Detailed Abstractions

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.