This is really funny, sad, amazing and without a question pretty representative of the attitudes of the very far left wing. You have to look at this whole thing.
This all happened last Saturday March 20 while you were out working in the yard.
The march of Anti Israel, Anti Government, Conspiracy Theorists, Pro Islam, Environmentalists, Anti War, pretty much the hole panoply of nutcases on parade.
I know many people who would think this is "Normal". That these people's ideas are mainstream at some level. That's the danger. They really believe this stuff. And, if they ever got into power would have no regret at destroying the world.
When I hear and see this kind of thing, at first it's amusing, then I realize there are some very deluded people in this world. People who believe any lie that comes along.
They cannot be reasoned with. Only suppressed. They have the right to be idiots. It's constitutional. But be aware of the lunacy. They are dangerous in groups.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Friday, March 26, 2010
A most interesting Chart of how personal incomes have risen and fallen in the past few years around the USA
Take a look at this chart. People's incomes and state incomes are dropping.
The article comes up first, then click on the map and consider what comes up. I find this fascinating.
The article comes up first, then click on the map and consider what comes up. I find this fascinating.
A Dire Look at America.....What think ye? (I didn't write this)
Some Believe That The Collapse Of America Is Inevitable -- Will You Fight It?
March, 2010
Permission to forward, post or re-print this essay is granted by the author.
It was a great country while it lasted. Nothing tangible lasts forever, not stars, or planets, or people or flowers or birds. Certainly not political systems. We can be certain that the American Republic will have an ending as surely as it had a beginning. But when?
Predicting the future is fraught with risk. In the hundreds of opinion pieces I’ve published over the years, I’ve had some notable success doing so. In 1998, three years before 9/11, I published a column headed, “America’s War on Terror will be long, slow and cruel.” In that column I wrote that terrorists now had the power to destroy large buildings. Pretty prescient, yes, but I’ve made my share of predictions that were completely off the mark.
Emerging trends or sudden events can completely alter what looked to be inevitable. The death of a key leader, a new technology, a natural disaster striking your country—or your opponent’s—all can alter the seemingly-inevitable future.
Certainly the American Republic has been both resilient and flexible since its improbable emergence from the fire of revolution. It survived a terrible civil war, an outcome that seemed highly unlikely at the time. It survived the Great Depression. It led and won the fight against global tyranny in WWII, a victory that may appear inevitable now, but was a damn near run thing at the time. And it faced down the monster of soulless Communism, despite the infatuation of large numbers of our vapid intellectual class with the joys of collectivism, as seen from afar.
And yet, despite this history of resilience and triumph, I think that there is about an 80% certainty that the American Republic will collapse within the next twenty years, and be replaced with something else—perhaps several entities. They will not be models of classical liberal democracy. That this will be accompanied by economic privation, great violence and mass suffering I consider inevitable. That the surviving citizens of the new entity or entities will enjoy anything close to our freedom or standard of living I believe highly unlikely. The Jamestown rule—no work, no eat—will be rigidly enforced.
Each of several challenges facing us is both complex and over-whelming, and we no longer seem to have “the right stuff” to deal with any of them. While we might successfully, though not painlessly, face down each of them individually, their convergence makes the Republic’s survival highly problematic. Americans want the benefits of the good life, but far too many want someone else to pay the costs and make the sacrifices for them to have it. Few are willing to sacrifice their comfort, their cash or their standard of living—never mind their lives—to protect the Republic and the system of political and economic freedom that created the material wealth that is the envy of the planet, far beyond what our grandfathers could have dreamed. Just one example: In WWII, our forces were led by graduates of Harvard, Yale and other leading institutions. Since Vietnam, military services is disparaged and shunned by the elites who benefit the most from our system.
We are victims of our economic success. Fat and comfortable Republics have ever been pray to wolves and barbarians, and, in our case, there are as many inside the gates as outside.
Here are the convergent forces that I believe are likely to destroy the Republic:
Fiscal Chaos: The National Debt is now $12.6 trillion, up $2 trillion in President Obama’s first 421 days. That debt now measures 64% of Gross Domestic Product. Add to that projected annual deficits of over a trillion dollars a year for the rest of the Obama years. Every dollar that government spends must be taxed from the private sector, or borrowed, thus reducing money available for private sector economic development while increasing the debt, or printed. Fiat money creates hyper-inflation, as Robert Mugabe could tell Barack Obama, destroying savings and wealth.
What happens when no one will lend us more money? Moody’s says the US is in danger of loosing its AAA bond rating. That downgrade would, of course, cost billions annually in increased payments on the national debt. And at some point, China and everyone else will say, “That’s all there is!” After all, we are not the only debtor nation in the world. Europe is in worse shape than we are. It now looks like the EU will put a temporary patch on Greece, the canary in the Europe’s coal mine, but that will only delay their coming disaster. Just like us, the EU politicians are kicking the can down the road, getting reelected by buying benefits through debt on their watch. But the day is fact approaching when the can won’t budge no matter how hard it’s kicked.
Add to all this a Social Security System that has started paying out more money than it is taking in, a Social Security Trust Fund that has been spent and is now basically a shoebox full of IOUs from the Treasury, and a Medicare System that, even before ObamaCare, was predicted to be insolvent in seven years, the massive retirement of the baby boomers, and will need a lot more in taxes from everyone, not just the top 5% as Obama promised, just to slightly postpone the disaster.
Then look at the other entitlement obligations the government has to veterans and government retirees. And I’m sure I’ve left out other benefit groups that we owe huge sums to.
Throw in the ever expanding government workforce, supported by a shrinking private sector. Government employee wages have done quite well in the recession. The percentage of federal civil servants making more than $100,000 a year jumped from 14 percent to 19 percent during the first year and a half of the recession, according to USA Today. The ruling party is as much indebted to public unions (the SEIU) as to trial lawyers and welfare recipients for their power base. See:http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/obama_and_the_government_emplo.html <http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/02/obama_and_the_government_emplo.html >
Government doesn’t create wealth. Yes, government workers pay taxes. Let’s say that they pay 30%, though that’s wildly inflated I’m sure. That leaves 70% of their salaries to be paid by the shrinking private sector. Plus the private sector has to also pay for the office buildings, computers, cars and paperclips the government employees need to operate. (The government may be trying to get into the wealth-creating business by owning companies like GM and Chrysler. But government-run businesses are always economic disasters, as decisions get made on the basis of politics and bureaucratic rules, not economic factors. Ask the leaders of the defunct Soviet Union.) And government intervention in the economy, from price controls to “affordable housing,” always ends badly. Then they cover it up by making things worse.
Now comes the huge new entitlement of ObamaCare, which they say will reduce the deficit by covering 30 million more people, through additional taxes and Medicare cuts. The additional taxes, even if they were only on the top 5% of earners as Obama solemnly pledged, will take money from the economy those payers would have spent on other things, perhaps on sustaining your job. The Medicare cuts WILL. NOT. HAPPEN. The politicians are never going to anger millions of seniors, all of whom vote. Medicare is probably the site of the most fraud and scams in the country, worth maybe $100 billion annually. But if getting rid of fraud was easy, or even possible, why haven’t they already done it? Because government is big, slow, inefficient and bureaucratic, thus an easy target for fraud. And that fraud target just got a lot bigger.
ObamaCare is predicted to cost about $1 trillion in the first six years—it will only be in effect for six of the ten years the CBO guessed at, though many of the taxes will be in effect for all ten. (Note that the CBO is required to accept the projections of the politicians, so if they say they are going to save $500 billion in Medicare, the CBO accepts that as though it had some basis in reality. And if they say they are going to transform lead into gold, the CBO…well, you get the idea.) What will be the cost of ObamaCare be for the second ten years and how will it drive the deficit? No one can really guess how many trillions. The National Center for Policy Analysis has gathered the predicted costs from various sources. They are astronomical. See:http://www.john-goodman-blog.com/obamacare-by-the-numbers/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=HA#more-9545 <http://www.john-goodman-blog.com/obamacare-by-the-numbers/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=HA#more-9545 >
And it’s only the beginning. We can’t stop this avalanche, regardless of Tea Parties and republicans. Obama, Reid and Pelosi have all promised supporters the next step is a public option. The fact that the government now orders vastly increased insurance company payouts through eliminating caps, requiring coverage of pre-existing conditions and expanding mandated coverage, while being able to do the popular thing and deny rate increases means the Obama administration can now bankrupt the insurance companies at their leisure, leaving a public option as the only option. In 10 years, it will be Medicare for all.
To the fiscal disaster, throw in the many states, led by California, Illinois and other bastions of Democrat legislative control that are beyond insolvent. It’s not just the recession. Many state legislatures have spent far beyond their states’ ability to pay even if the economy was booming. Add to their huge deficits the over $1 trillion the states owe to retires that is not there, and the problem becomes insoluble. See: http://www.uncoverage.net/2010/02/unfunded-pension-liability-trillion-dollar-gap/ <http://www.uncoverage.net/2010/02/unfunded-pension-liability-trillion-dollar-gap/ >
And: http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=19133&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DPD <http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=19133&utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=DPD >
Then include unfunded liabilities by local governments and government agencies. The Chicago Transit Authority had a $1.5 billion pension deficit in 2007. Peanuts by ObamaCare standards, but multiply that by all the cities and agencies in the country and you’re talking real money. See: http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=alwTE0Z5.1EA <http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=alwTE0Z5.1EA >
Now add to the states’ un-payable fiscal burden the vast expansion of Medicaid mandated by ObamaCare. The wonder isn’t that several states immediately announced they were suing to stop ObamaCare. The wonder is that the all 50 aren’t. Yet.
Now add in demographics. The United States currently has a birthrate of 2.1 live births per woman. This is exactly the replacement rate, which puts us in far better shape than Europe, where the birthrate ranges from 1.89 to 1.23 or lower, a decline that the native populations probably can’t recover from.
But America is only barely at the replacement rate due to groups like the Mormons, and to Hispanic immigrants. Will these be the high-work-ethic, well-educated workers needed to support us baby boomers in our golden years? Can Jose doing a “job Americans don’t want” support two seniors on Social Security and Medicare? Doubtful.
And another large percentage of the birth rate is the children born to single mothers in the inner cities. I’ve read that 70% of black births are out of wedlock. Our PC worship of multiculturalism has long made obeisance to the black ghetto culture that Dr. Thomas Sowell reports blacks took from southern, poor whites. It is a culture which disdains education, is always ready to do violence over touchy points of honor, and where young males glory in leaving a trail of abandoned children doomed to poverty. For Democrats, the bright spot is these children will be their economic slaves, locked in as voters of the plantation-welfare state, doing the party’s bidding for their daily crust. These are not the workers who will pay the taxes to support millions of retirees, who, thanks to the medical system now being destroyed, enjoy the longest life span in the world (after you factor out homicide and car wrecks).
I’m not picking on blacks, but the liberals whose philosophy has enslaved so many minorities in permanent poverty. The coming dark ages will be harder on our minority citizens then on anyone. Besides, minorities are hardly alone. In 2005, according to the IRS, the lowest 50% of income earners paid 3% of federal taxes, while the top 5% of earners paid 60%. This was under Bush, who you will recall was always accused of helping the rich! By the end of Obama’s first term, it is likely the lowest 50% of earners will pay no taxes at all, and a good many will get checks from the government at tax time, taken from the more productive. This majority of non-payers have every incentive to vote for politicians who promise ever more government programs and spending, at someone else’s expense. As Frederic Bastiat, a French Economist, said over 150 years ago, “Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.”
Will the economic recovery save us? JFK started an economic boom—and increased government revenue—by cutting capital gains taxes. Obama promises to raise them, just one of many factors, including ObamaCare and attacks on banks and insurance companies, which are keeping investors jittery and trillions sitting on the sidelines, stifling our efforts to recover from the “affordable housing for everyone” driven recession. People with any cash aren’t sure if they should put it in the market, or into gold coins in Switzerland. Trillions are being help back from the economy in fear of higher taxes and greater efforts to milk the prosperous.
But speaking of Europe, their welfare and healthcare systems are far more “progressive” than ours. (Workers in Greece get to retire at 56, giving them lots of time to riot in the streets over badly-needed benefit cuts.) They have far fewer younger workers. Their importation of Muslim “guest” workers is creating more problems than it solves, as a significant portion of those Muslims are on the dole, refuse to integrate, and recognize only Shari’a law which includes wife beating, child-marriages, polygamy, and second class status for women. They include a significant number of radicalized Muslims determined to impose Islam on Europe by violence, make all non-Muslims second class citizens and exterminate the Jews. Muslim guest workers are not the “change we can believe in” that will save Europe. Given how interrelated the world’s economy is, when the socialist system in Europe collapses, it may draw us into the maelstrom, years ahead of our own pre-destined economic collapse.
Both political parties have been passing this entitlement fiscal crisis forward, since at least 1932. The pain of fixing it was greater every year. To seriously try to do guaranteed you would be defeated by the Barack Obamas of the world, who believed in ever larger government and ever more government spending. So the crisis has worsened from year to year, and is now long past fixing. Members of both parties get elected by making it worse. George W. Bush took a whack at some Social Security reform, and got clabbered for it, adding to his unpopularity. (See:http://www.publicintegrity.org/investigations/broken_government/articles/entry/1054/ <http://www.publicintegrity.org/investigations/broken_government/articles/entry/1054/ > )
Since our tax system is dependent on the millions of citizens who honest and voluntarily comply, we may face a tax revolt that will make things even worse. Looking at the massive increase in government spending, won’t more taxpayers chose the Tim Geithner/ Tom Daschle/Charlie Rangel “honest mistake” approach to taxes and seek ways to not pay? When Massachusetts citizens forced a vote on lowering the state income tax from 5.85% to 5.20%, 41% of the people voted for higher taxes. So the bureaucrats helpfully left both rates on the tax forms. Few of those who thought taxes should be higher have paid at the higher rate. See:http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070719182659AAzCo79 <http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070719182659AAzCo79 > If 20% of Americans become disgusted tax scofflaws, most will get away with it because the IRS will be overloaded. And the fiscal crisis will get worse. (Of course, maybe they already are and only you and I are now paying our fair share.)
No party will be able to get elected supporting the ever more painful measures that would fix the fiscal mess. We all belong to entitlement groups and want our entitlements. I turn 65 in 13 months, and I have some health challenges. You bet I want my Medicare and Social Security. So the fiscal crisis will grow worse and the US will descend into chaos, until there are riots in the streets, fiscal collapse and martial law as the entitlement obligations cannot be met by taxation, printing monopoly money or borrowing. Cities like Detroit will be no-go war zones. Fiscal collapse may well be followed by political disunion, and certainly a pounce by our enemies. I’ve been telling my friends that they should teach their kids to shoot, hunt and grow potatoes, skills that will be needed in the transformed America Barack Obama promised us.
And we’d be lucky if the Fiscal Crisis was our only problem.
Islam, mentioned above, is on the march. Pabulum about “Islam is a religion of peace:” and “moderate Muslims” will not deter one murder. Yes, there are millions of moderate Muslim who want only to live in peace, just as there were millions of moderate Germans and Japanese in 1938 who wanted the same. And they are equally irrelevant. As with Shinto, another religion we had to put down, most of the mainstream schools of Islamic thought teach the dominance of Islam over the entire world, accept or proselytize the necessity of it being achieved by violence, and offer three choices to non-believers: convert to Islam, die or accept second-class citizenship as Dhimmis. There are Islamic movements working to achieve this through agitation, demands, and the courts, the so-called “stealth jihad,” and there are movements seeking it through violence. But the number of Muslims seeking it is growing, and is not a “tiny minority of extremists.”.
We have faced down nation states before, but how do you face down a combined religious-political system that is an entire way of life, has 1.3 billion followers and is in almost every country on earth? (Shinto was only in Japan.) That seems impossible, so the official position of both parties has to been to placate Islam with foreign aid to Muslim-ruled countries and concessions to the stealth Jihad at home. This only buys more demands for more concessions or more “aid.” And our ability to pay Jizra (the Qur’an-mandated, often-ruinous tax tribute required of non-Muslims in Muslim countries) in foreign aid is going to be destroyed by the fiscal crisis discussed above.
One option is surrender. Allowing the gradual imposition of Shari’a (Muslim) law means abandoning gender equality, freedom of speech and freedom of religion, but allowing child marriages, polygamy and wife beating.
The other is a war so awful that it goes beyond what our respect for persons and rights now allows. It’s one thing to fire bomb civilians in Japanese and German Cities. It’s quite another to have firing squads here and men with knives in dark allies. Waterboarding isn’t the half of what victory will require. Faced with that, our leaders in both parties have chosen a gradual approach to option one, postponing the defeat until after they are safely out of office.
Muslim populations are growing rapidly in Europe, and soon will be able to prevent, through violence or voting, any European action against Muslim regimes that sponsor terrorism. Then we will be America Alone as Mark Steyn points out in his excellent book of that title.
And if—maybe when—an a-bomb goes off in Tel Aviv, New York and/or Washington, DC? What then? One thing will be certain—there will instantly be a 90% majority of US citizens who will demand security over the Bill of Rights. Civil Libertarians might want to contemplate a post-atomic-attack America. But we have no good options for denying Iran nuclear weapons and the Obama approach of turning the other cheek has only gotten us slapped.
And if Pakistan becomes a failed state and it’s nukes fall into Taliban hands? Or it gets into a shooting war with our ally, India?
Not to mention that the on-going and highly necessary War on Terror/Overseas Contingency Operations (is Fort Hood overseas?) will require a lot of treasure to protect our freedoms—treasure that is fast pouring down the federal rat hole. They also require troops and those troops may be brought home to deal with chaos here.
China. Islam, of course, isn’t our only international challenge. China is building a military, including a blue water navy and advanced tactical fighters of the kind Obama just cancelled. Who are they expecting to challenge with them? Their Tibetan slaves? The Uighurs? Russia, while it’s preoccupied with its own Muslim problem? Perhaps. But the Chinese economy is growing and will be the largest in the world, and China, the “Central Kingdom” has always seen itself as a potential superpower. They may own our debt, but they are still a tyranny. They don’t love us, even if Obama bows and scrape, sneaks the Dali Lama out past the trash cans and doesn’t dare to mention human rights in their presence. Note to the global warming alarmists. Even if you are right about AGW, we could beggar ourselves and not make a dent into the carbon output China will put out in the next twenty years, regardless of what they say to our taxpayer-funded congressmen vacationing in Denmark. Name a Communist country that was good for the environment? East Germany?
Mexico. I saved the boil on the border for last. The leftists like to portray themselves on the moral high ground, defending the poor “undocumented workers” who strive for better lives. (Next they will call street drug dealers “undocumented pharmacists.”) But can the United States take in every person in the world who would like to come here? Of course not. Doing so would give us a standard of living below Zimbabwe and a crime rate above South Africa. So we have to have limits on immigration. To do that we have to have laws, and enforce them. Currently, the limit on immigration is all those who we let in legally, and all those who sneak in illegally, who we don’t catch at the border. They are proposed to have a “path to citizenship.”
But as the fiscal train wreck hits, can we afford to care for 12 million illegals in our hospitals, educate them in our schools and put them on our welfare rolls? Or the millions more yet to come? Yes, there are many who can be self-supporting and pay taxes, or who serve in our military with honor. I’m okay with them. But what about the majority when the fiscal crisis hits?
And this is just the tip of the enchilada. Mexico is losing a very violent war with the drug cartels. If they weren’t busy killing each other and anyone in the line of fire, they could take over the government. Our military has contingency plans for two potential failed states: Mexico and Pakistan. Lovely.
That drug war is spilling over the border and exploding into our inner cities as the cartels establish branches here to further operations, aided by the flood of illegals (which also serves as cover for Islamic terrorists to enter the US). They are ruthless enough to make us long for John Gotti, or at least Tony Soprano. This is going to get a lot uglier—and more expensive—very rapidly. Expect additional hand-wringing and strongly worded statements from the White House.
And as it gets nastier and more dangerous in Mexico proper, the barrios of Little Mexico in LA and Chicago will look all that more attractive to potential “undocumented workers.”
With militant Islam, China and Mexico piling on the fiscal crisis, it is hard for me to see how we survive as a stable, free Republic. And I haven’t mentioned North Korea’s nukes or a resurgent tyranny in Russia.
Add to all this an energy policy and environmental lobby that prevents us from developing new nuke plants, refineries, oil reserves, coal or natural gas in homage to global warming, thus beggaring our economy to support our enemies abroad, and I promise you that in twenty years, your kids won’t be the least bit worried about global warming. They’ll be too busy scrounging for food and re-loading.
Now imagine a Presidential Candidate of either party honestly addressing this crisis convergence:
“My Fellow Americans, we face hard times, and the need for shared sacrifice and pain if we are to save the Republic. If elected I promise to reduce Social Security payments by 10%, to raise the Social Security retirement age to 70, to cut all Federal employee salaries, including Congress, by 10%, to lay off 10% of Federal employees, excluding combat troops and security agencies, to cut Federal retirement payments by 10% to everyone, including veterans, to cut off Medicare for anyone with over $300,000 in assets, to eliminate the Departments of Education and Energy, to cut off spending on environmental matters for things based on bad science like Global Warming (see http://tartanmarine.blogspot.com/2010/03/global-warming-articles.html <http://tartanmarine.blogspot.com/2010/03/global-warming-articles.html > ), to cut off all funding for Agent Orange related claims (see http://tartanmarine.blogspot.com/2009/12/agent-orange.html <http://tartanmarine.blogspot.com/2009/12/agent-orange.html > ), to eliminate all funding for the arts and public radio or TV, to eliminate all earmarks, to eliminate school lunches and Federal support for anything in education except teaching the basics, to eliminate school loans, to eliminate support for agencies like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to cut federal funding to states that don’t take similar steps, and to eliminate all foreign aid, earmarks and an additional long list of government programs and agencies which my team is drawing up.”
“In addition, my fellow Americans, we will start executing people convicted of Medicare or other government fraud, without appeal, right after conviction. We will establish marshal law in the drug-infested inner cities and send in the military to destroy the gangs, foreign or domestic, with shoot-on-sight orders and officers authorized to hold military tribunals on the spot, followed by execution. In addition, our military will seal the southern border and conduct punitive raids into Mexico against the drug cartels. I am also drawing up plans to confront Islamic terrorism. Foreign terrorists will be declared to be outside the US Constitution and Geneva Convention, and all actions against them authorized. We will immediately blockade Iran, and bomb their nuclear facilities, so be prepared for gas at $10 a gallon. We will open all areas of American territory to development of oil, gas and coal resources, and fast track both nuclear plants and new refineries, eliminating all environmental laws that slow or block them. Plans to deal with China and North Korea are being developed. We will not hesitate to use nuclear weapons against Iran, Pakistan, North Korea or any other states if that’s what is needed to keep terrorists from obtaining nuclear weapons.”
Such a fascist candidate would be unlike to live to Election Day, let alone get any votes at all, probably not even mine. This program violates Americans’ constitutional rights and, worse, their sacred sense of entitlement to all the benefits that big government is now expected to provide. It risks their personal safety and would require more economic pain, personal suffering and sacrifice than the country has endured since the Civil War, when we were a hardier and more stoic people. No one would dare run on 10% of what is outlined above. So the coming fiscal and geo-political chaos will just have to happen.
I’m lucky, I guess, that with my health challenges and age I won’t be here with your kids to enjoy the world that the Obots are making.
This doesn’t mean that I’m out of the fight. Over my desk I have a Marine bumper sticker that reads, “Don’t you quit on me, Maggot.” Every day I hear Sgt. Harris, my Senior DI, screaming it in my ear. I’m going out punching. As a teen, I was into traditional poetry—and I still am. One of my favorites for over 50 years is “The Kings” by Louise Imogen Guiney, which concludes:
While Kings of eternal evil
Yet darken the hills about,
Thy part is with broken saber
To rise on the last redoubt;
To fear not sensible failure,
Nor covet the game at all,
But fighting, fighting, fighting,
Die, driven against the wall.
Good luck. Keep fighting.
Robert A. Hall is a Marine Vietnam Veteran who served five terms in the Massachusetts state senate. He blogs atwww.tartanmarine.blogspot.com <http://www.tartanmarine.blogspot.com/ > .
Permission to forward, post or re-print this essay is granted by the author.
It was a great country while it lasted. Nothing tangible lasts forever, not stars, or planets, or people or flowers or birds. Certainly not political systems. We can be certain that the American Republic will have an ending as surely as it had a beginning. But when?
Predicting the future is fraught with risk. In the hundreds of opinion pieces I’ve published over the years, I’ve had some notable success doing so. In 1998, three years before 9/11, I published a column headed, “America’s War on Terror will be long, slow and cruel.” In that column I wrote that terrorists now had the power to destroy large buildings. Pretty prescient, yes, but I’ve made my share of predictions that were completely off the mark.
Emerging trends or sudden events can completely alter what looked to be inevitable. The death of a key leader, a new technology, a natural disaster striking your country—or your opponent’s—all can alter the seemingly-inevitable future.
Certainly the American Republic has been both resilient and flexible since its improbable emergence from the fire of revolution. It survived a terrible civil war, an outcome that seemed highly unlikely at the time. It survived the Great Depression. It led and won the fight against global tyranny in WWII, a victory that may appear inevitable now, but was a damn near run thing at the time. And it faced down the monster of soulless Communism, despite the infatuation of large numbers of our vapid intellectual class with the joys of collectivism, as seen from afar.
And yet, despite this history of resilience and triumph, I think that there is about an 80% certainty that the American Republic will collapse within the next twenty years, and be replaced with something else—perhaps several entities. They will not be models of classical liberal democracy. That this will be accompanied by economic privation, great violence and mass suffering I consider inevitable. That the surviving citizens of the new entity or entities will enjoy anything close to our freedom or standard of living I believe highly unlikely. The Jamestown rule—no work, no eat—will be rigidly enforced.
Each of several challenges facing us is both complex and over-whelming, and we no longer seem to have “the right stuff” to deal with any of them. While we might successfully, though not painlessly, face down each of them individually, their convergence makes the Republic’s survival highly problematic. Americans want the benefits of the good life, but far too many want someone else to pay the costs and make the sacrifices for them to have it. Few are willing to sacrifice their comfort, their cash or their standard of living—never mind their lives—to protect the Republic and the system of political and economic freedom that created the material wealth that is the envy of the planet, far beyond what our grandfathers could have dreamed. Just one example: In WWII, our forces were led by graduates of Harvard, Yale and other leading institutions. Since Vietnam, military services is disparaged and shunned by the elites who benefit the most from our system.
We are victims of our economic success. Fat and comfortable Republics have ever been pray to wolves and barbarians, and, in our case, there are as many inside the gates as outside.
Here are the convergent forces that I believe are likely to destroy the Republic:
Fiscal Chaos: The National Debt is now $12.6 trillion, up $2 trillion in President Obama’s first 421 days. That debt now measures 64% of Gross Domestic Product. Add to that projected annual deficits of over a trillion dollars a year for the rest of the Obama years. Every dollar that government spends must be taxed from the private sector, or borrowed, thus reducing money available for private sector economic development while increasing the debt, or printed. Fiat money creates hyper-inflation, as Robert Mugabe could tell Barack Obama, destroying savings and wealth.
What happens when no one will lend us more money? Moody’s says the US is in danger of loosing its AAA bond rating. That downgrade would, of course, cost billions annually in increased payments on the national debt. And at some point, China and everyone else will say, “That’s all there is!” After all, we are not the only debtor nation in the world. Europe is in worse shape than we are. It now looks like the EU will put a temporary patch on Greece, the canary in the Europe’s coal mine, but that will only delay their coming disaster. Just like us, the EU politicians are kicking the can down the road, getting reelected by buying benefits through debt on their watch. But the day is fact approaching when the can won’t budge no matter how hard it’s kicked.
Add to all this a Social Security System that has started paying out more money than it is taking in, a Social Security Trust Fund that has been spent and is now basically a shoebox full of IOUs from the Treasury, and a Medicare System that, even before ObamaCare, was predicted to be insolvent in seven years, the massive retirement of the baby boomers, and will need a lot more in taxes from everyone, not just the top 5% as Obama promised, just to slightly postpone the disaster.
Then look at the other entitlement obligations the government has to veterans and government retirees. And I’m sure I’ve left out other benefit groups that we owe huge sums to.
Throw in the ever expanding government workforce, supported by a shrinking private sector. Government employee wages have done quite well in the recession. The percentage of federal civil servants making more than $100,000 a year jumped from 14 percent to 19 percent during the first year and a half of the recession, according to USA Today. The ruling party is as much indebted to public unions (the SEIU) as to trial lawyers and welfare recipients for their power base. See:http://www.americanthinker
Government doesn’t create wealth. Yes, government workers pay taxes. Let’s say that they pay 30%, though that’s wildly inflated I’m sure. That leaves 70% of their salaries to be paid by the shrinking private sector. Plus the private sector has to also pay for the office buildings, computers, cars and paperclips the government employees need to operate. (The government may be trying to get into the wealth-creating business by owning companies like GM and Chrysler. But government-run businesses are always economic disasters, as decisions get made on the basis of politics and bureaucratic rules, not economic factors. Ask the leaders of the defunct Soviet Union.) And government intervention in the economy, from price controls to “affordable housing,” always ends badly. Then they cover it up by making things worse.
Now comes the huge new entitlement of ObamaCare, which they say will reduce the deficit by covering 30 million more people, through additional taxes and Medicare cuts. The additional taxes, even if they were only on the top 5% of earners as Obama solemnly pledged, will take money from the economy those payers would have spent on other things, perhaps on sustaining your job. The Medicare cuts WILL. NOT. HAPPEN. The politicians are never going to anger millions of seniors, all of whom vote. Medicare is probably the site of the most fraud and scams in the country, worth maybe $100 billion annually. But if getting rid of fraud was easy, or even possible, why haven’t they already done it? Because government is big, slow, inefficient and bureaucratic, thus an easy target for fraud. And that fraud target just got a lot bigger.
ObamaCare is predicted to cost about $1 trillion in the first six years—it will only be in effect for six of the ten years the CBO guessed at, though many of the taxes will be in effect for all ten. (Note that the CBO is required to accept the projections of the politicians, so if they say they are going to save $500 billion in Medicare, the CBO accepts that as though it had some basis in reality. And if they say they are going to transform lead into gold, the CBO…well, you get the idea.) What will be the cost of ObamaCare be for the second ten years and how will it drive the deficit? No one can really guess how many trillions. The National Center for Policy Analysis has gathered the predicted costs from various sources. They are astronomical. See:http://www.john-goodman-bl
And it’s only the beginning. We can’t stop this avalanche, regardless of Tea Parties and republicans. Obama, Reid and Pelosi have all promised supporters the next step is a public option. The fact that the government now orders vastly increased insurance company payouts through eliminating caps, requiring coverage of pre-existing conditions and expanding mandated coverage, while being able to do the popular thing and deny rate increases means the Obama administration can now bankrupt the insurance companies at their leisure, leaving a public option as the only option. In 10 years, it will be Medicare for all.
To the fiscal disaster, throw in the many states, led by California, Illinois and other bastions of Democrat legislative control that are beyond insolvent. It’s not just the recession. Many state legislatures have spent far beyond their states’ ability to pay even if the economy was booming. Add to their huge deficits the over $1 trillion the states owe to retires that is not there, and the problem becomes insoluble. See: http://www.uncoverage.net/
And: http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dp
Then include unfunded liabilities by local governments and government agencies. The Chicago Transit Authority had a $1.5 billion pension deficit in 2007. Peanuts by ObamaCare standards, but multiply that by all the cities and agencies in the country and you’re talking real money. See: http://www.bloomberg.com/a
Now add to the states’ un-payable fiscal burden the vast expansion of Medicaid mandated by ObamaCare. The wonder isn’t that several states immediately announced they were suing to stop ObamaCare. The wonder is that the all 50 aren’t. Yet.
Now add in demographics. The United States currently has a birthrate of 2.1 live births per woman. This is exactly the replacement rate, which puts us in far better shape than Europe, where the birthrate ranges from 1.89 to 1.23 or lower, a decline that the native populations probably can’t recover from.
But America is only barely at the replacement rate due to groups like the Mormons, and to Hispanic immigrants. Will these be the high-work-ethic, well-educated workers needed to support us baby boomers in our golden years? Can Jose doing a “job Americans don’t want” support two seniors on Social Security and Medicare? Doubtful.
And another large percentage of the birth rate is the children born to single mothers in the inner cities. I’ve read that 70% of black births are out of wedlock. Our PC worship of multiculturalism has long made obeisance to the black ghetto culture that Dr. Thomas Sowell reports blacks took from southern, poor whites. It is a culture which disdains education, is always ready to do violence over touchy points of honor, and where young males glory in leaving a trail of abandoned children doomed to poverty. For Democrats, the bright spot is these children will be their economic slaves, locked in as voters of the plantation-welfare state, doing the party’s bidding for their daily crust. These are not the workers who will pay the taxes to support millions of retirees, who, thanks to the medical system now being destroyed, enjoy the longest life span in the world (after you factor out homicide and car wrecks).
I’m not picking on blacks, but the liberals whose philosophy has enslaved so many minorities in permanent poverty. The coming dark ages will be harder on our minority citizens then on anyone. Besides, minorities are hardly alone. In 2005, according to the IRS, the lowest 50% of income earners paid 3% of federal taxes, while the top 5% of earners paid 60%. This was under Bush, who you will recall was always accused of helping the rich! By the end of Obama’s first term, it is likely the lowest 50% of earners will pay no taxes at all, and a good many will get checks from the government at tax time, taken from the more productive. This majority of non-payers have every incentive to vote for politicians who promise ever more government programs and spending, at someone else’s expense. As Frederic Bastiat, a French Economist, said over 150 years ago, “Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.”
Will the economic recovery save us? JFK started an economic boom—and increased government revenue—by cutting capital gains taxes. Obama promises to raise them, just one of many factors, including ObamaCare and attacks on banks and insurance companies, which are keeping investors jittery and trillions sitting on the sidelines, stifling our efforts to recover from the “affordable housing for everyone” driven recession. People with any cash aren’t sure if they should put it in the market, or into gold coins in Switzerland. Trillions are being help back from the economy in fear of higher taxes and greater efforts to milk the prosperous.
But speaking of Europe, their welfare and healthcare systems are far more “progressive” than ours. (Workers in Greece get to retire at 56, giving them lots of time to riot in the streets over badly-needed benefit cuts.) They have far fewer younger workers. Their importation of Muslim “guest” workers is creating more problems than it solves, as a significant portion of those Muslims are on the dole, refuse to integrate, and recognize only Shari’a law which includes wife beating, child-marriages, polygamy, and second class status for women. They include a significant number of radicalized Muslims determined to impose Islam on Europe by violence, make all non-Muslims second class citizens and exterminate the Jews. Muslim guest workers are not the “change we can believe in” that will save Europe. Given how interrelated the world’s economy is, when the socialist system in Europe collapses, it may draw us into the maelstrom, years ahead of our own pre-destined economic collapse.
Both political parties have been passing this entitlement fiscal crisis forward, since at least 1932. The pain of fixing it was greater every year. To seriously try to do guaranteed you would be defeated by the Barack Obamas of the world, who believed in ever larger government and ever more government spending. So the crisis has worsened from year to year, and is now long past fixing. Members of both parties get elected by making it worse. George W. Bush took a whack at some Social Security reform, and got clabbered for it, adding to his unpopularity. (See:http://www.publicintegrity
Since our tax system is dependent on the millions of citizens who honest and voluntarily comply, we may face a tax revolt that will make things even worse. Looking at the massive increase in government spending, won’t more taxpayers chose the Tim Geithner/ Tom Daschle/Charlie Rangel “honest mistake” approach to taxes and seek ways to not pay? When Massachusetts citizens forced a vote on lowering the state income tax from 5.85% to 5.20%, 41% of the people voted for higher taxes. So the bureaucrats helpfully left both rates on the tax forms. Few of those who thought taxes should be higher have paid at the higher rate. See:http://answers.yahoo.com/q
No party will be able to get elected supporting the ever more painful measures that would fix the fiscal mess. We all belong to entitlement groups and want our entitlements. I turn 65 in 13 months, and I have some health challenges. You bet I want my Medicare and Social Security. So the fiscal crisis will grow worse and the US will descend into chaos, until there are riots in the streets, fiscal collapse and martial law as the entitlement obligations cannot be met by taxation, printing monopoly money or borrowing. Cities like Detroit will be no-go war zones. Fiscal collapse may well be followed by political disunion, and certainly a pounce by our enemies. I’ve been telling my friends that they should teach their kids to shoot, hunt and grow potatoes, skills that will be needed in the transformed America Barack Obama promised us.
And we’d be lucky if the Fiscal Crisis was our only problem.
Islam, mentioned above, is on the march. Pabulum about “Islam is a religion of peace:” and “moderate Muslims” will not deter one murder. Yes, there are millions of moderate Muslim who want only to live in peace, just as there were millions of moderate Germans and Japanese in 1938 who wanted the same. And they are equally irrelevant. As with Shinto, another religion we had to put down, most of the mainstream schools of Islamic thought teach the dominance of Islam over the entire world, accept or proselytize the necessity of it being achieved by violence, and offer three choices to non-believers: convert to Islam, die or accept second-class citizenship as Dhimmis. There are Islamic movements working to achieve this through agitation, demands, and the courts, the so-called “stealth jihad,” and there are movements seeking it through violence. But the number of Muslims seeking it is growing, and is not a “tiny minority of extremists.”.
We have faced down nation states before, but how do you face down a combined religious-political system that is an entire way of life, has 1.3 billion followers and is in almost every country on earth? (Shinto was only in Japan.) That seems impossible, so the official position of both parties has to been to placate Islam with foreign aid to Muslim-ruled countries and concessions to the stealth Jihad at home. This only buys more demands for more concessions or more “aid.” And our ability to pay Jizra (the Qur’an-mandated, often-ruinous tax tribute required of non-Muslims in Muslim countries) in foreign aid is going to be destroyed by the fiscal crisis discussed above.
One option is surrender. Allowing the gradual imposition of Shari’a (Muslim) law means abandoning gender equality, freedom of speech and freedom of religion, but allowing child marriages, polygamy and wife beating.
The other is a war so awful that it goes beyond what our respect for persons and rights now allows. It’s one thing to fire bomb civilians in Japanese and German Cities. It’s quite another to have firing squads here and men with knives in dark allies. Waterboarding isn’t the half of what victory will require. Faced with that, our leaders in both parties have chosen a gradual approach to option one, postponing the defeat until after they are safely out of office.
Muslim populations are growing rapidly in Europe, and soon will be able to prevent, through violence or voting, any European action against Muslim regimes that sponsor terrorism. Then we will be America Alone as Mark Steyn points out in his excellent book of that title.
And if—maybe when—an a-bomb goes off in Tel Aviv, New York and/or Washington, DC? What then? One thing will be certain—there will instantly be a 90% majority of US citizens who will demand security over the Bill of Rights. Civil Libertarians might want to contemplate a post-atomic-attack America. But we have no good options for denying Iran nuclear weapons and the Obama approach of turning the other cheek has only gotten us slapped.
And if Pakistan becomes a failed state and it’s nukes fall into Taliban hands? Or it gets into a shooting war with our ally, India?
Not to mention that the on-going and highly necessary War on Terror/Overseas Contingency Operations (is Fort Hood overseas?) will require a lot of treasure to protect our freedoms—treasure that is fast pouring down the federal rat hole. They also require troops and those troops may be brought home to deal with chaos here.
China. Islam, of course, isn’t our only international challenge. China is building a military, including a blue water navy and advanced tactical fighters of the kind Obama just cancelled. Who are they expecting to challenge with them? Their Tibetan slaves? The Uighurs? Russia, while it’s preoccupied with its own Muslim problem? Perhaps. But the Chinese economy is growing and will be the largest in the world, and China, the “Central Kingdom” has always seen itself as a potential superpower. They may own our debt, but they are still a tyranny. They don’t love us, even if Obama bows and scrape, sneaks the Dali Lama out past the trash cans and doesn’t dare to mention human rights in their presence. Note to the global warming alarmists. Even if you are right about AGW, we could beggar ourselves and not make a dent into the carbon output China will put out in the next twenty years, regardless of what they say to our taxpayer-funded congressmen vacationing in Denmark. Name a Communist country that was good for the environment? East Germany?
Mexico. I saved the boil on the border for last. The leftists like to portray themselves on the moral high ground, defending the poor “undocumented workers” who strive for better lives. (Next they will call street drug dealers “undocumented pharmacists.”) But can the United States take in every person in the world who would like to come here? Of course not. Doing so would give us a standard of living below Zimbabwe and a crime rate above South Africa. So we have to have limits on immigration. To do that we have to have laws, and enforce them. Currently, the limit on immigration is all those who we let in legally, and all those who sneak in illegally, who we don’t catch at the border. They are proposed to have a “path to citizenship.”
But as the fiscal train wreck hits, can we afford to care for 12 million illegals in our hospitals, educate them in our schools and put them on our welfare rolls? Or the millions more yet to come? Yes, there are many who can be self-supporting and pay taxes, or who serve in our military with honor. I’m okay with them. But what about the majority when the fiscal crisis hits?
And this is just the tip of the enchilada. Mexico is losing a very violent war with the drug cartels. If they weren’t busy killing each other and anyone in the line of fire, they could take over the government. Our military has contingency plans for two potential failed states: Mexico and Pakistan. Lovely.
That drug war is spilling over the border and exploding into our inner cities as the cartels establish branches here to further operations, aided by the flood of illegals (which also serves as cover for Islamic terrorists to enter the US). They are ruthless enough to make us long for John Gotti, or at least Tony Soprano. This is going to get a lot uglier—and more expensive—very rapidly. Expect additional hand-wringing and strongly worded statements from the White House.
And as it gets nastier and more dangerous in Mexico proper, the barrios of Little Mexico in LA and Chicago will look all that more attractive to potential “undocumented workers.”
With militant Islam, China and Mexico piling on the fiscal crisis, it is hard for me to see how we survive as a stable, free Republic. And I haven’t mentioned North Korea’s nukes or a resurgent tyranny in Russia.
Add to all this an energy policy and environmental lobby that prevents us from developing new nuke plants, refineries, oil reserves, coal or natural gas in homage to global warming, thus beggaring our economy to support our enemies abroad, and I promise you that in twenty years, your kids won’t be the least bit worried about global warming. They’ll be too busy scrounging for food and re-loading.
Now imagine a Presidential Candidate of either party honestly addressing this crisis convergence:
“My Fellow Americans, we face hard times, and the need for shared sacrifice and pain if we are to save the Republic. If elected I promise to reduce Social Security payments by 10%, to raise the Social Security retirement age to 70, to cut all Federal employee salaries, including Congress, by 10%, to lay off 10% of Federal employees, excluding combat troops and security agencies, to cut Federal retirement payments by 10% to everyone, including veterans, to cut off Medicare for anyone with over $300,000 in assets, to eliminate the Departments of Education and Energy, to cut off spending on environmental matters for things based on bad science like Global Warming (see http://tartanmarine.blogsp
“In addition, my fellow Americans, we will start executing people convicted of Medicare or other government fraud, without appeal, right after conviction. We will establish marshal law in the drug-infested inner cities and send in the military to destroy the gangs, foreign or domestic, with shoot-on-sight orders and officers authorized to hold military tribunals on the spot, followed by execution. In addition, our military will seal the southern border and conduct punitive raids into Mexico against the drug cartels. I am also drawing up plans to confront Islamic terrorism. Foreign terrorists will be declared to be outside the US Constitution and Geneva Convention, and all actions against them authorized. We will immediately blockade Iran, and bomb their nuclear facilities, so be prepared for gas at $10 a gallon. We will open all areas of American territory to development of oil, gas and coal resources, and fast track both nuclear plants and new refineries, eliminating all environmental laws that slow or block them. Plans to deal with China and North Korea are being developed. We will not hesitate to use nuclear weapons against Iran, Pakistan, North Korea or any other states if that’s what is needed to keep terrorists from obtaining nuclear weapons.”
Such a fascist candidate would be unlike to live to Election Day, let alone get any votes at all, probably not even mine. This program violates Americans’ constitutional rights and, worse, their sacred sense of entitlement to all the benefits that big government is now expected to provide. It risks their personal safety and would require more economic pain, personal suffering and sacrifice than the country has endured since the Civil War, when we were a hardier and more stoic people. No one would dare run on 10% of what is outlined above. So the coming fiscal and geo-political chaos will just have to happen.
I’m lucky, I guess, that with my health challenges and age I won’t be here with your kids to enjoy the world that the Obots are making.
This doesn’t mean that I’m out of the fight. Over my desk I have a Marine bumper sticker that reads, “Don’t you quit on me, Maggot.” Every day I hear Sgt. Harris, my Senior DI, screaming it in my ear. I’m going out punching. As a teen, I was into traditional poetry—and I still am. One of my favorites for over 50 years is “The Kings” by Louise Imogen Guiney, which concludes:
While Kings of eternal evil
Yet darken the hills about,
Thy part is with broken saber
To rise on the last redoubt;
To fear not sensible failure,
Nor covet the game at all,
But fighting, fighting, fighting,
Die, driven against the wall.
Good luck. Keep fighting.
Robert A. Hall is a Marine Vietnam Veteran who served five terms in the Massachusetts state senate. He blogs atwww.tartanmarine.blogspo
Thursday, March 25, 2010
The painful reality of ObamaCare
First: Congratulations to President Barack Obama and the Democratic leadership. You won dirty against bipartisan opposition from both Congress and the majority of Americans. You’ve definitely polarized the country even more, and quite possibly bankrupted us too. Bubbly for everyone.
Simply, you have nationalized health care by proxy. Insurance companies are now heavily regulated government contractors. Way to get big business out of Washington and our lives! These giant corporations will clear a small, government-approved profit on top of their government-approved fees. Then, when health care costs rise — and they will — Democrats will insist, yet again, that the profit motive is to blame, and out from this ObamaCare Trojan horse will pour another army of liberals demanding a more honest version of single-payer.
The Obama administration has turned the insurance industry into the Blackwater of socialized medicine.
Simply, you have nationalized health care by proxy. Insurance companies are now heavily regulated government contractors. Way to get big business out of Washington and our lives! These giant corporations will clear a small, government-approved profit on top of their government-approved fees. Then, when health care costs rise — and they will — Democrats will insist, yet again, that the profit motive is to blame, and out from this ObamaCare Trojan horse will pour another army of liberals demanding a more honest version of single-payer.
The Obama administration has turned the insurance industry into the Blackwater of socialized medicine.
This is the next big "Sky is Falling" drumbeat now that CO2 Global Warming is a Hoax
I read this article in the Chicago Tribune. What a crock. This guy is suffering from severe scientific illiteracy. Just like the global warming kooks.
Hey, buddy, here's a tip. Read a high school science book. Turn to the chapter on the hydrological cycle. Water cannot be used up. The exact same amount of water is on the earth as there was ten thousand years ago. Water is never created nor destroyed. It just changes states.
Vapor, liquid, Ice...etc.
Sure, some ends up dirty .... for a time. Then it changes. Water is indestructible.
The idea it is ever "Used" is a goofy idea.
I think that this guy is why amateur or journalists should not write books. Just report.
Hey, buddy, here's a tip. Read a high school science book. Turn to the chapter on the hydrological cycle. Water cannot be used up. The exact same amount of water is on the earth as there was ten thousand years ago. Water is never created nor destroyed. It just changes states.
Vapor, liquid, Ice...etc.
Sure, some ends up dirty .... for a time. Then it changes. Water is indestructible.
The idea it is ever "Used" is a goofy idea.
I think that this guy is why amateur or journalists should not write books. Just report.
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
At least we can have a Smile...or a little Sardonism
President Obama said Sunday Night, "This is what Change looks like". Here's what it looks like to me...and others.
Even Alfred E Newman has Changed....His Mind...
But never fear, for those of you who still sport an OBAMA sticker on your car and are now ashamed of the big mistake you made....there's HOPE
Even Alfred E Newman has Changed....His Mind...
But never fear, for those of you who still sport an OBAMA sticker on your car and are now ashamed of the big mistake you made....there's HOPE
RACISM...Where's the tape?
I am sensitive to the race issue. Both ways. I am sensitive to those who would denigrate people by the color of skin. I am surrounded and loved by and love many many who's skin is not pink-white like mine. I will go to war for them. BUT I am also sensitive to those who use race as a tool for deception and victimization of these noble people.
When I heard the reports on Sunday of Racist outbursts after the vote I was angry. I thought, "Aren't we beyond that?" Then... as time has passed, no video has surfaced. No audio. No actualities. No cell phone recordings. NOTHING. With hundreds of press and individuals with hundreds of recording devices wouldn't at least ONE recording have surfaced by now with one thing anyone said? This was a historic march being recorded. If there was anything You Tube would be buzzing with this.
I know the Tea Party folks, I hang with them. IF any ONE of them had said ANYTHING he would have been in for a serious beat down. Its just not done. I am coming to the conclusion that once more Race Baiters have used race as a foil to elicit emotion rather than reason. We have a problem in this country...racist misleaders.
Shame on them and shame on a left wing media who is intentionally blinded
When I heard the reports on Sunday of Racist outbursts after the vote I was angry. I thought, "Aren't we beyond that?" Then... as time has passed, no video has surfaced. No audio. No actualities. No cell phone recordings. NOTHING. With hundreds of press and individuals with hundreds of recording devices wouldn't at least ONE recording have surfaced by now with one thing anyone said? This was a historic march being recorded. If there was anything You Tube would be buzzing with this.
I know the Tea Party folks, I hang with them. IF any ONE of them had said ANYTHING he would have been in for a serious beat down. Its just not done. I am coming to the conclusion that once more Race Baiters have used race as a foil to elicit emotion rather than reason. We have a problem in this country...racist misleaders.
Shame on them and shame on a left wing media who is intentionally blinded
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
I think all the bravado and happy talk is useless
I have been listening carefully to the zeitgeist of talk radio, reading blogs, watching Fox, looking at Facebook.
Trying to see behind the curtain.
I have.
It isn't pretty:
No matter what kind of thing the Left does, it's a long long time until November. People are stupid (they elected Obama didn't they) and they don't understand what's happening. They have the attention span of a gnat.
So, in the fall unless something really really stupid happens, the house and senate will look like it does now after the election.
I hate the whole idea.
The only thing that will "save" us is a complete collapse of the economy. I don't want it, but this thing is sealing our fate. We are in big big trouble.
Trying to see behind the curtain.
I have.
It isn't pretty:
- People think Obama did good with health care, even some conservatives
- The pain doesn't happen until after the 2010 elections
- Pelosi has proven that coercion works and will do it again
- Some "Benefits" crammed down the throats of insurance companies will be appealing
- Lies are going to be huge this fall from the left
No matter what kind of thing the Left does, it's a long long time until November. People are stupid (they elected Obama didn't they) and they don't understand what's happening. They have the attention span of a gnat.
So, in the fall unless something really really stupid happens, the house and senate will look like it does now after the election.
I hate the whole idea.
The only thing that will "save" us is a complete collapse of the economy. I don't want it, but this thing is sealing our fate. We are in big big trouble.
Breakfast with a CPA
Yesterday I had breakfast with a CPA. She is quitting public accountancy. Obama has driven her out. There are so many more regulations and restrictions she has to live with. She just doesn’t want to do it any more.
Plus her customers are upset. Most have been getting a nice refund. Since the tax rollback of the Bush era tax cuts has commenced, her customers don’t think she is doing her job.
She’s sick of the whole thing.
She’s going to work in a nursing home.
Sounds great. Till Obama screws her over there.
Plus her customers are upset. Most have been getting a nice refund. Since the tax rollback of the Bush era tax cuts has commenced, her customers don’t think she is doing her job.
She’s sick of the whole thing.
She’s going to work in a nursing home.
Sounds great. Till Obama screws her over there.
I'm tired of watching Sausage Being Made
I think it’s time to shut CSPAN off. I mean unplug them. We did pretty well NOT watching every banal speech from the house and senate floor years ago. Early Reagan years.
I’m sick of Nancy Pelosi. I’m tired of pontificating pols at the podium.
We are not better off for CSpan. The vote in the house on Sunday proved that it’s all a sham anyway.
Let them go back to smoke filled rooms. Let the deliberations go on without the sickening grandstanding.
Sure, CSpan will have other crap to cover. Book writers. National Press Clubs. Inaugurations. Lying in state video. The normal stuff.
BUT let’s let deliberations be deliberations.
I listen to Mark Levine yesterday. He read something from Benjamin Franklin. You can read it here.
What struck me was this:
Maybe it’s time to turn off the cameras?
I’m sick of Nancy Pelosi. I’m tired of pontificating pols at the podium.
We are not better off for CSpan. The vote in the house on Sunday proved that it’s all a sham anyway.
Let them go back to smoke filled rooms. Let the deliberations go on without the sickening grandstanding.
Sure, CSpan will have other crap to cover. Book writers. National Press Clubs. Inaugurations. Lying in state video. The normal stuff.
BUT let’s let deliberations be deliberations.
I listen to Mark Levine yesterday. He read something from Benjamin Franklin. You can read it here.
What struck me was this:
Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best. The opinions I have had of its errors, I sacrifice to the public good. I have never whispered a syllable of them abroad. Within these walls they were born, and here they shall die. If every one of us in returning to our Constituents were to report the objections he has had to it, and endeavor to gain partisans in support of them, we might prevent its being generally received, and thereby lose all the salutary effects & great advantages resulting naturally in our favor among foreign Nations as well as among ourselves, from our real or apparent unanimity. Much of the strength & efficiency of any Government in procuring and securing happiness to the people, depends, on opinion, on the general opinion of the goodness of the Government, as well as of the wisdom and integrity of its Governors. I hope therefore that for our own sakes as a part of the people, and for the sake of posterity, we shall act heartily and unanimously in recommending this Constitution (if approved by Congress & confirmed by the Conventions) wherever our influence may extend, and turn our future thoughts & endeavors to the means of having it well administered.
Maybe it’s time to turn off the cameras?
Confession in answer to an Australian critic
For what it's worth, i believe that America has a place of exceptional responsibility in the world. To have that on it's shoulder is exceptional prosperity and an inherent nobility that has existed at one level or another for a long time, perhaps a hundred years or more. Mistakes have been made, but without the blood and treasure of America standing as best she knew how against tyranny in other lands in the past hundred years Europe might well be dominated by a German totalitarian government. A nuclear armed middle eastern nation might well have already obliterated the nation of Israel, Much of the Eastern Rim might be dominated by a Japanese imperialism, Most of the Asian continent would still be under the clutches of a Marxist communist government and precious New Zealand and Australia would stand alone un allied with anyone of consequence to say no to a domineering evil with bombs.
Mistakes? Sure. But unlike any other nation, when the USA sacrificed hundreds of thousands on beaches, beachheads and Islands and oceans in air and on sea, after victory, did not stay as conquerors. We instead have made every effort to see justice restored for countries like Japan.
Is America the Kingdom of God? Only in as much as we submit to HIM as King. Sadly, not much any more. But the residue of blessing is still evident.
America is special not because it's has great resource, not because it has great armies, not because it has great blessings that are unavailable to other countries.
America is special because once it's people had opportunity and freedom to succeed or fail without restraint. You had to try or fail.
What is happening now is robbing America of that greatness.
It's for that we mourn.
It's for that we will fight again against spirits and principalities that have invaded our land. Democracy elected Hitler too.
What Steve Chase said is what caused this long comment. America is a Great Country, I don't worship it. I worship the God who gave it to me. But I must steward it as I do every other blessing he gives. To do less is sin.
Mistakes? Sure. But unlike any other nation, when the USA sacrificed hundreds of thousands on beaches, beachheads and Islands and oceans in air and on sea, after victory, did not stay as conquerors. We instead have made every effort to see justice restored for countries like Japan.
Is America the Kingdom of God? Only in as much as we submit to HIM as King. Sadly, not much any more. But the residue of blessing is still evident.
America is special not because it's has great resource, not because it has great armies, not because it has great blessings that are unavailable to other countries.
America is special because once it's people had opportunity and freedom to succeed or fail without restraint. You had to try or fail.
What is happening now is robbing America of that greatness.
It's for that we mourn.
It's for that we will fight again against spirits and principalities that have invaded our land. Democracy elected Hitler too.
What Steve Chase said is what caused this long comment. America is a Great Country, I don't worship it. I worship the God who gave it to me. But I must steward it as I do every other blessing he gives. To do less is sin.
Monday, March 22, 2010
SARAH PALIN: OBAMA HAS SNOOKERED YOU AGAIN AMERICA!
I have been reporting on the massive blow Barack Obama has done to our national security, and how his hostile take over of Sarah Palin’s gasline project is an attempt to either take credit for this project as his own, or to simply shut it down.
We are busily researching all of the ins and outs, and the relationships between Obama’s new “Pipeline Czar” Larry Persily, and members of the “Corrupt Bastards Club” in Alaska. So there will be a lot more to come on this.
For now, Sarah Palin is speaking out against yet another evil Barack Obama is visiting upon the American people and the American economy. If you notice, one of the first things Sarah talks about is the deal Obama made with Brazil.
Last year, a mere three days after Obama’s puppet master, and self proclaimed “owner of the democrat party,” George Soros, bought controlling interest in Brazilian oil giant, Petrobas, our President loaned Brazil $10 BILLION American tax payer dollars. Chicago thug politics at it’s finest.
Now, in what can only be seen as a way to help out his master, Barack Obama has banned all off shore drilling in America. This is beyond evil, but really par for the course from the most corrupt man to ever step foot in the White House.
Let’s let Sarah tell us what’s on her mind:
Nonstop D.C. Nonsense: Drilling Down on Energy Doublespeak
It may be tempting to feel worn down as we take one step after another towards the “fundamental transformation of America” that Barack Obama promised. But we mustn’t let our energy be sapped, even in the face of the mind-boggling leap the Obama Administration just took that fundamentally shifts us towards more reliance on foreign energy sources. Hang on to your hat and take a look at this.
Months ago I discussed Washington’s decision to allow U.S. dollars to flow to Brazil for that nation’s off-shore oil drilling projects, while D.C.’s attitude towards America’s own offshore developments appeared less-than-enthusiastic. We gained hope though when our President promised in his State of the Union address that he’d be “making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development.” Most of us optimistically assumed that “making tough decisions” meant allowing at least some offshore drilling. In fact, on national television that night I said that the President deserved kudos for acknowledging our need for domestic energy development in his speech.
Turns out that was just more drilling doublespeak: America has been snookered again.
While everyone has been focused on Obamacare, the Obama administration took advantage of America’s distraction and quietly said that it’s planning to place a hold on offshore drilling on the outer continental shelf until at least 2012.
At a time when our country is desperate for job growth, deficit reduction, and energy independence, it’s simply astonishing that the administration refuses to allow additional offshore drilling, even while supporting energy development in foreign countries.
According to a study by the American Energy Alliance, opening the OCS to drilling could create as many as 1.2 million new jobs and add hundreds of billions of dollars annually to the US economy. Those are real American jobs – and great American opportunities – that can’t be outsourced. Offshore drilling would provide billions in revenue for our states, allowing them to reduce their budget deficits without raising taxes. It would help reduce our trade deficit, which spikes with each rise in the price of oil because we’re so reliant on foreign sources of energy. And because we have some of the best environmental standards in the world, we should be drilling for our own oil instead of buying it from countries with less stringent standards.
When the Obama Administration first delayed offshore leasing on the OCS to allow for “an extended public comment period,” the comments it received reflected what all the polling tells us – that Americans overwhelmingly support offshore drilling. (Curiously, those pro-drilling findings weren’t heavily publicized by the Administration and the press.) Americans understand that a true “all-of-the-above” approach to energy independence must include responsible development of our conventional resources. Even as we develop alternative energy sources, we’ll still rely on oil and gas for decades to come. If we don’t drill for it here, then we’ll just have to keep buying it from others.
Using executive power to lock up energy resources ignores the will of the American people who want to develop those resources and know that we can do so in an environmentally responsible manner.
Ignoring the American people is never good politics, but whether it’s energy independence or health care, our leadership in Washington is tone deaf to the commonsense solutions that Americans want.
Watching this potentially earth-shattering energy policy decision made quietly while health care transformation distracts us, it makes one wonder what else our politicians are up to. An old trick is to intentionally consume attention with a “crisis” so as to sap the public’s energy, and then to conveniently push through rash measures that would receive great scrutiny at any another time. Remember Rahm Emanuel’s Saul Alinsky-style of political operation: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”
America, we must resolve to stay engaged in what our politicians are doing. Don’t get tired and give up. All political power is inherent in the people. America can only be transformed into something unrecognizable if we get so tired that we give up our political power and close our eyes to what is going on. Find the energy to stand for what you know is right, including supporting leaders who don’t engage in energy policy doublespeak.
- Sarah Palin
Obviously, this is outrageous. But, it may be the only transparent thing Barack Obama has ever done. This is a transparent attempt by Obama to further enrich his master, George Soros, by making sure that American oil companies, and the American people themselves, cannot benefit from the God given natural resources we have off our own shores. By banning American exploration, this guarantees that Soros’ company, Petrobas, has a market for its oil, unaffected by the vast amounts of oil and natural gas reserves here.
If this isn’t corruption of the highest level, I’m not sure what is. In fact, with millions out of work, and nearly a trillion dollars a year sent overseas for oil, when we have plenty right here, this is more than just good old Chicago style corruption, this is bordering on treason.
There is absolutely no good reason for Obama to ban offshore drilling in America, other than to put more money in George Soros’ pocket, a pocket that already has $10 billion of your dollars in it.
With all of the unconstitutional activity Obama is pushing in regard to ObamaCare, and now this, isn’t it time we demand either his resignation, or impeachment?
Obama is demonstrably corrupt. We, the American people, should not have to wait for 2012 to be rid of him and his corrupt ways. It is time for this man, and the Chicago corruption he has visited on our nation, to go.
We won’t be snookered again!
Around the Web....the Buzz on Obamacare Today
The end of the world as we know it?
The time for mincing words is long past. We have to face the brutal reality that our government has been commandeered by hyper-communists who are bent on destroying our country. This is not hyperbole. It’s not “fear-mongering,” as the left so commonly likes to claim.
What has happened in Washington since Obama was installed in the White House is unprecedented in our nation’s history. If I were reading the run-down of legislative moves by this administration with the names and places redacted, I would think I was reading a list of things done by Castro, Chavez, or the rulers in Red China or North Korea.
This is an astonishing time in our nation’s history. So many of us have been “asleep at the wheel” for most of our lives, trusting our government to do the right thing and to take care of business in the best interests of our nation. We have been blind to the creeping enemy within who has not slept and has been on the march since the early part of the last century, and yes, long before that. Satan and his demon hordes do not sleep; nor do his human minions figuratively sleep–those whom he inspires with earthly power and treacherous and deadly plans.
We must realize the fact that the battle we face is much, much more than a Tea Party-versus-liberal, fiscal battle over our Constitution and the will of the people. We are battling spiritual forces that are hell-bent on destroying humanity. We know from reading our Bibles that ultimately the devil and his forces will prevail, but only for a short time. This short time of global “unity” under Satan will be the most horrible time in the history of the world.
Read the whole thing
Sunday, March 21, 2010
Now that it looks like Obamacare is going to happen, what you we can expect
England Surgery postponed indefinitely for 1,000 Kelowna patients
- Cathryn Atkinson, April 8, 2008 [Globe and Mail] Majority of Que. dentists quit health-care system
- March 27, 2008 [CTV.ca] Why Ontario keeps sending patients south
- Lisa Priest, February 22, 2008 [Globe and Mail] Will Socialized Health Care in the US Kill Canadians?
- Don Surber, March 3, 2008 [Acton Institute] Wait times for surgery, medical treatments at all-time high: report
- October 15, 2007 [CBC News (Canada)] The Ugly Truth About Canadian Health Care
- David Gratzer, Summer 2007 [City Journal] Cancer patients question why PET scan not covered
- May 28, 2007 [CBC News] BC Medical Association: Waiting Too Long for Hip and Knee Surgery Costs $10,000 Per Patient-Maximum Wait Times Should Be No Longer Than 6 Months
- June 28, 2006 [CCN Matthews] Ont. physician turns away patient for being 55+
- March 17, 2006 [CTV.ca] Canada inches toward private medicine
- Rebecca Cook Dube, August 8, 2005 [CS Monitor] Doctor defends private cancer clinic
- Gillian Livingston, July 15, 2005 [Canadian Press] Dogma trumps truth in health-care issues
- D’Arcy Jenish, July 7, 2005 [Ontario Business News] Why Canadians Purchase Private Health Insurance
- Walter Williams, June 20, 2005 [Capitalism Magazine] Doctor welcomes health ruling
- June 9, 2005 [CBC Montreal] Patients shouldn’t wait more than 8 weeks for cardiac defibrillator: experts
- May 24, 2005 [Canadian Press] Grads fail to slow doctor shortage
- Jennifer O’Brien, May 21, 2005 [London Free Press] Free Canadian health care comes at cost
- April 10, 2005 [Arkansas Democrat-Gazette] Canada’s drug tab reaches $22 billion, report suggests
- Sheryl Ubelacker, CP, April 6, 2005 [London Free Press] Canadian health care is free and first-class — if you can wait
- Beth Duff-Brown, March 19, 2005 [The Associated Press] Pediatricians, parents warn of shortage of community-based care for children
- Colin Perkel, March 4, 2005 [The Canadian Press] Access to specialists difficult: study
- February 16, 2005 [CBC Calgary] Doctor shortages, frustrations vary from region to region, survey shows
- February 15, 2005 [Canada.com] Montreal leads the country in offering private health care
- Aaron Derfel, February 12, 2005 [Montreal Gazette] Canada falling short on medical imaging
- February 9, 2005 [Macleans.ca] Creative incentives required to retain older doctors
- Dr. Charles Shaver, January 20, 2005 [Toronto Star] MRI gap defies cash fix
- Mark Kennedy, January 14, 2005 [National Post (Canada)] A boy’s plight, a nation’s problem
- Lisa Priest, January 13, 2005 [The Globe and Mail] Where’s proof private clinics cost more?
- Tom Brodbeck, December 4, 2004 [The Winnipeg Sun] Surgery backlog tops 5,500 at kids’ hospitals; One-year waits common
- Aaron Derfel, December 3, 2004 [The Gazette (Montreal)] Hospital wait lists to get worse, Carriere says
- Chris Traber, November 14, 2004 [Yorkregion.com] Frustrated patients can’t handle ER waits
- Jennifer Stewart and Jeffrey Simpson, October 28, 2004 [The Halifax Herald Limited] Private medical clinic opens in Montreal
…it answers, “an ever-increasing demand from the public for greater accessibility and quality of health services.” - October 13, 2004 [CTV.ca] Canadians have higher death risk than Americans after heart attack: study
- Sheryl Ubelacker, September 20, 2004 [Canada.com] Canadian medical tourists in India
- Jeremy Copeland, September 20, 2004 [CBC News] Doctor shortage cripples Canada’s free health care
- Clifford Krauss, September 18, 2004 [Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune] Canada’s Once-Proud Public Health System in Crisis
- David Ljunggren, September 14, 2004 [Reuters (Ottawa)] Hospitals to cut, again
- September 5, 2004 [Toronto Star] Canada’s Medical Nightmare
- Robert J. Cihak, M.D., September 1, 2004 [Health Care News] Canada faces shortage of doctors
- August 19, 2004 [MSNBC] Canadians losing faith in health system: poll
- August 16, 2004 [CTV.ca] Ontario hospitals a health risk
- Michael Hurley, August 8, 2004 [Toronto Star] Need surgery? Here’s how long you’ll wait
“It’s inhuman. The quality of my life is horrible and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it.” - Jason Fekete, July 28, 2004 [Calgary Herald] Docs, nurses fed up
Canadian doctors and nurses are fed up with inter-governmental “bickering” that is dragging out wait times and causing more pain and suffering for patients. - July 28, 2004 [Winnipeg Sun] Free Health Care?
…in some cases, patients die on the waiting list because they become too sick to tolerate a procedure. - Walter E. Williams, July 24, 2004 [CATO] The truth about Canada’s ailing health-care system
All the major candidates in Canada’s recent national election acknowledged that the country’s health-care system is failing Canadians. - Robert J. Cihak, July 13, 2004 [The Seattle Times] Health-care crisis looms, even with new money
Canada’s health-care system is “five to 10 years” from the breaking point — even with cash injections from government, says the new president of the B.C. Medical Association. - Doug Alexander, July 5, 2004 [Vancouver Sun] Emergency room delays a strong campaign factor
“Go into the emergency room — it is the most pitiful piece of work you ever seen in your life.” - David Bruser, June 22, 2004 [Toronto Star] Canadian Health Care in Crisis
Analyst visits NC to describe how single-payer health care really works in practice. - Donna Martinez, June 17, 2004 [Carolina Journal] Quebec cancer patients sue over wait
Women waited months for radiation; lawsuit could cost system $50-million. - Ingrid Peritz, March 11, 2004 [The Globe and Mail] Health care: no waiting lists
‘You get knee surgery within two days … try and get that in human hospitals.’ Canada’s [private] pet health-insurance industry is projected to grow at roughly 50 per cent a year… - Robert Scalia, November 30, 2003 [Montreal Gazette] For some, surgery abroad a welcome answer
- Daniel Girard, November 29, 2003 [Toronto Star] Canadian Doctors Eyeing United States
- Clifford Krauss, October 17, 2003 [The New York Times] The Top Ten Things People Believe About Canadian Health Care, But Shouldn’t
- Brian Lee Crowley, October 9, 2003 [Mackinac Center for Public Policy] Canadians’ health at risk, CMA says
- Valerie Lawton, September 26, 2003 [Toronto Star] Burnout is now doctors’ ailment
Almost half of Canadian doctors say they’re burned out, emotionally exhausted and blame medicine for putting a drain on their family life. - Karen Palmer, August 20, 2003 [Toronto Star] New MRI clinic in row over poaching
While she insists she’s not making any money off the venture, she says it provides an income allowance for her and her husband, the other principal in the company. - Theresa Boyle and Robert Benzie, July 28, 2003 [Toronto Star] Price Controls and Overall Drug Spending
The Canadian system, however, tends to push up overall spending on prescription drugs, despite the low prices for some brand name ones. - John Melby, July 2, 2003 [Buckeye Institute] Gore Endorses Canada’s Medical System
- William L. Anderson, November 29, 2002 [Mises] How Good is Canadian Health Care?
- August 2002 [Fraser Institute] Canadian Health-Care System Is No Model for Prescription Drug Reform
- May 1, 2001 [Mackinac Center for Public Policy] The Ghost of America’s Health Care Future Lives in Canada Today
- James Frogue and Robert Moffit, December 25, 2000 [Capitalism Magazine] Socialized Medicine: The Canadian Experience
Explores several lessons that can be drawn from the Canadian experience with socialized medicine: Canadian Health Care
…if Canadians knew as much as they think they do about the economic and moral workings of Medicare, they might not be as enthusiastic as they are about their cherished right to ‘free’ health care. - Andrei Kreptul, August 30, 2000 [Mises] When Patients Become Victims – The Crime of Government-Run Health Care
- Merrill Matthews Jr., Ph.D. and Kerri Houston, May 1, 2000 (PDF format) Socialized Medicine Leaves a Bad Taste in Patients’ Mouths
- Lawrence W. Reed, February 23, 2000 [Mackinac Center for Public Policy] Canadians Dissatisfied With Socialized Medicine
- January 26, 2000 [NCPA] Memo to Al Gore: Canadian Medicine Isn’t Cheap or Effective
- William McArthur, former chief coroner for British Columbia, January 28, 2000 Loved to Death: America’s Unresolved Health-Care Crisis
As Canada’s national government slashes spending on medical care in order to reduce the deficit, local provinces are reducing medical staff. In Ontario, pregnant women are being sent to Detroit because no obstetricians are available. Specialists of all kinds are in short supply. Patients have to wait eight weeks for an MRI, ten weeks for referral to a specialist, and four months for heart bypass surgery. - Michael J. Hurd, November 1997 [Liberty Haven] Is Canadian Health care a Good Model for the U.S. to Follow?
- Michael Walker, August 1994 [Liberty Haven] Health of the State (commentary by a cancer survivor)
I tell you this not to alarm you, to elicit sympathy, or to bore you. I tell you because the episode has been, for me, a salutary lesson (just in case I needed one) in why the government should not be allowed anywhere near a syringe, a dressing, a scalpel, an oxygen mask, a tissue sample — anything to do with health. Michigan Shouldn’t Copy Canada’s Health System
- Lawrence W. Reed, July 29, 1991 [Mackinac Center for Public Policy]
Great Britain’s National Health Service (NHS)was created on July 5, 1948. As with all government programs, bureaucrats underestimated initial cost projections. First-year operating costs of NHS were 52 million pounds higher than original estimates1 as Britons saturated the so-called free system.
Many decades of shortages, misery and suffering followed until 1989, when some market-based health care competition was reintroduced to the British citizens2.
Unfortunately for those requiring care, a mostly socialist health care system has problems. The articles and commentaries in this section identify some disasters caused by government intervention in the British health care system.
- Kidney cancer patients denied life-saving drugs by NHS rationing body NICE
- April 29, 2009 [Daily Mail (UK)] - Girl, 3, has heart operation cancelled three times because of bed shortage
- David Rose, April 23, 2009 [Times Online] - Number of children going to hospital to have teeth pulled soars by 66% since 1997
- Daniel Martin and Cher Thornhill, April 12, 2009 [Daily Mail (UK)] - NHS ‘failings’ over elderly falls
- March 25, 2009 [BBC] - Learning disabled ‘failed by NHS’
- Nick Triggle, March 24, 2009 [BBC] - Cancer survivor confronts the health secretary on 62-day wait
- Lyndsay Moss, March 21, 2009 [The Scotsman] - Culture of targets prevents nurses from tending to patients
- Claire Rayner, President of the Patients Association, March 21, 2009 [Telegraph UK] - Children being failed by health system, says head of watchdog
- Sarah Boseley, March 21, 2009 [Guardian Unlimited] - Our cancer shame: Survival rates still lag behind EU despite spending billions
- Jenny Hope, March 20, 2009 [Daily Mail(UK)] - Failing hospital ’caused deaths’
- March 17, 2009 [BBC] - Health gap drive ‘wasted money’
- Nick Triggle, March 14, 2009 [BBC] - Longer GP opening hours branded wasteful ‘PR exercise’ by doctors
- Lyndsay Moss, March 13, 2009 [The Scotsman] - “Political meddling” threatens general practice, warns GP leader
- March 13, 2009 [Management in Practice (UK)] - Children at risk through lack of training for doctors and nurses, report warns
- Rebecca Smith, March 13, 2009 [Telegraph UK] - Chocolate should be taxed to control obesity epidemic, doctors are told
- Simon Johnson, March 13, 2009 [Telegraph UK] - 1,000 villagers wait for a dentist after just one NHS practice opens
- March 10, 2009 [Daily Mail(UK)] - Study that proves the folly of NHS Alzheimer’s drug ban
- Jenny Hope, March 7, 2009 [Daily Mail(UK)] - NHS charges to rise in England
- March 5, 2009 [BBC] - Disabled children wait up to two years for wheelchairs
- March 4, 2009 [Guardian Unlimited] - NHS under fire over waiting times
- February 25, 2009 [The Scotsman] - Government procrastination blamed for HIV-contaminated blood tragedy
- February 23, 2009 [Guardian Unlimited] - Specialist nurses ‘vastly overworked’
- February 20, 2009 [Harwich & Manningtree Standard] - Hundreds of operations cancelled at Lothian hospitals
- Adam Morris, February 19, 2009 [The Scotsman] - Stop asking for antibiotics to cure coughs and colds, Government tells patients
- Daniel Martin, February 17, 2009 [Daily Mail(UK)] - Stroke services are ‘UK’s worst’
- February 17, 2009 [BBC] - Hospitals curb caesarean births
- Sarah-Kate Templeton, February 15, 2009 [The Times] - Only five out of 51 hospital trusts pass hygiene test, say inspectors
- Sarah Boseley, November 24, 2008 [Guardian Unlimited] - Top doctors slam NHS drug rationing
- Sarah-Kate Templeton, August 24, 2008 [The Times] - Heart patients dying due to poor hospital care, says report
- Sarah Boseley, June 8, 2008 [Guardian Unlimited] - NHS dentistry loses almost a million patients after new dentists’ contract
- David Rose, June 6, 2008 [The Times] - Private healthcare managers could be sent to turn round failing NHS hospitals
- Philip Webster, Political Editor, and David Rose, June 4, 2008 [The Times] - Cancer patients ‘betrayed’ by NHS
- Sarah-Kate Templeton, June 1, 2008 [The Times] - NHS scandal: dying cancer victim was forced to pay
- Sarah-Kate Templeton, June 1, 2008 [The Times] - Pensioner, 76, forced to pull out own teeth after 12 NHS dentists refuse to treat her
- Olinka Koster, March 26, 2008 [Daily Mail(UK)] - Dental patients face care lottery
- March 26, 2008 [Metro(UK)] - Lung patients ‘condemned to death as NHS withdraws their too expensive drugs’
- Jenny Hope, March 24, 2008 [Daily Mail(UK)] - Women in labour turned away by maternity units
- John Carvel, March 21, 2008 [Guardian Unlimited] - Health inequality has got worse under Labour, says government report
- Andrew Sparrow, March 13, 2008 [Guardian Unlimited] - Angry GPs reluctantly accept plan for weekend and evening surgeries
- John Carvel, March 7, 2008 [Guardian Unlimited] - NHS chiefs tell grandmother, 61, she’s ‘too old’ for £5,000 life-saving heart surgery
- Chris Brooke, February 28, 2008 [Daily Mail(UK)] - Patient ‘removed’ from waiting list to meet target
- January 31, 2008 [The Scotsman] - NHS patients told to treat themselves
- James Kirkup, January 4, 2008 [Telegraph UK] - NHS is ‘failing patients’ despite record funding
- Rebecca Smith, October 4, 2007 [Telegraph UK] - NHS rationing rife, say doctors
- September 24, 2007 [BBC] - One in eight patients waiting over a year for treatment, admits minister
- John Carvel, June 8, 2007 [Guardian Unlimited] - Audit Office asked to investigate record £500m NHS underspend
- John Carvel, May 30, 2007 [Guardian Unlimited] - The drugs the NHS won’t give you
- May 11, 2007 [Telegraph UK] - UK lagging behind on cancer drug access, study finds
- May 10, 2007 [Guardian Unlimited] - One in six trusts is still putting patients on mixed-sex wards
- Daniel Martin, May 10, 2007 [Daily Mail(UK)] - Specialist stroke care ‘lottery’
- May 9, 2007 [BBC News] - Smokers and the obese banned from UK hospitals
- May 2, 2007 [Healthcare News] - Cancer patients told life-prolonging treatment is too expensive for NHS
- Lyndsay Moss, February 13, 2007 [The Scotsman] - UK health service “harms 10 percent of patients”
- Kate Kelland, July 7, 2006 [Reuters] - 5,000 elderly ‘killed each year’ by lack of care beds
- June 26, 2006 [Telegraph UK] - Dental Socialism in Britain
- Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., May 9, 2006 [LewRockwell.com] - Pay for nurses and surgeons doubles NHS overspend
- Beezy Marsh, Patrick Hennessy and Nina Goswami, April 23, 2006 [Telegraph UK] - The money addicts: it’s your cash they are gambling with
- Patience Wheatcroft, April 23, 2006 [Telegraph UK] - NHS chiefs get luxury car deals
- Daniel Foggo and Steven Swinford, April 9, 2006 [The Times] - Secret NHS plan to ration patient care
- Nigel Hawkes, April 7, 2006 [The Times] - British Healthcare To Be Rationed
- April 7, 2006 [United Press International] - British body rejects EPO drugs for cancer patients
- March 17, 2006 [Reuters] - National Health Service – Grappling with Deficits
- March 9, 2006 [Economist.com] - Hundreds wait to register as another dentist quits the NHS
- Martin Williams, September 23, 2005 [The Herald (Scotland)] - Life-saving cancer drugs ‘kept from NHS patients by red tape’
- Sam Lister, September 20, 2005 [The Times] - NHS slides into the red despite record increases in health care spending
- September 20, 2005 [Telegraph UK] - Alzheimer’s sufferers hit by further delay in NHS approval for vital drugs
- Michael Day, September 18, 2005 [Telegraph UK] - We all pay a price for our ‘free’ NHS
- John Smith, August 19, 2005 [The Scotsman] - 2,000 British doctors out of work
- August 14, 2005 [The Washington Times] - UK health ‘unsustainable’
- August 14, 2005 [Finance24] - NHS faces rising bill for negligence claims
- Ben Hall, August 8, 2005 [Financial Times] - British boy to go to India for operation
- August 5, 2005 [United Press International] - NHS failed to stop doctor raping scores of women
- Lois Rogers and Jonathon Carr-Brown, July 31, 2005 [The Times] - Top crimewriter funds drugs for cancer victim refused by NHS
- Martyn Halle, July 8, 2005 [Telegraph UK] - Report says NHS is mired in huge debts
- David Simms, June 25, 2005 [ABC Money (UK)] - U.K. set to restrict smoking
- June 21, 2005 [The Associated Press] - NHS ‘fund bias’ against men may cost 2,500 lives a year
- Sarah-Kate Templeton, June 19, 2005 [The Times] - Doubts on funding NHS ‘monuments’
- Nicholas Timmins, June 10, 2005 [Financial Times] - 17 million reasons why we must improve hospital meals
- June 7, 2005 [Cambridge Evening News] - Figures show more patients waiting for operations
- June 3, 2005 [Guardian UK] - Scarcity of NHS dental treatment is revealed
- Celia Hall, May 19, 2005 [telegraph.co.uk] - Why NHS Opposes ‘Treatment by Demand’ for the Dying
- Stephen Howard and Jan Colley, PA, May 18, 2005 [Scotsman] - 800 queue for NHS dentists
- May 5, 2005 [telegraph.co.uk] - Hundreds more heroin addicts to be given a fix on the NHS
- Nic Fleming, April 25, 2005 [telegraph.co.uk] - British health service facing nurse exodus
- April 25, 2005 [United Press International] - About 400 patients a year in Scotland succumb to MRSA
- April 25, 2005 [Scotsman] - NHS debts soar to over £1bn
- Karyn Miller, April 24, 2005 [telegraph.co.uk] - British taxpayers foot $26.5 million bill for abortion tourists
- April 18, 2005 [Catholic World News] - U.K. Liberal Democrats Would Raise Taxes to Pay for Health Care
- Reed Landberg, April 14, 2005 [Bloomberg] - Number of NHS Bureaucrats ‘Rising Faster Than Health Staff’
- Joe Churcher, March 22, 2005 [Scotsman] - ‘£500m hole’ in hospital budgets
- Celia Hall, March 21, 2005 [telegraph.co.uk] - 1,000 Scots desert NHS every week
- Murdo Macleod, March 5, 2005 [Scotsman] - British NHS facing financial crisis
- March 3, 2005 [Washington Times] - NHS drugs regulator to withdraw approval of Alzheimer’s treatment
- Nicholas Timmins, March 2, 2005 [FT.com - Financial Times] - NHS waiting list rises
- February 11, 2005 [Guardian UK] - Tumour patients hit by NHS shortages
- Jo Revill, February 6, 2005 [Guardian UK] - NHS financial crises set to outlast winter
- Mike Waites, February 4, 2005 [Yorkshire Post] - NHS 24 ‘priority’ callers wait four hours for advice
- Caroline Wilson, January 14, 2005 [Evening Times (UK)] - ‘No strategy’ on NHS waiting time
- January 14, 2005 [BBC] - Output figures show NHS decline
- John Carvel, October 19, 2004 [Guardian UK] - Heart patients die on waiting lists
- Peter Sharples, October 18, 2004 [Manchester Online] - £25bn overspend feared for NHS computer network
- Karen Attwood, October 12, 2004 [telegraph.co.uk] - Gaps in care cost £7bn, says charity
- John Carvel, October 4, 2004 [Guardian UK] - NHS excluding poor people, UK
- September 15, 2004 [Medical News Today] - Smokers ’should not get NHS care’
- September 6, 2004 [BBC News] - Waiting list row blights Brighton
- John Carvel, September 4, 2004 [Guardian UK] - Patients are denied the last rites under data protection law
- Elizabeth Day, July 25, 2004 [telegraph.co.uk] - Shortage of dentists to double by 2011
- John Carvel, July 24, 2004 [Guardian UK] - Britain’s stiff upper lip gives way to a snarl
- Sarah Lyall, July 18, 2004 [The New York Times] - Hospital Overcrowding A Cause of Superbug Infections
- John von Radowitz, July 1, 2004 [Scotsman.com] - Hospital Crisis: Fallen Angels
- Lindsay Mcgarvie, May 23, 2004 [Glasgow Sunday Mail] - Study finds British hospitals are still austere, cold, smelly and poorly maintained
- May 6, 2004 [News-Medical.net] - Hospital bathrooms and showers: a continuing saga of inadequacy
- Andy Monro, MRCP & Graham P Mulley, DM, FRCP, May 2004 [Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine] - Majority back public smoking ban
- March 24, 2004 [BBC] - Discrimination Rampant In British Health Care
- Peter Moore, November 17, 2003 [365gay.com] - PERIPATETICS—To the Medical Socialists of All Parties
- Sheldon Richman, September 2003 [FEE.org] - Creeping Privatization?
Shortages of skilled workers, low morale, long queues for services, crumbling facilities and corrupt practises. - Roland Watson, August 6, 2001 [LewRockwell.com] - The World’s Worst HMO
- Stephen D. Moore, November 24, 1999 [Random Thoughts] - Socialized Medicine in Great Britain: Lessons for the Oregon Health Plan
- Professor John Spiers, March 18, 1999 [Cascade Policy Institute] - The Sickbed Which is Socialized British Medicine
- December 23, 1997 [NCPA] - The British Way of Withholding Care
- Harry Schwarz, March 1989 [FEE.org]
Canada
Parliament unanimously passed the Canada Health Act in 1984 and established a single-payer, publicly-financed health care system. To ensure a true government monopoly (is there any other kind?) Canadian provinces outlawed private health insurance.
- Cathryn Atkinson, April 8, 2008 [Globe and Mail]
- March 27, 2008 [CTV.ca]
- Lisa Priest, February 22, 2008 [Globe and Mail]
- Don Surber, March 3, 2008 [Acton Institute]
- October 15, 2007 [CBC News (Canada)]
- David Gratzer, Summer 2007 [City Journal]
- May 28, 2007 [CBC News]
- June 28, 2006 [CCN Matthews]
- March 17, 2006 [CTV.ca]
- Rebecca Cook Dube, August 8, 2005 [CS Monitor]
- Gillian Livingston, July 15, 2005 [Canadian Press]
- D’Arcy Jenish, July 7, 2005 [Ontario Business News]
- Walter Williams, June 20, 2005 [Capitalism Magazine]
- June 9, 2005 [CBC Montreal]
- May 24, 2005 [Canadian Press]
- Jennifer O’Brien, May 21, 2005 [London Free Press]
- April 10, 2005 [Arkansas Democrat-Gazette]
- Sheryl Ubelacker, CP, April 6, 2005 [London Free Press]
- Beth Duff-Brown, March 19, 2005 [The Associated Press]
- Colin Perkel, March 4, 2005 [The Canadian Press]
- February 16, 2005 [CBC Calgary]
- February 15, 2005 [Canada.com]
- Aaron Derfel, February 12, 2005 [Montreal Gazette]
- February 9, 2005 [Macleans.ca]
- Dr. Charles Shaver, January 20, 2005 [Toronto Star]
- Mark Kennedy, January 14, 2005 [National Post (Canada)]
- Lisa Priest, January 13, 2005 [The Globe and Mail]
- Tom Brodbeck, December 4, 2004 [The Winnipeg Sun]
- Aaron Derfel, December 3, 2004 [The Gazette (Montreal)]
- Chris Traber, November 14, 2004 [Yorkregion.com]
- Jennifer Stewart and Jeffrey Simpson, October 28, 2004 [The Halifax Herald Limited]
…it answers, “an ever-increasing demand from the public for greater accessibility and quality of health services.” - October 13, 2004 [CTV.ca]
- Sheryl Ubelacker, September 20, 2004 [Canada.com]
- Jeremy Copeland, September 20, 2004 [CBC News]
- Clifford Krauss, September 18, 2004 [Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune]
- David Ljunggren, September 14, 2004 [Reuters (Ottawa)]
- September 5, 2004 [Toronto Star]
- Robert J. Cihak, M.D., September 1, 2004 [Health Care News]
- August 19, 2004 [MSNBC]
- August 16, 2004 [CTV.ca]
- Michael Hurley, August 8, 2004 [Toronto Star]
“It’s inhuman. The quality of my life is horrible and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it.” - Jason Fekete, July 28, 2004 [Calgary Herald]
Canadian doctors and nurses are fed up with inter-governmental “bickering” that is dragging out wait times and causing more pain and suffering for patients. - July 28, 2004 [Winnipeg Sun]
…in some cases, patients die on the waiting list because they become too sick to tolerate a procedure. - Walter E. Williams, July 24, 2004 [CATO]
All the major candidates in Canada’s recent national election acknowledged that the country’s health-care system is failing Canadians. - Robert J. Cihak, July 13, 2004 [The Seattle Times]
Canada’s health-care system is “five to 10 years” from the breaking point — even with cash injections from government, says the new president of the B.C. Medical Association. - Doug Alexander, July 5, 2004 [Vancouver Sun]
“Go into the emergency room — it is the most pitiful piece of work you ever seen in your life.” - David Bruser, June 22, 2004 [Toronto Star]
Analyst visits NC to describe how single-payer health care really works in practice. - Donna Martinez, June 17, 2004 [Carolina Journal]
Women waited months for radiation; lawsuit could cost system $50-million. - Ingrid Peritz, March 11, 2004 [The Globe and Mail]
‘You get knee surgery within two days … try and get that in human hospitals.’ Canada’s [private] pet health-insurance industry is projected to grow at roughly 50 per cent a year… - Robert Scalia, November 30, 2003 [Montreal Gazette]
- Daniel Girard, November 29, 2003 [Toronto Star]
- Clifford Krauss, October 17, 2003 [The New York Times]
- Brian Lee Crowley, October 9, 2003 [Mackinac Center for Public Policy]
- Valerie Lawton, September 26, 2003 [Toronto Star]
Almost half of Canadian doctors say they’re burned out, emotionally exhausted and blame medicine for putting a drain on their family life. - Karen Palmer, August 20, 2003 [Toronto Star]
While she insists she’s not making any money off the venture, she says it provides an income allowance for her and her husband, the other principal in the company. - Theresa Boyle and Robert Benzie, July 28, 2003 [Toronto Star]
The Canadian system, however, tends to push up overall spending on prescription drugs, despite the low prices for some brand name ones. - John Melby, July 2, 2003 [Buckeye Institute]
- William L. Anderson, November 29, 2002 [Mises]
- August 2002 [Fraser Institute]
- May 1, 2001 [Mackinac Center for Public Policy]
- James Frogue and Robert Moffit, December 25, 2000 [Capitalism Magazine]
Explores several lessons that can be drawn from the Canadian experience with socialized medicine:
- Socialized medicine, although of poor quality, is very expensive;
- Political compromise is the result;
- Socialized medicine is both a consequence and a great contributor to the idea that economic conditions should be equalized by coercion. - Pierre Lemieux [The Freeman]
…if Canadians knew as much as they think they do about the economic and moral workings of Medicare, they might not be as enthusiastic as they are about their cherished right to ‘free’ health care. - Andrei Kreptul, August 30, 2000 [Mises]
- Merrill Matthews Jr., Ph.D. and Kerri Houston, May 1, 2000 (PDF format)
- Lawrence W. Reed, February 23, 2000 [Mackinac Center for Public Policy]
- January 26, 2000 [NCPA]
- William McArthur, former chief coroner for British Columbia, January 28, 2000
As Canada’s national government slashes spending on medical care in order to reduce the deficit, local provinces are reducing medical staff. In Ontario, pregnant women are being sent to Detroit because no obstetricians are available. Specialists of all kinds are in short supply. Patients have to wait eight weeks for an MRI, ten weeks for referral to a specialist, and four months for heart bypass surgery. - Michael J. Hurd, November 1997 [Liberty Haven]
- Michael Walker, August 1994 [Liberty Haven]
I tell you this not to alarm you, to elicit sympathy, or to bore you. I tell you because the episode has been, for me, a salutary lesson (just in case I needed one) in why the government should not be allowed anywhere near a syringe, a dressing, a scalpel, an oxygen mask, a tissue sample — anything to do with health.
- Lawrence W. Reed, July 29, 1991 [Mackinac Center for Public Policy]
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