Better Solutions for Pre-Existing Conditions

• Encourage Portable Insurance. Most of the time, the problem of pre-existing conditions arises precisely because health insurance isn’t portable.
• Allow Special Savings Accounts for the Chronically Ill.
• Allow Special Needs Health Insurance. Instead of requiring insurers to be all things to all people, we should allow plans to specialize in or more chronic conditions. Plans could specialize, for example, in diabetic care. heart care. or cancer care, and they would be able to charge a market price (say, to employers. other insurers. and even risk pools), and price and quality competition should be encouraged.
• Allow Health Status Insurance. To facilitate the market for chronic illness insurance, we should encourage two kinds of insurance: Standard insurance would cover the health needs of people during the insurance period, while health status insurance would pay future premium increases people face if they have a change in health status and then try to switch to another health plan. You can think of this as a way of insuring against the emergence of a pre-existing condition.
• Allow Self-Insurance for Changes in Health Status. The tax law allows employers to pay for current-period medical expenses with untaxed dollars. But there is no similar opportunity for either employers or employees to save for a future change in health status—one that will generate substantial increases in medical costs.
• Give Individual Buyers the Same Tax Break Employees Get.
• Allow Providers to Repackage and Reprice Their Services Under Medicare and Medicaid. We should encourage providers to create innovative solutions to the care of diabetes, asthma, cancer, heart disease, and other chronic health issues. Along these lines, providers should be able to offer a different bundle of services and be paid in a different way so long as they reduce the government’s overall cost and provide a higher quality of care.
• Allow Access to Mandate-Free Insurance. Studies show that as many as one out of four uninsured Americans—most of them healthy—have been priced out of the market for health insurance by cost-increasing, mandated benefits. At the same time, however, these mandates raise premiums for the chronically ill and divert dollars away from their care. There is no reason a diabetic should have to pay for other peoples’ in vitro fertilization, naturopathy, acupuncture, or marriage counseling, in order to obtain diabetic care.
• Create a National Market for Health Insurance. More competition, especially among the special needs insurers, would be a huge benefit for the chronically ill. Being able to buy insurance across state lines would encourage that competition.
• Encourage Post-Retirement Health Insurance.If the past is a guide, more than 80 percent of the 78 million baby boomers will retire before they become eligible for Medicare. This group has the greatest potential for denial of health insurance because of pre-existing conditions. Fortunately, one out of every three baby boomers has a promise of post-retirement healthcare. However, two out of three do not, and even for those who have a commitment, almost none of the promises are funded. A solution: give post- retirement health insurance the same tax encouragement as active-worker insurance and allow pre-retirement insurance to be portable.

Source: Priceless: Curing the Healthcare Crisis (2012) by John C. Goodman, Ph.D.

The History of the Minimum-Wage

Sidney Webb, English economist and co-Founder of the Fabian Society in the early 1900s, believed that establishing a minimum wage above the value of “the unemployables” as he called them, would lock them out of the market thus eliminating them as a class.

“Of all ways of dealing with these unfortunate parasites the most ruinous to the community is to allow them unrestrainedly to compete as wage earners,” Webb said.

That was actually a common sentiment in America at the time. in America shared this belief as well.  Around the same time, a Princeton economist said this:

“It is much better to enact a minimum-wage law even if it deprives these unfortunates of work… better that the state should support the inefficient wholly and prevent the multiplication of the breed than subsidize incompetence and unthrift, enabling them to bring forth more of their kind.”

Who was that Princeton economist? Royal Meeker, U.S. Commissioner of Labor, under Woodrow Wilson. [read more]

In 1896 in Victoria, Australia, an amendment to the Factories Act provided for the creation of a wages board.  The wages board did not set a universal minimum wage; rather it set basic wages for six industries that were considered to pay low wages.  First enacted as a four year experiment, the wages board was renewed in 1900 and made permanent in 1904; by that time it covered 150 different industries.  By 1902, other Australian states, such as New South Wales and Western Australia, had also formed wages boards.

Also in 1894, New Zealand enacted the first national minimum wage laws that, unlike the wages board of Victoria, were enforced by compulsory arbitration.

In the United States, statutory minimum wages were first introduced nationally in 1938; some states enacted them as protective laws starting in 1912 until they were ruled illegal, but they applied only to women and children.  For example, Massachusetts was the first and its laws "had the power only to investigate conditions and recommend changes". [read more]

I think if you have to have a minimum wage law make it optional for the employee. Make it so he or she can wave the minimum age so s(he) can be an apprentice or get his/her foot in the door. After all this is about empowering a person to get a job right? A wage should be negotiated between the employer and employee and the gov’t has no business in deciding what the wage should be. Then again those who distrust business and think business’ exploit and even oppress their employees will never allow the potential employee to wave the minimum wage. Those same people also believe the common class is helpless without them.

One final thought. If there should be a minimum wage why not a minimum salary? I mean is there really a difference other than the amount of money?

Frederick Douglass' Principles of Success

Since this month is Black History Month I thought I’d highlight a little about Frederick Douglass. First, his principles of success:

I.  The Proper Use of Power Is To Promote the Common Good.

II.  Give Up Something You Want In Order To Help Someone Else.

III.  Overcome Doubt and Fear.

IV.  Understand Why and How To Control the Human Ego.

V.  Do What Is Right and Proper Even If No One Is Looking.

VI.  Use Knowledge and Understanding Wisely.

VII.  Overcome Indecisiveness.

VIII.  Make Gratitude a Part of Every Thought And Action.

IX.  Practice the Skill of Listening Carefully Before Making Judgments.

X.  Remain True To Your Word.

XI.  Hold a Vision For the Desired Future.

XII.  Recognize That Your Success Is As Much a Motivation To Others As To You.

Those are good principles to live by. Most of them, I dare say, sound like conservative principles. Well, he was a conservative republican. As he put it:

I am a Republican, a black, dyed in the wool Republican, and I never intend to belong to any other party than the party of freedom and progress.

Here are some more quotes from him:

No man can be truly free whose liberty is dependent upon the thought, feeling and action of others, and who has himself no means in his own hands for guarding, protecting, defending and maintaining that liberty.

We may explain success mainly by one word and that word is WORK! WORK!! WORK!!! WORK!!!!

The man who will get up will be helped up; and the man who will not get up will be allowed to stay down.

Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.

The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose.

The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.

You don’t hear this from blacks on the Left.

President Grover Cleveland

Stephen Grover Cleveland (March 18, 1837 – June 24, 1908) was the 22nd and 24th President of the United States; as such, he is the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms (1885–1889 and 1893–1897) and to be counted twice in the numbering of the presidents. He was the winner of the popular vote for president three times—in 1884, 1888, and 1892—and was the only Democrat elected to the presidency in the era of Republican political domination dating from 1861 to 1913.

Cleveland was the leader of the pro-business Bourbon Democrats who opposed high tariffs, Free Silver, inflation, imperialism, and subsidies to business, farmers, or veterans. His crusade for political reform and fiscal conservatism made him an icon for American conservatives of the era. Cleveland won praise for his honesty, self-reliance, integrity, and commitment to the principles of classical liberalism.  He relentlessly fought political corruption, patronage and bossism. Indeed, as a reformer his prestige was so strong that the like-minded wing of the Republican Party, called "Mugwumps", largely bolted the GOP presidential ticket and swung to his support in the 1884 election.

His intervention in the Pullman Strike of 1894 to keep the railroads moving angered labor unions nationwide in addition to the party in Illinois; his support of the gold standard and opposition to Free Silver also alienated the agrarian wing of the Democratic Party. Furthermore, critics complained that he had little imagination and seemed overwhelmed by the nation's economic disasters—depressions and strikes—in his second term.

Cleveland used the veto far more often than any president up to that time

Source: Wikapedia.

The Moral Case for Free Enterprise

Arthur C. Brooks’s free enterprise principles from his 2010 book  The Battle.  How the Fight  Between Free Enterprise and Big Government Will Shape America's Future:

• The purpose of free enterprise is human flourishing, not
  materialism.
• We stand for equality of opportunity, not the equality of income.
• We seek to stimulate true prosperity, not treat poverty.
• America can and should be a gift to the world.
• What truly matters is principle, not political power.

The “we” he is talking about is the majority of American people. These principles republicans should get and understand. The principles democrats especially the progressive ones will never know.

Will the Real Socialist Congress Person Please Stand Up

Well, it looks like there are 70 Democrats who are socialists according to the Socialist Party of America (SPA). They belong to the SPA caucus. Here is a partial list of the names:

John Conyers

Luis Gutierrez

Maxine Waters

Sheila Jackson-Lee

Dennis Kucinich

Bernie Sanders (he is the only self-declared socialist member of Congress)

Keith Ellison

Barney Frank

Alan Grayson

Jesse Jackson, Jr

John Lewis

Jim McDermott

Charles Rangel

Linda Sánchez

[read more]

Inside North Korea Part 2

The songbun system: Every N. Korean belongs to one of three strata: “loyal,” “wavering,” or “hostile.” In most cases people are classified in accordance to what the person or his/her direct male ancestors did in the 1940s and early 1950s. Children and grandchildren of former landlords, Christian and Buddhist priests, private entrepreneurs, and clerks in the Japanese colonial administration, as well as descendants of other “suspicious elements” (like say, courtesans or female shamans) are classified as part of the “hostile” strata. People, whose direct male ancestors greatly contributed to the establishment or defense of the Kim family regime are considered members of the “loyal” stratum. As a rule, only members of this stratum are eligible for the most prestigious jobs. Another rule is that one cannot change not only one’s own place in this hierarchical system but also the place of one’s children. Only in exceptional cases can a humble “bad sonbuner” be reclassified and promoted—for example, it would help if she or he saves a portrait of Kim II Sung from a flooded house or does something equally heroic. Songbun is inherited through the male line.

In the enforcement of the domestic travel control, as well as in the the general surveillance, a special role was played by a peculiar N. Korean institution known as an inminban or “people’s group.” These groups still exist, even though their efficiency as surveillance institutions has declined since the early 1990s. A typical inminban includes 20 to 40 families. In neighborhoods consisting of detached houses, that is in the majority of N. Korean neighborhoods, once inminban includes all inhabinants of a block, while in apartment buildings an inminban includes all families sharing a common staircase (or 2 or three adjacent staircases if the building is not so large). Every N. Korean of any age or sex belongs to an inminban. The inminbans heads (always a woman, usually middle-aged) are required to learn about the incomes, assets, and spending habits of all of their charges in their respective inminbans. The police supervise the inminban’s activities. Every inminban is assigned to a “resident police officer” who regularly meets its head (actually, her appointment must be confirmed by this officer). During such meetings an inminban head must report suspicious activities that have come to her attention.

North Korea was the only country that banned the use of tunable radios in peacetime. From around 1960 onward, all radios officially sold in N. Korea had fixed tuning, so that only a small number of official N. Korean channels could be listened to. If one bought a radio in a hard-currency shop or bought it from overseas (which was legal), the owner had to immediately submit the radio to police, where a technician would permanently disable its tuning mechanism. Since a technically savvy person can easily repair a radio that has been set to one station, all privately owned radio sets had to be sealed. During the above-mentioned random household checks, the inminban heads and police were required to make sure these seals remained unbroken.

The N. Korean authorities took care to isolate the populace not only from from the foreign media but also from the official publications of early years. All N. Korean periodicals and a significant number of publications on social and political topics were regularly removed from common access libraries and could only be perused by people with special permissions. With periodicals the removal was done automatically, with all newspapers published more than 10 to 15 years ago being made inaccessible for the laity. This rule was obviously introduced to ensure that the changes in the policy line of the regime would remain unnoticeable to the populace.

20% of questions like these are in math books: ” During the Fatherland Liberation War [N. Korea’s official name for the Korean War] the brave uncles of Korean People’s Army killed 265 American Imperial bastards in the first battle. In the second battle they killed 70 more bastards than they had in the first battle. How many bastards did they kill in the second battle? How many bastards did they kill all together?” “South Korean boys, who are fighting against the American imperialist wolves and their henchmen, handed out 45 bundles of leaflets with 150 leaflets in each bundle. They also stuck 50 bundles with 50 leaflets in each bundle. How many leaflets were used?”

Source: The Real North Korea. Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia (2013) by Andrei Lankov.

News about N. Korea from Blaze.com:

March 7, 2013: North Korea Vows to Nuke U.S.

Apr. 5, 2013: 6 Things You Need to Know About North Korea This Friday

Jul. 19, 2013: North Korean Anti-U.S. Propaganda Is About as Unsettling as You’d Expect

Nov. 12, 2013: Reports: North Korea Executed 80 People for Watching TV and Owning Bibles

Jan. 3, 2014: North Korean Dictator Rumored to Have Used One of the Most Grotesque Ways to Execute His Uncle

Jan. 16, 2014: Human Rights Activists Are Combatting the North Korean Gov’t in One of the Most Innovative Ways Imaginable

President John Adams on Human Nature

That all men are born to equal rights is clear. Every being has a right to his own, as moral, as sacred, as any other has. This is as indubitable as a moral government in the universe. But to teach that all men are born with equal powers and faculties, to equal influence in society, to equal property and advantages through life, is as gross a fraud, as glaring an imposition on the credulity of the people, as ever was practiced by monks, by Druids, by Brahmins, by priests of the immortal Lama, or by the self-styled philosophers of the French Revolution. For honor’s sake, Mr. Taylor*, for truth and virtue’s sake, let American philosophers and politicians despise it.

Nature, which has established in the universe a chain of being and universal order, descending from archangels to microscopic animalcules, has ordained that no two objects shall be perfectly alike, and no two creatures perfectly equal. Although, among men, all are subjects by nature to equal laws of morality, and in society have a right to equal laws for their government, yet no two men are perfectly equal in person, property, understanding, activity, and virtue, or ever can be made so by any power less than that which created them; and whenever it becomes disputable between two individuals or families, which is the superior, a fermentation commences, which disturbs the order of all things until it is settled, and each knows his place in the opinion of the public.

All sober inquirers after truth, ancient and modern, pagan and Christian, have declared that the happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue. 

 

These quotes, by the way, come from Russell Kirk’s book The Conservative Mind. From Burke to Eliot (1953). Kirk called John Adams the first American conservative.

 

 

*John Taylor. Adams was writing this in a letter to him.

Learning Humility

Nix narcissism. Narcissism is an exclusive focus on the self. The focus is appropriately on others—but on others’ needs, not on others’ misdeeds.

Eliminate entitlement. Entitled people believe they are superior to others in a way that qualifies them for special treatment. Thus, they are often preoccupied with fairness* as they perceive it.  When people are both narcissistic and entitled, they perceived themselves to be unique, special, and deserving in ways that other people are not. Humble people tend not to point to others, or themselves when things go wrong. They fix problems, not assign blame.

Puncture pride. We probably all feed pride, and sometimes our pride justly deserved. At other times, pride is a defensive shield to protect a fragile ego.

Equalize egoism with empathy. Instead of thinking about yourself, try thinking about other people’s feelings, thoughts, needs, and personal experiences.

Secure self-confidence and self-esteem—but not too much. Poor self esteem can motivate people to serve others altruistically and to avoid attention modestly. Poor self-esteem’s aim is self-protection. But so is high self-esteem aim the same. When people hold themselves to high regard but their self-esteem is fragile, they will decisively stamp out any challenge to their seeming self-confidence. Self-confidence allows people freedom from fear, which permits humble service.

Be self-aware, but not too self-aware.  Like everything in life, find a balance.

Practice virtue. Try pursing a meaningful life.

Cultivate spirituality or religion. Humble people often feel that they are responding to a calling beyond themselves.

Source: Humility. The Quiet Virtue (2007) by Everett L. Worthington Jr.

In the book, the author talks about St. Benedict’s steps of humility for monks. Interesting read.

Even Jesus and Buddha talked about humility.

 

*This is where we get social justice, wealth redistribution, etc. from.

Sampling from the Liberty Amendments book

Here is a sampling of the liberty amendments from Mark. R. Levin’s 2013 book The Liberty Amendments. Restoring the American Republic:

An Amendment to Restore the Senate

SECTION 1: The Seventeenth Amendment is hereby repealed. All Senators shall be chosen by their state legislatures as prescribed by Article I.

SECTION 2: This amendment shall not be so construed as to affect the term of any Senator chosen before it becomes valid as part of the Constitution.

SECTION 3: When vacancies occur in the representation of any State in the Senate for more than ninety days the governor of the State shall appoint an individual to fill the vacancy for the remainder of the term.

SECTION 4: A Senator may be removed from office by a two-thirds vote of the state legislature.

Taxing

SECTION 1: Congress shall not collect more than 15 percent of a person’s annual income, from whatever source derived. “Person” shall include natural and legal persons.

SECTION 2: The deadline for filing federal income tax returns shall be the day before the date set for elections to federal office.

SECTION 3: Congress shall not collect tax on a decedent’s estate.

SECTION 4: Congress shall not institute a value-added tax or national sales tax or any other tax in kind or form.

SECTION 5: This Amendment shall take effect in the fourth fiscal year after its ratification.

An Amendment to Limit the Federal Bureaucracy

SECTION 1: All federal departments and agencies shall expire if said departments and agencies are not individually reauthorized in stand-alone reauthorization bills every three years by a majority vote of the House of Representatives and the Senate.

SECTION 2: All Executive Branch regulations exceeding an economic burden of $ 100 million, as determined jointly by the Government Accountability Office and the Congressional Budget Office, shall be submitted to a permanent Joint Committee of Congress, hereafter the Congressional Delegation Oversight Committee, for review and approval prior to their implementation.

SECTION 3: The Committee shall consist of seven members of the House of Representatives, four chosen by the Speaker and three chosen by the Minority Leader; and seven members of the Senate, four chosen by the Majority Leader and three chosen by the Minority Leader. No member shall serve on the Committee beyond a single three-year term.

SECTION 4: The Committee shall vote no later than six months from the date of the submission of the regulation to the Committee. The Committee shall make no change to the regulation, either approving or disapproving the regulation by majority vote as submitted.

SECTION 5: If the Committee does not act within six months from the date of the submission of the regulation to the Committee, the regulation shall be considered disapproved and must not be implemented by the Executive Branch.

An Amendment to Promote Free Enterprise

SECTION 1: Congress’s power to regulate Commerce is not a plenary grant of power to the federal government to regulate and control economic activity but a specific grant of power limited to preventing states from impeding commerce and trade between and among the several States.

SECTION 2: Congress’s power to regulate Commerce does not extend to activity within a state, whether or not it affects interstate commerce; nor does it extend to compelling an individual or entity to participate in commerce or trade.

The 17th Amendment was a Progressive idea. They didn’t want states having a check on the gov’t. This amendment is why there are unfunded mandates. Then again the Left won’t like most of these amendments.

The rest of Mr. Levin’s amendments are:

• An Amendment to Establish Term Limits for Members of Congress
• An Amendment to Establish Term Limits for Supreme Court Justices and Super-Majority Legislative Override
• A Limit Spending Amendment
• An Amendment to Protect Private Property
• An Amendment to Grant the States Authority to Directly Amend the Constitution
• An Amendment to Grant the States Authority to Check Congress
• An Amendment to Protect the Vote

Comte Henri De Saint-Simon (1760-1825)

All his life, Saint-Simon was possessed with the idea that he was the great new Messiah who had at last come to save earth*, and he lived at a time when a great many people** were under that peculiar impression.

[Saint-Simon] is also the father of what I should like to call the technological interpretation of history. This is not quite the same as the materialistic interpretation of history which we associate with the name of Marx, but it does lie at its root, and in certain respects is a much more original and tenable view. Saint-Simon is the first person to define classes in the modern sense, an economic social entities, dependent in a direct way upon the progress of technology—the progress of machinery, the progress of the ways in which people obtain and distribute and consume products. In short, he is the first person to draw serious attention to the economic factors in history. Moreover, whenever there is talk about a planned society, about a planned economy, about technocracy, about the necessity for what the French call dirigisme, anti-laissez-faire; whenever there is a New Deal; whenever there is propaganda in favor of some kind of rational organization of industry and of commerce, in favor of applying science for the benefit of society, and, in general, in favor of everything which we have now come to associate with a planned rather than a laissez-faire State—whenever there is talk of this sort, the ideas which are bandied saw the light originally in the half-published manuscripts of Saint-Simon.

Again, Saint-Simon more than anyone else invented the notion of the gov’t of society by elites, using a double morality. Saint-Simon is almost the first thinker who comes out and says that it is important for society to be governed not democratically, but by elites of persons who understand the technological needs and the technological possibilities of their time; and that, since the majority of human beings are stupid, and since they mostly obey their emotions, what the enlightened elite must do is to practice one morality themselves and feed their flock of human subjects with another.

He is one of the most trenchant attackers of such eighteenth-century shibboleths as civil liberty, human rights, natural rights, democracy, laissez-faire, individualism, nationalism. He attacks them because he is the first person to see—as the thinkers of the 18th century never did quite clearly see—the incompatibility between the view that wise men ought to direct society and the view that people ought to govern themselves; the incompatibility,in short, between a society which is directed by a group of wise men who alone know towards what goal to move and how to get humanity to move towards it, and the notion that it is better to govern oneself, even than to be governed well. He chooses, of course, in favor of good gov’t.

Finally, Saint-Simon is the first originator of what might be called secular religious—that is to say, the first person to see that one cannot live by technological wisdom alone; that something must be done to stimulate the feelings, the emotions, the religious instincts of mankind.

He developed the notion that history must be understood as a kind of evolution of mankind in the satisfaction of its various needs, and for that reason where the needs are different the satisfaction will be different. 

The four criteria of a progressive society:

1) The progressive society is that which provides the maximum means of satisfying the greatest number of needs of the human beings who compose it.

2) Anything that is progressive will give the opportunity to the best to reach the top. The best, for him, are the most gifted, the most imaginative, the cleverest, the most profound, the most energetic, the most active, those who want the full flavor of life.

3) The maximum unity and strength for the purpose of a rebellion or an invasion.

4) Conduciveness to invention and discovery and civilization.

What are the purposes of society? Well, says Saint-Simon, we are told it is the common good, but that is very vague. The purpose of society is self-development, the purpose of society is ‘the best application, in order to satisfy human needs, of knowledge acquired by the sciences, in the arts and crafts, the dissemination of such knowledge, and the development and maximum accumulation of its fruits, that is, in the most useful combination of all separate activities, in the sphere of the sciences, the arts and crafts’.

As for rights, ‘right’ is an empty sound: there are only interests. Interests are which humanity happens to want at any given moment. It is the business of producers to give it to them. Humanity divides into two vast classes, the indolent and the workers. By ‘workers’ he does not seem to mean manual workers or the proletariat; he means anybody who works, including managers, captains of industry, bankers, industrialists.

Above all, we must have professionals and not amateurs. Poverty is always due to incompetence, and we must replace the appalling waste of competition by concerted planning; what we want is a centralized industrial plan for society.

Source: Freedom and Its Betrayal. Six Enemies of Human Liberty (2002)  by Isaiah Berlin.

The beliefs of Saint-Simon I think are for the most part believed by the Left today. He could be one of their “founding fathers.” He did influence Karl Marx who called him a Utopian socialist.

Who are the other betrayers you might ask? Claude-Adrien Helvetius, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Joseph De Maistre.

 

*Sounds like the current U. S. president.

**This of course is the lame-stream-press, most musicians and actors, college professors, etc.

Rule of Man or Rule of Law?

From Fee.org (Jan. 14):

The rule of law sounds boring, but—along with its companion, property rights—it is the single most important factor in quality governance.

If you compare two geographically similar areas—say Florida and Haiti—and ask why the former is prosperous and peaceful, and the latter is not, the rule of law is the most important reason for the difference. The West triumphed relative to its competitors over the past thousand years not because of climate or ethnicity, but because of the evolution of all sorts of institutions (good rules) that fit under the rule of law.

Despite its importance, few educated adults, and fewer students, would list “the rule of law” as central to our prosperity. Perhaps they haven’t fully experienced the alternative—which one might call “the rule of man.” We only half-notice the order in which we live, without thinking about how it developed or what its alternatives are. We forget what Locke stated in England’s Glorious Revolution: “Where there is no law, there is no freedom.”

Locke's statement doesn’t mean that all laws makes us freer: We rightly intuit that Obamacare or NSA spying aren’t exactly expanding our freedom by leaps and bounds. The Lockean understanding of laws, and a pretty good litmus test of any proposed legislation today, is that laws must enlarge an individual’s freedom.

Laws do this best when they are:

• simple rules,
• evolved over time,
• agreed upon and known by all,
• rarely changed, and
• applied equally to all people.

An individual law may be silly, but if it fits the most of the above criteria, it likely is better to live under it that than to be ruled by a ruler, who is likely to be capricious and arbitrary. [read more]

Interesting essay. The tax rules are not simple, not known by all, always changing, and not applied equally to all people. Actually, you could say that about most bureaucratic regulations. The Ten Commandments and the Bill of Rights are simple rules and rarely changed. Well, the Commandments and Bill of Rights never changed and probably should never change. Both should be agreed upon and known by all. Both are definitely equally applied to all people.

The physical laws of nature like Isaac Newton’s Three Laws of Motion, and Johannes Kepler’s Laws of Planetary Motion are simple rules (each contain only 3 laws) that never change and apply equally to all objects in the universe.

The author gives an example of the Roman Emperor Claudius was fond of pronouncing edicts, issuing dozens of them per day, even declaring that public flatulence was good for one’s health. Evidently he never heard of climate change.

Not sure what the author means by laws should “evolve over time.” Evolution usually means change so that kind of contradicts his assertion that laws should rarely change.  Also, laws like living organisms can devolve too. 

Miscellaneous Thoughts Part 32

• There is a reason why the Liberty Bell isn’t called the Equality Bell or Fairness Bell.
• To the Left the only essential Americans are those who put them and keep them in power.
• Obamacare essentially controls your life, so you have very little liberty, which diminishes your happiness.
• If gov’t fears the people the country may get liberty if that is what the population wants. You will probably get a revolution, but you may get a softer tyranny.
• The reason the Left doesn’t like religion is because they cannot control something that is bigger than themselves.
• Age income tax: A federal flat income tax where you pay half the tax rate when you are 40 and no taxes when you are 80 and above. For another idea, see negative income tax.
• To those who love big gov’t, criticizing it or even questioning its policies means you hate gov’t period. 
• Book publishing companies could use the Modeltalker program (speech synthesis software for people who are losing or who have already lost their ability to speak ) to make audio books. 
• The minimum wage law is a war on teenagers trying to get an entry-level job.
• The Left wants rights for people when they consenting to have sex but not when they are consenting to make a business contract like hiring an apprentice for free.

Terrorist Group Issues Fatwa to Kill Journalists and Spies

From Blaze.com (Jan. 10):

Leaders of Pakistan’s most deadly terrorist organization issued a recent “fatwa” – an Islamic edict – ordering their followers to kill journalists and those believed to be spies for the West, saying they are enemies of Islam.

The 30-page document titled “FATWA Regarding Dajjali Media, Who is Wrong? Who is Right?” was issued by the Terik-E-Taliban’s (TTP) Central Shura in Pakistan’s lawless tribal belt and includes Fox News, the Associated Press, the BBC, Pakistan’s GEO News, Al Jazeera and several other news outlets whose logos are on the cover of the document. That said, the document stipulates the edict is to be directed at any reporter or news organization they deem anti-Islamic.

The document, written in Urdu, has only been released on several Jihadi websites. TheBlaze obtained the document this week and had it translated but chose not to publish it in its entirety out of the concern for journalists and other individuals working overseas. [read more]

What is this?! Islamists wanting to kill journalists? I don’t get it. The lame-stream-press is always careful not to tick off the Jihadists. Must be one of those conservative journalists ticking them off. Probably, made a online video disrespecting Islam. That’s got to be it.

The journalists and Western spies don’t have to worry about the FATWA though. It doesn’t seem to be issued by Al Qaeda. So it’s alright. They can let out a sigh of relief.

10 Surprising Government Programs That Are Costing You $10.2 Billion

From blog.heritage.org (Jan. 7):

The following is a list of the 10 programs where [Romina] Boccia [a Heritage budget expert] believes Congress can save taxpayers money. Click here to read the full report.

1. Cut Pet-Shampoo and Similar Projects, Save $3.1 billion: The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program funds “wasteful parochial projects, which include funding a pet-shampoo company and issuing risky business loans.”

2. Stop Bankrolling the Common Core, Save $2 billion: The Department of Education competitive grant programs under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) funds more than 60 projects, including an initiative that promotes Common Core national standards. Boccia says this is “an area regarded by tradition and law as a state and local matter.”

3. Cut a Program That Hurts Youth, Save $1.6 billion: Job Corps is a residential job-training program to serve disadvantaged youth, but according to Boccia’s research, it “has an abysmal record.” Job Corps participants were less likely to earn a high school diploma than non-participants in a control group. Participants in the program also worked fewer weeks and worked fewer hours per week than similar teens and tweens.

4. Cut Unnecessary Red Tape, Save $1.5 billion: The U.S. Department of Agriculture Food for Peace Title II grants require food to be purchased in the United States and then shipped across oceans in U.S.-flagged vessels, adding unnecessary logistical challenges to already-higher costs.

5. Cut Pork-Barrel Projects, Save $800 million: The Department of Transportation’s Transportation Alternatives Program funds community preservation projects like bicycle paths, sidewalks, and nature paths. Boccia argues “such projects are purely local matters.”

6. Cut Private Landowner Beautification, Save $730 million: The Natural Resources Conservation Service runs this program to help private landowners maintain private land and teach them how to best use their land. Boccia says taxpayers should not be forced to subsidize advice on how to improve visual appearance.

7.  Cut Government Handouts, Save $200 million: The Department of Transportation Essential Air Service subsidizes the flights of rural passengers who opt for air travel when cheaper or unsubsidized travel alternatives. According to Boccia, any subsidies for these flights should come from the local or state level, which are benefitting from the service.

8. Cut Corporate Welfare, Save $120 million: The Department of Energy’s Advanced Manufacturing Program subsidizes activities leading to greater energy efficiency in American manufacturing processes – something Boccia believes companies should decide on their own to participate in.

9. Cut Crony Capitalism, Save $100 million: The Rural Business Program Account deals with business and industry-guaranteed loans and rural business enterprise grants. This allows the federal government to play venture capitalist with taxpayer money, Boccia says.

10. Cut Funding for Overseas Abortions, Save $35 million: The United Nations Population Fund, funded in millions of taxpayer dollars, faces continued allegations that it has been complicit in China’s coercive one-child policy, which is often enforced through forced abortions and forced sterilizations. [read more]

Sounds like a good idea to me, but will the Republicans have the guts to propose these cuts? After all if they propose cuts in 2), 6), 7), possibly 3) and 10) the Dems will demonize them and say they mean and don’t care. Then again the Left will always say that no matter what the Republicans do or don’t do.

The Lincoln Platform

• Embrace what is new. Lincoln the modernizer wouldn’t have any patience for an economics born of nostalgia or of distrust of the workings of the market.
• Emphasize education. Lincoln talked of the importance of education from the first, although not with much specificity. He lived out his own commitment to it in his early years, with all his reading and self-directed study.
• Resist dependency. Lincoln resented his father for making him labor and keeping the proceeds for himself. He preached the gospel of work, and wanted as many people as possible participating in the commercial economy.
• Build infrastructure. Lincoln favored funding better transportation infrastructure, whether it was improving the pathetic little Sangamon River or building a grand railroad project spanning the continent.
• Fund other basic supports for growth. Lincoln lent aid to transportation improvements on the theory that they were transformative and couldn’t necessarily get the capital on their own otherwise. A direct analogue today is basic science and research.
• Reject class politics. The entire thrust of Lincoln’s economics was growing the pie for everyone and resisting zero-sum arguments positing an inherent conflict between classes. 
• Welcome immigrants.
• Exploit our resources. Lincoln would probably favor drilling, mining, and fracking to the utmost.
• Pay attention to the interests of the common worker. “Whatever is calculated to advance the condition of the honest, struggling laboring man,” Lincoln said in 1861 on his way to Washington, “so far as my judgment will enable me to judge of a correct thing. I am for that thing.” 
• Support causes of social renewal.
• Elevate the culture.
• Look to the founders. Lincoln’s attitude to the Founders bordered on the worshipful. He said of George Washington: “Washington is the mightiest name of earth---long since mightiest in the cause of civil liberty; still mightiest in moral reformation.”

Source: Lincoln Unbound. How an Ambitious Young Railsplitter Saved the American Dream—and How We Can Do It Again. (2013) by Rich Lowry.

These 13 Tax Increases Hit in 2013

From the Heritage blog (Dec. 31):

1. Payroll Tax: increase in the Social Security portion of the payroll tax from 4.2 percent to 6.2 percent for workers.

2. Top marginal tax rate: increase from 35 percent to 39.6 percent for taxable incomes over $450,000 ($400,000 for single filers).

3. Phase out of personal exemptions for adjusted gross income (AGI) over $300,000 ($250,000 for single filers).

4. Phase down of itemized deductions for AGI over $300,000 ($250,000 for single filers).

5. Tax rates on investment: increase in the rate on dividends and capital gains from 15 percent to 20 percent for taxable incomes over $450,000 ($400,000 for single filers).

6. Death tax: increase in the rate (on estates larger than $5 million) from 35 percent to 40 percent.

7. Taxes on business investment: expiration of full expensing—the immediate deduction of capital purchases by businesses.

8. Another investment tax increase: 3.8 percent surtax on investment income for taxpayers with taxable income exceeding $250,000 ($200,000 for singles).

9. Another payroll tax hike: 0.9 percent increase in the Hospital Insurance portion of the payroll tax for incomes over $250,000 ($200,000 for single filers).

10. Medical device tax: 2.3 percent excise tax paid by medical device manufacturers and importers on all their sales.

11. Reducing the income tax deduction for individuals’ medical expenses.

12. Elimination of the corporate income tax deduction for expenses related to the Medicare Part D subsidy.

13. Limitation of the corporate income tax deduction for compensation that health insurance companies pay to their executives.

[read more]

Wow! That’s quite a few tax increases. It looks like it won’t be a very good year for the tax payer.

There should be no death tax or medical device tax. Definitely no medical device tax. That is going to reduce innovation in the medical device field. As for the corporate tax America has one of the highest taxes. Having all those taxes won’t stimulate the economy. It will do the exact opposite. 

The Entrepreneurial Mindset

One way to get America back to great economic productivity is produce more tinkerers, more entrepreneurials, more people who can look at a problem and say “I can improve on that” or “I can fix that.” Government cannot do this. Only parents can encourage their children to be little capitalists. Or if you wish little entrepreneurials.

What is an entrepreneurial mindset? Well, according to a Success.com article some the characteristics of an entrepreneurial are:

• a self-promoter- this sounds egotistical but in a way when you run a business you are the business so you have to get the word out about your business.
• self-confident
• a self-starter
• a good planner and organizer
• competitive
• optimistic because your business will have setbacks once in a while.
• passionate about your product or service- if you are not why should your customers be passionate about your product?
• patient
• decisive

These are the type of characteristics parents can encourage in their children. Some other entrepreneurial traits that are mostly inborn are:

• handling pressure
• being comfortable with risk
• a strong drive to succeed
• encouraged by setbacks/challenges
• handling criticism well
• desire to work hard

One other thing. If you agree to any these statements:

• Your workday must include a chunk of "me" time.
• You spend time personalizing your office.
• You don't empty your own trash, even when you're headed that way.
• You feel you could be a lot more productive if you just had that new...
• You're still mad your department got shorted during the last budget cycle.
• You discuss work-life balance issues with passion and intelligence.
• You've ever said, even once, "I've paid my dues."

Then you’re probably not entrepreneurial material. Possibly a politician or a bureaucrat. Notice all the statements is about you sacrificing yourself to the business. It’s not about you so much but about the job. Making it a success.

One other thing parents can teach a little entrepreneurial is that making a profit is not a sin. Another word for profit is incentive.

Miscellaneous Thoughts Part 31

• You'll never see a midget (sorry, I mean a little person) play the tuba. Think about it. This is probably why you will never see a little people polka band.
• Humor: In order to get the best video of a tornado approaching your home stand in front of an open window. Pull back any curtains so they won't block the view of the camcorder.
• To NDErs real life is virtual life. The afterlife is more vibrant more real.
• Sometimes the monkey throws poo at you and sometimes at your nemesis.
• I think Michelle Malkin should run against Hillary Clinton (if she is the nominee) for POTUS. Mrs. Malkin would not pull any punches. Not sure about the VP candidate for Michelle. Possibly, Glenn Beck?
• I believe that the Mothman is some kind of daemon because it has red eyes and supernatural abilities (it’s been reported around the world). Colin Wilson in his book Mysteries believed Big Foot and the Loch Ness monster are daemons too.
• Obama’s new slogan: No pain for the country, no gain for me.
• Obamacare: Welcome to the New Slavery.
• I wonder if you can be a conscious objector to Obamacare?
• What Obama was thinking: If you like the Constitution, you can keep the Constitution. Or was that your freedom? I get confused.

Four Problem Categories for Conservatives

These four problems are taken from Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind (1953):

1. The problem of spiritual and moral regeneration; the restoration of the ethical system and the religious sanction upon which any life worth living is founded. Spiritual restoration cannot be a means to social restoration; it must be its own end.
2. The problem of leadership, which has two aspects: the preservation of some measure of veneration, discipline, order, and class; and the purgation of our system of education, so that learning once again may become truly liberal.*
3. The problem of the proletariat. The mass of men must find status and hope within society; true family, respect for the past, responsibility for the future, private property, duty as well as right, inner resources that matter more than the mass-amusements and mass-vices with the which the modern proletarian seeks to forget his lack of an object.
4. The problem of economic stability. This does not mean the security of plenty for everyone: no social program, least of all the planned economy of the welfare state, is likely to succeed in gratifying the material appetites of all humanity. But it does mean the establishment of a rational relationship between endeavor and reward. It means the adjustment of the American economy to the real capacities of American production, which cannot permanently supply the demands of half the world with a flow of manufactures and agricultural commodities.

Even though these problems were written in the 1950s they are still valid today because they transcend time. People at the core level are the same throughout history. Kirk was saying these are problems with the human condition that conservatives have to face and try to solve or moderate as he put it.

 

*He means classical liberal as in libertarian.

Slavery: The Opposite of Free Enterprise

Even slaves with relatively humane masters lacked the freedoms that most of today’s Americans, living under the modern leviathan, take for granted.

Peter Kolchin, in his seminal American Slavery: 1619–1877, sums up the reality:

Slaves could hardly turn around without being told what to do. They lived by rules, sometimes carefully constructed and formally spelled out and sometimes haphazardly conceived and erratically imposed. Rules told them when to rise in the morning, when to go to the fields, when to break for meals, how long and how much to work, and when to go to bed; rules also dictated a broad range of activities that were forbidden without special permission, from leaving home to getting married; and rules allowed or did not allow a host of privileges, including the right to raise vegetables on garden plots, trade for small luxuries, hunt, and visit neighbors. Of course, all societies impose rules on their inhabitants in the form of laws, but the rules that bound slaves were unusually detailed, covered matters normally untouched by law, and were arbitrarily imposed and enforced, not by an abstract entity that (at least in theory) represented their interests, but by their owners. Slaves lived with their government.

I thank God I don’t live with my government! For many years the pro-market tradition saw slavery as a grave violation of its principles. Kolchin writes:

Early political economists—including Adam Smith, whose book The Wealth of Nations (1776) remained for decades the most influential justification for the principles underlying capitalism—believed that slavery, by preventing the free buying and selling of labor power and by eliminating the possibility of self-improvement that was the main incentive to productive labor, violated central economic laws.

Although critics blame market exchange for the rise of slavery, this criticism is grossly unfair. The slave trade was indeed a market of sorts—unfree, unjust, and regulated—but the most fundamental relationship in slavery was not a market at all. Kolchin explains:

Slave owners engaged in extensive commercial relations, selling cotton (and other agricultural products), buying items both for personal consumption and for use in their farming operations, borrowing money, and speculating in land and slaves, but the market was conspicuously absent in regulating relations between the masters and their slaves. In other words, relations of exchange were market-dominated, but relations of production were not.

The slave power dominated political life in the South and enjoyed federal support through the Fugitive Slave Clause. Slavery was a major government program, its enforcement costs socialized through law. “The chief way that the South’s slaveholding elite externalized the costs of the peculiar institution was slave patrols,” writes Jeffrey Rogers Hummel in Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men. These slave patrols were “established in every slave state” to enforce black codes, inflict punishment, and suppress insurrections and were “compulsory for most able bodied white males.” Slave patrols, necessary to slavery’s maintenance, were a flagrant violation of the free economy. [read more]

It sounds like slaves were owned by progressive masters.

Ayatollah Khomeini's Four Basic Techniques

Here are the four basic techniques that Khomeini consolidated his domestic power after the overthrow of the Shaw:

1. The constant mobilization of the masses. The mobilization exploited the symbols and doctrines of Islamic fundamentalism, and the techniques of twentieth-century movements, from monster rallies, constant incitement of hatred to the revolution’s “satanic” enemies and once Saddam Hussein attacked and the bloody Iran-Iraq war began, constant reference to martyrdom.  
2. The regime devoted constant attention to the needs to the most impoverished sectors of society. Money, food, and housing were seized from the old elites and redistributed to the very poor. Even the poor was exempted from paying taxes and provided free transportation. This ensured the loyalty of the lower classes and kept the well-to-do constantly concerned about their own well-being.
3. Total, uncompromising war against anything having to do with the West. Khomeini banned music. Western books were removed from the schools and often burned. Strict segregation of the sexes was imposed throughout the educational system. Polygamy was reinstituted.
4. Use of the judicial system as an instrument of terror. In the first seven months of Khomeini’s rule, the revolutionary tribunals killed off more than six hundred people, including many who had welded great power under the old regime. 

Source: Iranian Time Bomb. The Mullah Zealots ' Quest for Destruction (2007) by Michael A. Ledeen.

The first three techniques are probably still used in Iran. Probably the fourth one too especially if you criticize the current leader or Islam or the Quran. The satanic enemies of Iran are of course America, Israel and our allies. Mainly America and Israel. That hasn’t changed even after the Iran-Iraq war is over.  Being nice to Iran’s leadership won’t change how they think or feel about America or Israel.  Western ideas are probably still banned in Iran.

Conservative Parents, Left-Wing Children

An interesting article by Dennis Prager:

There is a phenomenon that is rarely commented on but which is as common as it is significant.

For at least two generations, countless conservative parents have seen their adult children reject their core values.

I have met these parents throughout America. I have spoken with them in person and on my radio show. Many have confided to me -- usually with a resigned sadness -- that one or more of their children has adopted left-wing social, moral and political beliefs.

A particularly dramatic recent example was a pastor who told me that he has three sons, all of whom have earned doctorates -- from Stanford, Oxford and Fordham. What parent wouldn't be proud of such achievements by his or her children?

But the tone of his voice suggested more irony than pride. They are all leftists, he added wistfully.

"How do you get along?" I asked.

"We still talk," he responded.

Needless to say, I was glad to hear that. But as the father of two sons, I readily admit that if they became leftists, while I would, of course, always love them, I would be deeply saddened. Parents, on the left or the right, religious or secular, want to pass on their core values to their children. [read more]

A new plan for the Grand Old Party

From Joe for America.com:

In light of the 2013 election with Chris Christie getting elected and Ken Cuccinelli getting defeated, the Republican Party establishment will look at the results and think that in 2014 and 2016 that they need to go moderate; and they will be wrong. There are several problems with the Republican Party and they need to be addressed if the party is going to be viable and effective.

   •    The Party needs to decide who and what they are.

Are they conservative? Are they moderate? Are they ideologically pure or is there a big tent mindset? As someone who is an aspiring campaign manager and has studied politics most of her life, I have a solution. I think that the Republican Party needs to be primarily conservative with moderate elements but those moderate elements MUST understand that they are in the minority in this party and that they can’t tell the majority what to do. The party needs to be conservative to provide voters a clear choice. I often hear people say “There’s no difference between the parties.” Any more that’s true when speaking of the GOP establishment and the Democrat Party; but contrast the Tea Party with the Democrats and you get a stark contrast. GOP history should be a lesson that when we run conservatives such as Ronald Reagan and how George W. Bush was sold to us, then we win. But when we run moderates like Bob Dole, John McCain and Mitt Romney we lose. So the GOP establishment needs to stop dead their headlong rush to embrace the Christie 2016 Presidential campaign NOW. The GOP needs to be looking around for articulate, charismatic conservatives who are women and minorities to break the stereotypical old, white guy candidate. Sen. Ted Cruz would be an excellent choice as would Gov. Bobby Jindal and Gov. Susannah Martinez. Until and unless the party decides that it’s conservative with moderate elements then the party will continue to struggle and be ineffective because it will continue to be at odds with itself. [read more]

A good detailed plan. The rest of the points are:

• The GOP establishment needs to recognize that they are not listening to their base and are no longer connected with it.
• The Party needs a 21st Century version of The Contract with America.
• The Party needs to package the message to make it easy to understand, personal and yet in line with the principles of the Party.

Only the Self-Reliant Remain Free

An interesting essay by Terence P. Jeffrey:

Who had more freedom?

Was it the pioneer who rode horseback across the Midwest, settled in a wide-open space without paved roads, grocery stores or hospitals, and had to build his own home, cultivate his own food and educate his own children?

Or was it the less-adventuresome brother he left behind in an Eastern city who lived next door to a hospital, across the street from a public school and kitty corner from a grocery store — but in his later years could only get to work if he rode a public transit line and if the transit line ran on time?

I vote for the pioneer. He was not dependent on government. His brother was.

Self-reliance and freedom are inseparable. Americans once knew this in their very souls. Now, coaxed by those with a socialistic vision of government, we are beginning to forget it. We are becoming ever more dependent on government and putting our freedom at risk.

It is as simple as that.

The Census Bureau recently published some remarkable data. As of the end of 2011, it said, there were approximately 151,014,000 who received one or more benefits from the federal government. That was 49 percent of the population of the country, which then stood at 306,804,000. [read more]

So, true. America needs to get back to what made this country great: self-reliance and innovation. It’s what socialistic countries don’t have and that’s why most don’t have productive economies.

A Twelve Step Plan for Understanding the Free-Market

1. Admit that government solutions are a problem.
2. Have faith that people can interact peacefully and that economic blessings are available for all.
3. Surrender to the fact that certain social ills cannot be irradiated by force or politically will.
4. Ask yourself do I want to advocate self-sufficiency and voluntary means or do I want to look to politicians every time I don’t like something.
5. Survey the past record of governments when it comes to economic planning or other allegeds improvements.
6. Learn to look for the hidden costs of government intervention rather than the superficial benefits.
7. Understand the role of market prices and why tampering with them interferes with the job they have to perform.
8. Study history. Examine whether governments that violated private property rights stayed out their citizens other affairs.
9. Before condemning a market outcome is unjust first understand why it occurs.
10. Study other spontaneous social institutions such as language and science where no-one is in charge and yet the outcome is quite orderly.
11. When politicians propose a new program remember how much they said it would cost at the outset. Compare that number to the actual amount spent.
12. Go through the newspaper and discover how government meddling causes or exacerbates the conflict in virtually every story.

Source: The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism (2007) by Robert P. Murphy, Ph. D.

This is good advice for everyone but especially for the ones in power since they are the ones that make policy.

Le Contrat Social (1922)

This an interesting essay written by H.L. Mencken:

All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: Its one permanent object is to police him and cripple him. If it be aristocratic in organization, then it seeks to protect the man who is superior only in law against the man who is superior in fact; if it be democratic, then it seeks to protect the man who is inferior in every way against both. Thus one of its primary functions is to regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible and as dependent upon one another as possible, to search out and combat originality among them. All it can see in an original idea is potential change, and hence an invasion of its prerogatives.

The most dangerous man, to any government, is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are. Ludwig van Beethoven was certainly no politician. Nor was he a patriot. Nor had he any democratic illusions in him: he held the Viennese in even more contempt than he held the Hapsburgs. Nevertheless, I am convinced that the sharp criticism of the Hapsburg government that he used to loose in the cafes of Vienna had its effects that some of his ideas of 1818, after a century of germination, got themselves translated into acts in 1918. Beethoven, like all other first-rate men, greatly disliked the government he lived under. I add the names of Goethe, Heine, Wagner and Nietzsche, to keep among Germans. That of Bismarck might follow: he admired the Hohenzollern idea, as Carlyle did, not the German people or the German administration. In his “Errinerungen,” whenever he discusses the government that he was a part of, he has difficulty keeping his contempt within the bounds of decorum. [read more]

So, true now as it was back then. Nazism hadn’t completely taken over Germany then (that would be in ten years) but like communism and socialism what he described is very similar for all three ideologies. Remember during WWII the Soviet Union made a pact with Germany which Hitler promptly broke. But why would the communist Stalin back then even make a pact with a national socialist like Hitler in the first place if there were no commonality between their ideology?

The Reichstag Fire, 1933

The alarm was sounded on the evening of February 27, 1933 signaling not only a fire, but the arrival of a crucial moment in German history. The Reichstag Building in Berlin, the seat of the German Parliament, was ablaze. By the time firefighters arrived, the Reichstag was overwhelmed by the flames. In addition to destroying the physical embodiment of democracy in Germany, the conflagration provided the first step down a path that led to the solidification of Hitler's dictatorship and to the most devastating war the world has ever known. This pivotal inferno was no accident.

In 1932 the democratic government of Germany, dictated by the Versailles Treaty at the close of World War One, was in political chaos. The Nazi Party was the largest political party within the Reichstag but did not have a majority of seats. After several failed attempts to form a new government in the latter part of that year, German President Hindenburg appointed Adolph Hitler Chancellor on January 30, 1933. Having achieved political power, Hitler and his Nazi cohorts looked for a way to solidify their position. The destruction of the Reichstag Building was their answer.

Evidence discovered after World War Two indicates that the fire that engulfed the Reichstag twenty-eight days after Hitler's ascendency to Chancellor was planned and executed by his henchmen, Herman Goering and Joseph Goebbels, Hitler publicly blamed the Communists, an accusation that allowed him to arrest the Communist members of the Reichstag and thereby eliminate his major political opposition. A young, mentally deranged Communist Dutchman by the name of Marinus van der Lubbe was arrested, tried and convicted of setting the fire.

In late March 1933, Hitler presented legislation to the Reichstag that would transfer its powers to himself. The members easily voted themselves out of existence and proclaimed Hitler the sole leader of Germany. His total control of the country was democratically reconfirmed the following year when, in a plebiscite, 90% of the voters approved of Hitler's dictatorial leadership. He was acclaimed as der Fueher. He had learned a bitter lesson years earlier when he sought to achieve power through violence and failed (see Adolph Hitler Attempts a Coup, 1923). Now, he attained his goal through the skillful use of the tools of democracy. A fire during the night of February 27, 1933 paved the way. [read more]

I am not sure that Hitler had one of his henchmen start the fire. Herman Goering joked he started the fire. Maybe that is why the Eye Witness to History.com website talked about “evidence discovered.” Either way Hitler and the National Socialist Party exploited the fire so Hitler could gain power. They didn’t let a good crises go to waste.

It was the Enabling Act that was passed that gave Hitler dictatorial powers. As Britannica.com stated the Act “’enabled’ Hitler’s government to issue decrees independently of the Reichstag and the presidency.” Sort of like executive orders.

Was Hitler taking over an example of Van Jones top down-bottom up-inside out-strategy? Well, not completely. There probably wasn’t really any top-down part. The bottom-up part was the arsonist himself. The inside-out part was the economic chaos that happened before the fire then the fire itself which didn’t help matters. Hitler was smart enough to exploit the chaos like any good radical.

Russia Wants Monitoring Stations in America

From The Blaze.com (Nov. 16):

The CIA and Pentagon have been trying to halt a State Department plan to let Russia’s space agency (Roscosmos) construct within the United States a handful of monitor stations, according to American officials, the New York Times reported.

The fear is that the stations could aid Russian efforts to spy on the U.S. and bolster the accuracy of Russian weaponry, the officials told the Times, adding that the Russians said the monitor stations would dramatically improve their version of the Global Positioning System.

The CIA and other U.S. spy agencies, along with the Pentagon, believe the monitor stations would provide Russia with better accuracy with weapons and an opening to spy on the U.S., the Times noted.

In addition members of Congressional intelligence and armed services committees regard Moscow’s GPS — a.k.a. Glonass (i.e., Global Navigation Satellite System) — with suspicion and want answers from the Obama administration.

“I would like to understand why the United States would be interested in enabling a GPS competitor, like Russian Glonass, when the world’s reliance on GPS is a clear advantage to the United States on multiple levels,” said Representative Mike D. Rogers, Republican of Alabama, the chairman of a House Armed Services subcommittee. [read more]

More and more I think that the Obama administration is clueless about international affairs. I wouldn’t put it past Russia’s leadership to spy on America with those monitoring stations.

Congressman Warns of Obamacare “Secret Security Force”

From Infowars.com (Nov. 15):

During an appearance on the Janet Mefferd Show, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) warned that a provision within Obamacare could create an armed “secret security force”.

Referring to a section of the gargantuan Obamacare law which discusses “the president’s own commissioned and non-commissioned officer corps,” Gohmert drew attention to the notion that under the pretext of a “national emergency,” such individuals could be used to impose some form of medical martial law.

Under the Affordable Care Act, the Ready Reserve Corps is directed to “assist full-time Commissioned Corps personnel to meet both routine public health and emergency response missions.”

“It says it is for international health crises, but then it doesn’t include the word ‘health’ when it talks about national emergencies,” said Gohmert.

“I’ve asked, what kind of training are they getting….I want to know are they using weapons to train, or are they being taught to use syringes and health care items?” asked the Congressman, adding that “no clear answers” had been forthcoming on the issue.”

Combined with the continued DHS arms build up along with the federal agency’s hiring of armed guards with “Top Secret” security clearances, Gohmert characterized the issue as “very disturbing”. [read more]

Spooky. I wonder if the Ready Reserve Corps is going to be like the KGB in the old Soviet Union? Nah.

Beware of “False Flags”

From US Concealed Carry.com (Nov. 6):

Anti-gun zealots have recently been creating more and more fake “gun rights” groups, often duping unsuspecting gun owners into contributing to them. What’s most diabolical is that the money collected is then used to attack gun owner’s rights, not protect them.

Probably the best example of a “False Flag” gun rights group is the infamous “Americans for Gun Safety,” started in 2001 and bankrolled by Monster.com mogul Andrew McKelvey. After digging into the group’s origins and supporters, writer James L. Pate noted:

“With an initial start-up budget of more than $12 million of his own fortune, McKelvey created AGS as a new national coalition of local and state anti-gun groups. AGS was designed to move debate from Capitol Hill into state legislatures and to bring various state anti-gun activists under one umbrella.” [Emphasis ours.]

Other states have similar stories. “Iowa Gun Owners” is a recent example of a previously unknown group appearing out of nowhere, run by folks with suspiciously anti-gun backgrounds. So stay alert. These “Trojan Horse” outfits sound pro-gun, but often betray their agenda with phrases like “common sense” gun laws, “sensible” restrictions, or “closing loopholes.” [read more]

This is SOP for the Left. Especially the far left. Like for instance, in the Virginia governor race the libertarian candidate wasn’t really a libertarian at all. Even Ron Paul didn’t support him. He was a false flag candidate funded by the Left. That’s why a voter should never vote on just the party itself. Look deeper.

It won’t surprise me if the Left does other false flag activities like for instance saying they are pro-life or pro-school choice when they are not. Just be cautious.

Wickard v. Filburn

Here is an example of federal abuse of power. In 1942, a farmer was fined for not following the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938 guidelines. The farmer was growing “wheat crop which was available for marketing in excess of the marketing quota established for his farm.”  Here is more on the case from the docket:

“The appellee for many years past has owned and operated a small farm in Montgomery County, Ohio, maintaining a herd of dairy cattle, selling milk, raising poultry, and selling poultry and eggs. It has been his practice to raise a small acreage of winter wheat, sown in the Fall and harvested in the following July; to sell a portion of the crop; to feed part to poultry and livestock on the farm, some of which is sold; to use some in making flour for home consumption, and to keep the rest for the following seeding.”

So, basically the farmer was just minding his business not hurting anyone and he got in trouble with the gov’t.  He wasn’t even really selling all that much wheat. Just a little bit and using the rest for his farm and family.

5 Pillars of Becoming a Self-Aware Leader

From Fox Business.com (Sept. 16):

Americans are obsessed with doing. We like to be in constant motion even if we don’t always have a clear sense of exactly where we are going. As long as we are moving, we feel productive. But this steady movement is often unnecessary and unproductive, and professor Hitendra Wadhwa from Columbia University, is trying to change this mentality.

He founded the Institute for Personal Leadership to modify the way budding young leaders view leadership. His goal is to “invite people to dissolve boundaries” and learn to practice their core values in all circumstances. He says there is a “hunger in our society for self-awareness” and the practice of introspection can greatly benefit America’s emerging young business leaders.

The business world and pop psychology have long tried to create false boundaries between our inner-selves and our business-selves with the belief that trying to separate the two is somehow healthy, explains Wadhwa. But our experiences, values, emotions and beliefs all act to shape how we think and act across all circumstances. He points out that you just can’t separate your inner-self from your business-self and expect to function in a healthy way.

Wadhwa details five pillars of personal leadership that we should all strive to embrace in order to achieve a more holistic and fulfilling life. [read more]

The five pillars are:

1. Purpose
2. Wisdom. According to Wadhwa, wisdom is about mindset and the ability to “harness your emotions and thoughts to allow yourself to be at your peak performance at all times” regardless of the circumstances.
3. Self-awareness
4. Growth
5. Love. Wadhwa’s not talking about romantic love, but that leaders need the desire to win through others and genuinely take joy in their success.

The best pillar is love. Second best is wisdom. Even though these pillars are meant to be for business leaders, any kind of leader could use them.

The Nature of Jesus Christ

1. A man of deep concerns, with a passion to communicate, but he did not hammer away. Rather he clothed his concerns in stories that showed the profoundest respect for the intelligence of his audience*, Jesus spoke on one occasion of casting out demons by God's gentle power (“the finger of God”). The same could be said of his approach to teaching. Not harsh harangue, but gentle, sometimes humorous, sometimes biting image and winsome evocation consistently characterize his effort at counteracting what he felt to be destructive tendencies in the spirit of his time.
2. In the parables, perhaps as nowhere else, we can get a feeling for the priorities of Jesus' concerns. By taking the stories as a whole one begins to sense where the real weight of his thinking lay, where its focal centers were—the points to which it returned again and again. These can be summarized very simply. He felt the world to be radiant with the gracious, forgiving, healing activity of God. It was a disaster to him that the people of his time, the leaders especially, were so hostile to those who were most alienated and therefore most in need of this God. He felt that the "religious" just had to face up to what they were doing, and that they were indeed capable of doing so. The active goodness of God, the summons to faith, to compassion and love, and the urgency that men and women do something about their most obvious responsibilities toward each other— these are the notes that sound again and again through the stories we have just studied.
3. One theme above all, however, surfaces in these parables: the inherent dangers of self-righteousness, the supreme worth of humble repentance. To a too-reverent seeker who had called him good Jesus once replied: “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone” (Mark 10:18). In parable after parable he says the same thing. Surely Jesus is the humblest of world religious leaders. It is dangerous, yes fatal, he insists, not to face up to our fallibility and sin and learn to forgive and be forgiven.
4. Surprising is the simplicity and down-to-earthiness of the stories that Jesus fashioned to convey this message. They testify to the way his mind dwelt on the ordinary. If Jesus did speak of an apocalyptic future, a time when God would shatter the fabric of history, and introduce a totally new world, one must say that this was not by any means what preoccupied him. What preoccupied him, the parables would suggest, was the interrelationship of the ordinary and the spiritual. The goodness of God became manifest to him in the bumbling response of a friend at midnight, and the kingdom of God in the everyday miracle of leaven in dough. The profoundest issues of life were forcefully displayed by two men in prayer, and how a man should act could be seen in a scoundrel scrambling for a place for himself in the wake of precipitous dismissal from his job. That we are surprised by this down-to-earthiness of his teaching testifies no doubt to the plastic image of Jesus that has been too long dominant in Christendom.

Source: Step by Step through the Parables: A Beginner's Guide to the Modern Study of the Stories Jesus Told; Their Meaning in His Time and Ours (1981) by John W. Miller.

There is one characteristic of Jesus I would like to add to the list above that the author didn’t. And that is Jesus’ emphasis on the individual not on the group. Take for instance the parable of the lost sheep:

What man of you having a hundred sheep, and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety nine in the open and go after the lost one until he finds it? And finding it, he puts it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And coming to the house, he calls together the friends and neighbors, saying to them, Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that had been lost. I say to you that so is joy in Heaven over one sinner repenting, than over ninety nine righteous ones who have no need of repentance. (Luke 15:4-7)

The italics in the passage are mine. Notice that Jesus talks about a single sheep being lost not a group or collective of sheep being lost. Jesus says Heaven is happy when one person changes his or her life for the better. The sheep herder didn’t have to worry about the other sheep that didn’t stray. If the herder was a collectivist then the lost sheep wouldn’t have been saved because its life didn’t matter as much as the other sheep.  The lost drachma parable (Luke 15:8) is similar to the lost sheep parable.

 

*Too bad most politicians can’t have this attitude.

Epicycles and Obamacare

From FEE.org (Oct. 28):

Ever heard of Ptolemy? He’s the guy whose model of the universe lasted for more than 1,000 years. The earth, thought Ptolemy, is at the center of the known universe and the planets dance around the earth. But this is where things got unnecessarily complicated.

To explain the apparently strange planetary motions, Ptolemy and astronomers after him used epicycles. It took centuries before Copernicus figured out that the need for epicycles could be reduced by putting the sun at the center of the known universe. Improvements by Tycho Brahe, Galileo, Kepler and Newton eliminated epicycles altogether.

Regulators are much like Ptolemaic astronomers—only they can meddle directly in the economy to try to get it to fit their model. The regulators perceive some “market failure,” then apply their linear logic to justify an intervention. When the intervention fails or causes some perverse effect, the regulator’s epicyclical thinking kicks in. He decides to fix the bad consequences of the earlier fixes. Intervention begets intervention.

Take Obamacare. Regulatory interventions in healthcare since World War II have created an unnecessarily expensive healthcare sector. These interventions have created a cozy provider-insurance cartel, but they have also caused medical inflation, which has made healthcare and health insurance increasingly less affordable over time. Less affordability limits people’s access. [read more]

Copernicus was able to change the paradigm because he had mental flexibility and objectivity—the “earthcentric” view of the universe was not his theory so inverting the theory was no big deal to him. In other words, his ego wasn’t attached to the theory. Initially, it is easy to under why people back then believed the earthcentric view. It is what they observed with their eyes even after the invention of the telescope. 

To those whose ego and power is attached to Obamacare won’t look for other models of healthcare. Also, if you think you’re ideology or narrative is perfect then any system or theory you devise that is based on that ideology you won’t probably change since it will be perfect too. There is no mental flexibility if you believe your narrative or theory is right. Even if the facts say otherwise.

Are Anti-Bullying Programs Having An Opposite Effect?

From CBS local.com (Oct. 8):

NORTH TEXAS (CBSDFW.COM) – A lot of schools spend countless hours trying to stop bullying. But some question if they are sending the right message.

It started as a simple look at bullying. University of Texas at Arlington criminologist Seokjin Jeong analyzed data collected from 7,000 students from all 50 states.

He thought the results would be predictable and would show that anti-bullying programs curb bullying. Instead — he found the opposite.

Jeong said it was, “A very disappointing and a very surprising thing. Our anti-bullying programs, either intervention or prevention does not work.”

The study concluded that students at schools with anti-bullying programs might actually be more likely to become a victim of bullying. It also found that students at schools with no bullying programs were less likely to become victims. [read more]

If the anti-bullying programs are those so-called “conflict resolutions” programs then it is not wonder the programs fail. You want to stop bullying? Expel the bully especially if he or she is a serial bully. That will send a signal to other bullies. Usually, kids that are bullies have parents that are bullies. Or the bully is being bullied by another kid or by a bunch of kids.

Maybe, the victims of bullies should take the RAGE approach next time they are bullied. Not bad suggestions by the author.

Post-1960s Progressivism notes

Post-1960s Progressivism is an incoherent blend of the earlier Progressive emphasis
on material and spiritual uplift coupled with a new, adamantly relativistic orientation. his
altered Progressivism champions an understanding of freedom as “the right to define one’s
own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the meaning of human life.”
Policies that attack the traditional family through the promotion of sexual liberation, the
redefinition of racial equality in terms of atonement for alleged historical victimization, and
a preference for the preservation of the environment over human flourishing—demonstrate
that post-1960s Progressivism not only rejects the ethical ideal of earlier Progressivism; it
also denies the Founders’ conception of equality and rights as grounded in “the Laws of
Nature and of Nature’s God.”

Post-1960s Progressivism actively promotes sexual liberation at the expense of
the traditional family in order to overcome the purportedly intolerant and repressive
standards of the older morality.  Women and gays especially are considered victims of
the older moral standards; they deserve legislation promoting their specific interests.
As victims, they join thereby the ranks of other minority groups who require special
privileges in recompense for discrimination. These policies dovetail with the current
elevation of environmental concerns above the rights of individuals—the environment
also must be freed from the exploitation of humankind.  

Terms:

Anti-foundationalism- the idea that there is no foundation or ground upon which can one base judgments about truth.

Irony- is the term used by postmodern thinkers like Richard Rorty to mean that there are no enduring truths.

Ruling Class-  "the complex of government, the mainstream media, most of the academy, much of our senior military class and industrial and public sector unions that are tied to government power."

Biocentric- environmentalism privileges nonhuman nature as opposed to human life and prosperity.

Source: Hillsdale College’s Constitution 201 lecture series, “Post-1960s Progressivism” (2012) by Dr. John Grant.

America’s Latest Propaganda Machine

From The Blaze. com (Oct. 17):

Glenn Beck on Thursday broached a topic that he said “horrified” him when it was brought to his attention roughly two weeks ago, describing it as an “effort to re-write our history and catalyze a new culture for America” with the help of “America’s latest propaganda machine.”

Beck proceeded to tell his viewers about two groups, the first called “Imagining America” and the second called “The U.S. Department of Arts and Culture.”

The latter isn’t actually a body of the United States government, but in the group’s own words, “the nation’s newest people-powered department, founded on the truth that art and culture are our most powerful and under-tapped resources for social change.”

Beck highlighted various individuals affiliated with the organizations, who he described as “the people that will be teaching and influencing your children” through “art and music and film and history books.”

Among the topics the individuals were caught on tape discussing was the fair redistribution of wealth and how “we’re funding the arts through the Cultural Development Fund, which is upwards of $20-some-odd million funding our cultural communities.”

Beck also said Imagining America was created by Bill Clinton, and that its membership now includes roughly 90 universities including Columbia University, Brown University, the University of Chicago, and more. [read more]

Companies Will Start Reading Your Mind To Figure Out How Much You're Willing To Pay

From Fastcoexist.com (Oct. 18):

The price that companies set for their products is already a high-stakes game of psychology and competitive strategy. But there’s still a lot of guesswork and uncertainty. Would pricing be more simple and profitable if market researchers could just read consumers’ minds?

Like it or not, such “feel good” pricing could be coming down the product pipeline.

The German news site Spiegel Online last week profiled the provocative work of a Swiss neuroscientist and former sales consultant who is devising a method of measuring brain waves to determine how much a person would be willing to pay for a good or service. Testing his theory has led the researcher, Kai-Markus Müller, to conclude that Starbucks is not actually charging enough for its expensive coffee. In fact, it's probably leaving profits on the table because people would probably still buy it if they charged more.

Müller figured this out by targeting an area in the brain that lights up when things don’t really make sense. A coffee for 10 cents? The brain reacts unconsciously because that is so cheap. A coffee for $8? The brain also reacts because it’s too expensive. Measuring our brain activity in this way apparently can get at optimal pricing. [read more]

Interesting. An unscrupulous gov’t could use this technology to figure out how much it should tax you. Or even possibly regulate you.