Amid talk that the administration will re-name its plan for socialized medicine after the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy and re-package the national health care campaign as an American tribute to a 47-year veteran of the U.S. Senate who persistently opposed...
POLITICS
The basic and crucial political issue of our age is: capitalism versus socialism, or freedom versus statism. For decades, this issue has been silenced, suppressed, evaded, and hidden under the foggy, undefined rubber-terms of “conservatism” and “liberalism” which had lost their original meaning and could be stretched to mean all things to all men. – AYN RAND
The Great Escape
Many of the issues of our times are hard to understand without understanding the vision of the world that they are part of. Whether the particular issue is education, economics or medical care, the preferred explanation tends to be an external explanation-- that is,...
A Letter to Lee Scott, CEO of Wal-Mart on Wal-Mart’s Support of The Government Taking Over Health Care
Dear Mr. Scott,I was shocked to read that Wal-Mart's supports socialized medicine. Having asked for a donation to our Tea Party Association here in Albuquerque, New Mexico, I was told that Wal-Mart's policy is not to involve itself in political movements. So, upon...
Suppose Car Insurance Was Considered to Be a ‘Right’
The major impetus behind the Democratic health care plans is not economic--it is moral. The claim that health care is a moral right has motivated enormous government coercions against the medical industry for nearly fifty years. But this moral claim has blinded people...
Obama’s “Bait and Switch”: Whose Medical Decisions?: Part III
Amid all the controversies over medical care, no one seems to be asking a very basic question: Why does it take more than 1,000 pages of legislation to insure people who lack medical insurance? Despite incessant repetition of the fact that millions of Americans...
Is Racial Profiling Racist?
Harvard Professor Henry Gates' arrest has given new life to the issue of racial profiling. We can think of profiling in general as a practice where people use an observable or known physical attribute as a proxy or estimator of some other unobservable or unknown...
The Obama Vision: Whose Medical Decisions?: Part IV
The serious, and sometimes chilling, provisions of the medical care legislation that President Obama has been trying to rush through Congress are important enough for all of us to stop and think, even though his political strategy from the outset has been to prevent...
Obamacare’s Phony Arguments: Whose Medical Decisions?: Part II
When famed bank robber Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks, he said: "Because that's where the money is." For the same reason, it is as predictable as the sunrise that medical care for the elderly will be cut back under a government-controlled medical...
The Pelosi Terror: Guillotine The Rich
Nancy Pelosi wants government to take over health care. But there's a snag. At present the yearly income level at which Americans will be slapped with an onerous tax increase, is set at $250,000.Pelosi's own salary is presently $223,500 per annum, which does not...
Obama Cronies vs. American Citizens: Whose Medical Decisions?: Part I
There was a time when rushing a thousand-page bill through Congress so fast that no one has time to read it would have provoked public outrage. But now, this has been attempted twice in the first 6 months of a new administration. The fact that they got away with it...
On The White House “Disinformation” Campaign
The “disinformation” I’ve found has actually come from the White House…
The Health Care Bill: What HR 3200, “America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009,” Says
What does the bill recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, HR3962, short-titled the Affordable Health Care for America Act, actually say about major health-care issues? I here pose a few commonsense questions, cite some relevant passages, and offer a few...
America’s Fascist Health Care System
Many years ago America started down a path that has gradually limited the free practice of medicine and the relationship between physicians and patients. You can never really have a private meeting with your doctor anymore, because the government is always in the room...
Politics and Blacks
President Barack Obama won an unprecedented 96 percent of the black vote. That's not much of a news story since blacks typically give their votes to the Democratic candidate. Blacks are probably the most politically loyal people in the nation and it is almost taken as...
Random Thoughts for August 2009
Random thoughts on the passing scene: Different people have very different reactions to President Barack Obama. Those who listen to his rhetoric are often inspired, while those who follow what he actually does are often appalled. New York and Chicago have both...
A Public Option That Destroys All Options: Government Health Care Tyranny:
George Orwell is alive and writing new fiction about Congress legislating expanded government control of health care. Or at least it seems that way. A growing and ominous trend lately is the inversion of language to couch further government intervention in the name of...
Utopia Versus Freedom
"Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom." We have heard that many times. What is also the price of freedom is the toleration of imperfections. If everything that is wrong with the world becomes a reason to turn more power over to some political savior, then freedom...
Government Health Care: One Noose for One Neck
Before I developed a detailed interest in government management of health care, I was unwillingly introduced to the subject after I was badly injured in a head-on collision in a taxi to LaGuardia Airport in New York City in 1993. To my everlasting regret, the...
Exploiting Public Ignorance
How can political commentators, politicians and academics get away with statements like "Reagan budget deficits," "Clinton budget surplus," "Bush budget deficits" or "Obama's tax increases"? The only answer is that they, or the people who believe such statements, are...
Disaster in the Making
After many a disappointment with someone, and especially after a disaster, we may be able to look back at numerous clues that should have warned us that the person we trusted did not deserve our trust. When that person is the President of the United States, the...
Jewish Settlements and Israeli Law
We are hearing a lot now about Israel's creation of "Jewish" settlements on "Palestinian land." These settlements are created, we are often told, to extend the "apartheid state" of Israel by squeezing out the local populations and establishing a superior Jewish ruling...
Why Are We Moving Toward Socialized Medicine?
There can be no such thing as a “right” to products or services created by the effort of others, and this most definitely includes medical products and services.
A Post-Racial President?
Many people hoped that the election of a black President of the United States would mark our entering a "post-racial" era, when we could finally put some ugly aspects of our history behind us. That is quite understandable. But it takes two to tango. Those of us who...
Obama’s Magical News Conference for Socialized Medicine
Distracting the audience's attention is one of the ways magicians pull off some of their tricks. President Barack Obama's televised news conference on medical care shows that he is something of a magician when it comes to politics. The big trick for the president is...
In Defense of Liberty
The date is December 16, 1773. A ship has just entered Boston Harbor. In its hold it carries the chains of a foreign government. American colonists, increasingly rebellious under the weight of British oppression, board this ship and as a symbol of defiance seize these...
The Racism of Diversity
The U.S. Naval Academy's PowerPoint display explains diversity by saying, "Diversity is all the different characteristics and attributes of individual sailors and civilians which enhance the mission readiness of the Navy," adding that: "Diversity is more than equal...
Medical Care Confusion
Is there a coherent argument for government-controlled medical care or are slogans and hysteria considered sufficient? We hear endlessly about how many Americans don't have health insurance. But, if we stop and think-- which politicians hope we never do-- that raises...
EPA Cover-up: “Cap and Trade” — A Radical Environmentalist’s Dream Come True
Here's what I wrote in last year's column titled "Global Warming Rope-a-Dope" (12/24/2008): "Once laws are written, they are very difficult, if not impossible, to repeal. If a time would ever come when the permafrost returns to northern U.S., as far south as New...
A Personal Inequity: Me and Michael Jordan
Sometimes, when I hear about "disparities" and "inequities," I think of a disparity that applied directly to me-- the disparity in basketball ability between myself and Michael Jordan. When I was in school, I was so awful in basketball that the class coach wouldn't...
Senate Slavery Apology
Last month, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed Senate Resolution 26 "Apologizing for the enslavement and racial segregation of African-Americans." The resolution ends with: "Disclaimer. -- Nothing in this resolution (a) authorizes or supports any claim against the...
A Tangled Web: “Disparate Impact” Dogma (Part 2)
Much of the backlog of cases in our over-burdened courts has been created by the courts themselves, with adventurous judicial "interpretations" of laws that leave a large gray area of uncertainty around even the most plainly written legislation. Lawyers of course fish...
Judge Sotomayor’s Relativism
While I usually write about regional issues here, today's national issues are so crucially important that I'll devote substantial space to the views of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, nominated for the Supreme Court.EmpathyFirst recall what President Obama offered in 2007 as a...