Perhaps you missed the point of my e-mail. I think the Department of Health and Human Services is an unnecessary expenditure, and needs to be dismantled in its entirety. Starting with the whole idea that a central government can handle a healthcare system for an entire nation. This same type of service has been tried and has failed in numerous countries around the globe. England and Canada being only two countries that are now looking into privatizing their healthcare systems. Why are we not learning from them, why do we continue to implement a similar system to what has been tried and proved to be an unmitigated disaster? I do not want to be a party of any type to such a horrible idea. And as such I do not need to be reminded of what the department is doing to curtail my liberties, by adding a level of bureaucracy to all levels of a private conversation between my doctor and myself.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
A thoughtful argument against nationalized healthcare
HOO said.... "HERE IS THE TRUTH:
PELOSI/REID/OBAMACARE: THE REALITY
1. It is Unconstitutional (ILLEGAL) and Anti-constitutional (ANTI-AMERICAN)
A. Article 6 of the United States Constitution states that all of the members of BOTH houses of Congress “be bound by oath or affirmation” to support the Constitution. A PRINCIPLED member of Congress would feel duty bound to vote against any proposed legislation that violated that sacred oath or affirmation. Three Clauses in the Constitution are IMPROPERLY cited by proponents of the Nationalization of Health Care as granting the Congress the right to Nationalize Health Care.
1. The “General Welfare Clause” - This clause gives Congress the power “To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.”
This clause is NOT a grant of Power to Congress. It is a LIMIT to a power given to Congress: It LIMITS the purpose for which Congress can lay and collect Taxes.
2. The “Necessary and Proper” Clause " gives Congress the power “to make all laws necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States.” Like the General Welfare Clause, this clause was not a stand alone grant of power to Congress. Rather it authorizes Congress to make laws that are necessary (and also proper) to make other grants of authority in Article 1 effectual. So the Necessary and Proper clause cannot itself authorize national public health insurance. One would have to show that national public health insurance is necessary and proper to execute some other power granted in the Constitution.
3. “The Commerce Clause” " gives Congress the power to “ regulate commerce…among the states.” It was designed to prevent some states from taxing goods that passed through their boundaries on the way to
market. To Create and Engage in Commerce (National Health Insurance) is NOT the same thing as regulating commerce.
B. It is Anti-Constitutional. Obamacare’s passage would guarantee the eventual destruction of all important Guarantees of individual Liberty and Limited Government made by the Constitution.
2. It is IMMORAL for one group of citizens to abolish the rights and liberties of fellow Human Beings who have violated no law.
3. It is an act of THEFT from our Children of the labor they will be performing for their families and their country. It is the selling of our children into partial slavery. It insures that each child born in America will have an enormous debt to pay for substandard services they did not request.
4. It STEALS our children’s precious freedom to make basic decisions about the well- being of their bodies and minds and gives these stolen powers to government bureaucrats. It promotes the creation of more bureaucrats.
5. It ASSIGNS to the State the power of life and death over citizens who have committed no crime.
6. It is DESTRUCTIVE to the basic work of the Health Care Professional whose sole ethical responsibility must be to the Patient, a principle encapsulated in the Hippocratic Oath.
7. It DESTROYS incentive for independent and corporate scientific investigation into Human health and disease.
8. It proposes Government SEIZURE of the property of health care professionals.
9. The process of its coming to a vote is CONTEMPTUOUS of US Citizens and their elected representatives.
10. Proponents make outrageous statements about cutting the cost of Government “health care” by eliminating “fraud, waste, and abuse.” They claim to be able to do this so massively and so easily that their program will cost essentially NOTHING. This contrasts with figures prepared by economists projecting a cost of $1-2 Trillion Dollars. When Medicaid was first proposed its increasing annual cost to the Taxpayers was estimated to be 1/9 of the actual eventual annual cost.
11. Proponents deny the existence of Death Panels in their plans. Health costs cannot possibly be contained other than through rationing and rationing means allowing bureaucrats to place differing values on different people’s lives according to age, overall health, etc. These decisions will result in the earlier deaths of some people than would otherwise have occurred. If this cannot be called a Death Panel then what could be?
12. Proponents are attempting to collectivize Doctors. In 1930’s in Russia Stalin essentially declared that the Soviet agriculture system was ‘broken’ and therefore had to be placed under central government control. A famine with 10 million Russian deaths ensued. Proponents are attempting to declare government OWNERSHIP of Doctors including to authority to CONTROL them in every possible way.
13. Despite proposing to OWN Doctors as Government SLAVES proponents emphasize that Doctors could STILL BE SUED for unlimited damages.
14. The architect of Obamacare is Ezekiel Emanuel, a so called Bioethicist who believes that the Hippocratic Oath is the CAUSE of America's "broken" Health Care System! He recommends that physicians renounce the oath in favor of a commitment to "Society."
15. Nowhere in the Constitution is it suggested that Government is allowed to order its Citizens to purchase something.
16. Congressional Proponents want nothing to do with government healthcare for themselves and their families yet they want it to be forced on Americans who they know do not want it."
Texas MD http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=42600
PELOSI/REID/OBAMACARE: THE REALITY
1. It is Unconstitutional (ILLEGAL) and Anti-constitutional (ANTI-AMERICAN)
A. Article 6 of the United States Constitution states that all of the members of BOTH houses of Congress “be bound by oath or affirmation” to support the Constitution. A PRINCIPLED member of Congress would feel duty bound to vote against any proposed legislation that violated that sacred oath or affirmation. Three Clauses in the Constitution are IMPROPERLY cited by proponents of the Nationalization of Health Care as granting the Congress the right to Nationalize Health Care.
1. The “General Welfare Clause” - This clause gives Congress the power “To lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.”
This clause is NOT a grant of Power to Congress. It is a LIMIT to a power given to Congress: It LIMITS the purpose for which Congress can lay and collect Taxes.
2. The “Necessary and Proper” Clause " gives Congress the power “to make all laws necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States.” Like the General Welfare Clause, this clause was not a stand alone grant of power to Congress. Rather it authorizes Congress to make laws that are necessary (and also proper) to make other grants of authority in Article 1 effectual. So the Necessary and Proper clause cannot itself authorize national public health insurance. One would have to show that national public health insurance is necessary and proper to execute some other power granted in the Constitution.
3. “The Commerce Clause” " gives Congress the power to “ regulate commerce…among the states.” It was designed to prevent some states from taxing goods that passed through their boundaries on the way to
market. To Create and Engage in Commerce (National Health Insurance) is NOT the same thing as regulating commerce.
B. It is Anti-Constitutional. Obamacare’s passage would guarantee the eventual destruction of all important Guarantees of individual Liberty and Limited Government made by the Constitution.
2. It is IMMORAL for one group of citizens to abolish the rights and liberties of fellow Human Beings who have violated no law.
3. It is an act of THEFT from our Children of the labor they will be performing for their families and their country. It is the selling of our children into partial slavery. It insures that each child born in America will have an enormous debt to pay for substandard services they did not request.
4. It STEALS our children’s precious freedom to make basic decisions about the well- being of their bodies and minds and gives these stolen powers to government bureaucrats. It promotes the creation of more bureaucrats.
5. It ASSIGNS to the State the power of life and death over citizens who have committed no crime.
6. It is DESTRUCTIVE to the basic work of the Health Care Professional whose sole ethical responsibility must be to the Patient, a principle encapsulated in the Hippocratic Oath.
7. It DESTROYS incentive for independent and corporate scientific investigation into Human health and disease.
8. It proposes Government SEIZURE of the property of health care professionals.
9. The process of its coming to a vote is CONTEMPTUOUS of US Citizens and their elected representatives.
10. Proponents make outrageous statements about cutting the cost of Government “health care” by eliminating “fraud, waste, and abuse.” They claim to be able to do this so massively and so easily that their program will cost essentially NOTHING. This contrasts with figures prepared by economists projecting a cost of $1-2 Trillion Dollars. When Medicaid was first proposed its increasing annual cost to the Taxpayers was estimated to be 1/9 of the actual eventual annual cost.
11. Proponents deny the existence of Death Panels in their plans. Health costs cannot possibly be contained other than through rationing and rationing means allowing bureaucrats to place differing values on different people’s lives according to age, overall health, etc. These decisions will result in the earlier deaths of some people than would otherwise have occurred. If this cannot be called a Death Panel then what could be?
12. Proponents are attempting to collectivize Doctors. In 1930’s in Russia Stalin essentially declared that the Soviet agriculture system was ‘broken’ and therefore had to be placed under central government control. A famine with 10 million Russian deaths ensued. Proponents are attempting to declare government OWNERSHIP of Doctors including to authority to CONTROL them in every possible way.
13. Despite proposing to OWN Doctors as Government SLAVES proponents emphasize that Doctors could STILL BE SUED for unlimited damages.
14. The architect of Obamacare is Ezekiel Emanuel, a so called Bioethicist who believes that the Hippocratic Oath is the CAUSE of America's "broken" Health Care System! He recommends that physicians renounce the oath in favor of a commitment to "Society."
15. Nowhere in the Constitution is it suggested that Government is allowed to order its Citizens to purchase something.
16. Congressional Proponents want nothing to do with government healthcare for themselves and their families yet they want it to be forced on Americans who they know do not want it."
Texas MD http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=42600
Sunday, March 27, 2011
Climategate Uncovered
Okay, so we have the data in actual form that shows the truth and the fraud. How can anyone see this and still believe in global warming? This is fraud of the worst kind, it was meant to take billions of dollars from people and siphon it off to a small elite group. These "scientists" need to be prosecuted and put away for a very long time and this whole global warming fraud needs to be shown the light of day. If you still have the gonads to push the agenda after this, you should be ridiculed in the worst possible fashion.
All the legislation used to control the population in the name of saving the planet needs to be repealed and the appropriations need to be returned to those from whom it was stolen. Anyone, you know who you are Algore, who prospered from this fraud, need to have their credibility questioned and never be allowed to influence anyone else in the future. As far as I am concerned, all of the hollywood crowd who crowed the loudest needs to be ashamed of themselves, and give back what they made off of this. Too bad there aren't any laws against stupidity, like there are against fraud.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Walker v. Unions: the truth told
Wisconsin Interest
Volume 20, No. 1
March, 2011
By now, the political lore is familiar: A major political party, cast aside by Wisconsin voters due to a lengthy recession, comes roaring back, winning a number of major state offices.
The 43-year-old new governor, carrying out a mandate he believes the voters have granted him, boldly begins restructuring the state’s tax system. His reform package contains a major change in the way state and local governments bargain with their employees, leading to charges that the governor is paying back his campaign contributors.
Only the year wasn’t 2011 — it was 1959, and Gov. Gaylord Nelson had just resurrected the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. Certain of his path, Nelson embarked on an ambitious agenda that included introduction of a withholding tax, which brought hundreds of protesters to the Capitol. Nelson also signed the nation’s first public-sector collective bargaining law — the same law that 52 years later Gov. Scott Walker targeted for fundamental revision.
Two different governors, two different parties, and two different positions.
Ironically, their assertive gubernatorial actions may produce the same disruptive outcome. By empowering the unions, Nelson’s legislation led to public-sector strikes and work stoppages. By disempowering the unions, Walker’s actions might lead to public-sector strikes and work stoppages.
In Walker’s case, union members reluctantly agreed to his pension and health-care demands, but have fought desperately to preserve their leverage in negotiating contracts. That raises the basic question of the Madison showdown: Why is Scott Walker so afraid of collective bargaining?
The answer can be found in the rise of the state’s teachers unions.
After the 1959 Municipal Employees Relations law passed, the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association became, in 1964, the state’s first certified teachers’ bargaining agent. Slowly, more teacher groups across the state began to organize in their districts. And in 1969, Ashwaubenon teachers became the first Wisconsin educators to hit the bricks and strike, as 83 teachers walked out for four days.
Part and parcel with these developments, a venerable professional group founded in 1853, the Wisconsin Education Association, transformed itself into a tough-talking trade union in 1972 called the Wisconsin Education Association Council, with the authority to bargain on behalf of teachers all over the state.
WEAC began collecting funds from its members ($3 apiece) to spend on supporting political candidates. According to the union, 88% of its endorsed candidates won in the 1974 elections. The union had arrived on center stage as a major player in Wisconsin politics.
Unionized teachers routinely flexed their muscle. Between 1969 and 1974, there were 50 teacher strikes in Wisconsin, despite a state law declaring public employee strikes illegal.Because there were no penalties outlined in the law, WEAC’s leadership frequently convinced its members to walk out anyway.
A turning point came in March 1974, when a bitter teachers’ strike in the small town of Hortonville prompted a resolute school board to fire and replace 88 striking teachers. All hell broke loose.
The strike, one of the longest in the history of American education, garnered national media attention and was litigated all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the justices affirmed the school board’s right to fire the strikers.
Asked later if it was wise for WEAC to pick a fight in conservative Outagamie County, its former executive director Morris Andrews said: “I would have chosen a better place.”
Determined to use the Hortonville defeat as a rallying cry for solidarity, Andrews began pushing for a stronger, more galvanized teachers union. Under his leadership, WEAC hired collective-bargaining and arbitration experts and implemented “pattern bargaining” strategies. The idea was to extract as much salary and benefit increases as possible from teacher-sympathetic school boards, then use that data to pressure more stubborn boards to cough up better pay and benefits.
Notably, WEAC’s post-Hortonville muscle led to passage of a 1977 mediation-arbitration law that guarantees settlement of deadlocked collective-bargaining disputes.
The new law essentially ended public employee strikes. According to the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission, the state has had 111 municipal employee strikes since 1970; 90% took place prior to the 1977 med-arb law. Since 1982, there has only been one strike, in 1997 by Madison Metropolitan School District teachers.
The end of strikes, however, didn’t mean teachers were any less aggressive in negotiating. Aided by the new law, teachers redoubled their efforts to improve compensation. And they succeeded, judging by the costs of total pay and benefit packages.For instance, statewide average teacher salaries increased 6% per year in the 16 years before the Hortonville strike. In the 16 years after the strike, the increase is pegged at 7% annually. Not a big difference, for sure.
But salaries are only a part of the picture. Consider that in the 16 years prior to Hortonville, average state per-pupil spending increased 6.7% per year. Post-strike, it jumped to 9.6% per year in the 16 years following the Hortonville clash.
Through collective bargaining, WEAC obtained concessions from management that appeared to have little fiscal effect, but in the long run greatly benefited its members.
It was in the early 1970s, for example, that local government employees across the state started to see taxpayers picking up the full cost of pension benefits — the very practice Gov. Walker fought against in his budget-repair bill.
In the ’70s, union leaders were figuring out the value of benefits; many of labor’s decision-makers were older and needed health and pension benefits more than the rank and file. They recognized that benefits were often not taxed, meaning that teachers usually got more bang from a buck in benefits than from a buck in pay.
Other provisions benefiting unions followed. In 1973, Wisconsin enacted the “Educational Standards Bill,” establishing that all teachers must be certified by the state Department of Public Instruction, that every school district must provide kindergarten, special education, guidance counselors, and other measures.
Also in 1973, Milwaukee teachers negotiated a benefit that paid their health care premiums when they retired — in 2016, this benefit will be worth $4.9 billion, or more than four times the size of the Milwaukee district’s current budget.
Teachers represented by WEAC often demanded that their health premiums be provided by WEA Trust — their own health insurer — at a cost often greater than insurance on the private market. (Started in 1970, WEA Trust is now the fifth-largest health insurer in Wisconsin.)
In none of these cases of advancing teachers and their union were the long-term fiscal costs known. While Capitol protesters in February offered to give up some short-term financial considerations, it is this slow, steady, tectonic shift towards enriching and empowering public employees that Walker sought to decisively reverse.
Bottom line: Even in giving up ground on a few major points, the negotiating tide on work rules and other matters still favors government labor.
Today, K-12 education funding dwarfs the next-highest state spending program by a measure of 4-to-1. In 2011, Wisconsin spent $5.3 billion on public school aids, compared to $1.3 billion on Medical Assistance.
Give WEAC credit for having the most aggressive and most sophisticated bargainers. Give it credit for executing a long-term strategy to enrich its members. But the union has been so successful for so long that it has sown the seeds for a humbling comeuppance.
It was this seemingly inexorable march toward higher spending that Walker is trying to halt by disassembling an overly powerful and deeply entrenched union machine.
Upon taking office in 1959, Gov. Nelson called on politicians to “think and act anew.” And that’s exactly what Gov. Walker is doing.Christian Schneider is a senior fellow at the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
New thought to ponder
As I have been going through my daily reading of blogger entries. A commenter "Former Law Student" posted on the Althouse blog "Is there something the US could be doing that it's not? Remember we're stony broke and our military has no gas in the tank."
Stay with me here for a moment. We are currently not allowing drilling for oil in our own country. Obama has put a moratorium on drilling, we are more dependent on foreign oil than ever before (even though he promised us we would end our oil dependence). But by disallowing drilling in our own lands and off our own shores, he has put us at the mercy of the oil producing countries of the world even more, he has put us under their control, under their proverbial thumb, so to speak.
Now if a country wanted to shut down the mighty military of the United States, what would be one of the quickest and easiest ways to take away their response? Take away their oil. Think about this, seriously. Our military is VERY gasoline dependent. Aircraft, tanks, military vehicles, ships, helicopters, etc. all dependent on gasoline. So if an oil producing nation were to decide that they didn't want to have to deal with the US military what is to stop them from simply refusing to sell to the United States. What if OPEC decided tomorrow that they were not selling, at any price to the United States? What would our military do? We the people would simply have to make sacrifices, but how can our fighting men and women overseas defend themselves?
And how would we get ourselves out of this mess if it were to happen? It takes years to get the drilling going, this is not something that can be done over the weekend, or even a couple of months down the road. We would be in a world of hurt, and Obama has basically put us at the mercy of the oil nations of the mid-east. My only question now is did he know this, and did he do this on purpose? Not only is he leaving weak, he is bringing us to our knees in servitude to the Muslims.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
A letter to Governor Walker
Dear Governor Walker,
I have recently heard news reports that you may be ready to compromise on the collective bargaining of wages with the unions. Please I urge you to remain strong, to not back down now, it is too critical to the future of the state of Wisconsin.
I know you have taken a lot of heat from the unions and from the media, but we the conservatives need to know you will not give into the intimidation and extortion of the liberals. I continue to fight for you, I continue to defend you, I am in this for the long haul, and I hope you will also continue to keep the faith.
In the recording of you that has been circulating with the phony David Koch, I heard you mention a story of your belief that this was a defining moment for the state of Wisconsin and you wanted to emulate your hero President Ronald Reagan. I was really inspired by that story and felt that finally we had a man who would stand up to the liberal mindset that is destroying this country. Please do not be a leader like William Clinton who checked the polls to decide what direction the country should be turned. Ronald Reagan was hated by the left, the Democrats and the Media, and he didn't care, he lead this country like he was proud of it, because he was profoundly proud of it. I know you are facing a huge backlash right now, but remember your hero, and mine, faced even worse backlash, and he remained strong because he knew he had the support of the people. You have the support of the majority, even though we cannot be marching constantly on the steps of the Capitol. We have to work to fund the state. I have worked too hard to get off and stay off welfare to see it all go down the drain to someone who doesn't care about their own future, much less that of this wonderful state and country.
When I signed up for military service, I took an oath, much like you did when you took office, to uphold the Constitution and defend this country from all enemies foreign and domestic. And simply because I no longer am a member of the military doesn't mean I can turn my back on my oath. I will continue to fight all enemies, even if they turn out to be well-meaning but selfish union members. If what they are doing is to the detriment of this state and country, I will not back down.
If you give in now, you will only be reinforcing the idea that mob rule is acceptable. This is not what democracy looks like, no matter how loudly the protesters catterwall, this is what anarchy looks like, and we cannot let the few loudest shriekers determine the course of the future of our great state. Please the voters gave you a majority of both houses in a previously very red state, we continue to fight in the trenches for you. Please do not let us down by giving into the rabble.
Anne M Winrich
Thursday, March 3, 2011
MOMENT OF CLARITY: Madison Wild Wings
MOMENT OF CLARITY: Madison Wild Wings
My goodness this is the best analogy I have ever read. He hits the nail squarely on the head. The current tax code is a stinking turd. And the whole "tax the rich" line of debate is so old and tiresome. Can you progressives come up with something a little more original for change?
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