If NYT editorial writers leaned any further Left they would fall over
The New York Times’ editorial writers — who reflect the opinions of the newspaper’s publisher and principal owner, Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr., who hires and fires them — have their knickers in a knot over Sheldon Adelson. What has the Las Vegas hotel-and-casino tycoon done? The Times asserts that he is spending his money “to advance his personal, ideological and financial agenda, which is wildly at odds with the nation’s needs.”
Readers of the Times are expected to take it on faith that Mr. Sulzberger, who came by his status through inheritance, accurately perceives the nation’s needs, and that Mr. Adelson, who over the course of his 77 years rose from dire poverty to fabulous wealth by building businesses, has not a clue.
Full disclosure No. 1: I spent some of the best years of my life working for the Times , as a reporter, foreign correspondent, and editor. Then, as now, some of the world’s finest journalists were employed by the Grey Lady. One thing they have had in common: They do not draw conclusions and level charges except on the basis of solid evidence. By contrast, the Times’ editorial writers no longer burden themselves with serious argumentation. They assert, they preach, they allege. I have heard Times reporters grumble about this — though not on the record.
Full disclosure No. 2: I know Mr. Adelson and, on occasion, he’s donated funds to the non-partisan, non-profit organization I head to support work on national-security issues he views as critically important. But not for that reason do I defend his constitutional right to spend as much of his money as he likes to persuade his fellow Americans that his agenda is preferable to that favored by the Times . I would just as vehemently defend the free-speech rights of George Soros, another multibillionaire who spends lavishly to promote his agenda — an agenda with which the Times largely agrees and I do not. The Times has never criticized Mr. Soros as they have Mr. Adelson. In other words: I am championing a principle without exception; the Times — not so much.
The Times promotes its policy preferences — again, we’re really talking about Mr. Sulzberger’s policy preferences — every day, using ink it buys by the barrel. The Times sees that as part of its mission, correctly. But private citizens are entitled to the same free-speech rights as the media — unless, of course, one embraces as a serious principle what I’ve always assumed the great journalist A. J. Liebling intended as a quip: “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.” It should not go unobserved that the Times rarely allows opposing views to be aired on its op-ed pages.
Much of the money that Mr. Adelson, Mr. Soros, and others give to political candidates is spent on communications — ads in newspapers (including the Times) and on television and radio. The ads run by the politicians Mr. Adelson is likely to support often rebut the opinions articulated by the Times and other mainstream media, as well as the “public media,” which are subsidized with taxpayer dollars.
Mr. Adelson recently spent more than $20 million to support the presidential candidacy of Newt Gingrich. The Times calls that an attempt to “buy influence” but, more objectively, it was an attempt to persuade voters and, in my view, a net contribution to the national policy debate. Now Mr. Adelson is supporting Mitt Romney. That support, the Times fears, could help push the Republican candidate “over the top in a close race like this year’s.” The Times sees that as unfair. What the Times views as fairer: The Times supporting President Obama and pushing him over the top in a close race like this year’s.
The Times mentions only one substantive issue motivating Mr. Adelson: He is writing “huge checks” because, the Times alleges, of his “disgust for a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, supported by President Obama and most Israelis.” What is the basis for the Times’ use of a loaded word such as “disgust”? Readers are not told. The Times adds only that Mr. Adelson “considers a Palestinian state a stepping stone for the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people.”
Why in the world might Mr. Adelson think that? Well, there is the fact that Hamas, which rules Gaza, has repeatedly proclaimed that there can be “no solution” to the Palestinian–Israeli conflict “except through jihad,” a religious war through which “Islam will obliterate [Israel] just as it obliterated others before it.”
There is the fact that Mahmoud Abbas, leader of the Palestinian Authority and Fatah, has banned “all informal meetings between Israelis and Palestinians” because such dialogue promotes “the culture of peace” and is designed to “normalize” relations between Israelis and Palestinians. There is the fact that Palestinian Authority official Adli Sadeq has written in the official PA daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida , that Israelis “fool themselves, assuming that Fatah accepts them and recognizes the right of their state to exist, and that it is Hamas alone that loathes them and does not recognize the right of this state to exist. They ignore the fact that this state, based on a fabricated [Zionist] enterprise, never had any shred of a right to exist.”
If Times editorial writers have contradictory evidence, reasons to believe that Hamas and Fatah do not see a Palestinian state as “a stepping stone for the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people,” it would be useful for them to present it.
The Times goes on to charge that Mr. Adelson’s “overriding interest is his own wallet. He rails against the president’s ‘socialist-style economy’ and redistribution of wealth, but what he really fears is Mr. Obama’s proposal to raise taxes on companies like his that make a huge amount of money overseas.” Think about this for a minute: A man well into his eighth decade worth billions of dollars “fears” a tax increase?
The Times neglects to inform readers that Mr. Adelson does not give away money only to participate in political debates. He also has donated huge amounts for medical research, education, and other philanthropic pursuits. If his “overriding interest” were his wallet, would he do that?
The Times concludes by lamenting that we live in a time when “there are no legal or moral limits” preventing Mr. Adelson from helping “to elect Republicans who promise to keep his billions intact.” Under the moral and legal regime the Times would prefer, newspaper owners, “progressive” politicians, and government bureaucrats would decide how to spend Mr. Adelson’s money — and he would shut the hell up. I leave it for you to ponder whether that agenda would be in line with “the nation’s needs.”
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For the Thirtieth Time, the Obama Administration Admonishes Voters Not to Read Too Much into One Month’s Jobs Numbers
Says "The People's Cube"
May 2012: “Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report and it is helpful to consider each report in the context of other data that are becoming available.”
April 2012: “Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report and it is helpful to consider each report in the context of other data that are becoming available.”
March 2012: “Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report, and it is helpful to consider each report in the context of other data that are becoming available.”
February 2012:“Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report; nevertheless, the trend in job market indicators over recent months is an encouraging sign.”
January 2012: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report; nevertheless, the trend in job market indicators over recent months is an encouraging sign.”
December 2011: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”
November 2011: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”
October 2011: “The monthly employment and unemployment numbers are volatile and employment estimates are subject to substantial revision. There is no better example than August’s jobs figure, which was initially reported at zero and in the latest revision increased to 104,000. This illustrates why the Administration always stresses it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”
September 2011: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”
August 2011: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”
July 2011: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”
June 2011: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”
May 2011: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”
April 2011: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”
March 2011: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”
February 2011: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”
January 2011: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”
December 2010: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”
November 2010: “Therefore, as the Administration always stresses, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”
October 2010:“Given the volatility in monthly employment and unemployment data, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”
September 2010: “Given the volatility in the monthly employment and unemployment data, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report.”
July 2010: “Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report, positive or negative. It is essential that we continue our efforts to move in the right direction and replace job losses with robust job gains.”
August 2010: “Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report, positive or negative.”
June 2010: “As always, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report, positive or negative.”
May 2010:“As always, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report, positive or negative.”
April 2010: “Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report, positive or negative.”
March 2010: “Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report, positive or negative.”
January 2010: “Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report, positive or negative.”
November 2009: “Therefore, it is important not to read too much into any one monthly report, positive or negative.”
More HERE
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Making Government (Less Dis)Honest
Obamacare is a tax. It’s not a tax. Politicians and pundits are all over the map on this. A tax, a mandate, a ham sandwich…the answer depends on who you ask. But none of this matters because, whatever else it is, it’s currently the law of the land. But how did this happen?
During the debate over Obamacare, Democrats not only stampeded toward any camera they could find to say it wasn’t a tax, they spewed hundreds, if not thousands, of other lies about what it is and is not.
“It will lower premiums.”
“If you like your current plan you can keep it.”
“No one making less than $250,000 will see their taxes increase at all.”
These are just a few of liberals’ greatest hits that still echo off the inside of the Capitol Dome. They are still lies. The people who said them still know they were lies from the start and they continue to repeat those lies today.
That Congress lies surprises no one. That we have tolerated this for so long does surprise.
But what can we do? Vote them out? The worst of the worst – Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Charlie Rangel and Chris Van Hollen – run no risk of losing, thanks to gerrymandering. It’s time for a new idea.
Congress lives by its own set of rules and routinely exempts itself from the laws it passes. It does insist members be somewhat polite to one another or face toothless disciplinary action. Beyond that, there is no consequence for spreading provable lies in hearings, floor speeches or anywhere else.
We’re not talking about being incorrect here. When Democrats wailed “Bush lied, people died,” that was him being incorrect based upon faulty intelligence delivered from people whose job it is to know.
We’re talking about lies here. Provably false statements designed to misdirect and mislead the public. Democrats have made any number of such statements in the Fast and Furious hearings. They knew these statements were false, and they made them anyway to deflect and divert a legitimate investigation into the murder of hundreds as a direct result of government incompetence.
As a direct consequence of their lies, they will face…nothing.
Why not change that?
There are a few honest Members of Congress of both parties. Why not start a push to make everything in the Congressional record under oath? I’m not saying we should prosecute every “misspeak” for perjury and jail time. They’d never vote for that. But a “three-strikes-and-you’re-out” policy – enter three outright, provable lies into the Congressional record, on the floor of the House or Senate, in a hearing or in official correspondences, and you’re expelled from Congress for life.
To give it even more teeth, ban those expelled from ever lobbying.
Overnight, Congress would change from the cesspool of partisanship and lies it is today into a bastion of honesty unseen since a group of 5-year olds were asked what they thought of peas.
Sure, there would be turmoil and protests over matters such as the meaning of “is.” But we’d know who ordered Fast and Furious because Democrats wouldn’t be able to hide behind their lies. We’d know when the legislation they propose imposes massive tax hikes because they’d have to tell us. We’d know when either side was using accounting gimmicks that double-count Medicare money to cook the books in whichever direction they need at the time.
It’s like a lot of things in Washington – it’ll never happen because it makes too much sense. It’s as likely to pass as term-limits because, like term limits, it requires Congress to vote to limit its own power. And, as we’ve seen recently, that’s something Congress just can’t seem to do. But we can dream…
SOURCE
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The Current Cowardly Church Needs a Mega Dose of the Rebel Spirit
By (Pastor) Doug Giles of Clash Church
Unlike America’s original rebel Christians who dumped the Brits’ taxed tea into Boston Harbor and told King George that he could kiss their King George, today’s evangelicals, I believe—especially the dandy ministers who love to be loved—would have folded like one-ply toilet paper before British oppression. We’re a timid tufted titmouse compared to our rowdy founding forefathers.
Here are four reasons why I believe today’s evangelicals would have melted like little bon-bons during the American Revolution:
1. Some dainty saints of today think rebellion against tyrants is disobedience to God, when the converse is actually true. Yep, these stooges of the machine believe that Yahweh wants Christians to be the corralled cattle of corrupt politicians and policies. Indeed, a lot of pop evangelicals have become nicer than God. Our current craven “faithful” think it’s sinful to say bad stuff about bad elected leadership. Many somehow think it’s righteous to go in an unrighteous national direction. And we’ve got stacks of do-gooders who are turning the other cheek to political abuse and generational theft so fast that they make Shakira look arthritic.
2. A lot of evangelicals would rather live as government slaves than live and die as free men. Some do it out of sinful slothfulness, completely passive and thus complicit in the face of evil. Others do so because they actually think Christ was a Communist and that government theft and wealth redistribution somehow fulfill the Sermon on the Mount. D’oh.
3. Others, especially in the ministry, won’t say squat about our political squalor because it’ll offend the emotional members of their congregation and thereby jack with their weekly offerings, which, in turn, will cause them to lose their vacation home in Naples where they’re currently banging their mistress. Here we are during one of the most crucial elections of our lifetime, and ministers don’t (or won’t) address these issues or show up at protests. Wow. Good luck at the judgment seat. I’ve been to many, many Tea Parties up and down the east coast of Florida and have only run into a handful of ministers. Where are you, ladies? Your absence and silence during America’s demise is more obvious than Pam Anderson’s recent enhancement. Hello, Judas.
4. Another thing that irks me is this end-of-the-world Rapture mentality that, supposedly, all of this bad stuff we’re currently fielding as a nation is God’s plan for the ages and that there’s nothing we can do about it. I’m sure glad our predecessors didn’t look at the gargantuan junk they were facing during times of oppression and upheaval and say, “Oh, well. The Rapture must be right around the corner.” No, what they did was think, work, pray and fight. And guess what, end-of-the-world Christian? They yielded up this grand experiment in self-governance, that’s what.
The Church needs the biblical rebel spirit of our founders injected back into the evangelical mix instead of this squishy, pusillanimous, ignoble and compliant crapola that’s currently cranking through our indolent pulpits and pews. God help the Church to lose its cowardly, effeminate bent in these critical days. Amen.
SOURCE
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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
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Sunday, July 08, 2012
Israel takes out strategic insurance against any Egyptian threat to its global shipping lanes
In an age of containerization, and fast trains this is a Suez canal bypass with great potential, particularly for ships too big (above 240,000 DWT) to go through Suez. China is building 350,000 DWT ships at the moment. Could be handy in lots of ways, particularly if accompanied by Singapore-standard container turnaround time. Amusing if Israel grabbed part of the Suez canal revenue. Suez canal transit is a slow and expensive business
Israel and China have signed an agreement to build a railway connecting Israel's southernmost port of Eilat with its Mediterranean ports at Ashdod and Haifa. The joint multi-billion dollar project will give commercial shipping a ready detour around the Suez canal for vessels heading from the Med to major sea lanes in the Indian Ocean and to ports of call in eastern Africa and southern Asia. And vice versa.
However, there's more to the joint venture than mutual commercial interests, important as they are - China, an emerging world power, wants to expand global trade routes; Israel, with its booming high-tech sector, has similar objectives.
For Israel, the strategic value of this railway project may be even more important than its commercial benefits. In one stroke, it gives Israel a direct link for cargos headed to Eilat from the Indian Ocean via the Red Sea and thence to the Gulf of Aqaba and then, via the new railway, on to Europe, northern Africa and beyond via Ashdod and Haifa.
The Suez canal is taken out of the picture should Egypt -- now ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood -- entertain notions of blockading Israeli shipping. Which, strategically speaking, is not a threat to be taken lightly. The 1967 war between Israel and Egypt was triggered in part by President Nasser's blockade against Israeli shipping via the Straits of Tiran -- a vital seaway between the Gulf of Aqaba and the Red. Sea.
Later, the 1979 peace treaty between the two countries was drafted so as to stipulate that the Straits of Tiran are international waters open to one and all.
Israel's minister of transport Yisrael Katz headed a 12-member delegation that traveled to Beijing for the signing ceremony.
Part of the 20 billion shekel tab would be assumed by the China Development Industrial Bank -- with Israel heading the operational side. Chinese companies expect to win most of the construction projects.
Prime Minister Netanyahu declared the planned railway a national priority project. The 180-kilometer line is expected to cut travel time between Tel Aviv and Eilat to two hours -- a new catalyst for development of the Negev, which along with the Galilee is expected to become an increasing focus for economic and population growth for Israel in coming years.
But the strategic element stands out, as Israel puts more weight on security in a turbulent region -- made even more turbulent and uncertain by ominous results stemming from the "Arab spring." As Dr. Aaron Lerner, director of Independent Media Review Analysis, puts it: "What country in the region would have the chutzpa to interfere with the operation of a transportation system with a Chinese government connection?
SOURCE
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Barack Obama: Socialist or Nouveau Fascist?
“Barack Obama is a socialist.” Heard that one before? Of course you have. In fact if polling is to be believed, it’s more likely than not that you have accepted this premise at some point in the not too distant past.
Two summers ago a poll conducted by Democratic strategists James Carville and Stan Greenberg found that 55 percent of registered voters nationwide believed the term socialist accurately applied to Obama. In fact 33 percent of respondents — a third of all registered voters in the nation — believed the term applied to Obama “very well.”
More recently a Pew Center survey on some of our nation’s most commonly used ideological labels revealed that 60 percent of Americans have a negative impression of the word “socialism.”
But is Obama a socialist? And if he’s not — what is he?
Certainly there is a compelling case to be made that Obama is a socialist in the contemporary sense — much like the French Socialists, who are proposing massive tax hikes on the wealthy after securing the presidency and majorities in France’s Sénat and Assemblée Nationale.
Europe is littered with such tax-and-spend parties — including Germany’s Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands and Spain’s Partido Socialista Obrero Español (both of which ruled coalition governments in their countries until 2009 and 2011, respectively).
But is 21st century European socialism — which has led to a full-blown recession and pushed the world to the brink of a second global financial crisis — really socialism in the way that Karl Marx envisioned it?
Obama has never advocated doctrinaire socialism (which is based on government ownership of private property and the means of production). Certainly he has made good on his promise to “spread the wealth around” via unprecedented government intervention in the free market, but he cannot be called a socialist in the mold of Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro or Kim Jong-Il.
“What President Obama has been pushing for, and moving toward, is more insidious: government control of the economy, while leaving ownership in private hands,” columnist Thomas Sowell wrote recently. “That way, politicians get to call the shots but, when their bright ideas lead to disaster, they can always blame those who own businesses in the private sector.”
Sound familiar? This is precisely what happened during the recent recession. For example, government-mandated loans aimed at boosting homeownership were clearly among the root causes of the economic downturn – but when the sub-prime bubble burst blame was placed exclusively on “corporate greed.” Of course at the same time politicians were absolving themselves of any responsibility, they were forcing taxpayers to subsidize massive bailouts of these “greedy” financial institutions.
So if Obama isn’t a socialist, what is he? Economically speaking it’s far more accurate to say that he is a fascist — a supporter of dirigisme, in which government manages the economy through central planning, not collective ownership. Fascism did not seek to stamp out the innovative, wealth-creating potential of profit-seeking investment and entrepreneurship – instead it sought to channel those innovations (and funnel that wealth) to the good of the state.
“In fascist Italy the state pays for the blunders of private enterprise,” Italian social critic Gaetano Salvemini wrote in the mid-1930s.
When business was good, “profit remained to private initiative.” However when downturns came (as they inevitably do), “the government added the loss to the taxpayer’s burden.”
“Profit is private and individual,” Salvemini wrote. “Loss is public and social.”
This is the basis of fascism’s “third way” between laissez-faire capitalism and Marxism. It’s also precisely the economic system we see at work in America today, a centralized bureaucratic oligarchy in which farm subsidies, investments in “green jobs,” Wall Street bailouts, Export-Import Bank subsidies and numerous other taxpayer-funded incentives manipulate the market to serve specific political purposes.
Obviously the fascist analogy isn’t perfect. Unlike Obama, fascists abhorred class warfare (and labor’s efforts to foment it) because such societal divisions ran counter to their nationalist ideology. And while fascist economic policies can certainly perpetuate the redistribution of wealth, they also tend to create powerful privileged elites that leverage tax dollars and political favors so as to manipulate the market in their favor.
So is Obama’s brand of 21st century socialism/ nouveau fascism really “more insidious” than pure socialism, as Sowell suggests? Yes, because unlike socialism – the public sector never “takes a loss,” as the recent bureaucratic bailouts made clear.
Also consider this: Is any property really “private” if the government can take it based on little more than a whim? And is any sector of the economy really “private” as long as government can swoop in and set its prices and production quotas? And finally, is any market truly “free” if government can compel citizens to make specific purchases?
Of course not — all of which makes Obama’s ideology dangerous no matter what label we slap on it.
SOURCE
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Psychological Operations and Leaving Afghanistan
The timeline for withdrawal from Afghanistan is slated for 2014. It has become America's longest war of attrition. Yet all is not lost there. While the United States might not "win" the decade-long war, it is almost impossible to lose.
In a sense, there is nothing to win: Afghan culture is an embarrassment to the human condition. Even the "good guys" will kill people over a book and then sell their daughters to a septuagenarian. But there is nothing to lose, either. Lest we forget, the U.S. routed al-Qaeda and the Taliban more than ten years ago, by December 2001, with the use of just 5,200 troops. The ensuing failure of Afghan civil society is not a U.S. military defeat.
In World War II, General Douglas MacArthur famously said, "We are not retreating-we are advancing in another direction." As we begin to withdraw from Afghanistan, U.S. leaders should speak in a comparable manner. What we need is a public psychological operations strategy-or what the military now calls "Military Information Support Operations," or MISO-coupled with tangible displays of military superiority.
Win or lose, Afghanistan was always going to be at the whims of Pakistan. Thus the U.S. has a Pakistan problem, not a Taliban problem. It's Hamid Karzai with the Taliban problem. The Taliban are bad actors, no doubt, but they're essentially a hapless militia. The head of the snake is Pakistan, which covertly supports al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and every major terrorist group in South Asia. We must be clear: our eventual withdrawal from Afghanistan does not portend an American flight from South Asian politics. In fact, if we are wise, it might strengthen our leverage.
We must intensify our drone campaign throughout the "Af-Pak" theater-and talk about it openly, too. Predator drones work. They have killed thousands of top-tier terrorists and have not hurt our popularity throughout the region (we are already unpopular). The drones have, however, undermined among the indigenous population the popularity of the Taliban. If someone in your village were liable to get bombed at any moment, at some point you would want to kick him out of your village.
Our air campaign has struck fear into the hearts of the enemy. Terror chieftain Ustadh Ahmad Farooq was quoted as saying: "There were many areas where we once had freedom, but now they have been lost. We are the ones that are losing people; we are the ones facing shortages of resources. Our land is shrinking and drones are flying in the sky." American leaders should be citing quotes like this publicly. Bringing to light the enemy's private fears is effective psychological warfare.
Although there are some slippery-slope arguments against the use of Predator drones, we should not doubt their efficacy. The conventional wisdom once suggested that the more we bombed, the more we would "inflame" hatred against us. But just the opposite is true. The more air supremacy we display over our al-Qaeda and Taliban adversaries, the more they doubt themselves and their actions. The truth is this: when our Islamist enemies have been irrefutably whipped on the battlefield, they are not enraged, but rather humbled, and are more prone to second-guess the divine sanction of their cause. Allah doesn't like losers, you see. This was Osama bin Laden's old "strong horse" logic: a neutral man will not gravitate to a weak horse.
The Taliban's boasts that they can fight forever must be countered with visible exhibitions of U.S. dominance. Good-natured humor would help, too. President Reagan used humor with devastating effect against the Soviets. Today, American politicians will go to great lengths to embarrass and humiliate their political opponents, but refrain from mocking our undying enemies. This is unfortunate, as our enemies in Afghanistan and Pakistan are largely incompetent and worthy of ridicule.
This worked in Iraq. The U.S. military released a video of insurgent leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi unable to work his weapon, shattering his image as a military mastermind. The terrorists' cause would be greatly damaged should our national leaders use similar tactics on a more consistent basis. It would be nice to hear a U.S. official or general officer speak of the Taliban's widespread pedophilic treatment of young Afghan boys, or make the Seinfeldian observation that al-Qaeda spends too much time working out on the monkey bars. This, above all, will drive the enemy nuts: they do not want to be laughed at.
Advocates of the current strategy argue that our abandonment of the nation-building project will result in al-Qaeda and the Taliban reestablishing their bases throughout Afghanistan (from which they would plot more attacks). There are three counterpoints to this argument. First, the 9/11 attacks were planned in apartments in Hamburg, Germany, not in Afghan training camps. Second, the enemy has long goaded us into making this a war of attrition- M16s vs. AK-47s-and we have unfortunately obliged. But we do not have to fight the war on their terms. There are smarter, more cost-effective ways to fight our nation's enemies than "teaching toothless villagers how to brush their teeth," in the words of Col. Ralph Peters.
Third, the U.S. has aerial technologies today that did not exist in 2001 when the war began. Should the terrorists be dumb enough to coalescence into specified, observable camps, we would simply be able to target them that much quicker. We should openly encourage them-dare them, even-to reestablish those training camps. Hell, maybe they'll even hold parades like Hezbollah. They'd last ten minutes. It's unsettling that more senior officials do not share this confidence. Such a "worst-case" scenario would be indistinguishable from Yemen or Somalia, for which we successfully use a fly-swatter strategy (Predator drones, Special Forces, and aid to indigenous allies). Let's stop pretending like Afghanistan is the Gates of Vienna. It's not. It's Mars. Our strategic focus should be on Iran and Pakistan.
We should show more assurance and less worry regarding the outcome in Afghanistan. The entire theater should be inundated with fliers from the sky, translated into Pashto, Arabic, and Farsi. They should contain a photograph of the Wright brothers, and they should read: "This was human aviation in 1901. More than a century has passed and you still cannot get off the ground. We will be overhead forever." As we "retreat" in the coming years, the point must be made that we are, in fact, advancing in another direction-that we can continue the fight, at low cost, on our terms, indefinitely.
SOURCE
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This should be celebrated
The more the terminally corrupt United Nations is discredited, the better
[Canadian] Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird calls it a "sick joke" that the government of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad could get a seat on the UN Human Rights Council.
"It would do irreparable damage to the United Nations and likely would be the biggest blow that the United Nations has taken since its formation," Baird said during a teleconference Friday after the Friends of the Syrian People meeting in Paris. "What Assad needs to be facing is the International Criminal Court to face charges for committing crimes against humanities, he and his henchmen."
Syria is a candidate in the 2013 election for seats on the council.
The council condemned Syria on Friday for human rights violations, but UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer says it watered down a U.S. proposal to specifically rule out Syria's candidacy.
"We had a reference that all countries need to the meet the standards of membership, but there was no express rejection of Syria's candidacy," Neuer told QMI Agency. "At this point, the possibility that Syria will run next year is still on the table."
Neuer says it's also worrisome that Canada and other western governments haven't spoken out about Pakistan and Venezuela likely winning council seats in November.
Human Rights Watch has repeatedly criticized the governments of both countries.
SOURCE
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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
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In an age of containerization, and fast trains this is a Suez canal bypass with great potential, particularly for ships too big (above 240,000 DWT) to go through Suez. China is building 350,000 DWT ships at the moment. Could be handy in lots of ways, particularly if accompanied by Singapore-standard container turnaround time. Amusing if Israel grabbed part of the Suez canal revenue. Suez canal transit is a slow and expensive business
Israel and China have signed an agreement to build a railway connecting Israel's southernmost port of Eilat with its Mediterranean ports at Ashdod and Haifa. The joint multi-billion dollar project will give commercial shipping a ready detour around the Suez canal for vessels heading from the Med to major sea lanes in the Indian Ocean and to ports of call in eastern Africa and southern Asia. And vice versa.
However, there's more to the joint venture than mutual commercial interests, important as they are - China, an emerging world power, wants to expand global trade routes; Israel, with its booming high-tech sector, has similar objectives.
For Israel, the strategic value of this railway project may be even more important than its commercial benefits. In one stroke, it gives Israel a direct link for cargos headed to Eilat from the Indian Ocean via the Red Sea and thence to the Gulf of Aqaba and then, via the new railway, on to Europe, northern Africa and beyond via Ashdod and Haifa.
The Suez canal is taken out of the picture should Egypt -- now ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood -- entertain notions of blockading Israeli shipping. Which, strategically speaking, is not a threat to be taken lightly. The 1967 war between Israel and Egypt was triggered in part by President Nasser's blockade against Israeli shipping via the Straits of Tiran -- a vital seaway between the Gulf of Aqaba and the Red. Sea.
Later, the 1979 peace treaty between the two countries was drafted so as to stipulate that the Straits of Tiran are international waters open to one and all.
Israel's minister of transport Yisrael Katz headed a 12-member delegation that traveled to Beijing for the signing ceremony.
Part of the 20 billion shekel tab would be assumed by the China Development Industrial Bank -- with Israel heading the operational side. Chinese companies expect to win most of the construction projects.
Prime Minister Netanyahu declared the planned railway a national priority project. The 180-kilometer line is expected to cut travel time between Tel Aviv and Eilat to two hours -- a new catalyst for development of the Negev, which along with the Galilee is expected to become an increasing focus for economic and population growth for Israel in coming years.
But the strategic element stands out, as Israel puts more weight on security in a turbulent region -- made even more turbulent and uncertain by ominous results stemming from the "Arab spring." As Dr. Aaron Lerner, director of Independent Media Review Analysis, puts it: "What country in the region would have the chutzpa to interfere with the operation of a transportation system with a Chinese government connection?
SOURCE
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Barack Obama: Socialist or Nouveau Fascist?
“Barack Obama is a socialist.” Heard that one before? Of course you have. In fact if polling is to be believed, it’s more likely than not that you have accepted this premise at some point in the not too distant past.
Two summers ago a poll conducted by Democratic strategists James Carville and Stan Greenberg found that 55 percent of registered voters nationwide believed the term socialist accurately applied to Obama. In fact 33 percent of respondents — a third of all registered voters in the nation — believed the term applied to Obama “very well.”
More recently a Pew Center survey on some of our nation’s most commonly used ideological labels revealed that 60 percent of Americans have a negative impression of the word “socialism.”
But is Obama a socialist? And if he’s not — what is he?
Certainly there is a compelling case to be made that Obama is a socialist in the contemporary sense — much like the French Socialists, who are proposing massive tax hikes on the wealthy after securing the presidency and majorities in France’s Sénat and Assemblée Nationale.
Europe is littered with such tax-and-spend parties — including Germany’s Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands and Spain’s Partido Socialista Obrero Español (both of which ruled coalition governments in their countries until 2009 and 2011, respectively).
But is 21st century European socialism — which has led to a full-blown recession and pushed the world to the brink of a second global financial crisis — really socialism in the way that Karl Marx envisioned it?
Obama has never advocated doctrinaire socialism (which is based on government ownership of private property and the means of production). Certainly he has made good on his promise to “spread the wealth around” via unprecedented government intervention in the free market, but he cannot be called a socialist in the mold of Vladimir Lenin, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro or Kim Jong-Il.
“What President Obama has been pushing for, and moving toward, is more insidious: government control of the economy, while leaving ownership in private hands,” columnist Thomas Sowell wrote recently. “That way, politicians get to call the shots but, when their bright ideas lead to disaster, they can always blame those who own businesses in the private sector.”
Sound familiar? This is precisely what happened during the recent recession. For example, government-mandated loans aimed at boosting homeownership were clearly among the root causes of the economic downturn – but when the sub-prime bubble burst blame was placed exclusively on “corporate greed.” Of course at the same time politicians were absolving themselves of any responsibility, they were forcing taxpayers to subsidize massive bailouts of these “greedy” financial institutions.
So if Obama isn’t a socialist, what is he? Economically speaking it’s far more accurate to say that he is a fascist — a supporter of dirigisme, in which government manages the economy through central planning, not collective ownership. Fascism did not seek to stamp out the innovative, wealth-creating potential of profit-seeking investment and entrepreneurship – instead it sought to channel those innovations (and funnel that wealth) to the good of the state.
“In fascist Italy the state pays for the blunders of private enterprise,” Italian social critic Gaetano Salvemini wrote in the mid-1930s.
When business was good, “profit remained to private initiative.” However when downturns came (as they inevitably do), “the government added the loss to the taxpayer’s burden.”
“Profit is private and individual,” Salvemini wrote. “Loss is public and social.”
This is the basis of fascism’s “third way” between laissez-faire capitalism and Marxism. It’s also precisely the economic system we see at work in America today, a centralized bureaucratic oligarchy in which farm subsidies, investments in “green jobs,” Wall Street bailouts, Export-Import Bank subsidies and numerous other taxpayer-funded incentives manipulate the market to serve specific political purposes.
Obviously the fascist analogy isn’t perfect. Unlike Obama, fascists abhorred class warfare (and labor’s efforts to foment it) because such societal divisions ran counter to their nationalist ideology. And while fascist economic policies can certainly perpetuate the redistribution of wealth, they also tend to create powerful privileged elites that leverage tax dollars and political favors so as to manipulate the market in their favor.
So is Obama’s brand of 21st century socialism/ nouveau fascism really “more insidious” than pure socialism, as Sowell suggests? Yes, because unlike socialism – the public sector never “takes a loss,” as the recent bureaucratic bailouts made clear.
Also consider this: Is any property really “private” if the government can take it based on little more than a whim? And is any sector of the economy really “private” as long as government can swoop in and set its prices and production quotas? And finally, is any market truly “free” if government can compel citizens to make specific purchases?
Of course not — all of which makes Obama’s ideology dangerous no matter what label we slap on it.
SOURCE
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Psychological Operations and Leaving Afghanistan
The timeline for withdrawal from Afghanistan is slated for 2014. It has become America's longest war of attrition. Yet all is not lost there. While the United States might not "win" the decade-long war, it is almost impossible to lose.
In a sense, there is nothing to win: Afghan culture is an embarrassment to the human condition. Even the "good guys" will kill people over a book and then sell their daughters to a septuagenarian. But there is nothing to lose, either. Lest we forget, the U.S. routed al-Qaeda and the Taliban more than ten years ago, by December 2001, with the use of just 5,200 troops. The ensuing failure of Afghan civil society is not a U.S. military defeat.
In World War II, General Douglas MacArthur famously said, "We are not retreating-we are advancing in another direction." As we begin to withdraw from Afghanistan, U.S. leaders should speak in a comparable manner. What we need is a public psychological operations strategy-or what the military now calls "Military Information Support Operations," or MISO-coupled with tangible displays of military superiority.
Win or lose, Afghanistan was always going to be at the whims of Pakistan. Thus the U.S. has a Pakistan problem, not a Taliban problem. It's Hamid Karzai with the Taliban problem. The Taliban are bad actors, no doubt, but they're essentially a hapless militia. The head of the snake is Pakistan, which covertly supports al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and every major terrorist group in South Asia. We must be clear: our eventual withdrawal from Afghanistan does not portend an American flight from South Asian politics. In fact, if we are wise, it might strengthen our leverage.
We must intensify our drone campaign throughout the "Af-Pak" theater-and talk about it openly, too. Predator drones work. They have killed thousands of top-tier terrorists and have not hurt our popularity throughout the region (we are already unpopular). The drones have, however, undermined among the indigenous population the popularity of the Taliban. If someone in your village were liable to get bombed at any moment, at some point you would want to kick him out of your village.
Our air campaign has struck fear into the hearts of the enemy. Terror chieftain Ustadh Ahmad Farooq was quoted as saying: "There were many areas where we once had freedom, but now they have been lost. We are the ones that are losing people; we are the ones facing shortages of resources. Our land is shrinking and drones are flying in the sky." American leaders should be citing quotes like this publicly. Bringing to light the enemy's private fears is effective psychological warfare.
Although there are some slippery-slope arguments against the use of Predator drones, we should not doubt their efficacy. The conventional wisdom once suggested that the more we bombed, the more we would "inflame" hatred against us. But just the opposite is true. The more air supremacy we display over our al-Qaeda and Taliban adversaries, the more they doubt themselves and their actions. The truth is this: when our Islamist enemies have been irrefutably whipped on the battlefield, they are not enraged, but rather humbled, and are more prone to second-guess the divine sanction of their cause. Allah doesn't like losers, you see. This was Osama bin Laden's old "strong horse" logic: a neutral man will not gravitate to a weak horse.
The Taliban's boasts that they can fight forever must be countered with visible exhibitions of U.S. dominance. Good-natured humor would help, too. President Reagan used humor with devastating effect against the Soviets. Today, American politicians will go to great lengths to embarrass and humiliate their political opponents, but refrain from mocking our undying enemies. This is unfortunate, as our enemies in Afghanistan and Pakistan are largely incompetent and worthy of ridicule.
This worked in Iraq. The U.S. military released a video of insurgent leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi unable to work his weapon, shattering his image as a military mastermind. The terrorists' cause would be greatly damaged should our national leaders use similar tactics on a more consistent basis. It would be nice to hear a U.S. official or general officer speak of the Taliban's widespread pedophilic treatment of young Afghan boys, or make the Seinfeldian observation that al-Qaeda spends too much time working out on the monkey bars. This, above all, will drive the enemy nuts: they do not want to be laughed at.
Advocates of the current strategy argue that our abandonment of the nation-building project will result in al-Qaeda and the Taliban reestablishing their bases throughout Afghanistan (from which they would plot more attacks). There are three counterpoints to this argument. First, the 9/11 attacks were planned in apartments in Hamburg, Germany, not in Afghan training camps. Second, the enemy has long goaded us into making this a war of attrition- M16s vs. AK-47s-and we have unfortunately obliged. But we do not have to fight the war on their terms. There are smarter, more cost-effective ways to fight our nation's enemies than "teaching toothless villagers how to brush their teeth," in the words of Col. Ralph Peters.
Third, the U.S. has aerial technologies today that did not exist in 2001 when the war began. Should the terrorists be dumb enough to coalescence into specified, observable camps, we would simply be able to target them that much quicker. We should openly encourage them-dare them, even-to reestablish those training camps. Hell, maybe they'll even hold parades like Hezbollah. They'd last ten minutes. It's unsettling that more senior officials do not share this confidence. Such a "worst-case" scenario would be indistinguishable from Yemen or Somalia, for which we successfully use a fly-swatter strategy (Predator drones, Special Forces, and aid to indigenous allies). Let's stop pretending like Afghanistan is the Gates of Vienna. It's not. It's Mars. Our strategic focus should be on Iran and Pakistan.
We should show more assurance and less worry regarding the outcome in Afghanistan. The entire theater should be inundated with fliers from the sky, translated into Pashto, Arabic, and Farsi. They should contain a photograph of the Wright brothers, and they should read: "This was human aviation in 1901. More than a century has passed and you still cannot get off the ground. We will be overhead forever." As we "retreat" in the coming years, the point must be made that we are, in fact, advancing in another direction-that we can continue the fight, at low cost, on our terms, indefinitely.
SOURCE
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This should be celebrated
The more the terminally corrupt United Nations is discredited, the better
[Canadian] Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird calls it a "sick joke" that the government of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad could get a seat on the UN Human Rights Council.
"It would do irreparable damage to the United Nations and likely would be the biggest blow that the United Nations has taken since its formation," Baird said during a teleconference Friday after the Friends of the Syrian People meeting in Paris. "What Assad needs to be facing is the International Criminal Court to face charges for committing crimes against humanities, he and his henchmen."
Syria is a candidate in the 2013 election for seats on the council.
The council condemned Syria on Friday for human rights violations, but UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer says it watered down a U.S. proposal to specifically rule out Syria's candidacy.
"We had a reference that all countries need to the meet the standards of membership, but there was no express rejection of Syria's candidacy," Neuer told QMI Agency. "At this point, the possibility that Syria will run next year is still on the table."
Neuer says it's also worrisome that Canada and other western governments haven't spoken out about Pakistan and Venezuela likely winning council seats in November.
Human Rights Watch has repeatedly criticized the governments of both countries.
SOURCE
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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
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Friday, July 06, 2012
13 Ways Obamacare Will Ruin Your Life
This document will not even begin to detail the unforeseeable ways that “Obamacare” will impact the freedoms and livelihoods of American citizens. America has bought in to what will likely be more government insertion into our lives and homes, if we do not act wisely in this next election.
It is our irresponsibility as a nation that we must now correct. We must show our disapproval by removing from office those who threaten to chip away at our freedoms, and tax us heavily for the advancement of big government.
Do you know why you MUST vote those responsible for Obamacare out of offiice? Consider the following…
ALARMING FACT #1: Individuals/Families must carry Health Insurance – OR ELSE!
(See Public Law 111–148 Sec. 5000A. Requirement to Maintain to Minimum Essential Coverage)
Whether you agree with their decision or not, some individuals or families decide not to carry health insurance for a variety of reasons. Perhaps they are young, and have decided to spend their money on other things. Perhaps they believe the insurance industry is corrupt, and they choose not to carry coverage. Perhaps they participate in alternative services such as Samaritan Ministries Healthcare insurance. Perhaps they choose not to have it….just because.
We are obligated as American citizens to act lawfully and pay taxes. Otherwise, there is freedom of choice. We choose whether or not to vote. Should we vote? Absolutely! Does everyone vote, no indeed. As an American, do you have the right to decide which commodities you will purchase, and what services you will procure? Not any more!!! As of 2014, you will be required to carry a government-approved health insurance plan. If you don’t – you will be penalized (i.e. – taxed.) You will be taxed for your decision not to do something.
Let’s compare it to what we are taxed for today. You want to own property – expect to pay a property tax. You want to buy a television – expect to pay a sales tax. You want to drive your car – expect to pay a gas tax. But, it’s also your right NOT to do those things. In that case, there is no tax to pay. The ruling of the Supreme Court, and the law itself now allows government to “tax” you for NOT purchasing something. Will this be the beginning of a new precedent? What behavior can we expect to be taxed on in the future? If this doesn’t outrage you, then what will?
The American’s right to healthcare isn’t the issue at hand. We can all generally agree that our healthcare system must be reformed, but not at the expense of the American citizen’s freedom to choose.
ALARMING FACT #2: Employers must provide health insurance for their employees – OR ELSE!
(See Public Law 111–148 Sec. 1513. Shared Responsibility for Employers)
This doesn’t seem like a bad thing does it? After all, employers should offer health insurance to their employees, right? And, since this only affects companies with more than 50 employees, what’s to worry about? Why shouldn’t “big” companies offer health insurance? Here are two potential fall-out scenarios that will answer the question “why not?”
1. We can all agree that the economy is in trouble. Jobs are precious. Employers are cutting costs and eliminating jobs every day. Now, let’s introduce a government mandate requiring employers to increase their costs and offer health insurance to their employees. Who is going to absorb that cost? The employer? Likely, the employee is going to feel the “cost” of this insurance in his/her own back pocket. The salary of that employee will inevitably drop (or get redirected) to cover the amount that the new health insurance plan is going to cost the employer. Or, if the employer fails to offer coverage, perhaps the employee’s compensation will drop by the amount of the tax (i.e. – the fine) the employer will pay for not offering coverage. Either way, the employee is the one who will probably pay the price. So, while the employee’s total compensation may not be altered, the drop in his/her take-home pay may seriously affect that individual’s (or his/her family’s) bottom-line. This will be an ever-increasing burden for low to middle income wage earners, as the costs for coverage increases.
2. The employer may decide that it’s cheaper, in the short-term, to pay the tax rather than cover the bill for each employee’s health insurance plan. At least for the next few years, the cost of paying the tax is cheaper than the cost of the insurance policy. (I can even see employers who currently offer health insurance plans deciding that they might want to dump coverage and pay the tax, and let their employees go get a government-sponsored plan.) By the time the cost of the tax (i.e. – fine) is as much or more than the cost of that employer covering the health insurance premium, the damage will have been done. Everyone will have moved from private insurance coverage into the government-operated plans, and private insurance companies will be defunct. Perhaps this is exactly what the government wants! Perhaps they want employers to pay the fines so that we can move to a government controlled health care system. Don’t think that is a reasonable conclusion? Think about this:
Let’s compare the two entities who will offer coverage. Private insurance companies will offer coverage to individuals. Those private insurance companies are in business for profit. The government will also offer government-sponsored plans. The government is billions of dollars in debt, and yet they keep adding to that debt. Does the government seem the least bit concerned about making a profit? What private insurance company is going to be able to compete with the rates of the government-sponsored insurance plan? Add to that the fact that the law now requires private health insurance providers to pay an annual fee based on each individual company’s share of the total market. Ultimately, even if the private insurance companies are able to make money, they’ll be fined as a result. Do you think our government isn’t moving us toward a government-controlled health care system? Think again. They’ve done such a fine job with the health and state of our nation. NOT! Why would we even begin to want them in charge of our health care?
ALARMING FACT #3: You must pay for coverage you might not need.
(See Public Law 111–148 Sec. 1302. Essential Health Benefits Requirements)
Again, whether you agree with it or not, we have always been afforded the right to decide what kind of insurance coverage we’d like to pay for (or none at all). The new law requires that the following services must be covered by an individual’s policy: Ambulatory patient services, Emergency services, Hospitalization, Maternity and newborn care, Mental health and substance use disorder services, including behavioral health treatment, Prescription drugs, Rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices, Laboratory services, Preventive and wellness services and chronic disease management, Pediatric services, including oral and vision care.
What if you’re a single male? It doesn’t matter, you must still pay for a plan that offers maternity care. What if you have no children? It doesn’t matter, you still must have newborn care and pediatric services on your plan. In short, you are helping to fund services for others by being charged for services that you do not, and perhaps will never need.
Food for thought: Do you see the theme throughout this document? Free isn’t free! Who is paying for this wonderful new health plan for all Americans? YOU! Even more importantly, your freedom isn’t free. Your freedom to choose is being heavily taxed.
Oh yes, and the lawmakers who think this is such a great idea – they have exempted themselves from participating. How nice for them!
We must show our government our extreme dissatisfaction and disapproval, and vote these politicians, who are so willing to spend our hard-earned money for us, OUT OF OFFICE!
Much more HERE
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Is the NYT the sole authority on Jew-hatred?
So it works out that Iran's vice president really hates Jews. In fact, he hates Jews so much that even The New York Times reported it. On Tuesday, the Times published an account of Iranian Vice President Mohammad-Reza Rahimi's speech before a UN forum on fighting drug addiction in Tehran.
Rahimi claimed that Jews control the illegal drug trade. We sell drugs, he said, in order to fulfill what he said is a Talmudic writ to "destroy everyone who opposes the Jews."
He said that our conspiracy is obvious since, he claimed, there are no Jewish drug addicts. He went so far as to promise to pay anyone who can find a Jewish drug addict.
As he put it, "The Islamic Republic of Iran will pay for anybody who can research and find one single Zionist who is an addict. They do not exist. This is the proof of their involvement in drugs trade."
Oops, sorry, he doesn't hate Jews. He hates Zionists. Some of his best friends are Jews.
At least that is what the Times would have us believe. As reporter Thomas Erdbrink put it, "'Zionists' is Iran's ideological term for Jews who support the state of Israel."
He also helpfully noted, "More than 25,000 Jews live in Iran, and they are recognized as a religious minority, with a representative in Parliament."
Aside from that, just so we don't get the wrong impression about the Iranian government, Erdbrink calmed us down by noting, therapeutically, "Several Iranian ministers gave politically neutral briefings on the impact of the drug trade on the country."
So aside from the fact that its vice president is a frothing-at-the-mouth anti-Semite, the Iranian regime is perfectly respectable. Nothing to see here folks, move on.
Except, of course, that this is not the case.
Iran's "Supreme Leader" routinely refers to Israel as a cancer. For instance, in a sermon before thousands of Muslim worshipers in February, Ali Khamenei said, "The Zionist regime is a cancerous tumor and it will be removed."
Then there's Rahimi's direct boss, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who can't ask what the weather is like without calling for the annihilation of the Jewish people.
But then he too usually calls us Jews "Zionists," (which most of us are), so his calls for the genocide of Jewry is really just a political statement and not proof that what moves him when he wakes up in the morning and goes to bed at night is a passionate, obsessive desire to murder an entire people.
Many commentators seized on Erdbrink's write-up of Rahimi's diatribe as further proof that the civilized world cannot permit Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. And that is fair enough.
Of course Iran cannot be permitted to acquire nuclear weapons. They are religious fanatics who rule under a deranged banner of messianic genocide.
BUT THE real issue here is that these commentators felt it necessary to seize on the Times' write-up of Rahimi's speech to make this obvious point. That is, the real issue here isn't the Iranians. The real issue is the Western media. From the New York Times to the BBC to the European media, Jew-hatred is the most under-reported - and arguably most important story - of our times.
No issue unites the Muslim world more than venomous, murderous hatred of Jews.
No single issue informs their foreign policies more than hatred of Jews. And yet, reporting - even biased, misleadingly understated reporting - of this massive, strategically pivotal phenomenon is almost nonexistent in most major media outlets. As a consequence, it is a major event when the Times finally publishes an anemic report about it. And again, even that report hides the real story.
Erdbrink ended his report by quoting an unnamed European diplomat who was in Rahimi's audience at the conference. The diplomat told him that on the one hand, "This was definitely one of the worst speeches I have heard in my life. My gut reaction was: Why are we supporting any cooperation with these people?"
But, lest we reach any policy conclusions from Rahimi's bigotry, the diplomat soothed, "If we do not support the United Nations on helping Iran fight drugs, voices like the one of Mr. Rahimi will be the only ones out there."
What both Erdbrink and his European interlocutor failed to acknowledge is that Rahimi won't be punished for his views. He was promoted because of his views. Helping Iran fight drugs doesn't encourage non-genocidal Iranian politicians. It legitimizes the regime that promoted Rahimi and Ahmadinejad and Khamenei and every other powerful politician and military commander because of their hatred of Jews.
The Western media has two basic approaches to their non-reporting of Islamic Jew-hatred and its significance for international security. The first approach is to ignore the issue because it is ideologically inconvenient.
The New York Times, like every other major Western media outlet except The Wall Street Journal, is of the opinion that the Islamic world should be appeased. The Muslim Brotherhood and Iran should be accommodated.
If they gave Islamic Jew-hatred coverage commensurate with its actual significance, they would be undermining their ideological agenda. In light of their ubiquitous and vituperative obsession with Jewish people, it is obvious that it is impossible to appease the Muslim world.
The second approach to contending with Islamic Jew-hatred is to justify it by claiming that Israel has earned all the hate coming its way. It's "political" they say. The Islamic demonization of Jews is understandable given the Palestinians and all that.
Obviously, both of these approaches to the story of Islamic Jew-hatred are appalling. The former approach involves a breach of the very concept of objective journalism. After all, the purpose of journalism is to report on the world as it is, not as we would like it to be.
And the latter approach is no less bigoted than the hatred it serves to whitewash. The European diplomat's gut reaction to Rahimi's speech, "Why are we supporting any cooperation with these people?" was entirely rational.
AND IF Rahimi's hatred had been directed against any other people, race, creed, state or color, no one would support cooperation with "these people."
No one would support the Palestinian national movement if its inherent, overwhelming hatred was directed, say, against the black state rather than the Jewish state....
On the face of it, it can be argued that the Western media's willful blindness towards Islamic Jew-hatred and its influence on world affairs are part and parcel of the Western elite's collective refusal to recognize and contend with the implications of the phenomenon.
But this is too forgiving. Policy-makers who ignore Islamic Jew-hatred are doing so because they are trying to sell their policies. What's the New York Times' excuse?
The media are supposed to report facts, not shape perceptions. The facts, not the perceptions are supposed to inform policy. That is, they are not supposed to collaborate with policy-makers, they are supposed to inform policy-makers and the general public.
And this leads us back to the well-meaning commentators who seized on Erdbrink's report about how Iran's vice president believes that Jews - sorry Zionists - are monsters, and used it as proof that Iran cannot be permitted to get the bomb. Yes, of course, they are right that it is worth re-quoting his vile remarks to make the point.
But by quoting the Times, they may be scoring a couple of tactical points today, but they are losing a long-term strategic battle. They are giving respectability to a media organ that is consummately unworthy of our respect. They are giving respectability to a news organ with an institutional policy of denying, underreporting, and misleadingly reporting about the most important issue that shapes events in the Middle East today: Islamic hatred of Jews.
SOURCE
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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
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This document will not even begin to detail the unforeseeable ways that “Obamacare” will impact the freedoms and livelihoods of American citizens. America has bought in to what will likely be more government insertion into our lives and homes, if we do not act wisely in this next election.
It is our irresponsibility as a nation that we must now correct. We must show our disapproval by removing from office those who threaten to chip away at our freedoms, and tax us heavily for the advancement of big government.
Do you know why you MUST vote those responsible for Obamacare out of offiice? Consider the following…
ALARMING FACT #1: Individuals/Families must carry Health Insurance – OR ELSE!
(See Public Law 111–148 Sec. 5000A. Requirement to Maintain to Minimum Essential Coverage)
Whether you agree with their decision or not, some individuals or families decide not to carry health insurance for a variety of reasons. Perhaps they are young, and have decided to spend their money on other things. Perhaps they believe the insurance industry is corrupt, and they choose not to carry coverage. Perhaps they participate in alternative services such as Samaritan Ministries Healthcare insurance. Perhaps they choose not to have it….just because.
We are obligated as American citizens to act lawfully and pay taxes. Otherwise, there is freedom of choice. We choose whether or not to vote. Should we vote? Absolutely! Does everyone vote, no indeed. As an American, do you have the right to decide which commodities you will purchase, and what services you will procure? Not any more!!! As of 2014, you will be required to carry a government-approved health insurance plan. If you don’t – you will be penalized (i.e. – taxed.) You will be taxed for your decision not to do something.
Let’s compare it to what we are taxed for today. You want to own property – expect to pay a property tax. You want to buy a television – expect to pay a sales tax. You want to drive your car – expect to pay a gas tax. But, it’s also your right NOT to do those things. In that case, there is no tax to pay. The ruling of the Supreme Court, and the law itself now allows government to “tax” you for NOT purchasing something. Will this be the beginning of a new precedent? What behavior can we expect to be taxed on in the future? If this doesn’t outrage you, then what will?
The American’s right to healthcare isn’t the issue at hand. We can all generally agree that our healthcare system must be reformed, but not at the expense of the American citizen’s freedom to choose.
ALARMING FACT #2: Employers must provide health insurance for their employees – OR ELSE!
(See Public Law 111–148 Sec. 1513. Shared Responsibility for Employers)
This doesn’t seem like a bad thing does it? After all, employers should offer health insurance to their employees, right? And, since this only affects companies with more than 50 employees, what’s to worry about? Why shouldn’t “big” companies offer health insurance? Here are two potential fall-out scenarios that will answer the question “why not?”
1. We can all agree that the economy is in trouble. Jobs are precious. Employers are cutting costs and eliminating jobs every day. Now, let’s introduce a government mandate requiring employers to increase their costs and offer health insurance to their employees. Who is going to absorb that cost? The employer? Likely, the employee is going to feel the “cost” of this insurance in his/her own back pocket. The salary of that employee will inevitably drop (or get redirected) to cover the amount that the new health insurance plan is going to cost the employer. Or, if the employer fails to offer coverage, perhaps the employee’s compensation will drop by the amount of the tax (i.e. – the fine) the employer will pay for not offering coverage. Either way, the employee is the one who will probably pay the price. So, while the employee’s total compensation may not be altered, the drop in his/her take-home pay may seriously affect that individual’s (or his/her family’s) bottom-line. This will be an ever-increasing burden for low to middle income wage earners, as the costs for coverage increases.
2. The employer may decide that it’s cheaper, in the short-term, to pay the tax rather than cover the bill for each employee’s health insurance plan. At least for the next few years, the cost of paying the tax is cheaper than the cost of the insurance policy. (I can even see employers who currently offer health insurance plans deciding that they might want to dump coverage and pay the tax, and let their employees go get a government-sponsored plan.) By the time the cost of the tax (i.e. – fine) is as much or more than the cost of that employer covering the health insurance premium, the damage will have been done. Everyone will have moved from private insurance coverage into the government-operated plans, and private insurance companies will be defunct. Perhaps this is exactly what the government wants! Perhaps they want employers to pay the fines so that we can move to a government controlled health care system. Don’t think that is a reasonable conclusion? Think about this:
Let’s compare the two entities who will offer coverage. Private insurance companies will offer coverage to individuals. Those private insurance companies are in business for profit. The government will also offer government-sponsored plans. The government is billions of dollars in debt, and yet they keep adding to that debt. Does the government seem the least bit concerned about making a profit? What private insurance company is going to be able to compete with the rates of the government-sponsored insurance plan? Add to that the fact that the law now requires private health insurance providers to pay an annual fee based on each individual company’s share of the total market. Ultimately, even if the private insurance companies are able to make money, they’ll be fined as a result. Do you think our government isn’t moving us toward a government-controlled health care system? Think again. They’ve done such a fine job with the health and state of our nation. NOT! Why would we even begin to want them in charge of our health care?
ALARMING FACT #3: You must pay for coverage you might not need.
(See Public Law 111–148 Sec. 1302. Essential Health Benefits Requirements)
Again, whether you agree with it or not, we have always been afforded the right to decide what kind of insurance coverage we’d like to pay for (or none at all). The new law requires that the following services must be covered by an individual’s policy: Ambulatory patient services, Emergency services, Hospitalization, Maternity and newborn care, Mental health and substance use disorder services, including behavioral health treatment, Prescription drugs, Rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices, Laboratory services, Preventive and wellness services and chronic disease management, Pediatric services, including oral and vision care.
What if you’re a single male? It doesn’t matter, you must still pay for a plan that offers maternity care. What if you have no children? It doesn’t matter, you still must have newborn care and pediatric services on your plan. In short, you are helping to fund services for others by being charged for services that you do not, and perhaps will never need.
Food for thought: Do you see the theme throughout this document? Free isn’t free! Who is paying for this wonderful new health plan for all Americans? YOU! Even more importantly, your freedom isn’t free. Your freedom to choose is being heavily taxed.
Oh yes, and the lawmakers who think this is such a great idea – they have exempted themselves from participating. How nice for them!
We must show our government our extreme dissatisfaction and disapproval, and vote these politicians, who are so willing to spend our hard-earned money for us, OUT OF OFFICE!
Much more HERE
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Is the NYT the sole authority on Jew-hatred?
So it works out that Iran's vice president really hates Jews. In fact, he hates Jews so much that even The New York Times reported it. On Tuesday, the Times published an account of Iranian Vice President Mohammad-Reza Rahimi's speech before a UN forum on fighting drug addiction in Tehran.
Rahimi claimed that Jews control the illegal drug trade. We sell drugs, he said, in order to fulfill what he said is a Talmudic writ to "destroy everyone who opposes the Jews."
He said that our conspiracy is obvious since, he claimed, there are no Jewish drug addicts. He went so far as to promise to pay anyone who can find a Jewish drug addict.
As he put it, "The Islamic Republic of Iran will pay for anybody who can research and find one single Zionist who is an addict. They do not exist. This is the proof of their involvement in drugs trade."
Oops, sorry, he doesn't hate Jews. He hates Zionists. Some of his best friends are Jews.
At least that is what the Times would have us believe. As reporter Thomas Erdbrink put it, "'Zionists' is Iran's ideological term for Jews who support the state of Israel."
He also helpfully noted, "More than 25,000 Jews live in Iran, and they are recognized as a religious minority, with a representative in Parliament."
Aside from that, just so we don't get the wrong impression about the Iranian government, Erdbrink calmed us down by noting, therapeutically, "Several Iranian ministers gave politically neutral briefings on the impact of the drug trade on the country."
So aside from the fact that its vice president is a frothing-at-the-mouth anti-Semite, the Iranian regime is perfectly respectable. Nothing to see here folks, move on.
Except, of course, that this is not the case.
Iran's "Supreme Leader" routinely refers to Israel as a cancer. For instance, in a sermon before thousands of Muslim worshipers in February, Ali Khamenei said, "The Zionist regime is a cancerous tumor and it will be removed."
Then there's Rahimi's direct boss, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who can't ask what the weather is like without calling for the annihilation of the Jewish people.
But then he too usually calls us Jews "Zionists," (which most of us are), so his calls for the genocide of Jewry is really just a political statement and not proof that what moves him when he wakes up in the morning and goes to bed at night is a passionate, obsessive desire to murder an entire people.
Many commentators seized on Erdbrink's write-up of Rahimi's diatribe as further proof that the civilized world cannot permit Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. And that is fair enough.
Of course Iran cannot be permitted to acquire nuclear weapons. They are religious fanatics who rule under a deranged banner of messianic genocide.
BUT THE real issue here is that these commentators felt it necessary to seize on the Times' write-up of Rahimi's speech to make this obvious point. That is, the real issue here isn't the Iranians. The real issue is the Western media. From the New York Times to the BBC to the European media, Jew-hatred is the most under-reported - and arguably most important story - of our times.
No issue unites the Muslim world more than venomous, murderous hatred of Jews.
No single issue informs their foreign policies more than hatred of Jews. And yet, reporting - even biased, misleadingly understated reporting - of this massive, strategically pivotal phenomenon is almost nonexistent in most major media outlets. As a consequence, it is a major event when the Times finally publishes an anemic report about it. And again, even that report hides the real story.
Erdbrink ended his report by quoting an unnamed European diplomat who was in Rahimi's audience at the conference. The diplomat told him that on the one hand, "This was definitely one of the worst speeches I have heard in my life. My gut reaction was: Why are we supporting any cooperation with these people?"
But, lest we reach any policy conclusions from Rahimi's bigotry, the diplomat soothed, "If we do not support the United Nations on helping Iran fight drugs, voices like the one of Mr. Rahimi will be the only ones out there."
What both Erdbrink and his European interlocutor failed to acknowledge is that Rahimi won't be punished for his views. He was promoted because of his views. Helping Iran fight drugs doesn't encourage non-genocidal Iranian politicians. It legitimizes the regime that promoted Rahimi and Ahmadinejad and Khamenei and every other powerful politician and military commander because of their hatred of Jews.
The Western media has two basic approaches to their non-reporting of Islamic Jew-hatred and its significance for international security. The first approach is to ignore the issue because it is ideologically inconvenient.
The New York Times, like every other major Western media outlet except The Wall Street Journal, is of the opinion that the Islamic world should be appeased. The Muslim Brotherhood and Iran should be accommodated.
If they gave Islamic Jew-hatred coverage commensurate with its actual significance, they would be undermining their ideological agenda. In light of their ubiquitous and vituperative obsession with Jewish people, it is obvious that it is impossible to appease the Muslim world.
The second approach to contending with Islamic Jew-hatred is to justify it by claiming that Israel has earned all the hate coming its way. It's "political" they say. The Islamic demonization of Jews is understandable given the Palestinians and all that.
Obviously, both of these approaches to the story of Islamic Jew-hatred are appalling. The former approach involves a breach of the very concept of objective journalism. After all, the purpose of journalism is to report on the world as it is, not as we would like it to be.
And the latter approach is no less bigoted than the hatred it serves to whitewash. The European diplomat's gut reaction to Rahimi's speech, "Why are we supporting any cooperation with these people?" was entirely rational.
AND IF Rahimi's hatred had been directed against any other people, race, creed, state or color, no one would support cooperation with "these people."
No one would support the Palestinian national movement if its inherent, overwhelming hatred was directed, say, against the black state rather than the Jewish state....
On the face of it, it can be argued that the Western media's willful blindness towards Islamic Jew-hatred and its influence on world affairs are part and parcel of the Western elite's collective refusal to recognize and contend with the implications of the phenomenon.
But this is too forgiving. Policy-makers who ignore Islamic Jew-hatred are doing so because they are trying to sell their policies. What's the New York Times' excuse?
The media are supposed to report facts, not shape perceptions. The facts, not the perceptions are supposed to inform policy. That is, they are not supposed to collaborate with policy-makers, they are supposed to inform policy-makers and the general public.
And this leads us back to the well-meaning commentators who seized on Erdbrink's report about how Iran's vice president believes that Jews - sorry Zionists - are monsters, and used it as proof that Iran cannot be permitted to get the bomb. Yes, of course, they are right that it is worth re-quoting his vile remarks to make the point.
But by quoting the Times, they may be scoring a couple of tactical points today, but they are losing a long-term strategic battle. They are giving respectability to a media organ that is consummately unworthy of our respect. They are giving respectability to a news organ with an institutional policy of denying, underreporting, and misleadingly reporting about the most important issue that shapes events in the Middle East today: Islamic hatred of Jews.
SOURCE
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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
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Thursday, July 05, 2012
Essential Liberty
In honor of the establishment and preservation of Essential Liberty, we offer a few remarks from an young American Patriot standing watch on the front lines in Afghanistan, followed by insights from our Founding Fathers, as fitting reminders of the constant vigil which must be maintained in defense of Liberty.
Wisdom from the Warfront -- Enemies Foreign and Domestic:
"As an officer who faces combat challenges daily, and who has experienced my share of heartache in defense of our great nation in accordance with my oath, it pains me to see our elected 'leaders' so willfully defy their oaths to support our Constitution. But, war has taught me that we just take today at our best, because we never know what tomorrow will bring.
"The seemingly insurmountable battle to salvage what is left of American Liberty simply means God will provide a great movement and great leaders to get the job done in His timing. While we may see no solution, it's undoubtedly already in the making and I can only pray that He continues to use me in His service, along with all the other great Americans Patriots across our country.
"Battles would not be great and triumphant if they were easy. The more the Left undermines Rule of Law, the more glorious the reconstitution and restoration will be, the mightier the battle, and the mightier the men who will fight it. I simply pray that I continue to grow to fight that war, just as I am fighting this one, and that God preserves me to do so. God provided us with the means and the personal example to triumph over the greatest of evils, He has provided us with the solutions to our own problems, we simply must trust it is within His plan.
"Keep fighting the good fight, do not despair on the 4th of July, but celebrate that Providence provided us with the greatest blueprint for governments among men in 1789, with the spirit of 1776. As Alexander Hamilton said, 'The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the Hand of Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.' Our rights are only referenced by the Declaration, but endowed by our Creator, and as such, are self-evident. Obama cannot erase them and long after we are dead and gone, the rights of man will be preserved in the essence of God's creation available only through reflection in His gift of reason. Evil ultimately will not prevail -- we are blueprinted with Victory."
SOURCE
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Obamacare: 21 New or Higher Taxes
Ryan Ellis puts together some important data on the tax impact of Obamacare:
1. Individual Mandate Excise Tax(Jan 2014): Starting in 2014, anyone not buying "qualifying" health insurance must pay an income surtax according to the higher of the following
SOURCE
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The Joy of Government-Run Healthcare: The UK’s Gilded Bureaucrats and Dying Patients
SOURCE
Also see EYE ON BRITAIN for daily updates on the NHS
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ELSEWHERE
Affordable Health Care Act: Not affordable: "Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of Obama Care and the individual mandate to purchase health insurance or pay a fine, individuals are starting to face the sobering reality that the costs of health care and health care insurance are going to go up -- way up -- instead of down"
Obama’s victory is now his challenge: "'In my first term, we passed healthcare reform,' President Obama joked this spring. 'In my second term, I guess I'll pass it again.' Thanks to the Supreme Court, Obama can take that item off his agenda. But Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. guaranteed Thursday that healthcare will still be at the center of this year's presidential race."
Mexican politics: "Thousands of people rushed to stores on Tuesday to redeem prepaid gift cards they said were given them by the party that won Mexico’s presidency, inflaming accusations that the election was marred by massive vote-buying. At least a few cardholders were angry, complaining they didn’t get as much as promised."
How Amazon survives the State: "Here's a snapshot from the American landscape of convoluted crony capitalism: starting this September, if a man in Los Angeles buys a book from Amazon.com, the local sales tax he pays could go to the city of San Bernardino, which will then give 80 percent of the tax money back to Amazon itself."
We’re all socialists now, except for libertarians: "The Sunday edition of the New York Times published an interesting article that is certain to make some Americans who read it uncomfortable. Why is that? Because the article, which is entitled, 'What’s a Socialist?' makes a point that many ordinary Americans hate hearing: that by adopting the welfare state, Americans in principle became socialists, just like Europeans."
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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
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In honor of the establishment and preservation of Essential Liberty, we offer a few remarks from an young American Patriot standing watch on the front lines in Afghanistan, followed by insights from our Founding Fathers, as fitting reminders of the constant vigil which must be maintained in defense of Liberty.
Wisdom from the Warfront -- Enemies Foreign and Domestic:
"As an officer who faces combat challenges daily, and who has experienced my share of heartache in defense of our great nation in accordance with my oath, it pains me to see our elected 'leaders' so willfully defy their oaths to support our Constitution. But, war has taught me that we just take today at our best, because we never know what tomorrow will bring.
"The seemingly insurmountable battle to salvage what is left of American Liberty simply means God will provide a great movement and great leaders to get the job done in His timing. While we may see no solution, it's undoubtedly already in the making and I can only pray that He continues to use me in His service, along with all the other great Americans Patriots across our country.
"Battles would not be great and triumphant if they were easy. The more the Left undermines Rule of Law, the more glorious the reconstitution and restoration will be, the mightier the battle, and the mightier the men who will fight it. I simply pray that I continue to grow to fight that war, just as I am fighting this one, and that God preserves me to do so. God provided us with the means and the personal example to triumph over the greatest of evils, He has provided us with the solutions to our own problems, we simply must trust it is within His plan.
"Keep fighting the good fight, do not despair on the 4th of July, but celebrate that Providence provided us with the greatest blueprint for governments among men in 1789, with the spirit of 1776. As Alexander Hamilton said, 'The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the Hand of Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.' Our rights are only referenced by the Declaration, but endowed by our Creator, and as such, are self-evident. Obama cannot erase them and long after we are dead and gone, the rights of man will be preserved in the essence of God's creation available only through reflection in His gift of reason. Evil ultimately will not prevail -- we are blueprinted with Victory."
SOURCE
*****************************
Obamacare: 21 New or Higher Taxes
Ryan Ellis puts together some important data on the tax impact of Obamacare:
1. Individual Mandate Excise Tax(Jan 2014): Starting in 2014, anyone not buying "qualifying" health insurance must pay an income surtax according to the higher of the following
| 1 Adult | 2 Adults | 3+ Adults | |
| 2014 | 1% AGI/$95 | 1% AGI/$190 | 1% AGI/$285 |
| 2015 | 2% AGI/$325 | 2% AGI/$650 | 2% AGI/$975 |
| 2016 + | 2.5% AGI/$695 | 2.5% AGI/$1390 | 2.5% AGI/$2085 |
Exemptions for religious objectors, undocumented immigrants, prisoners, those earning less than the poverty line, members of Indian tribes, and hardship cases (determined by HHS)
2. Employer Mandate Tax(Jan 2014): If an employer does not offer health coverage, and at least one employee qualifies for a health tax credit, the employer must pay an additional non-deductible tax of $2000 for all full-time employees. This provision applies to all employers with 50 or more employees. If any employee actually receives coverage through the exchange, the penalty on the employer for that employee rises to $3000. If the employer requires a waiting period to enroll in coverage of 30-60 days, there is a $400 tax per employee ($600 if the period is 60 days or longer). Combined score of individual and employer mandate tax penalty: $65 billion/10 years
3. Surtax on Investment Income ($123 billion/Jan. 2013): This increase involves the creation of a new, 3.8 percent surtax on investment income earned in households making at least $250,000 ($200,000 single). This would result in the following top tax rates on investment income
| Capital Gains | Dividends | Other* | |
| 2010-2012 | 15% | 15% | 35% |
| 2013+ (current law) | 23.8% | 43.4% | 43.4% |
| 2013+ (Obama budget) | 23.8% | 23.8% | 43.4% |
*Other unearned income includes (for surtax purposes) gross income from interest, annuities, royalties, net rents, and passive income in partnerships and Subchapter-S corporations. It does not include municipal bond interest or life insurance proceeds, since those do not add to gross income. It does not include active trade or business income, fair market value sales of ownership in pass-through entities, or distributions from retirement plans. The 3.8% surtax does not apply to non-resident aliens.
4. Excise Tax on Comprehensive Health Insurance Plans($32 bil/Jan 2018): Starting in 2018, new 40 percent excise tax on "Cadillac" health insurance plans ($10,200 single/$27,500 family). For early retirees and high-risk professions exists a higher threshold ($11,500 single/$29,450 family). CPI +1 percentage point indexed.
5. Hike in Medicare Payroll Tax($86.8 bil/Jan 2013)
6. Medicine Cabinet Tax($5 bil/Jan 2011): Americans no longer able to use health savings account (HSA), flexible spending account (FSA), or health reimbursement (HRA) pre-tax dollars to purchase non-prescription, over-the-counter medicines (except insulin)
7. HSA Withdrawal Tax Hike($1.4 bil/Jan 2011): Increases additional tax on non-medical early withdrawals from an HSA from 10 to 20 percent, disadvantaging them relative to IRAs and other tax-advantaged accounts, which remain at 10 percent.
8. Flexible Spending Account Cap - aka"Special Needs Kids Tax"($13 bil/Jan 2013): Imposes cap of $2500 (Indexed to inflation after 2013) on FSAs (now unlimited). There is one group of FSA owners for whom this new cap will be particularly cruel and onerous: parents of special needs children. There are thousands of families with special needs children in the United States, and many of them use FSAs to pay for special needs education. Tuition rates at one leading school that teaches special needs children in Washington, D.C. (National Child Research Center) can easily exceed $14,000 per year. Under tax rules, FSA dollars can be used to pay for this type of special needs education.
9. Tax on Medical Device Manufacturers($20 bil/Jan 2013): Medical device manufacturers employ 360,000 people in 6000 plants across the country. This law imposes a new 2.3% excise tax. Exemptions include items retailing for less than $100.
10. Raise "Haircut" for Medical Itemized Deduction from 7.5% to 10% of AGI($15.2 bil/Jan 2013): Currently, those facing high medical expenses are allowed a deduction for medical expenses to the extent that those expenses exceed 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income (AGI). The new provision imposes a threshold of 10 percent of AGI; it is waived for 65+ taxpayers in 2013-2016 only.
11. Tax on Indoor Tanning Services($2.7 billion/July 1, 2010): New 10 percent excise tax on Americans using indoor tanning salons
12. Elimination of tax deduction for employer-provided retirement Rx drug coverage in coordination with Medicare Part D($4.5 bil/Jan 2013)
13. Blue Cross/Blue Shield Tax Hike($0.4 bil/Jan 2010): The special tax deduction in current law for Blue Cross/Blue Shield companies would only be allowed if 85 percent or more of premium revenues are spent on clinical services
14. Excise Tax on Charitable Hospitals(Min$/immediate): $50,000 per hospital if they fail to meet new "community health assessment needs," "financial assistance," and "billing and collection" rules set by HHS
15. Tax on Innovator Drug Companies($22.2 bil/Jan 2010): $2.3 billion annual tax on the industry imposed relative to share of sales made that year.
16. Tax on Health Insurers($60.1 bil/Jan 2014): Annual tax on the industry imposed relative to health insurance premiums collected that year. The stipulation phases in gradually until 2018, and is fully-imposed on firms with $50 million in profits.
SOURCE
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The Joy of Government-Run Healthcare: The UK’s Gilded Bureaucrats and Dying Patients
I’m not sure whether this is a post about America’s dismal future if Obamacare is allowed to take root or whether this is a post about bureaucrats ripping off taxpayers.
But I do know that it shows that the insiders take care of themselves quite nicely when the government seizes more control of a nation’s healthcare sector.
Here’s a report from the UK-based Telegraph about how bureaucrats at a Scottish branch of the National Health Service are bilking taxpayers.
National Procurement, a branch of the NHS National Services Division, arranged for staff who are deemed to be “regular users” of cars for business to get the cars through a taxpayer-backed vehicle-leasing scheme. …Figures provided by National Procurement in response to a Freedom of Information request showed that…one in eight members of staff, had used the 4x4s and convertibles to drive to work. Much of the insurance, petrol, road tax and leasing is funded by the state.
And we’re not talking cheap automobiles. Keep in mind, when you read this next passage, that £25,000 is almost $40,000.
One employee was leased a £27,000 Mercedes, while three other workers have been driving £23,000 S-line Audi A3 sports cars. Another employee received a £28,300 Audi TT. Since the beginning of this year, five new cars have been leased to staff, including a four-door BMW worth more than £30,500. Other leased vehicles include another Audi sports car worth more than £25,000 and three Range Rover Evoques costing up to £29,500.
So how do they work this scam? Simple, they take needless trips.
…staff have had to clock up a minimum of 5000 business miles during office hours to qualify for the scheme. …A department source told the Herald newspaper that some members of staff were using their leased cars for 80-mile round trips between National Procurement’s two offices, in Larkhall, Lanarkshire, and South Gyle in Edinburgh, even though there are adequate video conferencing facilities at both locations.
One hopes that this scandal in a Scottish branch is an exception and that most bureaucrats don’t behave in a similarly reprehensible fashion.
But given the bloated size of the National Health Service bureaucracy, it’s more likely that this is just the tip of the iceberg.
There is an entitlement culture in most government bureaucracies, and I would be shocked in the paper pushers and memo writers hadn’t figured out how to manipulate the system
And since there are more than 1.6 million of them, the magnitude of the fraud is presumably enormous.
The obvious follow-up question is whether taxpayers in the United Kingdom are getting some good value from this army of cosseted bureaucrats?
Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Here are some chilling excerpts from a story in the Daily Mail.
NHS doctors are prematurely ending the lives of thousands of elderly hospital patients because they are difficult to manage or to free up beds, a senior consultant claimed yesterday. Professor Patrick Pullicino said doctors had turned the use of a controversial ‘death pathway’ into the equivalent of euthanasia… There are around 450,000 deaths in Britain each year of people who are in hospital or under NHS care. Around 29 per cent – 130,000 – are of patients who were on the LCP. Professor Pullicino claimed that far too often elderly patients who could live longer are placed on the LCP and it had now become an ‘assisted death pathway rather than a care pathway’.
Here are a couple of horrifying examples.
Professor Pullicino revealed he had personally intervened to take a patient off the LCP who went on to be successfully treated. He said this showed that claims they had hours or days left are ‘palpably false’. In the example he revealed a 71-year-old who was admitted to hospital suffering from pneumonia and epilepsy was put on the LCP by a covering doctor on a weekend shift. Professor Pullicino said he had returned to work after a weekend to find the patient unresponsive and his family upset because they had not agreed to place him on the LCP. ‘I removed the patient from the LCP despite significant resistance,’ he said. ‘His seizures came under control and four weeks later he was discharged home to his family,’ he said.
In other words, government-run healthcare in the United Kingdom is a great scam if you’re an insider. But not such a good deal if you’re someone who needs, well, healthcare.
Sort of makes you wonder what Paul Krugman was thinking when he wrote, “In Britain, the government itself runs the hospitals and employs the doctors. We’ve all heard scare stories about how that works in practice; these stories are false.”
I guess the English newspapers are making up stories to denigrate their own nation. If you want to see more of these “false” stories, click here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
SOURCE
Also see EYE ON BRITAIN for daily updates on the NHS
******************************
ELSEWHERE
Affordable Health Care Act: Not affordable: "Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of Obama Care and the individual mandate to purchase health insurance or pay a fine, individuals are starting to face the sobering reality that the costs of health care and health care insurance are going to go up -- way up -- instead of down"
Obama’s victory is now his challenge: "'In my first term, we passed healthcare reform,' President Obama joked this spring. 'In my second term, I guess I'll pass it again.' Thanks to the Supreme Court, Obama can take that item off his agenda. But Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. guaranteed Thursday that healthcare will still be at the center of this year's presidential race."
Mexican politics: "Thousands of people rushed to stores on Tuesday to redeem prepaid gift cards they said were given them by the party that won Mexico’s presidency, inflaming accusations that the election was marred by massive vote-buying. At least a few cardholders were angry, complaining they didn’t get as much as promised."
How Amazon survives the State: "Here's a snapshot from the American landscape of convoluted crony capitalism: starting this September, if a man in Los Angeles buys a book from Amazon.com, the local sales tax he pays could go to the city of San Bernardino, which will then give 80 percent of the tax money back to Amazon itself."
We’re all socialists now, except for libertarians: "The Sunday edition of the New York Times published an interesting article that is certain to make some Americans who read it uncomfortable. Why is that? Because the article, which is entitled, 'What’s a Socialist?' makes a point that many ordinary Americans hate hearing: that by adopting the welfare state, Americans in principle became socialists, just like Europeans."
***************************
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
****************************
Wednesday, July 04, 2012
Two Muslim men suspected of trying to hijack a flight in China were beaten to death by passengers
I won't comment on the obvious comparison but it cries out for explanation
Two men who allegedly tried to hijack a plane in China were beaten to death by passengers and crew, state media said today. The men were part of a six-strong gang, aged 20 to 36, who attempted to hijack a Tianjin Airlines flight bound for Urumqi last Friday.
Minutes after the flight carrying 101 people took off from Hetian, southwest Xinjiang, three men in the front and three in the back stood up and announced their plans to terrified passengers, according to reports.
The group, all from the city of Kashgar in the west of Xinjiang, then broke a pair of aluminum crutches and used the pieces to attack passengers while trying to break into the cockpit, a regional government spokesman said.
They were tackled by police and passengers who tied them up with belts before the plane returned to the airport safely just 22 minutes later.
Several passengers and crew members were injured in the tussle. The alleged hijackers were taken to hospital where two of them later died, the state-run Global Times reported.
The newspaper said two others were hospitalised after mutilating themselves, but gave no others details.
The regional government spokesman added the men had smuggled suspected explosives on board. These were still being tested by police today.
Xinjiang is home to a large population of minority [Muslim] Uighurs (pronounced WEE'-gurs), but is ruled by China's ethnic majority Hans.
There have been clashes between authorities and Uighurs resentful of government controls over their religion and culture.
SOURCE
**************************
Is Fourth of July still worth celebrating?
"After a long nasty war these colonies coalesced into a nation-state that called itself the United States of America. It was a constitutional republic based on self-rule operating under a document meant to guarantee minimal government coercion and maximum individual freedom. That country no longer exists."
More HERE
**************************
Freedom and Frugality
I am told there is an Italian saying that translates as “It is raining again… PIG OF A GOVERNMENT!” The saying makes me wince because I can see myself raising a fist and shaking it in reproach at the drizzling sky. I spend so much time railing against statism that I risk defining myself by what I oppose. I risk taking the state inside me and allowing it to filter my approach to life.
This is another reason to Go Galt: to reclaim an unfiltered life and carpe the heck out of every diem. One of the ways to do so is deceptively simple. For want of a better word, it is “frugality,” by which I mean something quite different than most people.
For centuries, the North American way has been for people to work harder and earn more to ensure that their children had a better life. For centuries, the strategy succeeded. But today’s children are more likely to be crushed by debt than to inherit their parents’ wealth. Today, hard work is discouraged and punished. It is discouraged by a maze of regulations that police home businesses, for example. It is punished by soaring taxes and disappearing retirement funds.
Meanwhile, the political elites maintain power by draining productivity from society and funneling it into entitlements for the unproductive. As white-hot printing presses increase both the currency supply and prices, the average working person reaches out for some control of his own economic future.
Many people turn to frugality in response to economic bad times. That is, they view it as a necessary, but bitter pill they are forced to swallow, but would rather spit out. Viewing frugality as a form of poverty, they are driven to it through desperation, rather than a desire to increase control over their lives. To them, frugality must be a dreary thing, but in my life, the contrary is true.
A few years ago, my view of frugality changed due to an obvious realization that I had never fully grasped before. Material goods cost money; money is acquired in exchange for my time; my time is literally my life. If X costs $100 and I make $25 an hour, then X costs me four hours of life. Or rather, it costs four hours plus whatever time is consumed by the transaction costs of making money, such as the time and expense of a commute.
This was a paradigm shift for me. I ceased viewing possessions in terms of money and saw them in terms of time. And my time is a scarce good. The hours available can sometimes feel boundless, and it is easy to fall into the trap of valuing each unit as if it were part of an infinite supply. Of course, it is not. There are only so many hours left for me to live.
With no morbidity, I apply a version of “marginal utility” to those hours. This economic law says that a person values the first unit of a thing according to its highest use and values subsequent units less. For example, if you have one unit of water, then you value it highly for staving off dehydration and death. If you have a large number of units, then you value the last one for watering a house plant. You would be willing to spend far more for the first unit than for the last. I try to view my hours as though each one were a first unit and, so, highly valuable.
When I look in my closet, many possessions now represent wasted time: a dress I never wear, shoes that go with nothing… I won’t waste more time reproaching myself, but I need to learn a lesson from that closet. I traded irreplaceable units of my life for possessions I do not value; I call these possessions “the useless shoes of life.” They are things that are neither necessary nor worth the time I traded to acquire them. Instead, I could have been reading or writing, laughing with friends or watching movies with my husband.
And then there are the purchases I will never regret: books, DVDs, my sporty little econocar, our farm, the ingredients for a superb meal. Those items provide a utility that is well worth the cost. And yes, I include pleasure as a “utility.” Pleasure is one of the most useful things in the world. It makes you spring out of bed with energy in the morning; it makes you fall asleep with a smile on your face at night. But even pleasure should be balanced against the cost in time and purchased at bargain rates, if possible.
People respond to the idea of possessions representing units of their lives in different ways.
Some people redouble their efforts to earn more and so reduce the amount of time that any one purchase represents. This is a return to the traditional American dream: Work hard and prosper economically. I wish these people the best, but their choice is not mine. At this point, I find it difficult to understand why anyone would spend years at a job they don’t enjoy in order to own a bigger home than they can use, especially since the upkeep absorbs more time and cash. The trade-off doesn’t make sense.
Also, for the political reasons mentioned earlier, I no longer believe the American dream is functioning.
My choice is to earn and spend less in order to control my own time and to avoid fueling the State through more taxes. I have called this choice “frugality,” but some people are more comfortable with the term “voluntary simplicity.” The point of such simplicity is not to save every possible penny. It is to ensure that your time and money are expended on your goals. Voluntary simplicity can be viewed as a “business plan” for getting the most out of life. Ask yourself what your goals are and what is necessary to get there. Of equal importance, ask what is not necessary.
Every person will have a different answer. Some of my choices, for example, seem to run counter to frugality. For one thing, I live on a 40-acre farm, not in a small apartment. The choice is odd only if you equate frugality with cheapness, however. If you equate it with spending your resources to achieve your own values, then the farm is eminently frugal. An apartment would be cheaper, but it would also impoverish my life: no dogs, no walks down a gravel road, no garden, no privacy…
I look forward to my garden each spring and to cooking complicated ethnic meals so that the aromas of the world flood my kitchen. I intend to travel and experience the places that fired my fantasies as a child; someday, I will know what the stars look like in Africa and how a jungle smells. Rather than diverting time into “useless shoes,” I intend to live.
That is, after all, the purpose of freedom.
SOURCE
**************************
Obamacare was not killed off but it is still terminally ill
The Supreme Court’s upholding of the Obamacare legislation on Thursday does not settle the healthcare question because that legislation is largely unworkable. Equally, the pre-Obamacare U.S. healthcare system was unsatisfactory in a number of ways and becoming progressively more so. Under the assumption that either in 2013 or 2017 Congress and a new Administration will sit down and try to design a more rational healthcare system, I thought it worth outlining the basics of what such a system might entail.
It is unlikely that the Obamacare legislation will survive in the long term. First, it controls costs by capping Medicare payments and by the Independent Payment Advisory Board restricting expensive treatments. This is likely to be as unpopular and ineffective in the United States as is the equivalent National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (the Orwellianly named “NICE”) in Britain. Over time, both measures will also result in the degradation of healthcare quality. Second, the system will only work effectively if the tax on not joining becomes high enough to ensure universal participation. This will cause hardship in the lower income brackets that will be highly unpopular and become a political issue. As healthcare costs continue to rise, both for the state and for participating individuals, the demand for further healthcare reform will become overwhelming.
Start with the liberal demand that the impoverished should not go without health insurance. Phrasing the demand in that way itself increases costs, because it interposes a third party, an insurance company, between consumers and producers. In a free market, consumers and producers negotiate directly, thus ensuring that costs are minimized and quality maximized. Poor people have a right to healthcare, but they do not have a right to purchase that healthcare through insurance, and it makes no sense that they should.
Currently, the impoverished have two mechanisms by which healthcare is delivered to them. First, if their income is sufficiently low and they are fully documented in the U.S. bureaucracy, they have a right to Medicaid, which provides healthcare of variable quality and is paid for through taxes on the general population. Second, even if they are not fully accounted for in the state bureaucracy (for example, illegal immigrants, but also including the transient unemployed and the mentally ill) the hospitals have an obligation to provide emergency care if it is needed. In that sense therefore, few are denied healthcare altogether. However if even middle income people contract one of the ailments that requires huge amounts of spending to overcome it, they will end up with bankrupting medical bills and their life will be ruined.
The bankrupting effect of healthcare bills is exacerbated by two anomalies of the medical care payments system (apart from the excess costs of medical treatment generally, which I’ll get to). First, the emergency room mandate on hospitals, imposed by legislation in 1986, is entirely without compensation to them. Naturally, the hospitals have to pay for these services from somewhere, and they do so by raising rates on other customers. Second, the big insurance companies negotiate discounts with the hospital chains, which lessen their effect by raising their nominal rates, imposing inflated charges on the unfortunates who seek treatment paid for directly, without insurance. This combination of effects results in hospitals near big cities charging $10,000 per night for use of their facilities, an outrageous amount even in areas where a top-class hotel room can run as high as $500-600. Price gouging at this level, resulting in hospital costs five or ten times the full costs of hospitals in Europe, destroys the integrity of the system and makes it impossible to deal with.
Three other areas of excess systemic cost also need to be removed. First, the litigiousness of U.S. society has led to an immense class of parasitic lawyers attaching themselves to healthcare, their costs and settlements costing about 1.5-2% of GDP. When malpractice insurance for a newly registered doctor runs well north of $100,000, doctors’ earnings need to be inflated commensurately, not only by the $100,000 directly but also by the additional cost of the early years of practice, in which a doctor may be paying the full insurance premium but not yet earning enough to cover it.
Second, the insurance and legal bureaucracy surrounding medical care has made it uneconomic in many areas for doctors to operate as sole practitioners. In consequence, large clinics have been able to take over much medical practice. The result is lower earnings for the clinic doctors and inferior care for the patients, who find there is no alternative to visiting bureaucratically managed clinics in which personal knowledge of patients is impossible.
Whereas U.S. medical treatment thirty years ago was of incomparable quality, far better than available elsewhere, this is no longer the case. The belief among the general public that “doctors don’t make house calls” is valid, and is not adequately compensated for by the greater technological sophistication and lower error rate of today’s medicine.
Finally, today’s doctors are often overqualified. At an eminent heart surgeons’ conference on Chinese medicine at which I spoke two years ago, there was considerable complaint that U.S. doctors were not interested in undertaking primary care, and admiration of the Chinese system, in which primary care was readily available. “But then you have to remember” one eminent practitioner said, “that many Chinese doctors have only a bachelor’s degree.”
Immediately the problem became clear. In the medical as in the legal profession (where Law school is a pre-requisite in most states, as well as a bachelor’s degree) restrictive practices have been allowed to limit access to primary care and drive up its costs.
With the burden of litigiousness lifted, insurance companies largely removed from at least primary care and restrictive practices in the medical profession itself removed, the cost of much medical treatment could be reduced, not simply by 10-20% but by more than half. Remove also the cross-subsidization to insurance companies and the indigent inherent in the payment scheme, and medical care would become truly affordable for most people.
We then come to the essential problem of healthcare, that some people are healthier than others. In the public mind currently, this is thought to demand universal health insurance. But of course it does no such thing. For the vast majority of people, the premiums they pay in insurance and the Medicare/Medicaid taxes they pay are greater than the cost of the medical services they receive – otherwise medical insurance companies would go bankrupt. Costs are further increased by nonsenses required by a nanny state, such as forcing insurance companies to cover contraception and sex change operations.
In reality, public health insurance is indeed desirable, but only for catastrophic illnesses, either chronic or critical. There is no point in involving insurance companies in this provision, which simply adds another layer of cost. Instead, catastrophic insurance could be universal and provided by the state (or, in reality, by taxpayers) – thus satisfying the dreams of the left. However, it would involve an annual deductible of say $25,000 in any calendar year. Medical costs below this level would be covered by the individual, with wages being garnisheed if necessary to reimburse medical costs below the $25,000 level.
This system would cause occasional moderate hardship, but no catastrophes (individual hardship cases could be handled by local charities.) Medical costs would mostly be paid for directly, and in any case would be sharply reduced by the reforms described above. Individuals wishing to remove even the $25,000 annual risk could still purchase insurance, which would smooth their incomes and allow them to plan properly.
And overall, medical costs would be reduced from their current 17% of GDP to around the 10% of GDP that prevents the sector from bankrupting the economy. As in most areas it’s possible to design a decent medical and insurance system for the United States; only vested interests and political axe-grinding prevent us from doing so.
More HERE
***************************
My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
****************************
The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
****************************
I won't comment on the obvious comparison but it cries out for explanation
Two men who allegedly tried to hijack a plane in China were beaten to death by passengers and crew, state media said today. The men were part of a six-strong gang, aged 20 to 36, who attempted to hijack a Tianjin Airlines flight bound for Urumqi last Friday.
Minutes after the flight carrying 101 people took off from Hetian, southwest Xinjiang, three men in the front and three in the back stood up and announced their plans to terrified passengers, according to reports.
The group, all from the city of Kashgar in the west of Xinjiang, then broke a pair of aluminum crutches and used the pieces to attack passengers while trying to break into the cockpit, a regional government spokesman said.
They were tackled by police and passengers who tied them up with belts before the plane returned to the airport safely just 22 minutes later.
Several passengers and crew members were injured in the tussle. The alleged hijackers were taken to hospital where two of them later died, the state-run Global Times reported.
The newspaper said two others were hospitalised after mutilating themselves, but gave no others details.
The regional government spokesman added the men had smuggled suspected explosives on board. These were still being tested by police today.
Xinjiang is home to a large population of minority [Muslim] Uighurs (pronounced WEE'-gurs), but is ruled by China's ethnic majority Hans.
There have been clashes between authorities and Uighurs resentful of government controls over their religion and culture.
SOURCE
**************************
Is Fourth of July still worth celebrating?
"After a long nasty war these colonies coalesced into a nation-state that called itself the United States of America. It was a constitutional republic based on self-rule operating under a document meant to guarantee minimal government coercion and maximum individual freedom. That country no longer exists."
More HERE
**************************
Freedom and Frugality
I am told there is an Italian saying that translates as “It is raining again… PIG OF A GOVERNMENT!” The saying makes me wince because I can see myself raising a fist and shaking it in reproach at the drizzling sky. I spend so much time railing against statism that I risk defining myself by what I oppose. I risk taking the state inside me and allowing it to filter my approach to life.
This is another reason to Go Galt: to reclaim an unfiltered life and carpe the heck out of every diem. One of the ways to do so is deceptively simple. For want of a better word, it is “frugality,” by which I mean something quite different than most people.
For centuries, the North American way has been for people to work harder and earn more to ensure that their children had a better life. For centuries, the strategy succeeded. But today’s children are more likely to be crushed by debt than to inherit their parents’ wealth. Today, hard work is discouraged and punished. It is discouraged by a maze of regulations that police home businesses, for example. It is punished by soaring taxes and disappearing retirement funds.
Meanwhile, the political elites maintain power by draining productivity from society and funneling it into entitlements for the unproductive. As white-hot printing presses increase both the currency supply and prices, the average working person reaches out for some control of his own economic future.
Many people turn to frugality in response to economic bad times. That is, they view it as a necessary, but bitter pill they are forced to swallow, but would rather spit out. Viewing frugality as a form of poverty, they are driven to it through desperation, rather than a desire to increase control over their lives. To them, frugality must be a dreary thing, but in my life, the contrary is true.
A few years ago, my view of frugality changed due to an obvious realization that I had never fully grasped before. Material goods cost money; money is acquired in exchange for my time; my time is literally my life. If X costs $100 and I make $25 an hour, then X costs me four hours of life. Or rather, it costs four hours plus whatever time is consumed by the transaction costs of making money, such as the time and expense of a commute.
This was a paradigm shift for me. I ceased viewing possessions in terms of money and saw them in terms of time. And my time is a scarce good. The hours available can sometimes feel boundless, and it is easy to fall into the trap of valuing each unit as if it were part of an infinite supply. Of course, it is not. There are only so many hours left for me to live.
With no morbidity, I apply a version of “marginal utility” to those hours. This economic law says that a person values the first unit of a thing according to its highest use and values subsequent units less. For example, if you have one unit of water, then you value it highly for staving off dehydration and death. If you have a large number of units, then you value the last one for watering a house plant. You would be willing to spend far more for the first unit than for the last. I try to view my hours as though each one were a first unit and, so, highly valuable.
When I look in my closet, many possessions now represent wasted time: a dress I never wear, shoes that go with nothing… I won’t waste more time reproaching myself, but I need to learn a lesson from that closet. I traded irreplaceable units of my life for possessions I do not value; I call these possessions “the useless shoes of life.” They are things that are neither necessary nor worth the time I traded to acquire them. Instead, I could have been reading or writing, laughing with friends or watching movies with my husband.
And then there are the purchases I will never regret: books, DVDs, my sporty little econocar, our farm, the ingredients for a superb meal. Those items provide a utility that is well worth the cost. And yes, I include pleasure as a “utility.” Pleasure is one of the most useful things in the world. It makes you spring out of bed with energy in the morning; it makes you fall asleep with a smile on your face at night. But even pleasure should be balanced against the cost in time and purchased at bargain rates, if possible.
People respond to the idea of possessions representing units of their lives in different ways.
Some people redouble their efforts to earn more and so reduce the amount of time that any one purchase represents. This is a return to the traditional American dream: Work hard and prosper economically. I wish these people the best, but their choice is not mine. At this point, I find it difficult to understand why anyone would spend years at a job they don’t enjoy in order to own a bigger home than they can use, especially since the upkeep absorbs more time and cash. The trade-off doesn’t make sense.
Also, for the political reasons mentioned earlier, I no longer believe the American dream is functioning.
My choice is to earn and spend less in order to control my own time and to avoid fueling the State through more taxes. I have called this choice “frugality,” but some people are more comfortable with the term “voluntary simplicity.” The point of such simplicity is not to save every possible penny. It is to ensure that your time and money are expended on your goals. Voluntary simplicity can be viewed as a “business plan” for getting the most out of life. Ask yourself what your goals are and what is necessary to get there. Of equal importance, ask what is not necessary.
Every person will have a different answer. Some of my choices, for example, seem to run counter to frugality. For one thing, I live on a 40-acre farm, not in a small apartment. The choice is odd only if you equate frugality with cheapness, however. If you equate it with spending your resources to achieve your own values, then the farm is eminently frugal. An apartment would be cheaper, but it would also impoverish my life: no dogs, no walks down a gravel road, no garden, no privacy…
I look forward to my garden each spring and to cooking complicated ethnic meals so that the aromas of the world flood my kitchen. I intend to travel and experience the places that fired my fantasies as a child; someday, I will know what the stars look like in Africa and how a jungle smells. Rather than diverting time into “useless shoes,” I intend to live.
That is, after all, the purpose of freedom.
SOURCE
**************************
Obamacare was not killed off but it is still terminally ill
The Supreme Court’s upholding of the Obamacare legislation on Thursday does not settle the healthcare question because that legislation is largely unworkable. Equally, the pre-Obamacare U.S. healthcare system was unsatisfactory in a number of ways and becoming progressively more so. Under the assumption that either in 2013 or 2017 Congress and a new Administration will sit down and try to design a more rational healthcare system, I thought it worth outlining the basics of what such a system might entail.
It is unlikely that the Obamacare legislation will survive in the long term. First, it controls costs by capping Medicare payments and by the Independent Payment Advisory Board restricting expensive treatments. This is likely to be as unpopular and ineffective in the United States as is the equivalent National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (the Orwellianly named “NICE”) in Britain. Over time, both measures will also result in the degradation of healthcare quality. Second, the system will only work effectively if the tax on not joining becomes high enough to ensure universal participation. This will cause hardship in the lower income brackets that will be highly unpopular and become a political issue. As healthcare costs continue to rise, both for the state and for participating individuals, the demand for further healthcare reform will become overwhelming.
Start with the liberal demand that the impoverished should not go without health insurance. Phrasing the demand in that way itself increases costs, because it interposes a third party, an insurance company, between consumers and producers. In a free market, consumers and producers negotiate directly, thus ensuring that costs are minimized and quality maximized. Poor people have a right to healthcare, but they do not have a right to purchase that healthcare through insurance, and it makes no sense that they should.
Currently, the impoverished have two mechanisms by which healthcare is delivered to them. First, if their income is sufficiently low and they are fully documented in the U.S. bureaucracy, they have a right to Medicaid, which provides healthcare of variable quality and is paid for through taxes on the general population. Second, even if they are not fully accounted for in the state bureaucracy (for example, illegal immigrants, but also including the transient unemployed and the mentally ill) the hospitals have an obligation to provide emergency care if it is needed. In that sense therefore, few are denied healthcare altogether. However if even middle income people contract one of the ailments that requires huge amounts of spending to overcome it, they will end up with bankrupting medical bills and their life will be ruined.
The bankrupting effect of healthcare bills is exacerbated by two anomalies of the medical care payments system (apart from the excess costs of medical treatment generally, which I’ll get to). First, the emergency room mandate on hospitals, imposed by legislation in 1986, is entirely without compensation to them. Naturally, the hospitals have to pay for these services from somewhere, and they do so by raising rates on other customers. Second, the big insurance companies negotiate discounts with the hospital chains, which lessen their effect by raising their nominal rates, imposing inflated charges on the unfortunates who seek treatment paid for directly, without insurance. This combination of effects results in hospitals near big cities charging $10,000 per night for use of their facilities, an outrageous amount even in areas where a top-class hotel room can run as high as $500-600. Price gouging at this level, resulting in hospital costs five or ten times the full costs of hospitals in Europe, destroys the integrity of the system and makes it impossible to deal with.
Three other areas of excess systemic cost also need to be removed. First, the litigiousness of U.S. society has led to an immense class of parasitic lawyers attaching themselves to healthcare, their costs and settlements costing about 1.5-2% of GDP. When malpractice insurance for a newly registered doctor runs well north of $100,000, doctors’ earnings need to be inflated commensurately, not only by the $100,000 directly but also by the additional cost of the early years of practice, in which a doctor may be paying the full insurance premium but not yet earning enough to cover it.
Second, the insurance and legal bureaucracy surrounding medical care has made it uneconomic in many areas for doctors to operate as sole practitioners. In consequence, large clinics have been able to take over much medical practice. The result is lower earnings for the clinic doctors and inferior care for the patients, who find there is no alternative to visiting bureaucratically managed clinics in which personal knowledge of patients is impossible.
Whereas U.S. medical treatment thirty years ago was of incomparable quality, far better than available elsewhere, this is no longer the case. The belief among the general public that “doctors don’t make house calls” is valid, and is not adequately compensated for by the greater technological sophistication and lower error rate of today’s medicine.
Finally, today’s doctors are often overqualified. At an eminent heart surgeons’ conference on Chinese medicine at which I spoke two years ago, there was considerable complaint that U.S. doctors were not interested in undertaking primary care, and admiration of the Chinese system, in which primary care was readily available. “But then you have to remember” one eminent practitioner said, “that many Chinese doctors have only a bachelor’s degree.”
Immediately the problem became clear. In the medical as in the legal profession (where Law school is a pre-requisite in most states, as well as a bachelor’s degree) restrictive practices have been allowed to limit access to primary care and drive up its costs.
With the burden of litigiousness lifted, insurance companies largely removed from at least primary care and restrictive practices in the medical profession itself removed, the cost of much medical treatment could be reduced, not simply by 10-20% but by more than half. Remove also the cross-subsidization to insurance companies and the indigent inherent in the payment scheme, and medical care would become truly affordable for most people.
We then come to the essential problem of healthcare, that some people are healthier than others. In the public mind currently, this is thought to demand universal health insurance. But of course it does no such thing. For the vast majority of people, the premiums they pay in insurance and the Medicare/Medicaid taxes they pay are greater than the cost of the medical services they receive – otherwise medical insurance companies would go bankrupt. Costs are further increased by nonsenses required by a nanny state, such as forcing insurance companies to cover contraception and sex change operations.
In reality, public health insurance is indeed desirable, but only for catastrophic illnesses, either chronic or critical. There is no point in involving insurance companies in this provision, which simply adds another layer of cost. Instead, catastrophic insurance could be universal and provided by the state (or, in reality, by taxpayers) – thus satisfying the dreams of the left. However, it would involve an annual deductible of say $25,000 in any calendar year. Medical costs below this level would be covered by the individual, with wages being garnisheed if necessary to reimburse medical costs below the $25,000 level.
This system would cause occasional moderate hardship, but no catastrophes (individual hardship cases could be handled by local charities.) Medical costs would mostly be paid for directly, and in any case would be sharply reduced by the reforms described above. Individuals wishing to remove even the $25,000 annual risk could still purchase insurance, which would smooth their incomes and allow them to plan properly.
And overall, medical costs would be reduced from their current 17% of GDP to around the 10% of GDP that prevents the sector from bankrupting the economy. As in most areas it’s possible to design a decent medical and insurance system for the United States; only vested interests and political axe-grinding prevent us from doing so.
More HERE
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My Twitter.com identity: jonjayray. I have deleted my Facebook page as I rarely access it. For more blog postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, IMMIGRATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, EYE ON BRITAIN and Paralipomena
List of backup or "mirror" sites here or here -- for readers in China or for everyone when blogspot is "down" or failing to update. Email me here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Pictorial) or here (Personal)
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The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist" (Nationalsozialist) and the full name of Hitler's political party (translated) was "The National Socialist German Workers' Party" (In German: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei)
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