Unless you were lucky enough to be traveling or otherwise unavailable on Sunday, you were likely deluged with Mr. Obama’s media storm to sell not only health care, but apparently many other items as well.

First, it should be noted that this WH is above all, extremely insecure.  The President could be seen on 5 Sunday news shows: NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN and Univision.   But he didn’t have time for Fox, the number one rated Sunday news show…

Regardless of the WH being extremely petty and worrying more about perceived injustices than an honest discussion with those who might disagree, what he actually said is far more serious.

When asked if a health care mandate was a tax increase on ABC’s this week, the President responded:

…”I absolutely reject that notion,” the president said….

“What it’s saying is, is that we’re not going to have other people carrying your burdens for you anymore,” said Obama. “Right now everybody in America, just about, has to get auto insurance . Nobody considers that a tax increase.”…

Using flawed logic is nothing new for Presidents, but this one isn’t even close.  Hhe’s analogizing the privilege of driving with the “privilege” of being a citizen.

The difference of course as that by my very birth, I have a “right” to be a citizen, whereas driving has always remained a privilege with constraints.  You see, I can forgo auto insurance, so long as I don’t drive.  There are many ways around without a car in this day and age, but if I “choose” to drive, then constraints can be placed on me.

Health care on the other hand would be required simply because I existed and no other reason.  & If the government says, “You have to buy this” – it is a tax increase as not paying it can land you in very serious legal troubles.

On CBS’s Face the Nation, with an omnipotent sense of when health care, our fearless leader goes further:

…Obama put his support behind the idea of taxing employers that offer high-cost insurance plans.

“I do think that giving a disincentive to insurance companies to offer Cadillac plans that don’t make people healthier is part of the way that we’re going to bring down health care costs for everybody over the long term,” Obama said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”…

Even ignoring the fact that this goes against his basic premise that more people need more health care, one wonders if there is anything our President doesn’t know.  So far, he’s taken over banks, car companies, told car companies with whom to merge, who to hire, who to fire, what to build… and now we find out he knows how much health care is too much.

But let’s not stop there.  Not only is our community organizer one of the smartest men in America when it comes to economics and health care, he’s also a brilliant strategist with respects to Afghanistan:

…”What I’m not also gonna do, though, is put the resource question before the strategy question,” Obama told NBC’s David Gregory on “Meet the Press.” “Until I’m satisfied that we’ve got the right strategy I’m not gonna be sending some young man or woman over there- beyond what we already have.”…

I’m not sure exactly what happens to man to think he has the answers to every single last question. Maybe it’s just arrogance and ignorance, as Hayek stated:

If most people are not willing to see the difficulty, this is mainly because, consciously or unconsciously, they assume that it will be they who will settle these questions for the others, and because they are convinced of their own capacity to do this.

Whatever the reason he believes so strongly in his ability to decide what’s best for our own good, history shows us without question where this inevitably leads.  Hayek again:

To act on the belief that we possess the knowledge and the power which enable us to shape the processes of society entirely to our liking, knowledge which in fact we do not possess, is likely to make us do much harm.

Let’s hope we begin to understand the value of humility before we do too much damage.

In an effort to make sure Paul Krugman isn’t the most incoherent economics writer working for the New York Times, Thomas Friedman comes out with an oped yesterday titled Our One-Party Democracy.

You see, in Mr. Friedman’s world, the only party working towards effective reform is the Democrats, therefore democracy has failed:

Watching both the health care and climate/energy debates in Congress, it is hard not to draw the following conclusion: There is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today.

Not hard for him maybe, but for those who like freedom, we only see the worst example of governance ever conceived… except for all the others.

Why stop there?  According to Mr. Friedman, the real problem here is that the US isn’t more like China:

One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages…

I’m pretty sure even the leadership in China just laughed out loud at being called  enlightened – they are probably laughing just as hard as I am confused in trying to figure out how Mr. Friedman could come to such a conclusion.

After all, China is a country that continues to jail dissidents, persecute the religious, deny access to a free press, ignore basic contracts rights, and many, many other anti-freedom atrocities, all of which are well documented and easy to find.

Just a couple years ago, in 2007, multiple reports held that Chinese officials had displaced (read: kicked out without recourse or compensation) 1.5 million Chinese nationals to make room for the Olympic Village.

Surely Mr. Friedman understands this, so why go to such lengths as to spot light China for being enlightened?  Well, to Mr. Friedman, it seems obvious that with all of China’s current evils, they don’t rank with the evils being perpetrated on US society  right now by Republicans.  Thanks to Mr. Friedman, the Republican’s evil nature has been identified and it is startling.  Yes, the Republicans have dared to oppose Mr. Friedman’s Mr. Obama’s legislation:

…The fact is, on both the energy/climate legislation and health care legislation, only the Democrats are really playing. With a few notable exceptions, the Republican Party is standing, arms folded and saying “no.” Many of them just want President Obama to fail. Such a waste….

What should we do when people dare to demonstrate such blatant use of their individual rights by going against the One True Way?  Well go to one-party autocracy:

…The only way for us to match them [China] is by legislating a rising carbon price along with efficiency and renewable standards that will stimulate massive private investment in clean-tech. Hard to do with a one-party democracy….

…Well, to compete and win in a globalized world, no one needs the burden of health insurance shifted from business to government more than American business….

I know when trying to follow such flawless logic, sometimes we lose the forest for the trees, so for those playing the Analogy home game:

In the past 200 years, the United States, with a fairly free economy, slowly became and then maintained economic dominance in almost all areas, while China, Russia, and other controlled economies have done much worse.  Recent history is different with China, India, Russia, and others becoming emerging economies, but only as they progressed towards market reforms and away from command economies.

To Mr. Friedman however, little things like historical evidence and current human rights’ abuses aren’t part of the equation.  The only part of the equation seems to be “China is doing things I like, the US isn’t, therefore the US is bad and China is good.”

The most amazing thing is how he isn’t even trying to hide his desire to control your lives.  Without a hint of irony, he is telling you directly he’d prefer that those who disagree not be given rights to control the government,  while those who agree with him should be shown the keys to the kingdom.

Yes, like all worthless dictators before him and all totalitarian idiots who will come after him, Mr. Friedman is more than willing to give up your rights in search of his goals.

In another installment of serious people doing serious research for the betterment of society without government intervention at all, I present to you Michael Pritchard and his recent video describing his wonderful invention on Ted.com (see the whole thing here).

What has he done?  He’s taken a very basic problem that affects billions or people and through his own ingenuity, is working to solve that problem.

As most know, for the last ten years or so, we’ve seen article after article in science magazines,  news weeklies, TV news reports, political pundits, and environmentalists tell us that all future wars will be fought over water.

I personally didn’t believe their line of reasoning in the least, but they are generally correct on their facts.  The just take those facts and they push their internal beliefs into the results without even hinting that other possibilities might exist.

The basic argument goes like this: the world is running out of clean water.  Trends show that we seem to be using more water per capita each year.  Meaning that if every person on the earth used roughly 1 gallon of water a day, going forward it will be 2 gallons for each.

Combine this trend with the population trend that our world population continues to increase and we can see there is something on the horizon which will need to be mitigated.  We need to be able to increase drinkable water supplies across the world and try to conserve water better than we do today.

According to the UN (via Wired), “2.8 billion people won’t have enough water to meet their basic needs by 2025.”

Where their predictions fail, is that they seem to assume that the problems can’t be mitigated through normal human innovations.  Besides this displaying the fact the writers don’t think much of their fellow man’s abilities, this idea also shows a stunning lack of historical perspective.

If we take a look at something relatively analogous, like agriculture, we can see that humans are more than capable of resolving problems on their own.  Through the last few centuries, technology has increased to the point that we make more food for more people using less water and less land than we ever thought possible.

For water, we can get there the same way.  Enter Michael Pritchard, a man working to solve one piece of the puzzle (from Ted.com):

With cutting-edge nanotech, Michael Pritchard’s Lifesaver water-purification bottle could revolutionize water-delivery systems in disaster-stricken areas around the globe.

He in fact demonstrates the water purification system he has designed (I urge you to watch the video – short & sweet).  The system itself is very small and very portable.  Though he does make the mistake of assuming governments need to be the distributors, but if his product were provided to those in need, it would allow billions in poverty stricken areas around the globe to be able to cheaply purify the water they currently pull from rivers and streams. This would save countless lives now, and for the fear mongers among us, potentially prevent wars.

To be fair, this isn’t the only issue which needs solving.  We also need to be able to desalinate water through a much cheaper and resource intensive process, but that is being worked on as well and we should be confident that it will happen.

Maybe it’s just more fun for the writer’s to imagine a desolate world with people killing each other over water like some Mad Max fantasy world, but clear thinkers should see these predictions for what they are.  They are a simple reflection on the writers of this propaganda (examples here and here) and it’s being used as a scare tactic to drum up support for their ideas.  So they can fix them for us…. because it’s for your own good.

Either way – necessity is always the mother of invention and there’s no reason to believe this is a problem which isn’t solvable.

Since the Cap & Trade bill is getting hammered from quite a few angles throughout the halls of Congress, recent news has started pushing the much fated plan for Health Care.

They do this, by first admitting the need to increase the insured, the move to hyping the number of uninsured individuals, and finally discuss plans on how to insure them.

For serious thought – Cato and others have noted that the system itself is creating our current problems and by expanding the current system, we will only expand those problems(here):

A free-market approach would move away from employer-provided insurance and increase competition among both insurers and health providers.

Going further of course, they try to give some reasons the system operates as it does:

There are two key components to any free-market healthcare reform. First, we need to move away from a system dominated by employer-provided health insurance and instead make health insurance personal and portable, controlled by the individual rather than government or an employer.

Employment-based insurance hides much of the true cost of healthcare to consumers, thereby encouraging overconsumption. It also limits consumer choice, because employers get the final say in what type of insurance a worker will receive. It means that people who don’t receive insurance through work are put at a significant and costly disadvantage. And, of course, it means that if you lose your job, you are likely to end up uninsured.

Changing from employer-provided to individually purchased insurance requires changing the tax treatment of health insurance. The current system excludes the value of employer-provided insurance from a worker’s taxable income. However, a worker purchasing health insurance on his own must do so with after-tax dollars. This provides a significant financial reward for those who have employer-provided insurance. That should be reversed….

Not to be locked out, John Stossel just wrote a piece over at Reason giving the reader very colorful examples of how the current insurance system has actually done more harm to having efficient and cost effective medical care than any other piece of legislation on health care (here)

…Insurance, whether private or a government Ponzi scheme like Medicare, means third parties pay the bills. When someone else pays, costs always go up.

Imagine if you had grocery insurance. You wouldn’t care how much food cost. Why shop around? If someone else were paying 80 percent, you’d buy the most expensive cuts of meat. Prices would skyrocket.

That’s what health insurance does to medical care. Patients rarely even ask what anything costs. Doctors often don’t know. Often nobody even gives a damn. Patients rarely ask, “Is that MRI really necessary? Is there a cheaper place?” We consume without thinking.

By contrast, in areas of medicine where most patients pay their own way, service gets better, while prices fall.

Take plastic surgery and Lasik eye surgery: Because patients shop around and compare prices, doctors work hard to win their business. They often give customers their cell-phone numbers. Service keeps increasing, but prices don’t. “In every other field of medicine, the price is going up faster than consumer prices in general,” says John Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis. “But the price of Lasik surgery, on average, has gone down by 30 percent.”

And honestly, I encourage everyone to read what they can, because this is the very beginning.  Through an extensive societal system, we limit the number of doctors graduating each year.  We, by law, force doctors to do certain procedures lesser trained individuals might be able to do for my less money.  If you recall, 10 years ago, a fully registered nurse (RN) had to draw blood.  Now, it’s a 6 week course and they’re called phlebotomy techs.

So yes, Mr. Obama: I and millions think our health care is pretty good, but could use some changes.  We just don’t think the government has proven to be more inefficient in any endeavor when compared to a private company has in that same endeavor (excluding government allowed monopolies).

The only real question – is why are we looking for several trillion dollars, which will be pushed into all these different feel good remedies, most of which will show no measurable improvement?

And therein lies the selectorate theory, which basically reads that heads of states and other major players got to their positions of power through a winning coalition of others and those are the people they will be the first to covet.

As for those people that didn’t vote for Mr. Obama, and are therefore not in the winning coalition, well, they’ll get hurt.  It’s just too bad that my daughter someday will feel the pain from not being apart of that winning coalition, even though she was completely unable to vote.

This past Friday, the 25th of June, Democrats, with 8 Republicans in the House have passed sweeping environmental regulation known as Cap and Trade.

Democrats narrowly passed historic climate and energy legislation Friday evening that would transform the country’s economy and industrial landscape.

But the all-hands-on-deck effort to protect politically vulnerable Democrats by corralling the minimum number of votes to pass the bill, 219-212, proves that there are limits to President Barack Obama’s ability to use his popularity to push through his legislative agenda. Forty-four Democrats voted against the bill, while just eight Republicans crossed the aisle to back it…

Despite the numerous problems with the bill and still open questions remaining as to what the full financial impact will be on average consumers, Nobel prize winning economist, Paul Krugman is full of praise (here):

So the House passed the Waxman-Markey climate-change bill. In political terms, it was a remarkable achievement.

Which is perfectly fine.  I honestly tend to expect more out of an economist, like asking questions about cost versus benefits and the like, but I’ve gotten use to Mr. Krugman using his very large bully pulpit for his politics, and not economic principles.

As is his trademark for completely disregarding anything that fails to comport with his world view, he moved from praise directly into false logic:

But 212 representatives voted no. A handful of these no votes came from representatives who considered the bill too weak, but most rejected the bill because they rejected the whole notion that we have to do something about greenhouse gases.

And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a form of treason — treason against the planet.

So from the very beginning, he places everyone into two basic camps – those who voted for the legislation and those who are anti-science, treasonous bastards, how don’t understand the fundamental science behind climate change.

Instead of acknowledging the well known fact that many opponents of this legislation are not global warming deniers, he presents a false dichotomy in which there are only two sides – his side and those that don’t believe in global warming.

From this basic setup, his article flows smoothly as he defends the science behind global warming all the while pretending the strawman he is busy burning exists in real life.

As usual, outside of his partisan world, the issue is not nearly as cut and dry.  Many of the best argued positions come from people opposed to this bill have absolutely nothing to do with the science of global warming at all.  The generally tread a few main points:

1. What are the true costs of the bill to individual consumers? This question is almost impossible to ask as 300 additional pages were added to the 1000 page bill just a couple of hours before a forced vote.  None of Congress had time to read the additions prior to voting.
2. If we can detail a good cost estimate, do we fully know what benefits to expect in order to balance costs with benefits?
3. & lastly, the politics of the bill are being setup for corruption.  Instead of opening an exchange where the initial carbon offsets can be purchased through a free market system, the government will be handing out those directly to business.  They will get these carbon credits free of charge and be able to resell them on the market once that happens.  Allowing congress the ability to decide who gets free money is a system setup for corruption.

Critiques :Reason, Cato.org, and just a lot of additional BS on politics of the entire thing

Of course Mr. Krugman should know and likely does know exactly what he’s doing.  He frames the debate as a false dichotomy, only allowing two choices, then pretends to make one choice look completely stupid by comparison through the ceremonial burning of the strawman he invented.

Not terribly surprising from a columnist who was arguing in 2004 that the economy needed a housing bubble to get us moving forward again, only to completely reverse course and pretend he never did any such thing after the collapse of that market (here).

Is it really any wonder why the self proclaimed 4th branch of the government is trusted less and less everyday?