didn’t see my posting of the following under the NSA “Stellar Wind” entry:
… investment advisor Richard Russell notes in a blog, “Sturm Ruger & Co., which makes great pistols and rifles, received orders for a phenomenal one million units during the first quarter [of 2012]. Something to think about. A sign of the times?”
Sturm Ruger’s website has this: “Sturm, Ruger & Company, Inc. announced today that for the first quarter 2012, the Company has received orders for more than one million units. Therefore, the Company has temporarily suspended the acceptance of new orders.
Chief Executive Officer Michael O. Fifer: The Company’s Retailer Programs [snip] generated significant orders from retailers to independent wholesale distributors for Ruger firearms.
Year-to-date, the independent wholesale distributors placed orders with the Company for more than one million Ruger firearms.
[T]he incoming order rate exceeds our capacity to rapidly fulfill these orders. Consequently, the Company has temporarily suspended the acceptance of new orders.
One of the very few reasons I have come across for bothering to vote this fall relates to this. I am convinced that if Obama gets re-selected, severe restrictions on the private possession of firearms will be enacted. Perhaps even an outright ban. CC will be heavily revised if not eliminated entirely – and kiss open carry good-bye.
Either directly or as a result of changes in the Supreme Court.
The next president will almost certainly get one, probably two, Supreme Court picks. If it’s Obama doing the picking, we’ll get another “wise Latina” Sotomayor or Commissar Kagan – and kiss whatever remains of the 2A goodbye.
Much as I loathe the GOP and its chosen puppet, Mitt Romney, I expect that there would be effective pressure brought to bear to nominate somewhat better justices…
But I get why people are stocking up. It’s not a bad idea.
Hopefully, this will all serve the purpose of waking up the American taxpayers and helping the parasites realize that, as Ayn Rand said “there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch”. But as long as they can enforce these ridiculous programs with threats of prison, at the point of a gun and ever increasing threats of violence, America, as we know it, is doomed. Why else would homeland security and the rest of the lettered agencies issue purchase contracts for up to 450 million rounds of .40 caliber hollowpoint ammo and an additional contract for 185 million rounds of 5.56 X 45 ammo if they did not expect to need them? I can’t imagine that they believe the “terrorist” threat from overseas will require anything near this amount of ammunition. Ahh…but if they choose to make war on the citizens of the country or enforce their will at the point of a gun, it makes far more sense. 2012 may be the last opportunity to make a change…if the system is not co-opted by the beauracracy. Or maybe that will be the event that acts as a catalyst for martial law? Who knows what they have planned? But ALL the politicians, with the possible exception of those “tea party” guys elected in 2010 seem to be in on it!
“Why else would homeland security and the rest of the lettered agencies issue purchase contracts for up to 450 million rounds of .40 caliber hollowpoint ammo and an additional contract for 185 million rounds of 5.56 X 45 ammo if they did not expect to need them?”
Training?
I, for one am happy to hear about the 5.56 order. This is why people should pay close attention to what types of ammunition the Federal Government uses, you can get some really great deals on ammo i you buy the right gun. I favor the .40 S&W in a handgun, the .223 in a light rifle and the .308 (aka 5.56) in a heavy rifle for this very reason.
When they place orders for millions of rounds like this, the street price we plebs pay drops sharply. This is a very good thing.
Oops. The .308 isn’t 5.56. Sometimes I get confused going to metrics. Also, I’m just about out of .308 and I got excited. Sorry.
For anyone who cares, the .308 is 7.62 metric. I’ve made this mistake twice now in the past 6 months and it’s why I now own more .223 ammo than I will probably be able to use before I die.
.308 Winchester or 7.62 NATO? I think most 7.62 battle rifles will tolerate either.
5.56, I’m sorry to say, is just a plinking round. Good for varmint-shootin’ but really a toy 🙂
I haven’t been watching prices–but I’d think supply and demand would dictate that prices would go UP when Our Betters order huge quantities.
Not in my experience. The companies that make the ammo tool up for the Feds and make a few extra for the private market. Prices definitely go down on big orders like this.
.223 a plinking round? Sure you can use it that way but it’s also a great varmint round. I raise turkeys so I have my share of coyotes that come callin’ now and again. .223’s and coyotes don’t mix 🙂
I will concur on the the .223 / 5.56 NATO being a bit more than a “plinking round” Scott. With an expanding bullet, such as the Nosler Ballistic tip, a .223 will leave a very nasty wound channel that most folks won’t recover from if the shot is placed properly. The .223 Remington is indeed a high power rifle cartridge and it has accounted for a lot of dead people and animals since its introduction during the Vietnam era. If you’re shooting through light cover like small trees or car doors, then a .308 / 7.62 NATO would be preferable. But for taking down human sized soft targets out to 400 yards (there are those that would argue 600 yds. with heavy projectiles, but I have my doubts for the average shooter anyway), it is adequate to say the least.
“f you’re shooting through light cover like small trees or car doors, then a .308 / 7.62 NATO would be preferable.”
It’s also important to me that the .308 drops faster than a 30-06. I hunt in dense forest and never get a shot that would require a high performance long distance round. Since I’m also concerned about the bullet traveling outside my range of vision I prefer the .308.
“.308 Winchester or 7.62 NATO? I think most 7.62 battle rifles will tolerate either.”
I shoot two Browning .308 “Lightning” lever action rifles, I’ve never tried anything but .308 Winchester in them but I’m seriously thinking about buying NATO rounds to see if they work. Everyone I talk to says they’re the same.
Supposedly there’s a difference in the neck; I can’t see it with my eyes.
A friend’s HK 91 dents the hell out of the Winchester cases but leaves the NATO rounds whole.
Scott & Methyl: The commercial .308 Winchester and the 7.62 X 51 NATO rounds are not the same. The commercial .308 headspace is tighter and the cartridge brass is thinner near the base allowing slightly larger (approx. 10%) case capacity. The 7.62 NATO round has looser headspace (basically out of spec. for commercial .308) and thicker brass at the base to prevent rupture and separation. So firing a .308 in the military chamber has the potential to cause a case head separation (a polite way of saying the cartridge case can explode). If this happens, at best you get some hot gases escaping around and through the bolt and magazine well, plus a stuck case in the chamber with no base on it (lots of fun to get out). At worst you may get seriously injured. You might get away with firing .308’s in a military chambered rifle, but the wise shooter doesn’t do it.
This is different from the situation with the commercial .223 Remington vs. the 5.56 NATO. The leade in the 5.56 chamber is longer and shallower (giving you an effectively longer freebore) allowing the commercial .223 round to operate at safe pressures in the military chamber. Firing military 5.56 ammo in a commercial .223 chamber can run pressures up to 72,000 PSI and beyond. With the SAAMI maximum allowable pressure spec at 50,000 PSI you’d be pushing your pressures up over 17,000 PSI above maximum, once again asking for a case rupture, potential damage to your rifle and a generally poor experience at the range that day. As you can see, there are reasons why they designate one round as commercial and the other as military and it ain’t just to be cute.
Boothe, really good information, thanks. If I dare reduce this it sounds as if:
1) .308 Winchester should not be used in a military rifle chambered for 7.62 NATO; the result of doing so may be death.
2) 5.56 NATO should not be used in a sporting rifle chambered for .226 for the same reason.
Can we assume the obverse in both cases is acceptable? I honestly didn’t understand the difference was anything more than SAE to Metric conversion, obviously that’s not true. Could 5.56 be used safely in a .223 rifle? Could 7.62 be safely used in a .308?
I understand no warranty is expressed or implied by any answer, just looking for an opinion.
“2) 5.56 NATO should not be used in a sporting rifle chambered for .226 for the same reason.”
Should have read “.223”
@Boothe–yes thanks, excellent info!
Reminds me of “Ghostbusters”–“don’t cross the streams…”, “OK everyone important safety tip…”
Scott you should avoid 5.56 in a .223 chamber but .223 in the military chamber is considered safe.
The opposite is true with 7.62 military ammo being “considered safe” in the commercial .308 chamber (with the caveat that some military ammo may be too long, so the use of a case length gauge is highly recommended before chambering surplus military ammo in a .308 rifle). But commercial .308 ammo (having the thinner cartridge base) is not safe in the 7.62 military chamber. Clear as mud yet?
“Clear as mud yet?”
Down right gooey 🙂
Crystal. Thanks.
Anybody have a good resource for average annual cost of health insurance – before and after Medicare?
Anybody ever wonder why an MRI costs much much more than it did when it was introduced in 1972 (40 years ago).
Why is it that personal computers are smaller, faster, better and far cheaper (in both nominal and real dollars) than they were when they first became available.
How much (government mandated) regulation is there in the personal computer industry compared to the medical “care” industry?
Why don’t “high tech” medical devices get cheaper when high tech everything else does (even with continuous currency devaluation)?
I think you get where I’m going here.
My Dad is a doctor (retired) and his father was also an MD (allergist). He had an office on the first floor of his home; with just one nurse to assist him. No staff of fraus to push paper all day – each costing $40k-plus in salary and benefits.
There are more useless eaters involved in “health care” (not delivering an iota of “health”) today than there are down at the DMV.
But as bad as it is now, just wait until they have the power to threaten you with lethal violence.
Am I the first to notice the odd proliferation of state worshippers posting on this article? There are far more than I’ve ever seen before. Are they drawing a pay check perhaps?
Isn’t it also interesting how the month-old Trayvon Martin shooting suddenly became the biggest news story in America right about the time that the biggest Supreme Court case at least since Roe v. Wade if not longer, began to be heard?
Just the musings of a mentally-ill, gun-toting, government-fearing loony….
In 1965, President Johnson brought into existence Medicare and Medicaid. The promise was that it would never cost more than $5 billion (that would be about $50 billion today). The promise of Medicare is coming due, and the government does not have the resources to deliver. Obamacare is another government promise, the purpose of which is to capture the revenue of insurance premiums, as if it were a tax, and pass on the cost of the promise of Medicare/Medicaid to taxpayers in the form of insurance premiums. Good luck fixing the problem. To put this in perspective, part of Obamacare will be “paid for” by taking $500 billion out of Medicare, something that was never supposed to cost more than $50 billion.
Lesson: Anything that’s “free” usually ends up costing you a lot.
Lesson 2, The motive is always about what they say it isn’t.
Medicare and social security are essential ,necessary, and are INSURANCE…not free loading. WE PAID for these services in payroll deductions over the yeaars. We continue to pay a monthly PREMIUM for these services. When you pay for healthcare premiums to a private insurance company they set the RULES. If you had measles, brown eyes or anything theythink of they will REFUSE to paylaim. They will throw you out or demand a huge increase in premiums. What a mess!!! Next, when you have ALL people in the healthcare option you basicalloy have universal health care for everyone and NO WORRIES for anyone. BUT>>>>YOU MUST PAY A PREMIUM TO BE COVERED> It works perfectly and costs 35% LOESS than paying for it with an insurance company/
Harold, you were sold a bill of goods. We all were. At some point, you have to have the guts to walk away from the losing investment.
Harold,
Like so many Clovers, you’re reduced to Internet froth-mouthing as expressed via your childish use of ALL CAPS. Pathetic. It is a measure of the sophistication of your argument.
Medicare and Social Security are transfer payment schemes – nothing more. Money is taken from you during your working years in order to provide a “benefit” to a retired person now. It is inter-generational welfare. Your money (assuming you “paid in”) is long one. Whatever “benefits” you get today are the result of the government threatening current workers with violence in order to force them to hand over their money so that it may be given to you. It is not your money. It is blood money. You live by force off others.
Does it feel good, Harold? Ask yourself: Would you personally threaten your next door neighbor with a gun in order to provide you with “benefits”? If not, then why is it ok for the government to do this on your behalf?
If you would, well, then you know what sort of person you are.
The Crips are offering a reduced rate for anyone that nullifies their DC gang citizenship and signs a no tax pledge.
Just like the DC gang, they drive around and beat up doctors who refuse to be part of their Homey Maintenance Organization.
At least they take the 1.45% from your paycheck and invest it in Coca Futures, which doesn’t inflate as bad as DC Gangster Reserve Notes.
Once you join, you don’t even need a card, just pull up your right pant leg and flash the Cadeuceus Hand Sign.
They are also finalizing a social scurrity plan for anyone who’s tired of being harassed by the DC Gangs that have infested all 50 states.
“Ask yourself: Would you personally threaten your next door neighbor with a gun in order to provide you with “benefits”?”
If you wouldn’t take a thief to task for stealing from you your entire working life, what sort of person are you?
Your neighbor didn’t hold a gun to your head and take 6.5% of your salary, someone else did. Your neighbor is probably a friend of yours. You have barbeques together. Maybe your kids date each other.
These are not the ‘droids you’re looking for Eric.
Of course!
The problem of course is that we stand a chance of defending ourselves against our neighbor – but not our neighbor plus his Uncle. Not until a critical mass of awakened people are ready to do so, at any rate. And we’re working on that.
If Medicare and Social Security are essential, as you assert, then how in God’s name did the US do without them for 150 years?
Or are they simply things to which we have become accustomed?
One can become accustomed to almost anything, most of it bad, and claim those things are essential.
And don’t forget Ted Kennedy’s changing of the immigration laws, the ones he promised would not affect the racial makeup of the country.
While the immigration reform act of 1965 certainly has been a disaster, the war on poverty was worse.
Free states tend to attract the productive. Welfare states tend to attract moochers.
Here’s a couple of arguments for why the supremes might strike down I’llbombyacare.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/108939.html
I have my fingers crossed.. because if this isn’t shot down, America is over. It will be time to consider options. Argentina, perhaps. Or Uruguay. I hear they still mostly leave you alone down there…
But does it really change anything either way, Eric? I mean, the ratchet against liberty continues its irreversible force whether this law dies or not. It’ll just be resurrected in some other form in the next term and meanwhile other equally onerous schemes will be implemented. No, it’s over for the USA. Here’s hoping that something better will rise from the ashes one day and maybe we’ll have America again without the state.
Not holding my breath though.
I just did a survey for myself on that very subject and the winner is … Chile!
The biggest drawback to Chile is it has the best equipped standing army in South America. It also has (drum roll please) Nationalized Health Care, though not the bastard child of Communal Capitalism foisted off on us by the Big O.
Chile has an interesting political history. After 20 years of anarchy they spent about a decade under military rule (the Pinochet years) then adopted a parliamentary democracy. Today’s libertarian left are known as the Radical party, and are opposed by the Christian Democrats (socialist). Chile appears to have a strong free market/libertarian sub-population. Joe Bob says “Check it out!” I already have tickets.
Chile also has a privatized retirement system, where its citizens enjoy a much better payout than Social Security. One reason is that Chilean companies are required to pay out 30% of their net income in dividends to the stockholders, which gives the stockholder a real stake in the economy, and certainly encourages maximum participation in the retirement plan.
Chile is probably one of the best in South America. I’d definitely like to check it out. The irony in these “free” United States is you’re not allowed by your task masters to opt out of the state thievery for something better. This being all about freedom and such. Yeah, right!
Forget Uruguay.
If we ever want to be truly left alone, we’ll have to get the hell off this planet.
God willing, we can continue Western Civilization out in the Solar System somewhere, ’cause it’s just about dead here on Earth.
Why do think.the.government has a monopoly on space? Why the manned missions to the moon and elsewhere were shut down in 1974? Why no other county has bothered to send men to the moon?
Prison Planet.
Interesting you should say that.
Here’s some good news.
I think we’ve passed the point where it’s possible for an industrious and dedicated individual to build their a functional spacecraft from materials and information available on the internet.
Just something to think about…
I’m having this conversation with my wife again. The sheer hell that could be unleashed here–gnomesayin’s gone wild after the food stamp cards stop working, absolute police state, total surveillance, arrest for any and everything, gun confiscation, troops on the streets…
Those MAY not come to pass. But if they do, it will be unbearable.
I’m not confident the awakening is fast enough to head it off. I see a “Dark City” or “Bladerunner” dystopia ahead.
The NWO wants it world-wide this time; but in places that don’t have the infrastructure or money to really tighten the grid completely it will feel more free in practice–and right now, that’s South America.
I want to live among like-minded people; people who ignore, or outright defy, tyranny.
Has anyone here lived at length in S. America, and wants to comment? How do Chileans, Argentinians, etc. view government? Have they too become cloying little statists like Amerikans?
Do some research on Chile. They went through a committed period of minarchy they referred to as mutualism. Google mutualism & chile. It’s a good story.
Fred Reed – the columnist – fled to Mexico and speaks (generally) highly of life there. But that is changing as a result of the US-fostered “war on drugs” mayhem down there.
Eric, the first few articles on this page should give you/your readers somethings to ponder.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/
It is seriously time to think of S. America as a future place of residence.
The US (if you think of a yard/lawn) is full of clovers who outnumber the productive. They derive their opinions from the news “bimbo” every evening.
They will go along with any program they are suggested to support and which gives them entitlements and handouts. You are all outnumbered (sadly) by idiots who feel “entitled.”
This is the reality, and as sad as it is, they keep breeding and are financially subsidized (welfare) to do this very thing. It truly is an idiocracy.
I enjoy your column and reading your articles.
Best of luck to you, your family and all on this board. Stay safe!
Jeff Berwick loves Mexico; he’s in Acapulco. Simon Black favors Chile, and he’s setting up a self-sustaining community there.
Doug Casey’s relocated to Cafayate, Argentina–but I still have to work for a living, and it seems most of the Cafayate residents don’t….or rather, they’ve already worked hard enough to be able to live off investments.
Simon’s development seems very favorable.
Jeff Berwick discounts the War on (some) Drugs madness in Mexico; he says in the civilized areas it’s all but over. Of course the US Guv is desperate to sell you the lie that the good’ol US of A is the bestest most wonderfullest place and that nasty Mexico is a rotten shithole you should never ever even visit.
It’s important to keep the rubes fooled.
P.S. Last time I visited Mexico two years ago, in the Playa del Carmen area, it was damn nice. The airport was more modern and cleaner than Houston’s deplorable “Bush International”, and you were treated with…something strange, “respect” I believe it’s called.
I do not think that this is a “right” or “left” issue.
I declare that everyone must buy my product for your own good. If you do not buy my product, I will send people who will punish you financially (at first, the guns come later if needed) to coerce you into buying my product.
What would be my motivation to continually improve my product and keep costs in check? If I have a captive audience and can always pass increases through to you there is no incentive for me to be efficient. If the government forces me to sell my product at a loss, I can always cut back on services offered. I will just say that everyone will need to make sacrifices for the good of all. If I still cannot remain in business I can declare bankruptcy and/or go out of business to avoid most (if not all) financial obligations.
Ultimately it comes to what kind of government do you want and how will you pay for it. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Someone will be paying the cost of the government and its actions.
I prefer a minimalistic type of government.
The night watchman government is a utopian fantasy. Those who honestly support liberty cam be nothing but anarchists. ALL government is violence.
and some anarchists…
Is self-rule a form of government? What about mutualism, the idea of small groups getting together once in a while to solve common problems?
As long as any group member can freely leave without sanctions, there’s no violence in collective problem solving and cooperative societies. It’s only when the prevailing majority seeks to bind an individual to its policies against his will through the threat or use of force that government becomes violent.
Government does not have to be coercive. It does not have to be violent.
What I think most people over look in this is the various government actions to force people to have certain treatments as decided upon by the medical establishment. Right now these go through the courts and usually don’t turn out well as people are forced to go through treatments they have determined cause more harm than good for themselves or their children.
We can expect that profitable “health care” which is really manufactured sickness and un-ending chemical treatments and surgeries will be forced upon us all at gun point. You will see the government approved doctor, you will buy and take the medications he prescribes for you or else. No vitamins. No supplements. No alternatives of any kind. Why? No profit. And of course we all have to be the same, right? They will as a system, make us sick to drain our wealth into their pockets. More so than they do today. Furthermore how can sick population dependent on various drugs to get through the day ever revolt?
This is just the start of state asserting ownership of us. It’s already claimed it, this is asserting it. Putting that claim into action. It will use healthcare and collectivized “costs” to control practically every facet of our lives. Oh and let us not forget to use it to eliminate those of us livestock that are no longer sufficiently producing.
But let’s say that the argument for political power and financial wealth is simply “paranoid” and toss it aside. What about the do-gooder control freaks? What of them? The busy bodies cannot resist this power. There is no reasonable expectation that they would. They’ve never shown themselves able to. They use every wedge they can to force others to live the way they think people should live. They’ve been doing it for centuries. Why would they stop when something like this opens vast new powers for them?
The answer is they won’t. The best case of this system is where we are monitored and controlled for our own good like pets and livestock or maybe, as if we were children. At least this way we’ll be kept healthy and productive for the good of the vast collective farm…oh wait… sorry just like drugged up livestock in small pens in an industrialized farm.
Then again… just maybe… the whole thing becomes a farce and we will live relatively freely but have to use black markets. The system unable to effectively control because of its size. But I think that’s just wishful thinking these days. Things have advanced so far since olden times.
In addition to the Health Care Law, we have the Patriot Act, The National Defense Act, the little known FACTA law taking effect 1/1/2013, and a new law requiring some individuals to report assets held overseas to the IRS. They are also in the process of building a very large complex for the Homeland Security Dept, which should be complete soon. While everyone is talking about the Health Care Law, these other items should put some fear into everyone’s heart. There is absolutely no way they are spending this amount of money and resources to try and control a few terrorists in our country. They are doing this for one thing only, to control the population in the coming years when things start to get ugly and people start rebelling. Republicans and Democrats alike have been quietly passing these regulations for over 10 years now, without much publlc discussion or input. Why?
I think more people are starting to understand, they want to control as much of our daily lives as possible, for it is their opinion, they know what is best for our country, and yet their approval rating is around 15% or less. So why do we vote for the same people year after year, when we tell them we don’t like what they are doing? This is not much different than an underachieving, professional sports team, sometimes you just have to clean house and start all over again. The newly elected members of the House in 2010, have been the only legislators that have shown the courage to defy the president and the establishment occupying congress. We need more of the same as soon as possible.
Think of it this way. Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera does more good as a private individual than every scumbag tax eater and foreign baby killer combined.
El Chapo is the 937th richest man in the world and the head of the Sinaloa Farmers Coop & Cartel.
As we speak, unspeakable amounts of our involuntary tax tithes are being squandered to kill this one entrepreneur.
When he dies, Clovers everywhere will rejoice and praise to the Rainbow Coalition of Red White & Blue Bloods MS13s & Crips, and their Deadly Ponzi Game will start the hunt for Martha Stewart or Oprah or whoever else is America’s Most Wanted.
28% of the economy is government crap like this. 25% is financial paper pushing because of the fed. 15% is safety and risk sticker attaching because of the fed.
China and others long ago surpassed our role as world leading economy for real products desired by consumers.
You can’t fix ‘stupid’. You also cannot ‘fix’ healthcare until you have tort reform. It’s the Legal community via tort liability and patents to ‘protect’ Big Pharma that are the real reasons healthCare costs are as high as they are.
What a bunch of hateful, fearful, whiners! This is about HEALTH CARE, people. Get a clue. I for one, am tired of paying higher health care premiums because of people who are NOT insured. This article and the responses are the typical BS that we have come to expect from the right wing.
So you really believe that passing Obamacare is going to lower your health care premium? Wow. Keep dreaming.
Yes Robert, it is about HEALTH CARE: RATIONING HEALTH CARE.
Under Obamacare most people will pay more, and get less.
It happens every time with Socialized Medicine.
Check out Milton Friedman on YouTube:
He’ll teach you why it never works!
Robert; what a typical Cloverian response. You want the rest of us to pay for your healthcare, your kids’ education (if you have any offspring, we can certainly hope not), their lunches, your food, subsidize your energy bill, your housing, pay off your mortgage for you, provide you with airbags, etc. If we don’t volunteer to pay for all your sh!t then you want to be able to send men with guns to our homes and take our property for your benefit. That’s what it boils down to. If we dare resist, then you have no problem letting those men murder us as an example to the rest of the hosts out there to submit and obey when you and your parasite cronies come for the fruits of our labor. I’d have more respect for you if you had the balls to come up to me with a gun or knife and try to rob me outright.
But your class is a gaggle of spineless, brainless, nutless and gutless cowards that use the threat of government sanctioned violence to coerce us into paying up so you can have “your” healthcare, among other privileges, not rights, subsidized by the rest of us. Regardless, your health problems concern me about as much as mine concern you, I assure you. Most people with your attitude have healthcare problems and “need” subsidized healthcare because of your lifestyle choices. So, if the shoe fits….get up off your fat ass from time to time, take a walk, lift some weights, eat lean meat and raw vegetables, quit smoking and drinking to excess, take your vitamins and clean up your act and most of your health problems will evaporate. And while you’re at it, keep your effing hands off my wallet.
Now here’s a little history lesson you’re woefully in need of: If fascistic cartelization hadn’t occurred in the healthcare “industry” to begin with, medical treatment would yet remain affordable, without insurance, in the United States just as it was in the 50’s and 60’s. But because officious busybodies (like you) just had to meddle with the free market during the Great Depression (can you say wage and price controls?), employers had to find creative ways to attract and retain good employees. This led to offering health insurance in lieu of higher pay. After a couple of generations this has inevitably led to the nearly universal belief that health insurance is necessary to human survival and must by some form of demented illogic be a “right”. Well sucker, just like a job, a house, a car or even an airplane, you have a “right” to healthcare as long as you can find someone willing to provide it to you and you have the means to pay for it. Otherwise you’re the parasite stealing from the rest of us, despite your typical statist “I’m the victim” circular logic and socio-fascistic pseudo-philosophical arguments. You want to be ward of the state? Move to North Korea and start bitching over there. They’ll give you some free healthcare right quick I’ll bet.
Why not just establish that those who will not buy health care insurance, get NO health care?
That would be reasonable – that’s why!
Meanwhile, people (some people) believe they have a right to “health care” – to be provided at gunpoint by someone else.
We have similar principle at work here in Missouri: membership fire departments. Evey year I voluntarily pay $30 in dues to belong to the fire department. If I have a fire, they respond. If I don’t pay thereby choosing to take on the risk myself they may respond, but probably only to keep the fire from spreading to my neighbors’ property (those that pay dues). It’s a commons sense approach; if you care enough about your property to protect it by being a member they’ll help you or otherwise you’re on your own. No one forces you to belong. That being said, a few years back one of my neighbor’s that didn’t pay had his barn catch fire. The fire department showed up and watched it burn, just to be sure it didn’t spread. He lost the barn, a couple of tractors and some other farm equipment. He’s a member now. Imagine that. For those of you that don’t like that system, don’t come here or if you’re here, move. It’s really simple.
When I lived in Arizona, we had a similar arrangement, pay an annual fee of $250 or the fire department would put out your fire for $5000 (this was over 10 yrs ago). They also removed rattlesnakes and Gila monsters from your property on request – a feature we used 4 times in 9 years, so I was happy to pay the annual fee, even though I’ve always leaned towards partial self-insurance, preferring high deductible medical insurance over the HMO I was forced into when we moved to Hawaii.
Hawaii mandates employer-paid medical insurance for employees working over 19 hrs per week. The result is many people have 2 or 3 part-time jobs, especially with so many of the available jobs in the hospitality and restaurant business. There is a huge underground cash economy here, off the books, and out of the grasp of the taxman, due to excessive government regulation and taxation.
BTW, excellent response to Robert – I am surrounded by useful idiots and drones like him everywhere I go in Hawaii.
Hawaii also has one of the highest unemployment payouts in the country – $424 per week, which many collect while working for cash on the side. In the meantime, I am self-employed (sole owner of an Subchapter “S” corporation) and have to pay a 2% rate on my salary for state unemployment insurance to support these parasites. The only way I can be unemployed is to deliberately stop taking on new work – what a system…
People who have fires in their homes usually get insurance settlements, which could result in a timely contribution to the VFD, even if an annual contribution hadn’t been made.
Edmund, I can only hope you meant to suggest that people who will not buy health care insurance, get no health care insurance. What you said was “get no health care”. There’s an ongoing confusion on the part of many people these days who forget there’s a difference between health care *insurance* and health care itself.
Scott, Edmund had it right the first time – no ticky, no wash. No insurance, no treatment. Time was when the local community took care of itself, including the ill. Ever hear of charitable hospitals? They don’t charge the patients, but have criteria for what cases they take on. They survive by private, charitable funding. What a novel concept!
There’s a lot we don’t need institutionalized, Western-brand medicine for. The trouble is, the for-profit near-monopoly is seeing to it that all avenues to not participate in “their system” are closed down, and that “renegades” are unduly (and unfairly) punished.
So what’s this, Bill? My money is not as good as the insurance company’s money? Your idea is just as totalitarian as Obummercare.
I pay cash for my medical care because I refuse to go to doctors. I go to alternative health care pros, health foods stores for herbal and other remedies and I eat right. I don’t need medical insurance except for trauma care and I will pay for that in cash also. If everyone did what i do, medical care would be infinitely cheaper.
ps we should call it medical care, not health care, and i think that would help stop the confusion…
Bill, you say you blame the for-profit hospital people, but YOU are the one advocating against cash payment for services rendered, and in favor of administrative discrimination against certain treatments.
How long have you been a fascist?
Is it whining, Robert, to be appalled by the prospect of being forced to buy an expensive product one may not want? To be concerned about the prospect – very real – of government intruding into your private affairs (again) but now on the basis of your “health?
If you have a right to health care, Robert, then how about a house? A good job? Nice clothes? Why not? Where does it end? Where does the violence end?
I doubt very much you’d come to my house armed with a gun and threaten to kill me in order to take my property so that you can have some of it – or just to force me to buy some product you think I ought to have. I doubt you’d have the stomach for it, morally. Which ought to tell you something about the nature of that which you advocate.
Nice. A great point, that somehow contracting govt to do what it would be immoral for an individual to do legitimizes it. You can’t legally delegate an authority you don’t possess to begin with, and a govt derives its JUST powers from the consent of the governed. So locking someone up for abstaining necessarily violates that consent.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned positive rights yet, unless I just missed it somewhere. That positive rights violate liberty by legalizing forcibly depriving someone of either their time (life) or property, or dictating the manner in which someone may spend their time or use their property, things which we maintain are tyrannical when done by others.
Great points Uncle. I’d like to see a longer discussion myself, particularly on the subject of jailing a person for abstaining.
I’m particularly concerned about the growing trend in dictating “the manner in which someone may … use their property”. There’s a lot of real tyranny developing at the local level here in the Land of the Free, usually under the guise of the County Zoning Department. I’ve recently had two claims made against my lands that qualify as illegal “takings” and in the course of researching them I’ve found the problem is rampant throughout my State and seem to cross State borders pretty easily.
There is an organized national and international effort to essentially ban private ownership of land, you’ve probably heard of it, it’s called “Agenda 21” and it’s really ugly. I’d like your thoughts on it since it sounds like you have some. Personally it scares the heck out of me and I think it’s more dangerous than the nonsense Hillary is pushing regarding small arms.
It is a fantasy and urban legend that health care premiums are higher because of people not having insurance. This has been promulgated by those huckstering for mandatory insurance to get everyone behind their agenda. Several peer reviewed studies have concluded that at most premiums go up about 1% because of the uninsured.
Who the hell gave you or anyone else the right to trade on or appropriate my good health to lower your insurance premiums? What kind of collectivist mindset gives birth to such nonsense? KOOMBAYA, baby, I guess we are all one with the world, huh? You just can’t fix stupid.
Right on, Moze –
Robert is the sort of person (and mindset) we’re up against –
Inside all of us is the desire to take from others in order to further our own self interests. For example, taking money from taxpayers in order to get my birth control pills for free when I go to the doctor. Government programs are the best way to accomplish this without the legal problems, or the inconvenient feelings of guilt, associated with robbing or stealing from your neighbor. It works great.
Speak for yourself, Neil. I seek to earn things from others in the furtherance of my self-interest.
Then you are one in a thousand.
Ethical and Moral.
You are VASTLY out-numbered by the Democracy Parasites(DPs) who claim to own you.
It works great – until the moochers become the majority. Which is happening right now. It is the inevitable result of a system predicated on theft and violence and maggotry.
Most people have yet to understand the true nature of the system, though. They really do believe that “the government” just has stuff for them – poof! Just like that. They’ve never followed the chain of causality back to its fundamentals. That in order for the government to give it must first take.
Robert,
The primary reason your health insurance cost is so high is not because of the uninsured who could afford but choose not to buy insurance, most of which pay large portions of their health care expenses out of their own pockets, but because of the huge cost of Medicare and Medicaid patients (600 to 700 $billion/year paid out of the US Treasury). But that amount represents only about 40% of the actual cost for these patients to the health care system (hospitals, doctors, ancillary services) due to forced regulations and payment limits mandated by the federal government. That extra 60% (1 $trillion or more) must be shifted to those of us who pay for care, either through insurance or out of pocket, else the providers will go bankrupt. Blame the politicians who promise free stuff for anyone who will vote them into office at the taxpayers’ expense. Socialism only works as long as there are enough wealthy people to pay for those who don’t. Eventually you run out, as is happening now in Europe and soon the US.
You’re going to miss us someday. The engineers who conceive, provide, and maintain everything. Who in 1775 defeated the English Red Coated Clovers under hire of the Continental Congress.
You never anticipate consequences, due to clover-vision. You marvel bovinatively when you consider the fascist service of the 60,000 Pakistani Army Corp of Engineers or the 38,000 US Army Corp of Engineers.
Who’s to blame for the flooding of New Orleans, not the clovers you’re sure.
Who’s to blame right now for Legion of Homer Simpsons in charge of the St Lawrence Seaway even now.
Who’s to blame when a 14 foot height differential near the Chicago Portage area is breached due to a rogue individual or act of nature and all 5 Great Lakes empty out in the Ocean. Not Clovers of course, they’re the do-gooders, and we all know its do-gooders under the thumb of the Military Industrial Complex that do everything, not free individuals.
Better go buy some more bottled tap water Clover. It’s guaranteed drinkable by the FDA.
They weren’t English but British (just think how much of the army was Scottish, Irish, or even Welsh), and they weren’t defeated in 1775 – in fact, most weren’t defeated at all but left as part of a negotiated peace after the war party at home fell out of power.
It was akin to the way the North Vietnamese attrited the US to a stalemate that could not be politically sustained. It was – and still is – and effective strategy for a militarily inferior force to pursue against a military superior force. See, for example, Afghanistan – both the Soviet and current examples.
That may be true (it isn’t, since the main issue driving the peace settlement was the cost of resisting the French and Spanish threat, and operations could have been indefinitely continued cost effectively in North America along the same lines as in Ireland if that had been the only theatre), but it is also irrelevant – as the North Vietnamese General told the U.S. one who told him that the U.S.A. had never lost a battle in Vietnam.
No, what I was trying to bring out was the previous commenter was wrong about who was defeated (it wasn’t an “English” thing) and about when (it wasn’t in 1775). The only defeats in 1775 – for either side – were overtaken by later events.
Yup –
Imperial over-reach… in both cases…. and now, again.
Oddly enough, no, because the North American theatre on its own wasn’t imperial over-reach/overstretch for Britain in the late 18th century, since the sea voyage was not a big deal by then. The problem was that the rebels had allies – France, Spain and Holland – who between them could stalemate major offensives in North America after about the middle of the war and could also hamper sea access to that theatre, and who also posed a serious threat to other British possessions and even the island of Great Britain itself if defences ever got stretched too thin. The thing is, those allies faced problems of distance themselves if they ever wanted to try major operations in North America, so over-reach/overstretch wasn’t a factor favouring either side (even at the end, the rebels couldn’t take the tactical offensive against British strong points, or resist sea-borne hit and run raids well); after 1781, things just turned into a stalemate there.
Contrary to U.S. mythology, Yorktown didn’t defeat the British effort, it just froze it in that theatre – but the war continued furiously at sea for another two years, principally around European shores and among the European participants. A separate peace might have led to Britain getting a free hand to reduce North America slowly with raids from fortified areas, areas that could pay for themselves, as Britain had done in Ireland; as it was, the peace party was willing to negotiate a peace that gave the rebels most of what they wanted, as long as France and Spain didn’t get a foothold in North America that could be used against Britain later (Spain did get back the Floridas, which had never rebelled). Viewed in 18th century terms, the rebels won outright (but only on points, as it were); Britain lost on points but was not ruined, which mattered a lot just a few years later; France and Spain won Pyrrhic victories that ruined them for a generation, or at any rate their regimes; and Holland lost outright, ceasing to be a world power. Ironically, almost any other result would have made the new U.S.A. non-viable, as the usual 18th century pattern would have led to another war along the old lines quite soon, with hostilities affecting North America; as it was, events in Europe flowing from the dislocations of that war of rebellion kept Europe otherwise occupied until the U.S.A. really had become strong enough that operations there really would have been an ocean too far (which is why Wellington advised against a slow reduction in 1812 – though I think the world would have been a better place if that had happened, not only from avoiding what happened there in the 1860s but also from Germany seeing a stronger Britain in each of 1914 and 1939).
So Vietnam isn’t a good analogy; various two front wars are better.
Thanks P.M. I didn’t know that.
The more I learn, the more I become Archie Bunker with an internet connection it seems.
At this point, it might be best for America to join the United Kingdom and fly the Union Jack or whatever the flags name is.
Of what benefit is it to prop up all the lies about the propaganda amalgams of Lincoln, FDR, and the rest.
At least with Kings and Parliament, there are real human beings, and the obfuscation isn’t so impenetrable.
America traded 1 parasite 3000 miles away for 3000 parasites 1 mile away.
bring back King George! Please! We are so sorry!
The government breaks your leg and then tells you only it can repair your broken leg. That is how it is with medicine today in the United Fascist States of America.
I should not be forced to pay for someone else’s stuff – open heart surgery, cell phones (yes, please come to Massachusetts all of you with a need), baby formula, apartments, car rides at seven hundred dollars a pop, etc. Theft is theft, whether you voted to rob me or not. If you are tired of paying for some poor soul’s health care, demand the entity that is pointing the gun to your head demanding you do so – the government – to cease and desist. Please do not coerce ME to give more money because someone else has a need. Let me management my own need.
If you want to fix health care delivery, stop telling me I must pay for Joe Blow’s bypass and turn things over to the private market. It is absolute fact that the market controls prices, government edicts do not. At which point we would create high risk pools that are voluntary. We would have the money for them because government coercion would no longer be inflating the cost of care. I would then give generously to someone else with a true medical need.
Thanks for the supporting fire, Veronica!
Especially the following:
“If you are tired of paying for some poor soul’s health care, demand the entity that is pointing the gun to your head demanding you do so – the government – to cease and desist.”
Exactly.
One person’s irresponsibility (or even just bad luck) does not impose an obligation enforceable at gunpoint on others. Helping people voluntarily, using your own means, is a wonderful thing. Using the threat of murderous violence to compel someone to “help” you is a sickening perversion of the concept.
Thanks for the feedback, Eric.
Forget health care, we are really fighting a struggle against those who really believe human beings should be herded, tweaked, directed, improved by fascist elites who really think they know what you or I need. Reminds me of Soviet scientists trying to create the perfect Soviet man. And we all know that communism is just the flip side of fascism. This against a view that says life and economic activity is spontaneous and cannot be harnassed, thank goodness.
In a nutshell, to all of you in Western Europe who keep shoving your decaying model down my throat: please leave me alone to do as I wish. If I go sky diving and end up a vegetable, do not pay my hospital bill. Do not make them force you to pay the bill. Have the hospital sue to get my house, etc. If I have no money, create charities to pay the bill.
My roots are in western Europe but your collectivism and totalitarian fascism (at least you realized facism works better than state ownership of everything) makes me want to puke. This is shameful considering the huge earlier contributions from this part of the world.
pay my hospital bill. Do not make them force you to pay the bill. Have the hospital sue to get my house, etc. If I have no money, create charities to pay the bill.
My roots are in western Europe but your collectivism and totalitarian fascism (at least you realized facism works better than state ownership of everything) makes me want to puke. This is shameful considering the huge earlier contributions from this part of the world.
For healthcare ins I pay 5% of my income and my employer matches, then for medicare I pay about 1.5% and the employer matches. Why don’t they just wrap everything up into medicare, you pay 7% of your income and you are on medicare. Let the employer off the hook for anything so he could increase wages if he wanted to. When using medicare you would always owe say 10% and co-pays. To prevent any one person from using 10x what he put in. Get the insurance companies out of the mix, they are just a leach on the system. If the system ran out of money just keep uping the patient portion to keep people from using it. Just like my dental ins.
Agree with you!!
Stop trying to fix a broken system by meddling with it. The problem is not insurance companies, the problem is government interference in the market…as usual.
Donald Trump was on Fox News last night. He mentioned something that I’ve been wondering about since I started working professionally and with a family. How come we are forced to buy health insurance within our own state? Why do the insurance company have a monopoly? Why don’t they let us have options, say across state borders? This would introduce competition and maybe help fix the problem overnight.
Dom-
If you live in a state that mandates coverage for crap like mental health, addiction treatment, chiropractic services, etc., letting you buy insurance in a state that doesn’t do this hurts the bottom line of the insurance companies, because all these things raise the cost of coverage. So they lobby the feds…it’s a familiar story.
When I lived in Texas and they began “mandatory” auto insurance it struck me like a ton of bricks the obviousness of it all. It was simply a means to “ensure” the insurance companies got a guaranteed rate increase and profits by forcing the public to purchase what they needn’t. So where was the competition and promised rate decreases because we were lied that with increased participation such would be the case? Alas, or not, it never came to be. The excuses and further lies from the insurance lobby, and their governmental shills, shows that everything only got more expensive. I’ve always wondered how they could afford to pay for all those expensive television ads.
Of course – but unfortunately, a lot of people are just dumb – and many others are just authoritarians. We’re outnumbered, unfortunately.
But we do have the right (and smarts) on our side, so that’s something!
It also points out the absurdity of invoking *INTERstate* commerce as a justification for forcing people to by insurance. If you can only buy insurance in your own state, that is INTRAstate commerce. Nothing is allowed to cross state borders, therefore it does not have anything to do with the commerce clause.
The pigs have taken over the farmhouse and as Eric points out, all this is about control, having little to do with healthcare (other than rationing). The whole healthcare reform fiasco will become an umbrella for maximum governmental intervention in each individual’s life starting with a national database of our “medical history” which will include intimate personal details about everyone that participates. With the Supremes’ failure to strike down this law, that will include practically everyone in the USSA.
Once you’re “registered” and honestly (if foolishly) answer the pretreatment screening questionnaire healthcare providers often require of us now, which includes “Do you own a gun?” or “Are there any guns in your household?” you the individual will be registered. If you don’t answer the questions, they’ll be able to deny you treatment. Once you’re identified as a “gun owner” you will be subject to the same special scrutiny concealed carry permit holders get the first time someone in your home dials 911 for a medical emergency. Based on recent events, your angina attack may very well lead to a house full of belligerent doughnut-feeders tazing your ass to death or even shooting you, because you demand that they leave and they “know” (based on your own medical records) that you’re “armed and dangerous”.
It may only be a matter of time before simply owning firearms will be declared an “obsession with guns” and a “medical condition” that will need to be “treated as a mental illness”. So we may have to buy health insurance, car insurance, homeowners and even life insurance for your own good. But we may not be able to buy a gun (legally anyway) for our own protection if we have “mental problems” as defined by the state. Make no mistake, the specter of guns being a medical problem will very likely rear its ugly head again soon. You can bet that regardless of the outcome of the next election (a Ron Paul victory notwithstanding), we will see the continued and evermore rapid escalation of totalitarian Fascism (civilian disarmament being a keystone to its implementation) right here in the good ol’ USSA under the aegis of “public health and safety”.
So true. And so very sad.
While defining owning guns as a mental illness is certainly on the horizon, something else will happen first. The liberty minded and those who question the state will be declared mentally ill.
It’s already been raised a few times, here and there, with little mention, that people who do not share this faith in the all mighty state must have some form of mental illness. We can see it in the everyday culture where people like yourself, or me, or just about anyone posting here is considered “paranoid” for thinking those with government power might not be looking out for our best interests. Meanwhile these same people appear to think without the state that their neighbors would kill them. But that’s not “paranoia”.
If this health care thing progresses life is going to get very scary for anyone who didn’t become a properly conditioned drone.
That’s an excellent point Brent. It parallels the old Soviet practice of locking up political dissidents as “mentally ill”, because if you can’t see the logic and beauty of the total state there must be something wrong with you. With the assistance of the great and benevolent Southern Poverty Law Center, tremendous inroads have already been made to identify Liberty minded and individualistic Americans as “lifestyle terrorists”. Some of the symptoms of this “disease” include a distrust of government, preoccupation with the Constitution, preoccupation with the Bible, gun ownership, home-schooling, owning camouflaged clothing, an interest in survivalism or third party candidates and practically anything that might distinguish one from the herd. The scary part is this hooey is put out to law enforcement agencies as “educational” material.
It won’t be long before a Ron Paul or GOA bumper sticker will get you special treatment by Officer Friendly on a much more frequent basis than it does now. And if you strenuously object to the state’s benevolent scrutiny, administered for your own safety of course, you could very well end up restrained, sedated and indefinitely institutionalized for observation and evaluation “in the interests of national security”. For those readers that think it can’t happen here I would remind you that the president has taken it upon himself to order the execution of an American, then his sixteen year old son and his son’s friends without even the pretense of due process of law. Furthermore, with the passage of the National Defense Authorization Act the president (his signing statement notwithstanding) now has the authority to detain, incarcerate and even deport anyone he sees fit without any Constitutional constraints. That folks is a totalitarian dystopia not a Constitutional Republic and anyone that still believes “this is Ah-murr-icka, it cain’t happen here” is seriously delusional because it already has happened.
The president and his staff claim that their decision making process, how they decide to kill an american or imprison him, is due process of law. They are the law. Just like traffic court.
Doesn’t “due process” include one’s right to hear the evidence against them, and to defend themselves, anymore? A lot of people need a reminder.
It does or at least did. But now a days people feel instead of think. So like the tool laws in the drug war, they “trust the cop” to only go after bad people and bad people aren’t worth spending time on evidence and such. That’s the clover world we live in.
Oh, that’s happened already. The DSM has included “Oppositional Defiant Disorder” (ODD) since version III; in version V it expands to adults.
The political use of psychiatry against dissidents has a long and proud history; remember, they used to lobotomize and/or shock-therapy hippies in the sixties.
The techniques are so much more humane now; they can remove your soul chemically!
Cheery thoughts. Welcome to Huxley’s world.
A gramme is better than a damn!
From Europe, where I live it is unbelievable the way you people argue about mandatory health insurance. If every American was wise enough to exercise his right to health insurance, no law would be necessary, As it is now, some 45 miljon Americans have to gamble that they will not get sick and be forced to sell their house in order to pay the bills. Only the 1% can afford to take that risk. Those who are not insured will have to receive help from some charity or go to ER. Part of the risk would disappear if y’oll would drop the idiotic notion that every citizen should have the right to cary fire-arms, even concealed no less. It costs 30000 lives and 100.000 seriously wounded per year. If this were a bacterial disease it would be declared a national disaster.
Maybe Americans should realise that they live in the 21st century and not in the 18th, the time this holy constitution was formulated.
Not everyone needs or wants health insurance. In fact, people who are healthy and who make smart life choices might consider it a better choice, financially, to spend their money on other things – including investments of their own choosing. They pay for incidental health care expenses out of pocket – and because they have not been impoverished by being forced to purchase health insurance, they have the resources to deal with major problems if/when they occur.
In any case, my health care is none of your business – or the government’s.
No one has a “right” to health care any more than they have a right to a house or a full of head of hair, either.
Your comments reveal you to be a Clover – that is, a collectivist.
I try not to collectivize individuals, but so-called Europeans can be so tiresome with their holier-than-thou statist nattering about health care and guns. Do you even realize what you are saying? The state will throw people in prison if the do not purchase health insurance! Maybe you like the idea of otherwise up-standing individuals being ass-fucked by a prison gang, but I am very interested in avoiding such a fate. If only I would just obey, right? Go fuck yourself you miserable excuse for a sentient.
Europeans have had socialism or fascism or some form of authoritarianism for at least 100 years now. Generations born and bred (and conditioned) to the mentality of authoritarianism. It is a miracle that any of them have come around and rejected their heritage and conditioning in favor of liberty.
It ain’t very many of them, unfortunately.
My mother was a native German and my dad’s family were immigrant farmers from the 19th who worked the plains of Nebraska. So Germanic in many ways. The amazing thing I find is that this socialist/collectivist thinking crosses borders in Europe. I can’t count the times I’ve run across Europeans who have this mythical faith in government that routinely screws them over just so they can claim they have “insurance”. The boiling frog analogy could never be more apt. There is a better way to do things but expecting your so-called “leaders” to do it is simply absurd.
Nico,
Where did you get(make up) those numbers?
Yeah Nico,
If we’d just commit suicide, there’d be no need to murder us!
Did I get that right?
Liberty and individualism made Americans the greatest people in history.
And I’ll tell you something else I’ve noticed.
All the Europeans who had any honor, any courage, any sense of dignity, and character…
They all died in the wars or became Americans.
And all Europe has left is the refuse.
But at least that refuse is well-cared-for.
Oh, codswallop. My mother’s family were Irish who emigrated to France (still in Europe), and they tended to look down on those who emigrated to the U.S.A. as being merely self-interested economic migrants rather than politicals with ideals they could keep putting into practice from Europe. So there was more in the way of fighting for liberty among those who stayed in Europe.
That may or may not be true. What is true without question is that all the countries of Western Europe are socialist – and have populations that support socialist policies, including redistributionist taxation and nonsense such as people having a “right” to medical care.
Some of the countries (such as the UK) have criminalized the expression of political opinion – characterizing that which deviates from the PC orthodoxy as “hate speech.” You have cameras everywhere – and the primary “freedom” you enjoy is being able to choose a red vs. a green sweater.
And we’re becoming more like this each year. Once ObamaCare becomes “constitutional” – and they take away our right to possess arms – we will have become just like the Europeans. Which is precisely what the elites are working toward; that is, a world-wide Company Town.
What I was criticising was the assertion that those who were interested in liberty went to the U.S.A. or died, and that – by elimination – those who stayed in Europe and also lived didn’t care about it; an assertion that is more than a little offensive, and which is not substantiated by the histories (my great-uncle Leopold is in them). If anything, it was the other way around, as the many Irish who acted then could have told you. Emigrating to the U.S.A. was that era’s equivalent of the “chicken run”, considering the availability of alternative destinations that (unlike the U.S.A.) allowed further effective efforts.
Wat North America offered was opportunity that wasn’t available in Europe – including notably the opportunity for an average person to become a landowner. The corollary of that is liberty – freedom of action.
The bottom line is that Europe offered less liberty to the average person than was available in America. Hence, it was a draw to people who wanted a fresh start – and more, to get the hell away from 17th and 18th century Clovers (kings, a rigid class system and all the rest of it).
This legacy manifests even today in the fact that, while no longer nearly as free, most Americans still enjoy several important liberties denied to Europeans, among them the right to possess arms for self-defense and the right to speak and write to an extent that would result in criminal prosecution in England and Germany and other European socialist states.
Yeah,
Look at all those nancy wankers running off to America, just so they can have guns and large incomes (that they get to keep) and big houses with big yards and big powerful cars and cheap, abundant food and room to move about and freedom to worship their choice of god or gods (or none at all) and isolated location so they don’t have to worry about fighting wars on their home soil.
My parents own a piece of property in Canada, and on the ferry ride up there one year, my dad got to talking with a middle-aged Canadian guy who spoke of his recent heart operations.
The guy claimed that he received both free of charge and my dad just asked him what his income tax rate was.
“Oh, about 55%. Maybe 60, eh.”
Yeah, we should grow up and be like Europe.
Part of this is they’ve become accustomed to living a diminished life. Consider:
I’m far from being rich, but I own a 16 acre spread with a large three level house (and a guesthouse on the property). The only people who own anything remotely comparable in Western European countries are extremely affluent. But such is possible here – even today – even if you’re a person of relatively modest means.
I also own a V-8 muscle car (and can afford to drive it). I have five motorcycles. Two trucks. Again, how many people in the socialist, high-tax countries of Europe are able to afford the like?
The typical Western European lives in a small (by our standards) apartment, drives a small car (if he has a car) and so on….
By European standards, I get to live like a minor baron or earl!
God, I just remembered something else.
In Europe, patriotism is frowned upon and considered the exclusive preserve of soccer hooligans and other lower-class people. It’s not seen as very “enlightened” or “sophisticated.”
Here, it’s generally expected.
As Eric has pointed out, our reflexive patriotism is beginning to get us into trouble domestically, what with the cult of soldier-worship or imperial adventuring overseas.
But generally, people love being Americans because America offers them so much, even in our severely degraded modern condition.
I can do things here, like carry a handgun for protection, own a fast car and say things that grossly offend people, that would get me a prison sentence on the Continent.
I can say “God Bless America,” and mean it, without my fellows looking at me like I’m some social bottom-feeder. Hell, they’ll back me up on that one.
Here, you see Old Glory everywhere. In parts of the country, even the Stars and Bars fly from every fourth house. We love our little piece of the world, and we’re proud of it.
We Americans have done more in 200 years than the whole damn rest of the world did in EIGHT THOUSAND, and we’re rightly proud of that.
And I think when we reflect upon the fact that we landed a man on the moon while Europeans were stretching the frontiers of artistic pornography, we get a little justifiably smug.
Believe it or not, we’re NOT really trying to offend you. We’re just being ebullient.
And we did it all by being fractious, irascible, industrious, individualistic, tough-minded and pathologically unsafe.
It’s how we roll, and it’s a hell of a way to be.
Come join us.
@Chris, I think you’re conflating Patriotism and Nationalism. A patriot loves his country, while a nationalist loves his country’s government, or its sports team, or the smell of its fertilizer, or whatever. As long as its from their own country.
In other words, a Nationalist’s guiding principle is largely familiarity, when compared to the Patriot’s ideal, presumably the happiness and well-being of his fellow countrymen. Thus, nationalism is generally a childish sentiment, while patriotism is usually a bit more mature.
Nico, your need to tuck in your ignorance; it’s showing. Firearms related fatalities don’t even make the Center for Disease Control’s top ten causes of death in the United States. In Vermont in 2008, where anyone can carry concealed without a permit, homicide (all methods combined) didn’t even make the CDC’s top 15 causes of death and the same for heavily armed Arizona. Explain that. Civilian firearms ownership saves innumerable innocent lives in the U.S. each year. Approximately 200,000 American women alone use firearms to defend themselves from sexual abuse annually. My wife successfully stopped a serial rapist in his tracks in 1987 by shooting him. Without her handgun, she’d have been his next victim. We’ll never know how many other women she protected through her actions, but if he’d been successful he’d have kept on doing it you can be sure. It took the police nearly an hour to arrive on the scene after the shooting, so you can bet it they’d have shown up long after the rape was completed too.
It has been well documented and impeccably researched by Dr. Gary Kleck that guns are used to successfully thwart crimes in the U.S. at an annual rate of 2.5 million times (that’s about 6,850 times a day!) with only 8% of those incidents actually resulting in a shooting. Even some of the strongest proponents of “gun control” are troubled by Dr. Kleck’s work because it literally proves they (and the ill informed such as you) are clearly wrong in your emotional assumptions. The mere display of a firearm or a warning shot is all it takes to send most criminals running. Even the Clinton era National Institute of Justice study (by the anti-gun authors Jens Ludwig and Philip Cook), “Guns in America” had to grudgingly acknowledge that guns were used in self defense 1.5 million times each year. And before you start touting the virtues of the police and their training, consider this: civilians only mistakenly shoot innocent people 2% of the time, the police in America shoot the innocent by mistake 11% or more than 5 times as often (and frequently do so with impunity).
If the Jews in Nazi Germany had all been armed, the outcome would have been considerably different. But in 1928 a freely elected German government implemented a gun control law that required registration of gun owners and firearms, supposedly to curb “gang activity” (which was essentially street fighting between Nazi and Communist thugs). Upon taking power in 1933, the Nazi’s (socialists) inherited those lists and used them to confiscate weapons from people deemed “unreliable”. Five years after that the Nazi’s enhanced the original law in 1938 to include handgun control and only allowed Nazi party members and other “reliable” people to possess arms. Jews were prohibited from even engaging in firearms related businesses. We know very well how that turned out. With that and all the other historical evidence of democide provided by totalitarian governments in mind, when I read the ill considered emotional ruminations of a nosey busy-body such as yourself (with respect to our right to arms or free market healthcare for that matter) it appears to me that you support mass murder at the hands of the state.
Boothe, that was an outstanding piece of research and an equal example of great expository writing. Congratulations to your wife, you must be very proud of her. I’m sure the experience took a heavy toll on both of you, no one would ever want something like that to happen to them, but it obviously could have been much worse.
Let’s say every citizen in the U.S. is forced to buy health insurance a la Odumbacare. That will not address the real problem which is the high price of health care, not the fact that people do not receive medical treatment. No one is turned away from the hospital at which I work which is one of the best in the world. The smelly bum with diabetic legs gets the same optimal care as does Mumbles Menino, our esteemed mayor.
The problem involves the fact that governments are mandating and meddling to the extent that in MA I only have a couple of options – no interstate commerce here – for health insurance. These options must cover all the bells and whistles. I don’t have the option of buying a catastrophic plan, so costs go through the roof when everyone is forced to have everything. And hospitals have no reason to offer a fair price to the patient because they negotiate with a third party.
People are overusing the system on everyone else’s dime. Prices will only come down when the free market kicks in and the individual is vested in keeping costs low. If everybody had their water bill covered by insurance (you cannot live without water), do you think the average Joe is going to shop around for the best price? Water costs would be through the roof.
Same problem with education. Anything that gets socialized gets expensive. Look what happened to college tuition when the Govt. started making student loans.
Do hospitals pay their employees to buy health care, or do they skip the middleman and just supply it as necessary? Should medical employees, who can presumably take advantage of work-supplied services, also face penalty for not carrying insurance?
You nutty Europeans simply do not understand nor desire freedom. You have been living under petty fiefdoms and monarchs claiming the “divine right of kings” for so long the word freedom is merely a hazy abstraction. You are comfortable with your dependence. Dependence is weakness and dependence on government is downright dangerous. What happens when government fails? You’re screwed. You have no survival skills. 21st century society is frighteningly fragile and all the comforts you have come to expect could disappear overnight.
“Part of the risk would disappear if y’oll would drop the idiotic notion that every citizen should have the right to carry fire-arms, even concealed no less. It costs 30000 lives and 100.000 seriously wounded per year.” The only entity that could generate numbers like that (presuming you numbers are based in fact) is government. Only a drugged up clown in a rented suit would argue the people need no way to protect themselves from the inevitable specter of government gone bad.
Please, wrap yourself in your socialist blankey, snuggle up to the nearest bureaucrat, and go back to sleep. We’ll wake you when the government sponsored horror show is over, or not.
It is always the brain-dead and lifeless infantiles who “think” of political terrorists as Mommy and Daddy. My German friend (who unplugged from The Matrix) refers to the indoctrinated runts in Europe as “Euro-Peons”.
They are the OVERWHELMING majority on Earth so you all better start obeying your owners or they WILL kill you.
What do you think Your Owners are preparing for with all their terror laws?
I am afraid our system has secretly adopted the New World Order, dis-topic, psychopathic view on humanity.
The establishment knows that it will fail and that the numbers are too big to work with and at the same time, enforce our beloved constitution.
Obama Care will prevail because it strives to take the most from the individual, such as mandated premiums, individual liberty, rights and choices.
At the same time will restrict the most real value from each one of us. The aggregate population will get less, the elite few will through waivers and special contacts, get more value.
A great win for the well connected crony capitalist and globalist.
I always hear people say that health care is not a right. This isn’t accurate. Health care is a right, just as bearing arms is a right. You have the right to bear arms, but that does not mean the government provides arms for you to use. Nor does it mean that the government in some way ensures that you are armed. It means that you have the right to bear arms if you choose, and acquiring them is your personal responsibility. The same is true of health care. Health care, like bearing arms, is a right.
An entitlement is different. You are not entitled to health care. Nor are you entitled to firearms of any kind. Acquire them yourself. It’s your right to do so.
Entitlements are things such as being notified of legal charges against you, a trial by a jury of your peers, law enforcement services, etc. Anything that is a right and is also unavailable in the free private marketplace is an entitlement.
I think you are confusing health care and health insurance. Insurance is not a right and neither is health care, if it was then doctors would be forced to provide their services for free to anyone. This bill is not about health care its about insurance. A right comes from God, it can not be bestowed by Government.
If what you’re saying were accurate then gun shop owners would be forced to provide firearms for free to anyone. After all, bearing arms is a right, isn’t it?
Your “right” is the right to buy and pay for what you have a right to.
Neil, I believe you are confusing rights and services. Everyone has the right to bear arms. But you do not have the right to force someone to give you a gun. Now a gun shop owner is willing to provide you with a gun as a service which you pay for. As to healthcare, you have the right to ask for it, but are not entitled to it, the Doctor can either treat you or send you on your way. I define a right as that which exercised confers no obligation upon anyone: example is speaking. I can speak on the corner and no one is obligated to listen to me. Joining the Military is a privilege, not a right as some people have said. If it were a right everyone would be accepted and none would be refused.
I am entitled to nothing except what God has given me and what I can produce because of it.
I agree that we must not confuse health care with health insurance. If/when the Supreme Court declares the individual mandate clause of Obamacare to be unconstitutional in June, we logically have only one option left to lower the accelerating costs of health care and to spread its benefits and costs more broadly. We must adopt a single-payer option, which is entirely within the scope of the constitution (like Medicare and Social Security, for example) and be finished with our lame efforts to include a reluctant insurance industry in a critical and central facet of our lives. This path is now being openly discussed in the public forum as a result of the unceasing efforts of those on the politicial right to scuttle any attempts to reform the health care system. The fact that we should have taken this path two years ago is amply made by the hysteria now rampant on the political right to oppose any meaningful changes in the health care delivery system, which has spun exponentially out of control due to greed, mismanagement, and insufficient moderation by a badly flawed free market.
Who is we, Marlo? What gives you the right to speak for me – or anyone else? What gives you the right to stick a gun in my face and force me to pay for your health care? I would never threaten you with violence to compel you to provide me with health care (or anything else).
This isn’t a right-wing critique.
It’s a question of authoritarianism vs. people who are opposed to authoritarianism.
I am appalled Herr Erik. Zee hav vays ov making you pay for health care. Itz vor your own good.
By zee vay, May I zee you papers?
Ironic that the US fought wars against fascism and communism during the last century, but people want to co opt their ideas regarding the running of society.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Health care for all paid by none (or at a greatly reduced rate) is a nice thought. The question I have is what are the means to this goal. If you mean to rob from others to pay for this goal then the ends does not justify the means.
If there was not this pile of money (taken by force from others) available to pay for medical care, then what would happen?
I would think that some treatments would be too costly for many, but some costs would be more reasonable. If the doctor/health providers price themselves too high then they will not provide any service and go out of business.
Amazing that there are “people” in Amerika that are too stupid to even recognize political violence/terrorism…Public schools have worked well for the political terrorist class, Eh?
The “We” people…LOL!
“We” need to do this…”We” need to do that.
“We” need to leave me the F alone!
Right you are TS!
The “we” thing drives me up the wall, too.
Mario,
You will never have a perfect system, but the best system is always the free market system, free from the the restraints, rules, and regulations of bureaucrats. The only thing required are basic laws against fraud, theft, and violence.
“You will never have a perfect system”
Why would you state that?
A perfect system is simple. The non-aggression principle. It does take a bit of brain power to understand.
Google “Stefan Basil Molyneux” for help.
Marlo – People who want to join risk pools, by which I really mean “buy medical insurance” can do it without being coerced by their neighbors. It should be obvious that if there are people who haven’t bought medical insurance already, it’s because they’ve chosen not to for one reason or another. Why should we take that choice away? What gives us the authority to do that?
Advocates of nationalized health insurance always talk about “the poor”, and how they can’t afford insurance so they end up going without care. This is nonsense since every state in the nation now offers Medicaid to poor people. So who are they really talking about? They’re talking about middle class families that don’t buy health insurance because its too expensive. Instead they pay cash when they have to. And its true, health insurance *is* too expensive. But my neighbors (some of them anyway) figure they can bring their costs down if they force me to buy it too.
You see, my neighbors believe the Insurance companies when they whine about folks like me driving the cost of insurance up for them. They believe it when the nice Insurance companies tell them that if they can just “convince” me somehow to buy insurance, their rates will go down. Maybe they think its some kind of commission program, who knows? All I know is I have a target on my back and the Insurance companies are offering a bounty for my hide.
And it sounds like you want to help them.
Scott, your comment has made me realize something. I was too focused on the cartel and power aspects to see it before. This is the mandatory auto insurance con! The insurance companies conned the states one by one into making auto insurance mandatory by arguing that it would be cheaper if everyone bought it. It’s the same argument. It will work about the same, it will force low risk people, the most profitable “customers” to buy inusurance. Rates will of course not go down for anyone.
The cash is really going to roll in before the government forces bankruptcy in the long haul.
Brent,, you’ve said it better than me.
Marlo, there is no free market in health care. It’s been a creature of the state and the tax code since the early 20th century. It’s a corporatist system designed to keep prices high and higher. Obama care simply further secures the cartel and the high prices.
Of course, like transit, it’s a deal with the devil which will eventually result in bankruptcy because the political office holders will demand more and more and more without allowing cost increases. Thus allowing total government take over.
We need to remove the FDA, AMA, tax codes which essentially force medical/health care on to employers. We need to re-establish a free market where prices are driven down through competition and innovation as they are in real terms in just about everything the government isn’t involved in.
The debate about mandatory health insurance was poorly argued to the Supreme Court. As such, it should, and will be dismissed based on the Commerce clause (Gov’t can govern it, but can’t mandate it). I’d have argued the merits of manadated health insurance on the grounds of an equitable tax. Plain and simple. And, I’ve have pointed out that payment of that tax was deliberately routed to private insurance companies (instead of to the IRS) to assure efficiency and competition. Additionally, I’d have permitted citizens to waive the insurance if they could PROVE some threshold of assets to cover a major illness (say, $200k). The bottom line is that bad luck happens. But when it happens to those without health insurance (or ability to pay) society pays. I think any debate on this bill should start with a recognition that WHEN we become ill, and can’t pay, we become a burden to society. Without that recognition arguments against Obamacare devolve into statements of bravado.
Check your premises, Mike. The only reason “society” (that is, you and I) pay for the health problems of irresponsible or unfortunate total strangers to whom we owe nothing other than sympathy and goodwill is because we have a system that enables these people to use force to compel people who owe them nothing but goodwill to hand over their money and thus, their most basic human right – the right to be left in peace unless you have caused someone harm.
Any argument for the state to accept control over health care is a poor argument, just like it was foolish to allow them to take control over energy, education, housing, all of which have seen dramatic increases in cost since the government meddled with them. Why do you think government healthcare will be any different?
WHEN we become ill, and can’t pay, we become a burden to society.
Why? Why is this “society’s” problem? Why isn’t it the problem of the individual, or the family of the sickly and indigent, like it used to be? Why can’t it be the problem of their faith community? Or their friends?
It’s my argument that if these people don’t have a family, or friends, or church or some other kind of charitable organization to help them, that says a hell of a lot more about them than it does about “society.”
Why do you want insurance companies to accept tax remittances? This just makes them more a component of the state than they already are. Why does ability to pay need to be proven to the government? This still makes government the final arbiter, which is what most here wish to avoid in the first place.
Why can’t folks like you see that the government is the problem, and rewarding its failure with more authority and power is just going to press the boot more firmly on our necks?
Try freedom, Mike. Real freedom, not the little bit you want government to permit us to have.
That One Guy, these things are “society’s problem” to the extent that they cause spillover costs. That can happen a lot, with epidemic diseases and the like, but it still happens to some extent with any form of illness. That is, while someone dying of heart disease or lung cancer mostly affects himself, even those have some real costs for others. I’m not talking about how some people get worked up with empathy – that’s just something that makes them try to throw burdens on everybody else, so the real cause of spillovers for that is those people, not the sick.
Now, these costs are comparatively small, and certainly don’t amount to justification for intervention, but they are real. The right way to address them is to make/allow people to be well enough off to fend for themselves so nothing spills over – but if you drive them under in the first place, their personal suffering will spill over after a certain point, which is a real effect and consequence.
I’ll buy that –
In which case, the key is to leave people free to become financially and otherwise self-sustaining. But then, there’s no money – or power – in that for the government. Or Big Business.
Consider insurance – now forced on people at gunpoint, with more to come.
The average person already spends (wastes) several thousand dollars annually on:
Car insurance
Life insurance
Home insurance
Health insurance
If, instead, they lived prudently (and so obviated the need for most of this insurance) they could put aside/save/invest this money – which after a fairly short time amounts to a pile of cash – available for most (though not all) major problems that might crop up but which of course probably will not crop up. The Clovers want to deny people the right to make this reasonable calculation for themselves.
On health care, two further points:
First, the idiocy of using insurance to pay for routine things like a physical or allergy medicine. It is like using a car insurance policy to pay for oil changes.
Second, the “useless eater” cost associated with the paperwork that results from the above. Instead of just paying for your check-up, you submit a claim. A claim that must be handled by multiple useless eaters, starting with the ones at the doctor’s office. The typical doctor now has a staff of 2-4 (or more) people at the front desk whose only purpose is to deal with all this paperwork. Each one “earns” say $40k annually. So before the doctor even pays the electric bill, his practice must take in $100k (or more) just to pay the useless eaters.
And we wonder why “healthcare costs so much”….
The Austrian view of economics is, IMO, always technically correct about the burden any interventionist policy incurs on society. OK. But, the Austrain view deliberately avoids discussion of the inherent inefficiency society plays in an economy because society IS about the strong assisting the weak? I agree, technically, with the points made in this thread about self reliance and the burden other’s irresponsibility places on all of us. I actually agree that it’s ‘technically’ unfair that others pay for the healthcare of those who can’t. But, stupid people make stupid decisions and how far do we really want to go? Are we really willing to step over the idiot in the street who broke his leg and can’t pay? Would we let pre-schoolers starve cause their mother is too useless to feed them? I see the points everyone has raised about the repulsion we all feel about helping irresponsible people. I do. But, as a responsible person, I sincerely believe some degree of burden is my cost of membership in an advanced society. So, I agree with the ‘technical’ points made in this thread (and, I thank everyone who made them). But, I think a greater wrong occurs when we completely abandon our duty help… stupid people. I sense the ‘best’ solution to this healthcare debate lies somewhere between the Austrian view and an acceptance of our ‘unfair’ burden as a functioning members of society. I’m no communist. But, I can’t step over the lame and crippled in the street either.
“But, as a responsible person, I sincerely believe some degree of burden is my cost of membership in an advanced society.”
This is the charitable impulse and it’s a wonderful thing. You – and everyone else – ought to be free to help as you are able and deem appropriate. But you’re not free (morally) to point a gun at anyone else in order to compel them to “help.”
Once you have opened that door, there is no longer any limit to the violence that can be justified against innocent people. Which leads to where we find ourselves today.
The only legitimate purpose of government – that is, of the use of force – is to keep the peace. To protect people’s rights – not to diminish or rescind them.
This is the moral argument against your position. The practical argument is that when charity is voluntary, it has built-in checks. That is, it is harder for scumbags to exploit. Because the givers have a choice about giving, they can meter what they give to the truly worthy recipients. And if they think someone is a layabout or just taking advantage (or a “free” hospital is corrupt, etc.) they can decline to give.
Also, more broadly, voluntary charity is good for the human spirit – and for the sense of honest community that builds a civil society. When you force people to “help,” you cause the “helpers” to rightly resent the recipients, as well as the system that threatens them with violence in order to take their rightful property so that it may be given to some random stranger to whom they owe no debt.
Here’s a personal anecdote that’s relevant:
We live in a rural area; our neighbors behind us are old people. In winter, I take my tractor and plow their (long) driveway because I want to help them out. They are nice people – and it makes me feel good to be able to assist them. But how would I feel about it if the government told me I “owed” them plowing services – and threatened me with violence if I failed to plow their driveway?
It’s the same with “health care.” Helping people – that is, freely giving of your time and resources – is one thing. Being forced at gunpoint to provide your time/resources to others is the moral and polar opposite. It is evil in itself because it chains us to one another by force and so makes us hate each other. It is an assault at the root of healthy human interaction – that is, human interaction based upon goodwill.
Do you see?
The question is, what happens when the consequences of stupid decisions are removed?
When a person who makes stupid decisions must depend upon the charity of another person he is less apt to make stupid decisions. When stupid decisions are subsidized by government force then stupid decisions don’t seem so horrible.
Worse yet is what it does to the people from whom the funds are collected. The value retained from work and “good decisions” drops. The value of sloth and “stupid decisions” increases. This means more people make the decision not to work and start making “stupid decisions”. Why? “stupid decisions” usually feel good in the moment. They are enjoyable things in the short term that have long term consequences.
For instance, because in part, that government subsidizes stupid decisions, the value of money drops. This punishes people who save for a rainy day. Use it or lose it. Furthermore with the downside risk subsidized people take more risk. Have a McMansion with no money down, it’s government subsidized! If something goes wrong get government aid. Or if that fails just walk away. It’s going to be those suckers who bought houses they could afford that will end up paying. (same on the crony corporate level several factors of ten greater) But who got to enjoy in the meantime? It’s not the sucker who bought the small house that’s for sure.
Someone who gives up what is enjoyable immediately should get the long time preference reward of financial security and so on. But the government is going to play equalizer of results. So why defer to later? Take for today. When nobody accumulates capital, when nobody works, because there’s no reward for it, what happens? Third World. In the third world the fruits of a person’s labor is stolen. Saved capital is stolen. Look at the result. Poverty for just about everyone.
So what is the greater evil? Leaving those in need at the mercy of voluntary kindness and/or the consequences of their own decisions or bring down the people who made the good decisions until they no longer make good decisions because the bad decisions have no penalty and are a lot more enjoyable? Or they just don’t feel like putting in the effort when the fruits of their labor go to someone else.
As to health care, if the government and emotional people hadn’t interfered decades ago it would be cheaper than dirt today. Today’s poor can afford so much because of at least a somewhat free market. They could afford health care too if it had been a relatively free market. Doubling down on the mistake of interference is not going to fix it. It will make it worse.
As to the in the street comment, when were they ever? They aren’t now. They weren’t when health care was free market. It’s a false assumption.
Marlo,
Many people give medical care an unduly prominent place in the grand scope of things.
Seems like declaring health care to be such a huge, central part of our lives, individually and nationally, is like planning an expedition into the wilderness and worrying about if there are going to be bathrooms along the way, because when we need to solve THAT problem, we need to solve it RIGHT NOW. Just like patching a gunshot wound.
Health care can never be free because SOMEONE always has to pay for it and it’s not a right because SOMEONE other than the recipient must provide it.
If I could do my own heart or liver transplant, then yeah, health care would be my right.
Hell, I think I have more right to my CAR that to a doctor’s attention, because mobility is an essential feature of liberty in a mechanized society.
And I think that if automotive technology existed during George Washington’s time, he’d agree with me.
I don’t understand why we have to keep reminding people that this isn’t about medicine, but liberty. If the State can do this, what can it legally do next time?
And there’s ALWAYS a next time.
But if you could do your own surgery or treat yourself the government won’t allow it. The government does not allow us to simply buy the medication we think we need. It wants to forbid us from buying the vitamins we think we need or could use.
If health care weren’t regarded as something to be controlled we would have free and unfettered access to purchase whatever we need to do it ourselves or pay someone to do it for us. Instead it is restricted at every turn and soon we will have to beg someone to allow us to have what we need regardless of who pays for it.
It’s a “right” like gun ownership is. We can buy only what the government says we can while the government taxes us to provide other people with it. (US government arms foreign and domestic governments, rebel groups, terrorist groups, drug gangs, etc and so forth)
Mario, socialized medicine (or single payer, as you call it) is NOT Constitutional either. Medicare and SS are as unconstitutional as government funded TV converter boxes, free beer or Food stamps.
Stop buying into the left vs right dialectic, the whole thing is a sham.The real battle is Statist (which both R and D are heavily for) and Liberty. It is not governmemts role or business to be involved in health in the first place. The reason why everything is so fucked right is BECAUSE of prior government intervention: price fixing, monopolies on training and treatments, safety requirements, etc.
We don’t have a free market, THAT IS THE PROBLEM. Government monopolies always raise shortages, poorer quality and absurd prices. Of course we must forget the collusion between the AMA and government either in creating this mess.
I think the collusion is between insurance companies and the government. I don’t think the AMA likes either one of them. Surgeons in particular seem to have an open disdain for both that I find refreshing.
My take is Obama never intended for this ACA thing to work. Let’s consider; the guy lays claim to being a Constitutional scholar, then approves a plan that includes the “individual mandate”? Hmm. That doesn’t make sense unless you figure he’s stupid. Obama might be a lot of things, but stupid isn’t one of them.
My guess is it’s his way of sticking it to the Republicans and any Dems that refused to raise taxes for universal single payer health care. Sort of a Brair Rabbit move, “Oh please Mr. Fox, don’t make me use the individual mandate!” Then the whole thing gets thrown out by the SCOTUS, he gets to wail about the damned conservatives that forced him to raise taxes, and we’re done. Meanwhile he gets re-elected.
Brilliant.
A single payer system would lead to the Soviet Union circa 1960. No innovation, no choice, incredible shortages that ultimately will bankrupt the system. The only way to fix things is to make the individual have a stake in what the price is. No one cares or asks what xyz surgery will cost because they do not pay the bill, a third party does. We should offer catastrophic plans for younger and healthier people, and charitable foundations could help pay for the ill.
The bottom line is that people are overusing hospitals because there is no consequence for doing so (the free market would restrain this). Insurance as it is does not work because it is a pre-payment plan, not real insurance. We need real competition and patient responsibility to kick in. That WILL lower costs and keep us cutting edge.
If ever I have to deal with this evil single payer model, I will shoot myself. And wait hours to be seen and probably die due to insufficient care!
Right on, Veronica!
One of the most idiotic (because destructive) aspects of the current way of doing things is the use of insurance to pay for routine care. Can you imagine using your car insurance policy to pay for oil changes? Can you imagine what car insurance would cost if people paid for car repairs that way?
Good to have you with us!
There is a science fiction short story that is based on using insurance for auto repair and maintenance. I can’t find my copy and I cannot remember the author or the title.
Could these be your story?
Life-line by Robert A. Heinlein
Robin S. Scott. Who needs insurance?
Sadly, neither. The story is about the ever skyrocketing cost of auto repair and auto repair and insurance. It’s told through a series of invoices and letters between car owners, repair shops, and insurance companies.
It was part of a science fiction class I took. I removed it from it’s proper location to re-read it many years ago. It did not return to that spot. I have not been able to find it since. It’s got to be somewhere… I made sure the place was empty the last time I moved 🙂
Watch this thug cop:
I love it how they make themselves to a threat to people and then hold people being “nervous” against them. Even when they aren’t apparently.
Also the mystical “dog alert” that can only be interpreted by the trained cop. Which makes the dog nothing but a ceremony for the cop to search whenever he wants. And of course plant the drugs if they so desire.
And just to make sure these club members don’t hassle each other: http://leoprocards.com/ (in today’s LRC blog)
No, he was right.
FDR is the single most evil person in US history. He did everything from authorize severe violations of the Fourth Amendment (Wiretapping) to forcing Americans to join a doomed Ponzi scheme (Social Security) to creating the American Gestapo (FBI).
He is a traitor and a profound villain. We’re still trying to undo all the damage he and his ilk did to our once great nation.
T_Paine, I’d say FDR would come in second to Lincoln for villain and traitor status since making war upon the several states is the very definition of treason. Lincoln laid the foundation for nationalism and dictatorship under the guise of “preserving the union”. FDR merely continued to build on that foundation.
At least Lincoln was rewarded for his treason, the rest of them got away with their acts of treason.
I agree: Lincoln was the worst. But FDR and Wilson are close seconds.
Hamilton, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelts, Johnson.
All the worst of the USA political terrorists.
The cancer started much earlier. Don’t forget Wilson – and Roosevelt – and before them, the ur-villain and original defiler of the Republic (RIP)… Dishonest Abe Lincoln.
Hm, FDR was evil–but he stands in line behind:
#1: Lincoln, the original American tyrant
#2: Wilson, who presided over the creation of the Fed and the IRS
FDR’s special evil was that he conned americans from not trusting the government into trusting it. From being independent to dependent on the state.
Lincoln enslaved the people by force.
Wilson enslaved the people through the money by trick so most did not notice.
But FDR made people love their slavery and not even see it as such.
FDR is why we have an uphill battle just getting people to realize their condition. FDR is why people think that good deeds domestically are done by government power. (Wilson did that for foreign policy). FDR made people look to the government instead of to themselves. FDR is why people believe in government intervention into anything and everything.
FDR was more insidious than Lincoln by the fact that FDR took minds, Lincoln only bodies.
A nation is an idea and the Lincoln cult has to hide how Lincoln violated that idea. FDR changed the idea so there is no reason to hide it, people now believe in that idea.
Lincoln killed the voluntary republic by force. FDR killed the idea of one ever existing. Which is worse?
“A nation is an idea and the Lincoln cult has to hide how Lincoln violated that idea. FDR changed the idea so there is no reason to hide it, people now believe in that idea.”
Brent, an excellent insight.
Anyone who doubts the truth of it need only view the masses thronged outside the Supreme Court demanding “health care” be confirmed as a right. Or the lowing cattle mooing whenever Obama’s face appears anywhere…
Speaking of Obama’s face – There is an ad on your website with his picture that follows me as I scroll…It is making me SICK!
Sorry, Sally – I apologize for that! It’s Google Adsense….
Is there a Google AdGoodSense?
Oh…Wait…Google is CIA-backed.
It’s the stuff you see in the sidelines; they get auto-generated and I think the auto-generation ties into (generally) whatever the content of the article is. So, an article mentioning ObamaCare gins up an ad with his face – etc.
@SallyB,
Look into Ghostery. It can minimize the amount of adds you see.
Tor is something else you may find worth your while.
I do click those ads to help the site 🙂
I concede the point to an eloquently expressed piece of reasoning!
Well said Brent. In terms of directly visible egregiousness Lincoln’s acts were the worst; but in terms of long-term damage to the spirit of the people FDR takes the cake.
Thanks for the discussion; it’s one of the reasons I love the commentors on this site–they can actually change my mind!
thanks, but I didn’t mean to change anyone’s mind with regard to the ranking. Ask me on any given day and I’ll change my mind on the order of those three :). I only wanted to point out why FDR wasn’t a slacker in the elimination of the republic and his contribution is why this health care bill came into being.
An excellent insight. Thanks for posting. I wish the paper trolls would c/p stuff like that instead of always regurgitating the party line, unchecked.
Actually, FDR himself didn’t force anyone to join a “doomed Ponzi scheme”, he just set it up to fail unless it was fixed – but it could have been fixed, so it wasn’t doomed, i.e. locked in to fail. The people FDR forced to join all gained, and although it was set up to hit the rocks for later joiners (who were forced to join by later governments, not by FDR), there was enough room to manoeuvre that later governments could have fixed things before they hit the rocks, possibly even as late as the 1980s – not by making it a viable scheme (which was impossible) but by winding it back before it was too late to do so without some people losing (rapid abolition would have hurt some people even in the very beginning).
The fundamental nature of the thing is what’s at issue; viz: Is it moral to force Smith at gunpoint to provide funds for the benefit of Jones? My answer is of course no. Because theft is theft, no matter ow it’s dressed up and no matter whether it’s done by a thug in the street or a thug wearing a government costume. No one has a right to the property of anyone else. To compel another to labor for their benefit (the defining characteristic of slavery).
Is this “mean spirited” and “selfish”? (The typical Clover argument.) Only if it is “mean spirited” to oppose threatening people who have caused no harm to anyone with violence in order to compel them to sacrifice their own financial security for the benefit of random strangers. To turn people against one another – to create a system of inter-generational parasitism based on violence rather than one based on goodwill and voluntary cooperation.
Yes and no.
Yes, that is the fundamental issue about what FDR himself did, but that is only relevant for assessing him and his legacy in an almost academic way.
No, that is not “the” fundamental issue facing us, but rather the whole, rolled over, generational thing is. For that, FDR’s original sin of commission pales before the cumulative effects of all his successors’ sins of omission. For us, looking at what to do about it, FDR is almost unimportant except symbolically.
In case anybody is interested, some years ago I did write up one approach to fixing these things in an article for an Australian context; it may be more broadly applicable, and certainly FDR was irrelevant here.
If my ancestors were robbed of their property, does that give me the right to rob some other person today? (Because I have been deprived of my inheritance, say?)
The fundamental issue is indeed theft. Yes, it is a tragedy that so many millions of people have become dependent upon SS. That imposes no obligation on me or any other person to “contribute” to “help” them. Just as I would have no moral right to mug you to make up for my having been mugged.
Life is not fair. But life’s vicissitudes do not obviate people’s rights. The misfortune of one does not impose an obligation enforceable at gunpoint on someone else. We owe our fellow men goodwill and are obligated to respect their rights – as we expect them to respect ours. That’s all.
I personally would be more than willing to renounce any claim to future “benefits” in exchange for simply not being forced to continue “contributing” to the system. Just leave me the hell alone. That’s all liberty-minded people are asking for. That their basic human rights be respected.
But the Clovers won’t countenance that.
The whole thing is very tangled, deliberately so, which is why I regard the tangle as the fundamental issue; it is a cheat that set up the theft. The reason it matters is the theft, which shows up in its eventual effect much later than when it is set in motion: someone gets left holding the parcel when the music stops, as it must for any Ponzi scheme that does not manage to get unwound first, and for that person there is a realised loss (do you have the “pass the parcel” game in the U.S.A.? it’s much like “musical chairs”). Only, for earlier people who received but passed the parcel, it never presented difficulties, so – if they bought into the rhetoric – they never realised they were perpetuating a problem; to them, it looks like paying in and getting back from a genuine investment.
It was never a genuine investment, so it was wrong all along. But being wrong all along – the theft – wasn’t the fundamental issue, because there was something even more fundamental: the way it was wrapped up as a parcel to conceal what was going on and to defer the problems being realised – losses showing up for actual people – until well after the original perpetrators were no longer around. To me, that cheat is deeper than the theft it enabled – more fundamental – because it had to come before that, both logically and chronologically.
Practically speaking, even today, you can’t get anywhere with trying to undo and stop the continuing and growing theft unless you first wake people up to the cheat. They all will once it’s too late and the music stops, but there will be nothing that can be done about it then. There still is something that can be done about it now, just, so the failure around now isn’t FDR’s original sin of commission in setting it up but the continuing sin of omission of his successors in not fixing it; that’s where I came in, but I didn’t clarify that “it” isn’t just the theft but both that and the cheat that supported and still supports the theft. And the place to start the fix is the deeper thing – in my view, using a wind back that at least spreads the unavoidable loss and pain rather than hitting some people so hard all at once that it practically destroys them. This is a thing in which a lot of people really are all in it together, if only because someone really did drop them (us) in it together rather than because they (we) somehow anyway inherently are a collective “us”.
“Pass the Parcel” = “Hot Potato”, roughly the inverse of “Musical Chairs”
One answer. State nullification.
Yeah right, and lose out on all that Federal money? Besides, you are forgetting about that whole Civil War thing, when States rights ceased to exist. You can’t nullify the edicts of the supreme power of the land. Just ask them.
I disagree, all the War Between the States showed was that the Northerners were wussies and cowed to Lincoln. Before he forced the Draft on the Northern States the Confederacy was winning. Nullification is the only non-violent solution and still keep the Union intact. If the States don’t nullify then secession is the only other option open. And I don’t see DC being able to stop it.
Very sad that this wasn’t stopped 60 or 70 years ago when it was still possible.
Back around the year 2000, I had read about a group of prominent russian economists who predicted the breakup of the United States in the early 2010’s due to major economic depression.
Also, I am aware of the elite’s plan to create a country called the “north american union” which would have a soviet style constitution.
I guess this will depend on who wins the coming conflict which will occur in the soon to be former USA, the good guys or the bad.
I’ve studied the War of Federal Aggression for many years and while I suspect we agree about the nature and causes of the war, I will concede that the North outfought the South. In part, because the North was willing to use tactics similar to those used by the Waffen SS in WW II: Total war – the deliberate targeting of civilian populations and infrastructure; deliberate genocide. The South – to its credit but ultimately, to its disadvantage – fought an honorable war. There were a few exceptions, of course (as happens in any war) but as policy, the South did not countenance attacks on civilians, the burning down of cities, etc.
The South – in my opinion – made a number of strategic mistakes. Chief among these was being maneuvered into firing the first shot, which gave the North a psychological advantage. Second, fighting an offensive rather than a defensive (and hit and run) war against a materially superior enemy. The North simply did what the Soviets did to the Germans: Attrited them to ruin. Lee understood this danger in 1861 but unfortunately, the Southern leadership did not act accordingly.
The North – or rather, great swaths of Northern public sentiment – were either opposed to war or not fervently in favor of war in 1861. If the South had forced Lincoln into the position of conscripting Northern young men to be sent far away – to another country – to get their limbs blown off and lose their lives – public opinion would very quickly have turned against him. All the South needed to do was avoid losing for a year or two – and that could have been achieved.
You are correct Eric, and that has been the policy of the military ever since. Regardless of what anyone else says. Look at Dresden, Tokyo, North Vietnam, Afganistan, Iraq and any other wars the US has conducted.
Instead of firing on Fort Summter, they had blockaded it into surrender the result may have been different and there would not have been a war between the States.
I am wondering what would happen if people who stopped by the police, arrested by the police or have their property invaded by the police show the Constitution to the Police and demand to be shown where their authority comes from and not to cite any court rulings since all court rulings – since Marbury vs. Madison – are unconstitutional that interpret the Constitution. Too bad the State Governments don’t stand up to the Federal Government and nullify every law that they – the Federal Government – ever made. I would sleep sounder at night.
Sorry if I was ranting or got off topic.
People have done this – and the result is (usually) they get arrested and carted off to the clink. Most cops – and most judges – have little, if any, respect for the actual Constitution – whose plain meaning no longer carries any legal weight. Consider the Fourth Amendment: There are no qualifiers – no “compelling state interest” – just the simple, eloquent language forbidding unreasonable searches which are then defined as those absent specific probable cause. Yet we have the TSA Gate Rape, “safety” stops and so on – all in clear violation of the plain meaning of the term, unreasonable – by dint of being performed on anyone, without the slightest pretext of probable cause.
One could easily go on… the point being, the Constitution exists only as a historical document paid perfunctory lip service to by the lawless elites who control the government.
The Supreme Court ruled 70 years ago that farmers growing animal feed on their own property to feed to their own animals can be regulated as “interstate commerce”.
The Constitution was killed many decades ago. It only exists today as a false cloak for statists to dress up in to talk about freedom.
Yup –
The Soviet Union also had a Constitution. Of course, its people had no rights. Just like us.
I believe the old joke was that the difference between the Soviet Constitution and the American one was that the Soviet Constitution guaranteed you freedom of speech, assembly and religion.
And the American Constitution guaranteed you freedom AFTER speech, assembly and religion.
Two sets of rules. One for the show car, and another for the daily driver.
Health care is not, and cannot be a right. Health care (as we see it), is usually a service provided by doctors and other professionals. Therefore it is labor done by someone else. If we declare health care a right, it means we will be forcing someone to do labor to maintain someone else’s rights. No one has to do anything for me to have the right to life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness, other than defend the country as a whole.
When you sign up for military service, you basically give up your constitutional rights. Will we have to have a similar setup for the health care industry?
But what would happen if health care was made to be a right? The first thing that Washington would do is try to take it away… just like the right to life (Roe v Wade), liberty (Patriot Act, etc), and Pursuit of happiness (ever have to deal with the DMV? not happy).
Check with some Canadians. Over 90% think our public medical system is the best thing ever delivered by government. Any politician who threatens it is soon given the Deep 6.
Your suggestions for Auto insurance are already in place in several canadian provinces – it works very well.
Now universal home & life insurance; hmmm, good ideas. We’ll have to bring those into Canada.
I don’t care how many people favor this sort of thing – my rights are not subject to a vote! That’s what separates a Clover from a non-Clover.
You lost your rights years ago. You are now living in a fascist state.
Come vacation in Canada & checkout the difference.
Canada’s a beautiful country – except that they’ll arrest you for possessing a gun to defend yourself or for violating the speech code.
I like those Canadians who don’t respect American know how. Those who are more respectful of know why. Lifegivers who hate men who voluntarily kill someone because someone in authority tells them to.
The Canadians who would rather attend a meeting of Mothers Against Dead Soldiers than raise their hand in salute to a flag or honor the idiots who died 1000s of miles away for no legitimate reason of self defense whatsoever.
Women who continue to hate warmongers and warmakers even after their death.
Moms who hate morons who get a letter in the mail to attend a mandatory workshop in a European Death Camp and actually show up.
Parents who hate the monotone rhythmic cadence of the militarized English they hear during newscasts, sportscasts, advertisements, and almost everything else.
And you think Canada isn’t a fascist state?! The classic definition of fascism is government control of the means of production…not ownership…just control. If Canada’s medical professionals are in private practice but must comply with the dictates of a government-controlled ‘single payer’ system, then healthcare in Canada is fascist. If Canada’s medical professionals are instead salaried employees of the state, then it is a socialist system. Either way…pick your poison.
I am Canadian and I am wondering where you get your stats…90% of Canadians like our system???
(Does your stats come from one of our government skewed news programs?)
In Canada anything that is urgent or life threatening, if you have money you go to the U.S. We have a 2 tier system!
The Canadian system is bankrupting our country as it is with all countries that practice socialize medicine–U.K., Europe etc.
Frankly, I see the U.S. becoming even more socialistic than my own country.
That’s VERY scary!
Glenn 🙂
I knew there were some good Canucks left!
Time to emigrate to ‘The Land of the Free’.
Land of the free ride?
you are a delusional LIAR!!!!
sorry,my comments were for voxfox
I’m American Indian. My Tribe provides all my Medicines & GREAT health care, including Hospitalization. I pay NOTHING!
Why should I be FORCED to be onto ObamaCare. I’m tired of that Communist
anyway!
Jerry
Right on, Jerry!
The only time it’s legitimate to threaten anyone with force is when you yourself have been threatened with harm first. In other words, violence is only legitimate when used in self-defense. Obamacare and all the rest of it amounts to aggressive violence – no different than a street thug. The fact that you’re “getting” something (after something’s been taken from you) doesn’t change the essential nature of the thing.
The question of course is where does the tribe get the funds? If they come from business revenues of the tribe, then that would be the ideal.
Of course the US government could provide all sorts of benefits to the people of this nation through selling resources to the highest bidder in open auction. However, the government instead gives away the resources for pennies on the dollar to connected private businesses instead of using them to produce revenues such that taxes or at least many taxes would be unnecessary.
Voxfox cannot be a delusional liar. A liar is someone who knowingly tells untruths, which isn’t delusional.
Well, it might be possible to be delusional about one subject, enticing one to lie about another subject, qualifying technically as a delusional liar. Whether or not this situation qualifies, I won’t address.
Not with that word construction, which has “delusional” qualifying “liar”, i.e. that a liar who is delusional in the capacity of liar. Separating them would need something like “delusional and a liar”.
When anybody buys insurance it inflates the price of the commodity insured. It does NOT work very well. The government should provide limited coverage based upon need and a certain cut-off point above which all will be paid for regardless just to be fair to wealthier taxpayers. A few things like an annual doctor’s visit could just be free to incentivize consumption. All pregnancy-related and adoption system-related (for both parties) expenses should be free to disincentivize abortion. I’m pro-choice but I am anti-abortion as well and this is actually a more practical way of reducing abortions.
As for insurance it is a racket and extortion and it needs to be BANNED NOT mandated. Totally banned. And financial need payments applied to genuine need. If you can walk to work then you can be out of a car for some time and that’s just the way it is. My idea would save everyone on average money in the long run even if people have to pay more in short incidents. And it would put the unproductive insurance sector to work in more productive sectors.
Voice,
The government cannot provide anything without first taking it from someone else. Thus, your proposed “free” annual doctor visits are merely paid for by others – at gunpoint, if the insurance is mandatory.
I have no issue with insurance if it is voluntary. Banning it is wrong – because it’s wrong to use force to compel anyone to do (or not do) something they wish to do, provided they’re not harming others in the process. If Smith wishes to sell insurance – and Jones wishes to buy it, then they have a right to do business with one another. But Smith has no right to force Jones to buy insurance.
You write:
“And financial need payments applied to genuine need.”
No, financial payments should be based on agreed terms and conditions of the applicable contract.
“Need” is completely subjective. Do you really want to be put in the position of having some asshole decide what your “needs” are? As opposed to signing an enforceable contract in which the parties know exactly what each others’ obligations are?
Of course, there is no such thing as a “right” if it comes at someone else’s expense. For some reason that has to be explained to many people – usually the ones who expect to get something at someone else’s expense.