You Have No Right to Violate My Rights
By Adam Murdock, MD
All the problems related to medical care can be traced to a revised and perverse new definition of human rights. No slogan or idea has been used with greater detriment and influence than implying that there is a right to 'free' healthcare. The problem with this slogan is that it takes advantage of the general public's naïve understanding and sympathy for human rights and combines it with an emotional subject such as healthcare.
Using this slogan as a backdrop, political opportunists seeking to impose their version of universal healthcare, trot out tragic examples of individuals, who 'deprived' of their right to healthcare, will be left to suffer and die. They use these rare examples to argue that if only government provided care for everyone then these people would be provided the care they need.
Over the last century, social engineers have also trotted out images of the homeless in the streets to justify total wealth transfer through taxation and the creation of government social programs. Likewise, the Marxist revolution in the Soviet Union and elsewhere appealed to the 'oppressed' with promises of bread and prosperity for the masses. However, in practice the Marxist ideal quickly devolved into endless lines ups for, not bread, but crumbs and not prosperity, but poverty. The promise and practice of universalism in all its forms, including healthcare, proved to be untenable and a gigantic failure.
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- Category: Philosophy
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Hip-Pocket Politics: How To Become a Tack
by Gary North
"If you are in the hip pocket of any political party, prepare to be sat on." ~ Gary North
Political victory in the United States is best defined as follows:
Getting your political agenda enacted into law, enforced by the Executive branch, and upheld by the courts.
A definition of political victory that ignores any of these criteria is part of a shell game: getting people elected for their careers' sake, not your agenda.
To achieve this three-part victory, you must be part of a voting bloc that has the power to impose sanctions: positive and negative.
Establishment politicians understand this. They respect it. They have learned to exploit it. They tell their constituents: "You can win through me if you supply the votes to enable me to win (positive sanction) at the expense of my opponent (negative sanction)." This is the politics of the shell game, what I call the Punch and Judy show.
The correct definition of the power to impose political sanctions is this:
Sufficient votes to deliberately keep your party's candidate from winning in November if he waffles, and sufficient votes to elect his replacement two years later.
There is a corollary:
The willingness to run a post-nomination independent candidate against an incumbent member of your party if he has waffled during his most recent term in office.
Any voting bloc that has this ability will not be in any party's hip pocket.
Conclusion: a fundamental strategy for political success is to get the rival wing of your party into the party's hip pocket.
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The Political Unemployment Scam!
by Gary D. Barnett
As Obama once again this past week took to the airwaves upon his seemingly permanent throne, he boasted mightily of his job-creating prowess. Of course in real terms, all that was said was little more than braggadocios pomp, but when has that ever stopped a politician from spewing nonsense.
Anyone who pays attention fully understands that most all government figures are either false due to outright incompetence or simply lies put forth in order to fool the people. In the case of unemployment, both of these factors are evident. Without going into detail as to the unemployment report for March, a report with very mixed data to say the least, let’s look at just one factor; temporary census hires. I want to concentrate on the overall effect of census hiring, and over a period of time, not just the 48,000 hired in March.
According to the census bureau’s own site, the "total number of people recruited for 2010 Census operations during fiscal years 2009 and 2010 (as of March 1)" was 3.8 million. "This includes almost 1.2 million people recruited for address canvassing last year." Keep in mind that these are for the most part temporary positions that will probably be eliminated by the end of the 3rd quarter of this year. Just for 2010 alone, the census bureau will hire an additional 870,000 temporary workers, and if there is a large non-response follow-up needed, and this is very likely considering the large numbers not complying, then the census bureau intends to hire 635,000 more. Just what does this mean considering real unemployment?
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The Insanity of Government 'Reform'
By William Anderson
Albert Einstein's definition of insanity -- repeating something and expecting different results -- is known to nearly everyone. Yet mere knowledge of this definition apparently has not kept the "best and the brightest" among us from becoming its practitioners.
The belief that government continually "reforms" itself, correcting earlier "mistakes" and moving toward "perfection," has dominated our body politic since the Progressive Era. American history books celebrate the Progressivism of a century ago in which a combination of intellectuals, politicians, and business leaders sought to lay aside the "chaos and corruption" that was the market economy and replace it with something that was "efficient" and "equitable."
Anyone who has taken a typical American history course, whether in high school or college, can remember how the expansion of government through a series of "reforms" has been touted as "progress." We read how Congress passed the Pure Food and Drug Act after Upton Sinclair's book, The Jungle, exposed unsanitary conditions in meat-packing houses, how government collared Big Business by establishing economic regulation and antitrust rules, and how the "people" finally controlled the huge fortunes made by businessmen like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller earned via the income tax.
Then there is the establishment of the Federal Reserve System, which gave us a "modern" financial system (and helped give us the Great Depression). The list seems endless, and the message is clear: The expansion of the powers of the federal government made American society better and more accountable.
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