Saturday, November 21, 2009
Resisting Obama
The PHILOSOPHY upon which resistance to Obama's policies is a legitimate, respectable point of view, with deep roots in American tradition and culture, and nothing to do hatred. It emphasizes individual freedom at its core. It asserts that the foundation for maintaining individual freedom is individual responsibility and consequences from individual action. It understands that any collective action is an abridgment of individual freedom, but it accommodates limited collective action as practical for the operation of society. It nonetheless reflexively resists collectivism in general. It does not regard the various calamities of life heartlessly, but it instead believes the best way to minimize these calamities (hunger, poverty, sickness, etc) is to adhere to a framework that revolves around freedom and responsibility, and that creates the incentives for human beings to both define and optimize quality of life.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Don't You Statists Understand?
Of course, I suppose on its face to be Liberal means to want to have it both ways. But the current flap over the Stupak amendment really illustrates that in a delicious way.
Now, to be clear, I am pretty staunchly pro-choice. That's not the point. The point is: when you turn over these functions to government, you have to live with the results of being controlled by others (other voters, other officials, elected and not, etc.). This is THE fundamental small-government argument in the freedom agenda: choose for yourself, or let others choose for you. You won't always like the choices of the others.
You cannot have it both ways. Take this abortion argument: regardless of your own view, this is an issue of serious contention in the US, and pro-lifers have some solid arguments. You may disagree with their moral point of view, but you must acknowledge they have a right to feel what they feel and advocate for it. So, the fact that they are represented and considered and, in this case, get something they want, means that by adopting a state-controlled process for obtaining health care liberals must suffer the establishment of some new compromises in the form of new restrictions on access to abortion.
Tough frickin' luck, statists. This is the deal you make with the state and you better learn to like it. No, you DON'T get to hand over what was once our autonomous, variegated, and yes at times chaotic health system to the feds AND have everything work the way your lefty agenda wants it. Instead, you subject yourself to the will of the "whole", and that whole includes pro-lifers as well as, among other things, holocaust deniers and Scientologists and every other kind of bullshit under the sun. But they vote, and they get their voice, and now you are stuck with it.
It's like the NEA. Don't like crosses dipped in pee? Too bad--the collective decided to fund it. Oh, and by the way, one day when they make Ollie North the NEA Chair and all we get are revivals of South Pacific from coast to coast, I for one will be laughing my ass off at you idiots for what you have wrought.
Unfortunately our health care is less of a laughing matter. You are about to turn over this autonomy to a monolith that will shut down a lot of your autonomy in the name of "access." It's a gigantic step away from individual freedom and responsibility (and CHOICE [pun intended]), and towards a collectivist nightmare. Call these crocodile tears for your stupid selling of your freedoms.
Now, to be clear, I am pretty staunchly pro-choice. That's not the point. The point is: when you turn over these functions to government, you have to live with the results of being controlled by others (other voters, other officials, elected and not, etc.). This is THE fundamental small-government argument in the freedom agenda: choose for yourself, or let others choose for you. You won't always like the choices of the others.
You cannot have it both ways. Take this abortion argument: regardless of your own view, this is an issue of serious contention in the US, and pro-lifers have some solid arguments. You may disagree with their moral point of view, but you must acknowledge they have a right to feel what they feel and advocate for it. So, the fact that they are represented and considered and, in this case, get something they want, means that by adopting a state-controlled process for obtaining health care liberals must suffer the establishment of some new compromises in the form of new restrictions on access to abortion.
Tough frickin' luck, statists. This is the deal you make with the state and you better learn to like it. No, you DON'T get to hand over what was once our autonomous, variegated, and yes at times chaotic health system to the feds AND have everything work the way your lefty agenda wants it. Instead, you subject yourself to the will of the "whole", and that whole includes pro-lifers as well as, among other things, holocaust deniers and Scientologists and every other kind of bullshit under the sun. But they vote, and they get their voice, and now you are stuck with it.
It's like the NEA. Don't like crosses dipped in pee? Too bad--the collective decided to fund it. Oh, and by the way, one day when they make Ollie North the NEA Chair and all we get are revivals of South Pacific from coast to coast, I for one will be laughing my ass off at you idiots for what you have wrought.
Unfortunately our health care is less of a laughing matter. You are about to turn over this autonomy to a monolith that will shut down a lot of your autonomy in the name of "access." It's a gigantic step away from individual freedom and responsibility (and CHOICE [pun intended]), and towards a collectivist nightmare. Call these crocodile tears for your stupid selling of your freedoms.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Innoculated from "Socialism"
Watching heiress and Nation co-owner Katrina vanden Heuvel on Morning Joe today, I was reminded of what a masterful job the left have done at discrediting the term "socialism." Listening to her rabidly left critiques of the House-approved Health Care "Reform" bill, one could not avoid reflexively categorizing her as a socialist. But of course, anyone who dares invoke the term is immediately lumped in with the Beck-Limbaugh-Hannity blowhard crowd. Today's left has effectively disabled the word as a functioning instrument of description.
Think about it; a formal definition of socialism is: "various theories of economic organization advocating public or direct worker ownership and administration of the means of production and allocation of resources, and a society characterized by equal access to resources for all individuals with a method of compensation based on the amount of labor expended" (Socialism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press). If the current thrust of the current health care policy change does NOT fit the above, I'm not sure what does. Yet, I will be called, variously, kooky, mean, or cartoonish for saying so.
Think about it; a formal definition of socialism is: "various theories of economic organization advocating public or direct worker ownership and administration of the means of production and allocation of resources, and a society characterized by equal access to resources for all individuals with a method of compensation based on the amount of labor expended" (Socialism: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press). If the current thrust of the current health care policy change does NOT fit the above, I'm not sure what does. Yet, I will be called, variously, kooky, mean, or cartoonish for saying so.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Freedom Ebbs
Some facts, for your consideration:
Federal pay czar Kenneth Feinberg is cracking down on executive pay at the big financial firms where the government has a stake. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is mulling a law to apply Mr. Feinberg's governance changes to all publicly traded companies.
The percentage of American adults who have no federal income-tax liability will rise to 49% from 40% under Mr. Obama's tax plan. Another 11% will pay less than 5% of their income in federal income taxes and less than $1,000 in total.
The administration has announced that it would seek to raise revenue for its ambitious spending programs by reducing the charitable deduction for the highest two income-tax brackets by as much as 30 percent. Peter Orszag, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, seemed to concede proposal would reduce the amount of money given to charity when he offered in mitigation that “contained in the recovery act, there’s $100 million to support nonprofits and charities as we get through this period." So now, THEY decide which charities to fund, rather than us.
To prevent further declines in employer-sponsored coverage, the Obama plan would impose a “play-or-pay” policy. Employers would be required to make a “meaningful contribution” to the cost of their employees’ health plan or pay a tax that would help pay for a new public health insurance plan. Supporters of this approach argue that it is only fair that business carry some of the burden of expensive health care premiums. The only problem with this argument is that workers, and not business, ultimately bear the full cost of their health benefits. Employers offer insurance as part of an employee’s compensation package. The total value of the compensation depends on the employee’s productivity, regardless of the split between wages and benefits. To maintain the same level of health benefits when costs increase, employers cannot increase wages as rapidly as they would otherwise. That helps to explain why productivity has grown faster than earnings over the past decade. The mandate is effectively a tax on labor, and labor
would eventually shoulder the cost.
Federal pay czar Kenneth Feinberg is cracking down on executive pay at the big financial firms where the government has a stake. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) is mulling a law to apply Mr. Feinberg's governance changes to all publicly traded companies.
The percentage of American adults who have no federal income-tax liability will rise to 49% from 40% under Mr. Obama's tax plan. Another 11% will pay less than 5% of their income in federal income taxes and less than $1,000 in total.
The administration has announced that it would seek to raise revenue for its ambitious spending programs by reducing the charitable deduction for the highest two income-tax brackets by as much as 30 percent. Peter Orszag, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, seemed to concede proposal would reduce the amount of money given to charity when he offered in mitigation that “contained in the recovery act, there’s $100 million to support nonprofits and charities as we get through this period." So now, THEY decide which charities to fund, rather than us.
To prevent further declines in employer-sponsored coverage, the Obama plan would impose a “play-or-pay” policy. Employers would be required to make a “meaningful contribution” to the cost of their employees’ health plan or pay a tax that would help pay for a new public health insurance plan. Supporters of this approach argue that it is only fair that business carry some of the burden of expensive health care premiums. The only problem with this argument is that workers, and not business, ultimately bear the full cost of their health benefits. Employers offer insurance as part of an employee’s compensation package. The total value of the compensation depends on the employee’s productivity, regardless of the split between wages and benefits. To maintain the same level of health benefits when costs increase, employers cannot increase wages as rapidly as they would otherwise. That helps to explain why productivity has grown faster than earnings over the past decade. The mandate is effectively a tax on labor, and labor
would eventually shoulder the cost.
Friday, October 9, 2009
Thursday, August 13, 2009
The Ultimate Goal
Why is this government making it an all-or-nothing proposition? "Reform" is a meaningless term. Not everyone who opposes a gov't-OPERATED plan also opposes a gov't-REGULATED plan. Changes to insurance law to level the playing field (pre-existing conditions, portability, individual tax deductions, etc.) are warranted.
But BHO has said it himself: his ultimate goal is a single-payer system. Reforms that actually improve the functioning of the private market stand in the way of that goal, so they must not be tolerated.
It reminds me of the Surge. The left virulently opposed the Surge because of the risk of it working. And guess what--it did. We won. And by the time the 2008 election rolled around, Iraq was a non-issue. If not for Lehman Brothers, Obama isn't president right now.
But BHO has said it himself: his ultimate goal is a single-payer system. Reforms that actually improve the functioning of the private market stand in the way of that goal, so they must not be tolerated.
It reminds me of the Surge. The left virulently opposed the Surge because of the risk of it working. And guess what--it did. We won. And by the time the 2008 election rolled around, Iraq was a non-issue. If not for Lehman Brothers, Obama isn't president right now.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
So Our Politics is Reduced To This
At age 19 I was flying from Tel Aviv to Amsterdam and a man seated next to me asserted, deep into a conversation about some political absurdity or another, that government was in fact entertainment, show business. I was incredulous; I could comprehend the idea as metaphor, but no, he insisted that he meant it quite literally.
This morning as I listened on the radio to Arlen Specter's "Town Hall" meeting in Lebanon PA, I realized that this assertion, which I have returned to in my mind many times over the ensuing years, has now met its fullest flowering.
The election of Barack Obama did not, as I and many others (I assume) had hoped, fulfill the dream of a return to a more elegant and reasoned discourse. Oh, I realize now that I should not have dared hope that the process of the election itself was the last gasp of a dying coarseness, ignorance, and sensationalism. Like other romantic fools before me, propelled by what I saw as Bush's supreme failure (not any particular policy, but arrogance and poor communication style), I fantasized that Obama's urbane, eloquent demeanor signalled a return to intelligence. Of course, it was not to be.
Our politics now are cheaper, and more brutish, and more vapidly melodramatic than ever before. Our discourse over healthcare reform is precisely, in both substance and tone, the intellectual equivalent of a Jerry Springer program. The so-called "tea-bagging" Republicans (so nicknamed by the cleverly crude left) play the standard roles of the impossibly stupid rednecks and low-lifes whose monosyllabic rants don't simply appeal to, but actually work to reduce us all to, society's dimmest consumers. And the haughty and powerful Democrats are both the knowing TV audience (it's a guilty pleasure) looking on with uncomfortable disdain AND Springer himself--portrayed, of course, by the President; calm, knowing, above the fray, and subtly introducing just the ideal soupcon of encouragement to fan the flames of stupidity ever higher, where go the ratings.
Just like local weather "storm teams," the government do-good-niks would never waste a good crisis (whether it is a crisis or not; many a morn has a Channel 29 reporter, intrepid but nervous-faced, relayed live from the intersection of Rio and 29 that "the roads are looking pretty good so far," a dry, clear dawn behind them ironically raining on their parade). If we expect the Fourth Estate to act in any fashion other than to optimize profits we are fools; and if we expect that the way to do so is anything other than to create rooting interests in the extreme, we are unthinking. I observe the credulous comments and positions of many of my wisest friends and realize how thoroughly the agents of antagonism for profits' sake have insinuated their reductive talking points into the culture.
Well, the gent on the plane was right. So was the one who said we get the government we deserve.
This morning as I listened on the radio to Arlen Specter's "Town Hall" meeting in Lebanon PA, I realized that this assertion, which I have returned to in my mind many times over the ensuing years, has now met its fullest flowering.
The election of Barack Obama did not, as I and many others (I assume) had hoped, fulfill the dream of a return to a more elegant and reasoned discourse. Oh, I realize now that I should not have dared hope that the process of the election itself was the last gasp of a dying coarseness, ignorance, and sensationalism. Like other romantic fools before me, propelled by what I saw as Bush's supreme failure (not any particular policy, but arrogance and poor communication style), I fantasized that Obama's urbane, eloquent demeanor signalled a return to intelligence. Of course, it was not to be.
Our politics now are cheaper, and more brutish, and more vapidly melodramatic than ever before. Our discourse over healthcare reform is precisely, in both substance and tone, the intellectual equivalent of a Jerry Springer program. The so-called "tea-bagging" Republicans (so nicknamed by the cleverly crude left) play the standard roles of the impossibly stupid rednecks and low-lifes whose monosyllabic rants don't simply appeal to, but actually work to reduce us all to, society's dimmest consumers. And the haughty and powerful Democrats are both the knowing TV audience (it's a guilty pleasure) looking on with uncomfortable disdain AND Springer himself--portrayed, of course, by the President; calm, knowing, above the fray, and subtly introducing just the ideal soupcon of encouragement to fan the flames of stupidity ever higher, where go the ratings.
Just like local weather "storm teams," the government do-good-niks would never waste a good crisis (whether it is a crisis or not; many a morn has a Channel 29 reporter, intrepid but nervous-faced, relayed live from the intersection of Rio and 29 that "the roads are looking pretty good so far," a dry, clear dawn behind them ironically raining on their parade). If we expect the Fourth Estate to act in any fashion other than to optimize profits we are fools; and if we expect that the way to do so is anything other than to create rooting interests in the extreme, we are unthinking. I observe the credulous comments and positions of many of my wisest friends and realize how thoroughly the agents of antagonism for profits' sake have insinuated their reductive talking points into the culture.
Well, the gent on the plane was right. So was the one who said we get the government we deserve.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
So Now our President is Hiring and Firing CEOs
Per Mark Steyn:
"Think about it: It takes extraordinary skill to create and manage a billion-dollar company; there are very few human beings on the planet who can do it. Now look at Obama and Geithner, the two men currently “managing” more money than any individuals in human history: not billions, but trillions.
Notwithstanding the Treasury secretary’s protestations that the Yes/No prompt buttons of Turbo Tax were too complex for a simple soul such as himself, it’s no reflection on the hapless Geithner that he’s unable to fix the planet. When the Bolsheviks chose to introduce Russians to the blessings of a “command economy” 90 years ago, they were dealing with a relatively simple agricultural society largely contained within national borders. Obama and Geithner are trying to do it with a sophisticated global economy in which North American consumers, European bankers, Asian suppliers, Saudi investors, and Chinese debt-holders are more tangled than an octopuses’ orgy. Even with “global oversight” — with the Toxic Tims of Germany, Argentina, and India all agreeing on how to fix the game — it can’t be done."
http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=YjBlNjQyNzYzNzk2YjBhNjg4NDM2Y2I5MjJkMDYzNjQ=
"Think about it: It takes extraordinary skill to create and manage a billion-dollar company; there are very few human beings on the planet who can do it. Now look at Obama and Geithner, the two men currently “managing” more money than any individuals in human history: not billions, but trillions.
Notwithstanding the Treasury secretary’s protestations that the Yes/No prompt buttons of Turbo Tax were too complex for a simple soul such as himself, it’s no reflection on the hapless Geithner that he’s unable to fix the planet. When the Bolsheviks chose to introduce Russians to the blessings of a “command economy” 90 years ago, they were dealing with a relatively simple agricultural society largely contained within national borders. Obama and Geithner are trying to do it with a sophisticated global economy in which North American consumers, European bankers, Asian suppliers, Saudi investors, and Chinese debt-holders are more tangled than an octopuses’ orgy. Even with “global oversight” — with the Toxic Tims of Germany, Argentina, and India all agreeing on how to fix the game — it can’t be done."
http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=YjBlNjQyNzYzNzk2YjBhNjg4NDM2Y2I5MjJkMDYzNjQ=
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Surely, deep down, many, many Obama supporters are now having second thoughts
Even if they cannot admit it to themselves, much less aloud, I am pretty sure that a number of people who voted for a forceful intellect and a generational shift are beginning to realize that theirs was in fact a vote to diminish and denude the capitalist America in which we grew up.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Few will be thinking about this today....
But I will. I especially love the line about that most prominent sufferer of BDS: "...even this pales in light of the actions of the New York Times, which on its downhill road to becoming a weekly shopper giveaway for the Upper West Side..."
Monday, January 5, 2009
Israel v Hamas
I'm just not getting the logic of the ambivalent responses to the situation.
Thought experiment: Mexico's Zapatista rebels claim a territory and declare it autonomous from Mexican government rule. They declare that NAFTA and the border fence along the Rio Grande are profoundly damaging to their economic opportunities. They begin shooting low-grade, but lethal, rockets into Tuscon, El Paso, and other border cities. Dozens of American civilians are killed and hundreds are injured.
Everyone who thinks the sensible US response would be "proportional"--i.e., that we would forgo the use of our most sophisticated military options in favor of a militarily level playing field--raise your hand.
Why have a defensive military capacity at all if you're unwilling to use it for that most basic of national priorities, protecting the lives of your citizens?
I am genuinely confused by commentators who seemingly share, generally, my liberal/western values but simultaneously support "proportionality," "dialogue," and even "sympathy" for the terrorist organization that targets innocent, non-combatant civilians. And not merely enemy (Israeli) civilians, but their own civilian citizens, whom they deploy as human shields by positioning combat personnel and materiel in their densely populated midst. The actions of Hamas in this respect are essentially akin to cannibalism.
Thought experiment: Mexico's Zapatista rebels claim a territory and declare it autonomous from Mexican government rule. They declare that NAFTA and the border fence along the Rio Grande are profoundly damaging to their economic opportunities. They begin shooting low-grade, but lethal, rockets into Tuscon, El Paso, and other border cities. Dozens of American civilians are killed and hundreds are injured.
Everyone who thinks the sensible US response would be "proportional"--i.e., that we would forgo the use of our most sophisticated military options in favor of a militarily level playing field--raise your hand.
Why have a defensive military capacity at all if you're unwilling to use it for that most basic of national priorities, protecting the lives of your citizens?
I am genuinely confused by commentators who seemingly share, generally, my liberal/western values but simultaneously support "proportionality," "dialogue," and even "sympathy" for the terrorist organization that targets innocent, non-combatant civilians. And not merely enemy (Israeli) civilians, but their own civilian citizens, whom they deploy as human shields by positioning combat personnel and materiel in their densely populated midst. The actions of Hamas in this respect are essentially akin to cannibalism.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
