Sunday, May 30, 2010

Private Option Health Care Act

Ron Paul introduces his new Private Option Health Care Act. It seeks to allow individuals to have control over their health care choices, and to restore a free market health care system.

H.R. 5444: To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 and to replace it with provisions reforming the health care system by putting patients back in charge of health care.

He introduced his End the Mandate bill in April. H.R. 4995: To restore the American people's freedom to choose the health insurance that best meets their individual needs by repealing the mandate that all Americans obtain government-approved health insurance.

Here's an interesting article on "What's Really Wrong with the Health Care Industry" by Vijay Boyapati.

Here's an additional article addressing the upcoming Republican response. I think it will be interesting to hear the Republican's reasons for not supporting these bills. After all, they are all for repealing this act of socialized medicine, right?

Monday, May 24, 2010

Obama’s New Healthcare Czar

Please listen. It gets really good toward the end. And by good, I mean bad.

College Education Why?

belushi college

Colleges in Mississippi decide to spend money on allowing more students to attend, rather than expanding or improving the quality of education at such institutions. This helps to perpetuate the myth that there is a right to a college education and that students need a 4 year degree to succeed in life.

Ramesh Ponnaroo writes:

It is absurd that people have to get college degrees to be considered for good jobs in hotel management or accounting — or journalism. It is inefficient, both because it wastes a lot of money and because it locks people who would have done good work out of some jobs. The tight connection between college degrees and economic success may be a nearly unquestioned part of our social order. Future generations may look back and shudder at the cruelty of it.

Today many students are considering different options because they see rising student debt, stagnant graduation rates and a struggling job market flooded with overqualified degree-holders.

When institutions make it their goal to admit more students, rather than admit intelligent students, the overall educational experience will suffer. Class discussion will not be thought provoking, and the “why are we here” mentality will be conveyed from public high schools to the college level.

Some have even stated that there is a higher-education bubble caused by government subsidization of colleges and universities. Brian A. Kroll writes:

As a consequence of the past few decades of capital misallocation, the United States has decreased productive goods-producing private sector jobs in favor of government service sector jobs. This has resulted in an ever-increasing trade deficit impairing our economy from real economic growth. As result, production-oriented skills have been in increasing demand in the ailing U.S. Economy.

He thinks more individualized educational opportunities like online schools and trade schools may be the answer. He also looks back to how education shaped the 20th century in America:

…a college education was [once] the fundamental gateway towards a middle-class American life. One was told “Work hard, get a good education, obtain a degree and you will be virtually guaranteed a high standard of living in the United States.”

Who wins when the volume of students who can’t afford to work their way through college is increased? Who wins when more people are forced to become debtors?

Saturday, May 22, 2010

New Taxes Proposed on Sweet Drinks

Approximately 30 states now apply a sales tax to soda.

D.C. Councilwoman Cheh proposed the tax obviously believes her job is to control the behavior of her constituents. She said merely adding a sales tax would “be too little” to change behavior and wouldn’t be as obvious to consumers.

C.S. Lewis puts it well:

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

pepsi-fat

Friday, May 21, 2010

Net Neutrality = Net Censorship

article

From the mouth of the Minister of Information leader of our national government:

"You're coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don't always rank all that high on the truth meter." With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations...information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation. " [emphasis added]

Saturday, May 8, 2010

Road to Serfdom

Here’s a good figure of the road to serfdom. When watching the news, you only hear about liberal v. conservative. These ideologies function equally as a means of progression toward a totalitarian state.

There are a few more figures and explanations when you click on the figure. diamond_paradigm

There’s also a really smart guy who wrote a book called The Road to Serfdom. You should check him out. He was born on this day in 1899.

Liberal Policies Actually Hurt the Poor

The Liberal Assault on the Poor

by Jacob G. Hornberger

Here’s a great article detailing how the policies aimed at helping the poor actually confine them to poverty and prevent upward mobility. The collateral damage is everyone else in society.

Mr. Hornberger discusses the following :

Public and private ownership

The role of capital

Return to poverty

Employment and value

Creating unemployment

Unemployment and crime

High wages

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Good Job Wicker

Indefinite Detention Without Trial for US Citizens

Mississippi’s own Senator Roger Wicker[R-MS] is a cosponsor to The Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010, or S. 3081.

The bill, which has eight cosponsors, explicitly names U.S. citizens as among those who can be detained indefinitely without trial:

An individual, including a citizen of the United States, determined to be an unprivileged enemy belligerent ... may be detained without criminal charges and without trial for the duration of hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners in which the individual has engaged, or which the individual has purposely and materially supported, consistent with the law of war and any authorization for the use of military force provided by Congress pertaining to such hostilities. [Emphasis added.]

Among the groups opposing the bill are the following:

Campaign for Liberty

Cato Institute

The bill was introduced by presidential runner-up Sen. John McCain [R-AZ]. The cosponsors are:

Scott Brown [R-MA]

Saxby Chambliss [R-GA]

James Inhofe [R-OK]

George LeMieux [R-FL]

Joseph Lieberman [I-CT]

Jefferson Sessions [R-AL]

John Thune [R-SD]

Roger Wicker [R-MS]

David Vitter [R-LA] (withdrawn)

Does This Seem Like Skynet to Anyone Else?

First we have Obama joking about killing the Jonas Brothers with Predator Drones.

Next we have footage of how the Predator Drones operate.

Finally, drones already being tested and used domestically.

Where is Sarah Connor?

Do Police Need to Be Able to Blow-Out the Doors and Windows to Our Houses?

DeSoto Country residents face a new police training facility in their backyards.

Alan Brosnan, who operates Tactical Energetic Entry Systems in Horn Lake, said

only small explosive charges - from 3 to 4 ounces or much lighter - would be used in classes such as explosives handling and breaching doors and windows.

No, police don’t need to train to blow out our doors and windows. They can already do this:

Sunday, May 2, 2010

GM Pays Back Government Loans in Full With…

GM released a commercial that touted its paying back the taxpayers in full, with interest, 5 years ahead of schedule, except: