Every man, however obscure, however far removed from the general recognition,
is one of a group of men impressible for good, and impressible for evil,
and it is in the nature of things
that he cannot really improve himself
without in some degree improving other men.
Charles Dickens
Tweet of the Day
Anti-Catholic smear from Pope Francis? "Some think that in order to be good Catholics we have to be like rabbits.No." http://t.co/9KwHF1tsUC
— Ronald Guillemette (@raguillem) January 20, 2015
Image of the Day |
| Via Libertarian Catholic |
Remember How When "The One" Was Elected, The Rise of Ocean Waters Would Slow and the Earth Would Begin to Heal?
New JOTY Nominee: Houston Mayor Annise Parker (D)
Lesbian Mayor Parker is involved in anti-democratic efforts to deny a referendum on repealing an "Equal Rights Ordinance", which among other things allows transgender (natural) males access to ladies' restroom facilities. More than 50,000 signatures have been collected and the city secretary has certified the petition requests, but the mayor and city attorney disqualified thousands of signatures on various technical grounds (e.g., use of nicknames or unsigned petition sheets). The pastors are suing, asking for a jury trial. The mayor, of course, doesn't like the idea of a jury trial, and the judge refused her request.
Steven Brill's New Time Article; What I Learned From My $190,000 Surgery: Thumbs DOWN!
If the familiar reader remembers, Brill wrote a highly celebrated Time article a few years back, called "The Bitter Pill". I would have to go back to reread my commentary on the piece; I did like descriptions of the mysterious chargemaster, and I do not like the ridiculous pricing for cash customers (not to mention I can think of at least two occasions I got follow-up bills after putting up full costs before treatment). But Brill totally buys into government hype for its own programs, progressive spin involving dubious comparative international statistics; for an alternative perspective, see here for example. Since then, I've occasionally discussed websites where you can find comprehensive all-inclusive pricing, e.g., in Oklahoma, medical tourism, going rate information on local medical prices, even low-cost providers for blood tests.
Brill's follow-up starts with a discussion of his $190K heart surgery and some tongue-in-cheek worries that his expose of hospitals might affect his treatment. But his effusive praise for ObamaCare borders on outright apologetics, and his stereotyped scapegoating of the free market is positively infuriating. I have written several pieces on these topics and won't repeat them in detail here. One piece I read over the weekend pointed out nearly 90% of the hospitals at the beginning of the twentieth century were for-profit and a century later, the proportion had almost exactly flipped; we have competitive barriers by state licensing, we have certification of need laws to discourage building new hospitals, we still can't offer policies across state lines and/or don't allow groups to self-insure like many corporations. Brill still wants to demonize private insurers (an apples to oranges comparison), while encouraging one-stop shop hospital-based "insurance" plans cutting out the middleman--all under federal antitrust regulation, of course. He totally doesn't get the fact that roughly half the dollars in the healthcare sector come at the expense of the taxpayer and federal reimbursements are typically below-market and delayed and really cross-subsidized by other, private-sector patients; increasing numbers of doctors are unwilling to take any or additional government program patients. He doesn't realize how government tax-free treatment of plans via employers (instead, say, a universally applicable flat tax deduction) not only encourages bundling of non-essential services and products but means (under a progressive tax systems) higher-income employees get a bigger tax benefit. It would be one thing if the government simply reinsured against catastrophic expenses on a needs basis--but you have the lunacy of the government micromanaging costs in a way that stifles innovation and creative destruction, never mind IPAB undermining physician flexibility in dealing with the patient. As I've written before, the way to intelligently use interstate commerce authority is to simply enable competition undermining state cartels; a more intelligent way to deal with high risk patients would have been to shore up state solutions like high risk pools, not to second-guess state regulatory policies and violate the principle of Subsidiarity. I could rant on, but I think I've given readers a taste of my perspective.
Facebook Corner
(Reason). The $320 billion tax increase Obama will propose in his State of the Union address tomorrow is going to hurt others besides the richest among us.
Welcome to left-wing redistributive populist hell courtesy of Cherokee Lizzie Warren and like-minded Statist political whores, expanding the morally hazardous unsustainable welfare net of entitlements as we head to next year's change election. Why save for "free" college? Why save given guaranteed retirement pensions? See government health care, watch insurance premiums, government deficits and sector price inflation go up. See nationalization of college loans, watch the loan bubble surge past $1T and tuition rates rates, as crony universities capture loan proceeds? Tom DiLorenzo is right; we now live in a facialist economy.
(IPI). Many municipal police and fire pension funds are so woefully underfunded, for example, that they are likely to go up in smoke in not-too-many years.
The firefighter/ paramedic career is the #1 most stressful job in the country. So any haters will be happy to know that our retirements are usually quite short. And by all means, when the country is screwed due to corruption throughout our federal and state governments, let's attack firemen, policemen and teachers. Give me a break.
Sheer bullshit! First of all, public sector workers, like police and firefighters, don't even make the top ten: according to BLS 2013, government workers accounted for 2% of fatal occupational injuries. Loggers, fisherman, and flight officers are far more dangerous in terms of fatality rates. I also believe that family member survivors of fallen safety officers usually are eligible for a certain monthly stipend and other benefits, often tied to said pension funds.
Let's be clear: you and/or other parasites are not entitled to unsustainable unpaid-for pensions for up to 30 years or more of retirement. These were grossly underfunded by both workers and government commensurate with longer retirement tenures, on unrealistic promises made by crony unionists and corrupt Democratic political whores. You morally corrupt, shameless, self-serving, arrogant thieves think future taxpayers, mostly without pensions, should make up the difference at the expense of essential city services.
(continuation of a Libertarian Catholic thread on abortion)
My head hurts a the fact that you're trying to claim that the unborn children are more important than race equality. We haven't finished civil rights for everyone alive; let's focus on that first.
Beware when leftists start arguing their egalitarian-redistributive crap like the OP. Right-libertarians like myself start out with negative rights--things that government or others can't deprive you of, fundamentally life, liberty and property. Race only applies in the sense that people cannot have those fundamental rights defined away. When leftists like the OP are arguing "racial equality", it's a euphemism for positive rights--things that the government must provide on some party's behalf, usually by using force to steal the property of others, i.e., taxation. Libertarians have no problem with charities in the private sector involved in voluntary exchanges in conjunction with their own religious/moral duties, but it's morally irresponsible to believe in the morally hazardous State, which has compounded, not cured poverty issues and in fact has promoted government dependency and created a morally corrosive set of policies which, for example, have resulted in failed public schools, single-parent homes, and up to over half of pregnancies, not aborted, illegitimate, leftist like OP need to see government is a part of the problem, not the solution, and genocide of minority preborn children is also not the solution.
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Gary Varvel via Townhall |
Céline Dion (with Barbra Streisand), "Tell Him"
