The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.
When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims,
one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms,
like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.
George Orwell
Pro-Liberty Thought of the Day
I think I embedded a prior quotes image with an unrecognized actress Salma Hayek in it (quipping something like I had no shot with this woman), not immediately picking up on the coincidental surname sharing with Nobel Prize winning Austrian School economist F.A. Hayek, an inside joke. Now an attractive woman quoting FA Hayek in real life would connect with any geek...
The obvious things that immediately come to mind is 9/11, which gave us DHS, TSA, the Patriot Act, and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, the gift that never stops giving, and the economic tsunami, which led TARP and Dodd N Frankenstein....
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| Via LFC |
Facebook Corner
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| Courtesy of LFC |
(via LFC) I've been hearing about statism a lot lately and about how bad it is. But why is it that Minarchism is also called Minimal Statism, and is a form a statism. And Anarchy is the Opposite of Statism. But Minarchism seems like just an extremely small government form Anarchy, but some how it's not? Basically, where does Minarchism Stand with you guys?
Monopolies are not intrinsically evil; for example, during the tenure of John D. Rockefeller, the price of kerosene to the public nearly went down 80%; the public was better off. We believe true voting is in the daily marketplace. Anarchists not only present a Utopian vision of reality (we regard whatever they use to reconcile competition in justice and defense as a variation of minarchism: you can put lipstick on a pig...), but engage in polemical, absurd criticisms that minimal government implies the unfettered monstrosity of the given State. It's like if one argues for eating limited portions to achieve healthy living, the anarchist will argue that it's inevitable people will cheat and overeat to the point they have to be wheeled out of a house... No, we have a principled approach; we need just enough government to guarantee our unalienable rights of life, liberty, and property; once we achieve core functionality, each proposed new government functionality must be judged against opportunity costs, impairment of the free market. Our Constitution was written in a way that made the progression to Statism difficult, but not impossible. FDR wanted to nationalize health care--but it took decades and a one-party government to impose fetid ObamaCare on us....
(Bastiat Institute) Once kids have been paid for all their trick or treating hard work, how much candy should the government take? What's fair?
Wait for Obama to declare his War on Chocolate and Candy. You see, we have a national emergency in child obesity and dental issues...
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| via LFC |
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| via LFC |
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| Via LFC |
(progressive troll) Don't be a hypocrit. If you complain about the ACA you can't turn around and complain about people not being able to enroll in the ACA
The fact that the Hypocrite-in-Chief actually ran against an individual mandate makes this relevant. The Democrat Unaffordable Care Act borrowed guaranteed issue and community rating policies from states with among the highest insurance costs in the country, which all but destroyed the individual policy markets in said states. These policies discriminate against young/healthy people because they are being forced to subsidize higher risks, an implicit form of taxation. What we know is before the Feds got involved with Medicare and Medicaid, prices were steady, if not slowly declining. Government has created the status quo, and progressive trolls, without a modicum of knowledge in basic economics, have the audacity to blame the "free market" for cascading government failures. This is a Ponzi scheme perpetrated on the American public.
LFC: "A behind-the-scenes attempt by the White House to keep insurers from publicly criticizing what is happening under this Affordable Care Act." Like in Hayek's "Road to Serfdom": First, Big Business supports interventions that force people to buy their product. Then Dr. Frankenstein's monster goes nuts, and it is too late: The state controls the means of production and can pressure producers to do whatever they want. (Teal)
Just the transparency of the demagogue whom promised transparency and post-partisan politics.
(progressive troll) LOL okay. Insurers WROTE the bill. Look at their stock values the week Obamacare rolled out. The health insurance companies who the administration picked to be part of the "market" are going to profit handsomely, to put it lightly.
The reason why the insurance companies got involved is because of guaranteed issue and community rating. This basically requires insurers to write below-cost coverage, never mind socializing high expenses. You eventually get into a vicious circle of higher costs, as only high risk policyholders are left. Healthcare insurers are NOT high margin businesses. A lot depends on how many young people can be scammed into paying artificially high premiums vs. the much smaller hit of the tax penalty--it's a no-brainer.
Political Humor: The Return of Remy
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Eric Allie and Townhall |
John Stewart, "Midnight Wind". One of my favorite songs. The late singer was a member of the well-known folk group, the Kingston Trio, was probably best known for his pop classic "Daydream Believer", a monster hit for the Monkees and Anne Murray (I once got in trouble at work, not realizing I was singing along with the latter version...), and had his biggest solo hit with the top 5 "Gold". (You'll recognize two prominent Fleetwood Mac members backing him on the related album, Buckingham and Nicks.)
I think I wrote this personal anecdote in a prior post but am rewriting it for the convenience of any newer readers. I first heard this song in heavy rotation on my first trip to the People's Republic of California (I think for new employee orientation). I was a new hire in my first job in Houston at a branch office of the largest APL timesharing company. (APL is an interpretive--vs. compiled--programming language with powerful mathematically-notated operators; it was initially released by IBM on its 1960's mainframes and often used for rapid application prototyping. In essence, we sold expensive computer time with a value-added version of APL. We did a good deal of business with big energy companies in Houston, providing managers a workaround to their backlogged IT department. In general, timesharing was a bridge solution to buying a new, expensive mainframe. Commodity computing power at low prices through smaller computers, including PC's, undermined the business model of this industry niche. I think that the companies I worked with in Houston had closed their branches by the time I earned my doctorate.)
This pretty blonde from headquarters had come to conduct some training at the branch and seemed uncharacteristically down this one day, and I asked her what was wrong. She explained that it was her car's birthday, and she wasn't home to celebrate it. (At first, I thought I was getting punked, but she was serious.) Her face brightened as she explained that she had found the perfect birthday card for him and had mailed it off earlier.
As soon I heard "Midnight Wind" I knew I had to buy the album. (For those who haven't heard the album, I also love "Lost Her in the Sun".) They arranged for local travel arrangements, and I recall at one point we needed rides somewhere (maybe it was a dinner party at a company executive's house). I don't think it was a coincidence that I ended up taking a ride, just the two of us, in my favorite blonde's (very nice) beloved car. The first thing she does after I get in the passenger seat, buckling myself in, is, without a word, pointing at the car's birthday card, dangling by a lanyard from the dashboard mirror. Isn't life wonderful? I should have married that girl... Life would have been ever so interesting. She was like a stereotype come to life: Venice Beach, rollerskating, etc. (I also recall the executive's bombshell blond wife actually went about saying things like "Mellow, man!")
As for me, I guess I'm just a typical guy. I don't even remember my car's birthday, what I was wearing the first time I saw her, or when or where we went parking the first time...
