Friday, July 31, 2009
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Markets, Not Mandates
How medical markets would improve health care and reduce costs
Ronald Bailey | July 28, 2009
The New York Times calls it "possibly the most complex legislation in modern history." The health care "reform" currently being hammered out by the Democratic leadership of the House of Representatives already clocks in at $1 trillion and 1,000 pages—and it's nowhere near done. But one thing is clear: the legislation attempts to substitute top-down mandates from a centralized bureaucracy for the distributed decisions made by millions of consumers, physicians, and insurers acting in a marketplace. This will fail.
While congressional reform efforts screech and shudder along, let's take a moment to dream: What would real reform look like? It would be consumer driven, transparent, and competitive.
Right now consumers are locked into the health insurance and health care plans that their employers choose, thanks to previous government meddling with the health care system and the tax code. Consequently, most consumers simply don't have a clue what their health insurance costs. They have no way to reduce those costs, and no incentive to do so, even if they could.
Harvard University business professor Regina Herzlinger is stuck in exactly the same place as most Americans—her employer, in this case, the president of Harvard, buys her health insurance for her. "I wouldn't permit him to buy my house or my clothing or my food for me. Yet as my employer, he could take up to $15,000 of my salary each year and buy my health insurance for me, without knowing anything about my preferences or needs. It's ridiculous." Indeed it is.
Third party payments are the main source of dysfunction in the American health system. "The devil systematically built our health insurance system," once suggested Princeton University health economist Uwe Reinhardt. As evidence, Reinhardt pointed out that it "has the feature that when you're down on your luck, you're unemployed, you lose your insurance. Only the devil could ever have invented such a system."
So the first step toward real reform is to give consumers responsibility for buying their own health insurance. The employer-based health insurance system must be dismantled, and the money spent by employers for insurance should be converted to additional income. This would immediately inject cost consciousness into health insurance decisions. READ THE REST @ REASON
State-Of-The-Art Health Care For Everyone?
This article appeared in Forbes on July 28, 2009.
A basic fact is being ignored amid all the spilt ink in the healthcare debate: A nation cannot afford state-of-the-art health care for everyone. The current effort to expand health care insurance is designed to make the same health care available to both those with extensive insurance and to those currently uninsured. This effort ignores the fact that resources to make such care available to everyone do not exist.
For every major category of goods, higher income families spend more than lower-income families. Health care is not an exception. Consider the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey for 2007, the latest year available; for all respondents together, the survey reports average annual income after taxes per consumer unit of $60,858 and average annual health care expenditures of $2,853.
For the highest income group tabulated, consumer units had average income after taxes of $230,849 and health care expenses of $4,836. The highest income group, therefore, had health care expenses 70% higher than for all groups. Of course, total national expenditures are much higher, with many costs borne by government, companies and private charities.
Let's assume that the highest income group can afford state-of-the-art health care, which we would like to make available to everyone. Based on these data, that would increase national health care outlays by 70%. To achieve this outcome, the nation would need many more physicians, nurses, medical technicians, hospitals, medical schools, MRI machines, drugs and so forth. It would be easier for the space program to send astronauts to Mars than to increase the scale of the medical establishment by 70%.
Providing today's state-of-the-art health care for everyone is simply impossible. Moreover, relentless and highly desirable technical improvements keep pushing the health care frontier outward. An ambitious goal, like sending astronauts to the moon, may be desirable, depending on a calculation of benefits and costs. An impossible goal, like state-of-the-art health care for everyone, is foolish. READ MORE @ CATO
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Our #1 Source of Antioxidants: Coffee
by Elizabeth Walling
Have you been trying to kick the coffee habit? Well, before you say good-bye to your favorite morning drink forever, you may be interested in hearing coffee may not be so bad for you after all. In fact, it's been linked to a variety of health benefits. Did you know that one study shows even one cup of coffee each day can cut your risk for Parkinson's disease in half?
Coffee's full of healthful components like magnesium, potassium and vitamin B3. And coffee is the American's number one source of antioxidants, says one 2005 study from the University of Scranton. Another study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showed that one cup of coffee can have more antioxidants than a serving of blueberries or oranges. Antioxidants play a key role in reducing the inflammation which is associated with many health problems ranging from heart disease to rheumatoid arthritis.
Dr. Joe Vinson, a chemistry professor who led the Scranton study, says, "Antioxidants are your army to protect you from the toxic free radicals, which come from breathing oxygen and eating sugar, that start chronic diseases. Antioxidants help stave off cancer, heart disease, diabetes and stroke."
It may be the high level of antioxidants that helps coffee protect the heart. Researchers from Norway looked at data involving more than 27,000 women in the Iowa Women's Health Study and found women who drank 1–3 cups of coffee each day had a 24 percent reduction in risk of heart disease compared with women who didn't drink coffee at all. Women who drank as much as five cups a day showed up to a 19 percent decrease in risk of death from all causes. However, the study also concluded that more is not always better. Drinking more than six cups of coffee per day did not seem to increase benefits significantly.
From President to Pundit: Why Obama should have stayed quiet about the arrest of Henry Louis Gates
He was absent Wednesday when a reporter asked his views on the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates. At first, Obama sounded like himself. He acknowledged that Gates is a friend, "so I may be a little biased here" and pointed out helpfully, "I don't know all the facts."
That set him up nicely to forgo further comment on a matter that had nothing to do with the topic of his news conference (health care reform) or his responsibilities. Or, rather, it should have.
Instead, he proceeded to rake one Cambridge police sergeant over the coals for having "acted stupidly," before proceeding to place the episode in the context of the "long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately."
With that, Obama went from president to pundit. We've all heard speculation that Sarah Palin is aiming at a TV career on Fox News. Maybe Obama has his eye on Rachel Maddow's chair.
The Gates story is familiar by now. He arrived home to find his front door jammed. He tried to force the door, before going to the back and using his key. Meanwhile, a neighbor called police to report a burglary. READ MORE AT REASON
Obamacare Follies: A Perilous Rush
Added to cato.org on July 27, 2009
This article appeared in the New York Post on July 27, 2009.
ON Tuesday, July 14, House Democrats unveiled a health-care-reform bill that was 1,018 pages long. The next day, after all of eight hours of debate, the House Ways and Means Committee passed it. Does anyone believe they actually read the bill?
But apparently, that doesn't matter because, as Ways & Means Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-Harlem) said: "There's an urgent need to get something done because real lives are at stake."
Now House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is insisting that the full House vote on the bill before they go home for August recess, less than a week from now. House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) says he may even pull the bill from his own committee and send it directly to the floor. "This can't be an interminable discussion," he says.
President Obama, who admits that he hasn't read the bill either, is also pushing for Congress to act quickly. "Health-care reform can't wait," the president said in a half dozen different variations during his most recent news conference.
Why? What's the rush? READ THE REST AT CATO
The Immorality of Taxpayer-Funded Abortion
Healthcare continues to dominate the agenda on Capitol Hill as House leadership and the administration try to ram through their big government healthcare plan. Fortunately, they have been unsuccessful so far, as there are many horrifying provisions tucked into this massive piece of legislation. One major issue is the public funding of elective abortions. The administration has already removed many longstanding restrictions on abortion, and is unwilling to provide straight answers to questions regarding the public funding of abortion in their plan. This is deeply troubling for those of us who do not want taxpayer dollars funding abortions.
Forcing pro-life taxpayers to subsidize abortion is evil and tyrannical. I have introduced the Taxpayer’s Freedom of Conscience Act (HR 1233) which forbids the use of any taxpayer funds for abortion, both here and overseas.
The most basic function of government is to protect life. It is unconscionable that government would enable the taking of it. However this is to be expected when government oversteps its constitutional bounds instead of protecting rights. When government supercedes this very limited role, it cannot help but advance the moral agenda of whoever is in power at the time, at the expense of the rights of others.
Free people should be left alone to follow their conscience and determine their own lifestyle as long as they do not interfere with other people doing the same. If morality is dictated by government, morality will change with every election. Even if you agree with the morality of the current politicians and think their ideas should be advanced, someday different people will inherit that power and use it for their own agendas. The wisdom of the constitution is that it keeps government out of these issues altogether.
Many say we must reform healthcare and treat it as a right, because that is the moral thing to do. Poor people should not go without healthcare in a just society. But too many forget the immorality of stealing from others in order to make this so. They also forget the morality and compassion that naturally exists in communities when government is not fomenting class warfare with wealth redistribution programs.
Many doctors willingly volunteer, accept barter or reduced payment from patients who can’t pay, or give away services for free. Many charities help the poor with food, housing and healthcare. These charities are much more responsive and accountable for helping people in need than government ever could be. This is the moral way that private individuals voluntarily deal with access to healthcare, but government intervention threatens to pull the rug out from this sort of volunteerism and replace it with mandates, taxes, red tape, wealth redistribution, and force.
The fact that the national healthcare overhaul could force taxpayers to subsidize abortions and may even force private insurers to cover abortions is more reason that this bill and the ideas behind it, are neither constitutional, moral, nor in the American people’s best interest.
Hawk in Hock: Obama pretends to be frugal as we sink deeper in debt.
Remember Barack Obama’s New Era of Responsibility? It got off to aninauspicious start, with a $787 billion economic stimulus package, a $410 billion appropriations bill, and a record $1.8 trillion budget deficit.
But now the president wants to signal that he’s serious about cutting the federal budget. Unfortunately, his plan hinges on the assumption that Americans do not know how to calculate percentages.
In May the Obama administration, after going through the budget “line by line,” unveiled $17 billion in budget cuts. That amounts to less than 0.5 percent of the president’s proposed $3.6 trillion budget for the next fiscal year and less than 2 percent of the projected $1.3 trillion deficit.
The following week, the White House raised its estimate of the budget deficit for the current fiscal year from $1.75 trillion to $1.84 trillion. The $89 billion correction was more than five times the cuts Obama had proposed four days before.
The president dismissed critics who were unimpressed by his $17 billion in savings as inside-the-Beltway snobs with no understanding of howregular people view things. “In Washington,” he told reporters, “I guess that’s considered trivial. Outside of Washington, that’s still considered a lot of money.” White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs used the same rhetorical strategy. “I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: $17 billion is a lot of money to people in America,” he said. “I understand that it might not be to some people in this town, but that’s probably why we’re sitting on a $12 trillion American Express bill”—a reference to the national debt. READ THE REST AT REASON
Libertarians warn Judiciary vote may have consequences
WASHINGTON -- America’s third largest party Wednesday reminded members of the Senate Judiciary Committee their vote for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor was a vote against constitutionally-guaranteed gun rights and those who vote to confirm in the full Senate next week can expect to be held accountable at the polls.
Libertarians announced their opposition to the Sonia Sotomayor confirmation early, after reviewing her troubling record on individual, property and gun rights. The Judiciary Committee voted 13-6 to send the nomination to the full Senate. South Carolina Republican Lindsay Graham joined the committee’s 12 Democrats.
“A judge’s record is the best indicator of what they will do on the Court, and Judge Sotomayor’s record is one of opposition to the individual right to keep and bear arms. Libertarians, and all of America’s 90 million gun owners, will remember how you voted,” said Donny Ferguson, Libertarian National Committee Communications Director. “Your vote on Judge Sotomayor may come back to haunt you one November.”
“And if you think you can’t lose your seat over the gun issue, I suggest you speak with Harris Wofford,” said Ferguson, referring to the incumbent Democratic Pennsylvania senator who lost his seat to Republican Rick Santorum in 1994 by a 49 to 47 percent margin, after supporting the Clinton gun ban. “If I’m a senator who could lose if a small percentage of my pro-gun base votes for another candidate, I’d be worried.”
“History shows, whether it’s a grassroots conservative activist, a blue-collar union member or a libertarian, the base of every party is made up of people who value their gun rights and will not support someone who votes against their constitutionally-guaranteed freedoms,” said Ferguson. “The Libertarian Party is the only party in America that never compromises on gun rights, and one way or another we will hold those voting to confirm accountable on Election Day.”
In the New York v Maloney case earlier this year, Sotomayor affirmed a lower court ruling that the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the right to keep and bear arms does not apply to the states.
Sotomayor also ruled against gun rights in a 2004 case, United States v Sanchez-Villar, citing as precedent the statement “the right to possess a gun is clearly not a fundamental right.”
The Supreme Court will likely rule next year on the NRA v Chicago case, a case critical to restoring the individual right to keep and bear arms.
For more information on this issue, or to arrange an interview with the Libertarian Party, please call Director of Communications Donny Ferguson at 703-200-3669 or 202-333-0008, x. 225, or email Donny.Ferguson@lp.org.
The Libertarian Party is America's third-largest political party, founded in 1971 as an alternative to the two main political parties. You can find more information on the Libertarian Party by visiting http://www.LP.org. The Libertarian Party proudly stands for smaller government, lower taxes and more freedom.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
"Police Use Taser on Deaf, Disabled Alabama Man"
Police in Mobile, Ala., used pepper spray and a Taser on a deaf, mentally disabled man who they said wouldn't leave a store's bathroom.
The family of 37-year-old Antonio Love has filed a formal complaint over the incident on Friday.
Police tell the Press-Register of Mobile that officers shot pepper spray under the bathroom door after knocking several times. After forcing the door open, they used the stun gun on Love.
Police spokesman Christopher Levy says police didn't realize Love had a hearing impairment until after he was out of the bathroom. The officers' conduct is under investigation.
Fannie Med? Why a "Public Option" Is Hazardous to Your Health
by Michael F. Cannon
President Obama and other leading Democrats have proposed creating a new government health insurance program as an option for Americans under the age of 65, within the context of a new, federally regulated market — typically described as a "National Health Insurance Exchange." Supporters claim that a new government program could deliver higher-quality health care at a lower cost than private insurance, and that competition from a government program would force private insurers to improve.
A full accounting shows that government programs cost more and deliver lower-quality care than private insurance. The central problem with proposals to create a new government program, however, is not that government is less efficient than private insurers, but that government can hide its inefficiencies and draw consumers away from private insurance, despite offering an inferior product.
A health insurance "exchange," where consumers choose between private health plans with artificially high premiums and a government program with artificially low premiums, would not increase competition. Instead, it would reduce competition by driving lower-cost private health plans out of business. President Obama's vision of a health insurance exchange is not a market, but a prelude to a government takeover of the health care sector. In the process, millions of Americans would be ousted from their existing health plans.
If Congress wants to make health care more efficient and increase competition in health insurance markets, there are far better options.
Congress should reject proposals to create a new government health insurance program — not for the sake of private insurers, who would be subject to unfair competition, but for the sake of American patients, who would be subject to unnecessary morbidity and mortality.
Wendy Jones Reaching Out To Delaware Voters
Voters in Delaware's 19th State Senate District will have two more chances to hear from Libertarian candidate Wendy Jones. Jones is running in the Aug. 3 special election to succeed Senate President Pro Tem Thurman Adams Jr., who died last month from pancreatic cancer.
Jones will appear on Bill Colley’s radio program this Wednesday, at 5:00 p.m. on WGMD, and Jeff Gartman’s radio program on Saturday morning from 7:00 to 8:00 a.m. You may listen on the radio, or via the broadcast live from their website.
Jones will also speak with voters on Thursday at the League of Women Voters forum for this special election. All four candidates have bene invited to the event, which will be held at the Sussex County Council Chambers at the Circle in Georgetown.
The 7:00 p.m. event will be broadcast live on the County Council’s webcam, which can be viewed here. Follow the instructions if you need a plug-in to make it work. The audio link is separate from the video link, so you have to click both to see and hear.
Jones will share with voters her plans on several important issues:
Job Creation is top priority. Small businesses create the most jobs. Cut taxes and give business credits to encourage expansion of private businesses with good jobs in Sussex County.
Cut Government by cutting taxes and privatizing. Let private businesses compete to provide the greatest choices and efficiencies for Delawareans.
Health Reform: Government should not be authorized to limit our free choices for our healthcare providers.
Self Defense: Everyone should have the right to self defense and to protect our families. I am a lifetime member of the NRA, and the state representative for the Pink Pistols, advocating self defense for women.
Support School Vouchers: Parents should be free to choose their children’s schools: private, public, parochial, charter, or homeschooling.
Del Pointe: It is immoral and irresponsible for the state to partner with gambling and other special interests, to compete with private businesses in Sussex County. It is unfair for the state to reward a few, politically privileged people at the expense of all − Delaware’s taxpayers.
You may visit Wendy's campaign online at http://www.delawareliberty.com.
-- Post From My iPhone
Monday, July 27, 2009
Monday LP Message
Have a sick child? Then you’d better get used to putting her on a government waiting list.
That’s because while Barack Obama is trying to sell his proposed federal takeover of the entire health care system with promises of lower costs and more choices, it’s about as honest a pitch as that ad in the back of comic books for x-ray glasses.
The truth is his scheme outlaws private insurance (page 16 of the 1,018 page draft bill,) sends government employees to your home to monitor your parenting (page 838) and forces the sick and elderly to submit to “end of life counseling” (page 425.)
On page 167, and elsewhere throughout the draft, it also calls for compulsory “shared responsibility payments,” clearly defined as a “tax on individuals without acceptable health care coverage.” The government would confiscate thousands of dollars from your paycheck if they don’t like your choice of coverage. In other words, you have no choice.
And those are just a few of the atrocious provisions of the draft bill. The Congressional Budget Office has found the plan is economically unsustainable. Since “free” care leads to people using the system every time they get the sniffles, it cannot work unless you are put on a miles-long waiting list or get approval from the government to meet your doctor.
That’s commonly called “rationing.”
As more and more information leaks out, Obama’s approval ratings are plummeting. His “strong approval” rating has plunged to a paltry 29 percent. His “strong disapproval” rating has ballooned to 40 percent. A majority of Americans oppose his health care plan.
But Obama will not be deterred by such facts. Why?
Just look at the mail senior citizens get right before an election. With many dependent on the socialized Medicare system for treatment, Democrats use their very lives as campaign fodder.
Every election year, senior citizens are inundated with mail, phone calls and personal visits from Democrat campaign personnel warning them if they don’t show up on Election Day and vote Democrat, the other side will cut off their access to health care and – literally – leave them to die. Terrified because government controls their access to care, most show up to cast their votes for the Democrat…any Democrat!
Obama would love to extend that campaign ploy to all Americans. His goal is a nation where Democrats can make people vote for them simply because Democrats hold their access to medical care in their iron grip, as they already cruelly do to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid recipients.
That’s why your Libertarian Party is leading the charge against the Obama health care takeover. We’ve launched an aggressive media campaign to inform millions of Americans of this expensive, ineffective and ultimately dangerous scheme to force an entire nation onto rationed welfare care.
It’s working. The Kansas City Star admitted the LP is helping defeat Obama in way that can “cling tightly to its principle and still fit comfortably in the political mainstream.
"That's why our job is hard," wailed a Democrat pollster. "It's always easier to use words to defeat something." For the record, our “words” were nothing more than the facts about the Obama plan.
Even Rush Limbaugh is now reading from Libertarian Party press releases on the air. Dr. Richard Kerr, a West Virginia Libertarian Party member and retired 36-year doctor is publicly asking Obama to apologize to doctors after the president publicly accused them in his press conference last week of deliberately giving the wrong treatments to sick children to make more money.
No matter what you think of Limbaugh, his 22 million listeners are politically active -- and many are independents and libertarians. They’re looking for someone, anyone, to fight back. It’s not like the Republicans, with their profligate spending and Bush Medicare prescription drug entitlement, are much of an alternative.
That kind of media campaign is why we’ve seen a spike in candidate inquiries and e-mailed questions from interested independents, libertarians and former Republicans this week.
We’ve also made it abundantly clear we will hold supporters of the Obama plan accountable the only place it counts – at the ballot box. Libertarian candidates will campaign on their support of proven free-market reforms to make health care affordable and accessible. And they will hold their opponents’ feet to the fire for supporting a radical government takeover that bloats costs, degrades the quality of care and leads to waiting lists and rationing.
As it stands right now, the Obama plan will probably pass in Congress. But you can do something to change it.
Will you join the Libertarian Party’s growing citizen army against the Obama health care takeover?
-- Post From My iPhone
Ron Paul on Obamacare It's Monstrous: Scrap It
Former Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul has a frank prescription for the health care plan making its way through Congress: Scrap it.
"I think it's monstrous," Paul said.
"I don't think it will improve medical care in this country. I think it's very, very costly and we don't have any money. And they don't have any way of paying for it."
The libertarian GOP congressman and physician was in East Grand Rapids today for a private reception for what was touted as a "conservative comeback luncheon."
Paul is skeptical of estimates that peg the 10-year cost of the plan backed by President Barack Obama at $1 trillion. He puts it much higher.
He noted that cost estimates for Medicaid and Medicare are often below the mark.
"On average, it's two or three times more expensive than they say. This is going to be incredibly expensive."
Paul has introduced a bill that would provide tax credits and medical savings as a means of expanding health insurance coverage.
Paul believes Republicans must return to core principles if they are to resurrect themselves from their losses in 2008, an election that saw the Democratic Party seize the White House and both houses of Congress.
To Paul, that means less government, at home and abroad.
"They are going to have to earn that trust back. They should be more concerned about personal liberties. They shouldn't be the great defenders of government secrecy and torture..."
"The young people aren't supporting Republicans. The worst group for the Republicans is (age) 15 to 25. If they can't appeal to that group, what kind of future is there for the party?"
Paul, who opposed the Iraq war, asserts the United States should pull its troops out of Afghanistan in addition getting out of Iraq.
"I'd come home, from all of it, the sooner the better. The greatest incentive for the recruitment of al-Qaida and the Taliban is occupation. The sooner we realize that and come home, the better."
E-mail Ted Roelofs: troelofs@grpress.com
How Government Grows
"Government does not grow by seizing our freedoms, but by assuming our responsibilities. "
Health Care Quotes
"National Health Insurance means combining the efficiency of the Postal Service with the compassion of the I.R.S. … and the cost accounting of the Pentagon. "
Health Care Reform Coming Down to the Wire
Michael D. Tanner
President Obama and the Democratic congressional leaders are pushing hard to finish and vote on legislation that will effectively lead to a government takeover of the health care system.
Health care reform is needed. However, reforms that increase the role of government and an already massive federal budget deficit – as many proposals would – are bad medicine. The Cato Institute is undertaking nationwide outreach on how free-market reforms increase consumer choice and improve health care's quality and affordability.
The Cato Institute is running ads in major newspapers and on radio stations nationwide to inform the public that health care reform is necessary – but only the right kind of reform. These ads aren't cheap, so please consider making a contribution to support Cato's health care reform efforts.
As part of the campaign, Cato health care analysts are working to dispel myths about health care reform. Writing in the New York Post, Cato senior fellow Michael D. Tanner outlines the three big lies of Obamacare:
1 "If you like your current health-care plan, you can keep it."
"In the end, millions of Americans would be forced out of the insurance they have today and into the government plan. Businesses, in particular, would have every incentive to dump their workers into the public plan. The actuarial firm the Lewin Group estimates that as many as 118.5 million people, roughly two-thirds of those with insurance today, would be shifted from private to public coverage."
2 "You will pay less."
The Congressional Budget Office has made it clear that the reform plans now being debated will increase overall health-care costs. … The final health-care bill is expected to cost more than $1 trillion over the next 10 years. That means much higher taxes, and not just for the wealthy."
3 "Quality will improve."
"Anyone who thinks a government takeover of the health-care system will improve quality of care has only to look at the health-care programs the government already runs: The Veterans Administration is overwhelmed with problems, Medicaid is notorious for providing poor quality at a high cost — and Medicare has huge gaps in coverage."
Libertarian Quote of the Day
"The legacy of Democrats and Republicans approaches: Libertarianism by bankruptcy. "
Sunday, July 26, 2009
States Rights vs. Obama: Texas Rediscovers the 10th Amendment
Gov. Rick Perry, raising the specter of a showdown with the Obama administration, suggested Thursday that he would consider invoking states’ rights protections under the 10th Amendment to resist the president’s healthcare plan, which he said would be "disastrous" for Texas.
Interviewed by conservative talk show host Mark Davis of Dallas’ WBAP/820 AM, Perry said his first hope is that Congress will defeat the plan, which both Perry and Davis described as "Obama Care." But should it pass, Perry predicted that Texas and a "number" of states might resist the federal health mandate.
"I think you’ll hear states and governors standing up and saying 'no' to this type of encroachment on the states with their healthcare," Perry said. "So my hope is that we never have to have that stand-up. But I’m certainly willing and ready for the fight if this administration continues to try to force their very expansive government philosophy down our collective throats."
Perry, the state’s longest-serving governor, has made defiance of Washington a hallmark of his state administration as well as his emerging re-election campaign against U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison in the 2010 Republican primary. Earlier this year, Perry refused $555 million in federal unemployment stimulus money, saying it would subject Texas to long-term costs after the federal dollars ended.
Interviewed after returning from a trip to Iraq and Afghanistan, Perry spoke out against President Barack Obama’s healthcare package less than 24 hours after the president used a prime-time news conference Wednesday night to try to sell the massive legislative package to Congress and the public.
'Not the solution'
"It really is a state issue, and if there was ever an argument for the 10th Amendment and for letting the states find a solution to their problems, this may be at the top of the class," Perry said. "A government-run healthcare system is financially unstable. It’s not the solution."
Perry heartily backed an unsuccessful resolution in this year’s legislative session that would have affirmed the belief that Texas has sovereignty under the 10th Amendment over all powers not otherwise granted to the federal government. Read The Rest
Sunday Truth
"As libertarians well know, each new extension of government power should be examined under a presumption of error."
Watch Who You Call Extremist
by Steven Greenhut
My idea, put forward in last week's column, to break California into four separate states was met with an overwhelmingly positive response, which leads me to believe that Californians might have an amicable geographic breakup that allows our various regions to go their separate ways. This week, I'm writing about another political divorce, albeit one sure to be full of bitterness and custody disputes. It involves the future of the Republican Party and the conservative movement, following the GOP's well-deserved November election drubbing. Based on a revealing debate among Orange County bloggers last week, I can guarantee that this is going to be one nasty split.
Quite simply, as the vanquished GOP struggles to find its voice and reach out to voters, some party activists and right-wing leaders have decided that the real problem isn't just President Barack Obama, but the small-"l" libertarians who still remain within their midst. Local activists, writing in an establishment GOP Web site, accused me of "jumping the shark" – i.e., of no longer being relevant – because of my July 4 column that poked fun at U.S. military adventurism and the possibly illegal policies of U.S. spy agencies. But it's not about me, really. The article, written by GOP/Red County honcho Chip Hanlon, uses my column as an example of the supposed extremism and America-hating found within the libertarian movement and takes pot shots at former GOP presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul.
Hanlon goes for the easy straw man: "They argue – with the benefit of hindsight – that we should never have gotten involved in World War II, that Abraham Lincoln is one of history's worst war criminals … . Their 'philosophy' is really pretty simple: Libertarians hate government, period, and the government they hate the most is their own. … When their full belief system is known, however, support of Libertarians like Paul cannot be defended. But folks like Paul are learning, becoming better at hiding their extremist views."
The GOP establishmentarians mocked the (mostly calm) libertarians who commented on such mischaracterizations. One of the Republicans actually blamed libertarians for the GOP's defeat, as if we're the ones who had spent the last eight years abusing presidential and congressional powers. Like totalitarians, they invited us to renounce our "extremism," make a public apology and join their cause to limit government, which is akin to a drunk calling on members of Alcoholics Anonymous to join him at the bar if they really want to fight alcoholism. READ THE REST AT LEW ROCKWELL
Truth That is Hidden
"Because the government cannot permit Fannie and Freddie to default, their obligations are part and parcel of the full-faith-and-credit obligations of the United States. Thus, the national debt, usually viewed as the $5 trillion held by the public, is really $10 trillion once we add the Fannie and Freddie obligations and the mortgage-backed securities they guarantee."