It’s amazing how angry people get when you question government programs and regulations. Usually, they do not backup their undying faith in government. They simply use obscenities. What causes this devotion? I simply don’t get it. Government’s consistently lie to us. They only pretend they are going to keep their word during elections, and then after they are elected, they break almost every promise they make. They even have the nerve to laugh about it. Remember Nancy Pelosi and her “A lot of promises are made on the campaign trail. Hahahahaha” What? This is what inspires complete, unquestioning devotion to government?

Liberals constantly tell us about the selfishness of their fellowmen. We are supposed to believe that neighbors would sit idly by watching their neighbor starving to death, so the government in all it’s compassion must steal everyone’s money to make sure that doesn’t happen. We are told that without the government, it would be complete chaos. People would be killing each other in the streets. Without regulation, companies would be killing their customers with poisons and crappy products. Without welfare, people would sleep in the streets dying beneath our feet as we all just walk by not caring. Charity is fine, but there just isn’t enough caring people to donate enough to take care of the poor. Doctors aren’t compassionate enough to provide low cost or free services to the poor. Basically, we are all just a bunch of barbarians, and luckily for us the government keeps us civilized.

Really?

Were we really worse off when we had less government? Were people less friendly and compassionate 100 years ago when government was smaller? Were families and neighbors further apart than they are now? Did charities and foundations not get enough donations to create library systems, universities, and the like? Were people killing each other left and right? Were companies killing people with poisons and death contraptions? These are all just scare tactics to make us beg for more government. We are told we need government to protect us from each other. In order to protect us, we surrender our rights to the government. We grant them the sole right to use force against us. We allow the government to steal, kill and harass us.

All these claims are no different than the neocons’ claims that we need to be deathly afraid of arabs and communists. This too is just to scare us and have us begging for more government. There is no way Muslims could conquer a free people such as those in the United States. The Soviet Union couldn’t have conquered the US even if all the dominoes fell. As long as a people have the right to bear arms and value freedom, they will remain free. I’d love to see a country try to invade the US with 200 million civilian guns and another 100 million professional arms in use. The only way this is possible is if our own government takes our guns from us. Of course, if they do that, then they’d really claim only they can protect us.

So what is the truth then? The truth is the government lies, cheats and steals to get more power. It could care less about protecting or providing for us. It is constantly looking for angles to exploit. Then it creates massive media campaigns to convince everyone they are in danger and the government alone is the only one who can fix the problem. How do they propose to fix the problem? Do they really have anything to offer? No, of course not. We all know the government produces nothing. It’s no different than the mob. The mob didn’t produce anything. It just stole production from others, and then redistributed it. It takes resources at the point of a gun, and then uses it to purchase more power for itself. Then the government and all their sycophants tell us they are doing it to protect us.

Can someone tell me why we are supposedly a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but then we are told the people are too uncaring, ruthless and selfish? We are supposed to believe that in general the people won’t take care of their friends, families and neighbors, because they are too selfish. The people would exploit each other. They would kill each other and steal from each other. But then we are told we are governed by the people through democracy. How can we trust this democracy if the people are so evil to begin with? How can we trust our elected officials if they are us, and they are also selfish, uncaring, ruthless people.

The government is more like an abusive spouse who tells their victims they are just keeping them in line. Without them, the victim would have nothing. They couldn’t fend for themselves. The abusive spouse is really protecting them. As citizens we collectively buy into the abuse. “Yes, I know he/she beats me, but I really deserve it. I was wrong.”

Really? Wake up already. The government needs us. We don’t need the government. The government needs us so they can siphon money and production from the producers in society to fill the pockets of a select few. Does TARP and bailouts ring a bell? In order to not be so obvious about it, they buy off the poor in society. They expand the number of poor through ever increasing entitlements in order enslave enough of us, so that they always have a big enough voting block to get more power. Like the abusive spouse, they tell those who get entitlements that only they will provide for them. They’d have nothing without the government. Their fellow man would neither offer them a job or a meal.

So, I can hear it now. The defenders of big government immediately say businesses and the powerful would run roughshod over all of us in order to gain more power and wealth. Hmmm, I hate to say it, but that sounds very close to what government does. Let’s just take a few of these “government is good” claims and see if they really add up.

….to be continued

Here’s a great fable from the Conservative Business Network.

My mother and father would hark back to the days when a loaf of bread was only 8 cents. “Mom”, I would say, “things just cost more.”

Could I have been more wrong?

Things don’t cost more, it is a hidden tax!

How Inflation is Created

Contrary to common thought, inflation is not the normal order of things. It will all become very clear when you read this short analogy.

There are 10 people in a community.

1. Abe makes tractors

2. Bill makes gas

3. Charlie builds houses

4. Darin is a developer

5. Edward makes tractor parts

6. Frank is a produce farmer

7. George raises cattle

8. Hank is a tractor mechanic

9. Ian owns and drives a delivery van

10. Jasper is a laborer

These hardworking folks soon learned a simple barter system would not work. When Charlie built a house for Hank, he wanted to be paid, but did not need tractor parts.

They needed something else of value to trade. Everyone knew this was a problem for them too. So they all got together and created an advanced barter system called money.They created the “DayCredit” or as it became known the DC.

A DayCredit was equal to exactly (1) 12 hour day of work. Since it takes Charlie 3600 hours to build a house, the house is worth 300 DC’s. That means Hank is going to have to labor as a mechanic for 300 days to pay for the house.

With DC currency, it does not matter for whom Hank works, as long as they pay him in equivalent DC currency. Charlie knows that the money he receives can be used to buy goods or services from anyone else in their group.

So far; so good.

One day, the Fedrev family moves into town. The whole town is excited and welcome the Fedrev’s with open arms. They explain to them how their barter system works and the Fedrevs agree to accept and use the DC currency.

Up until this point, everyone printed their own currency based on integrity and full guarantee of their 12 hr work day per DC.

Fedrev was a printer and supplied printing services. Then one day they offered to be the sole printer of the DC currency. A reasonable idea but unfortunately Fedrev was lazy and dishonest.

Fedrev wanted to have the nicest house in the community but did not have enough DCs to purchase the house from Charlie. So they very quietly printed a little extra money and gave it to themselves as a 10% interest bonus. They then used that money to buy the most expensive house Charlie could build.

Everyone knew there were more DCs in the system than there were labor hours to back them up. So when Frank went to buy a tractor, Edward would no longer accept 1 DC per 12 hr day. Edward now wanted 1.1 DCs for each labor day he needed to build a tractor.

Jasper the laborer could no longer afford to buy produce because Frank had to raise his prices to cover the cost of the tractor. So he demanded a cost of living adjustment from George the Cattle farmer.

Upon learning that George’s beef prices went up by 10% Bill raised his gas prices to cover his family expenses.

And so on.

Sadly, due to dishonest money policy, 10% of the value of the money simply disappeared. A day's work is still a days work, but for this community, a day’s work is only worth 91% of what it used to be.

For those that could raise their prices, it was a wash.

But for those who could not raise their prices, their money now buys less. A day of delivery for Ian is no longer worth a 12 hours of Bill’s gas production.

Rising prices are absolute proof that too much money is being pumped into the system!

I get inflation, but how is this a hidden tax?

Great Question.

Who benefited in the community of 10?

Read the rest at Conservative Business Network.

If you’ve been following my blog, you already know I am no fan of the FDA. This bureaucracy costs drug developers so much time and money that many drugs that could save lives are never invested in and developed. I’ve talked about that here and here. This morning, the Wall Street Journal has an article about FDA staffers “helping” companies move their orphaned drugs through the process by holding workshops. The underlying story, if you read between the lines, is many drugs never make it to the market because the FDA is a road barrier that is not worth overcoming for rare diseases. The end result is people with rare diseases die or have to live with their disease with a lot less hope that a drug will be developed, all thanks to your all caring government.

Staff members at the Food and Drug Administration are doing something unusual. They are leaving Washington to help drug makers take a crucial step in developing drugs for rare diseases.

Only a statist would consider it a crucial step in the development of a drug to fill out government paperwork.

The staffers help administer the Orphan Drug Act, which provides incentives to create therapies for so-called orphan diseases—those that affect fewer than 200,000 Americans. There are about 7,000 such maladies, most of them serious, that have few or no drugs to treat them, from adenoid cystic carcinoma, a rare head and neck cancer, to Zollinger-Ellison syndrome, which is associated with a tumor that causes the production of high levels of stomach acid.

As a result, doctors may end up prescribing drugs developed for other diseases off-label, but not all insurers will cover this kind of use.

Getting an orphan-drug designation opens the door to incentives once the FDA approves a medicine for sale in the U.S., including seven years’ marketing exclusivity and tax breaks. Last year, just 250 requests for orphan-drug designation were filed, and 160 received it.

“We’re barely scratching the surface,” says Timothy Coté, director of the FDA’s Office of Orphan Products Development, the workshop’s sponsor. He says there are roughly 350 orphan drugs approved, covering about 150 rare diseases.

Tim Cunniff, vice president of global regulatory affairs at Lundbeck Inc., which has a number of approved orphan drugs, says most companies developing orphan drugs are small.

As I’ve stated previously, the big companies love the FDA. It’s a barrier to small companies from developing drugs to bring to market, which means less competition for Big Pharma. Small companies would develop drugs for rare diseases, because they see the whole in the market. The problem for them though is trying to find $1 billion dollars and up to 15 years time to move the drug through the FDA. This is a huge barrier to entry, and it leaves people with these rare diseases to suffer.

Big companies are starting to get more interested in rare diseases, but the key issue is the high cost of developing a drug and the typically long time it takes to move it from a lab into a clinic as a treatment that gets prescribed. Before starting down this arduous path, a company needs to feel there is a reasonable chance of making a profit.

Bing-O. Here is the proof that the FDA is a hindrance to progress. Companies have to make predictions about an extremely expensive and time consuming process, that can be swayed by politics. As we all know, everything has opportunity costs. If they decide to move forward on one drug, the money and time spent moving it through the FDA process is money and time that are not spent developing the next drug. Because of this alone, we are losing out on more drugs, but we are also making it much harder for companies to decide in favor of moving forward with a drug. It’s probably almost never going to happen for drugs for rare diseases, because the market is so small.

To help get more applications, Dr. Coté’s office put out the word: Help is available, in two workshops with on-the-spot regulatory advice. The first workshop, held last month at the Keck Graduate Institute here, drew 29 potential sponsors, from major drug companies to academic centers, small biotechs and even some patient advocates. In a follow-up survey, 74% said they had never before filed an application for orphan drug designation.

Dr. Coté said he wanted participants to understand that the workshop wasn’t providing an alternative pathway to orphan-drug designation, just regulatory advice. He said it was very important that the FDA avoid the “perception of favoritism” and even stressed that in the cover letter to an application, the sponsors shouldn’t say they had been at the workshop.

Sure wouldn’t want the “perception of favoritism”. Don’t make it easier for companies to develop drugs for rare diseases, that otherwise won’t be developed. That would be just horrible.

Barbara Fant, president and chief executive of Clinical Research Consultants Inc., attended the workshop to prepare an application for a drug-company client, and said this was her first time filing for an orphan drug designation.

An FDA staffer pointed out issues in her application that “would have come back to me as questions and delayed the designation process” if she had filed before the workshop. “I learned some nuances that I didn’t know,” said Dr. Fant, who declined to provide details about her client or the drug.

Who says you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to fill out government papers correctly. I guess being a doctor just isn’t enough. If this lady was not at this workshop, should would have probably just lost months of time before this paper went into the FDA bureaucracy and got turned down and returned, because it was missing some “nuance”.

An orphan-drug designation is no guarantee a medicine will ultimately be approved for marketing. A different FDA division reviews safety and efficacy data for approval. Upon further testing, a drug may turn out to be too dangerous or not effective. Companies may decide a product is too expensive to make, change direction, or go out of business. But Dr. Phillips and Dr. Coté hope that by increasing the pool of applicants for designation, they will increase the chances of getting more approvals.

via FDA Pushes for Cures for Rare Diseases – WSJ.com.

Did you get the underlying message of this article? Do you need more proof that the government, in this case the FDA, is a road barrier to progress? There really is no need for the FDA. There could easily be a private mechanism for testing drugs. All it would take a is change to patent laws, which have to give Big Pharma complete control of the market for a long time in order for them to make enough profit to make it worth bringing a drug to market. Because of the huge expense of the FDA, that control of the market has to be longer than it otherwise would need to be.

Also, as John pointed out in the comments section on this post, why couldn’t the FDA be optional? Why can’t we as consumers have a choice between an expensive FDA approved drug and a cheaper non-FDA approved drug? Surely, the non-FDA approved drug will go through the rigors of private testing via competitors, doctors and universities. We know the answer to that though. Government can never have something that challenges it’s claim to be our protector. If we allowed non-FDA options, the FDA would shortly be proven useless.

Following up on an earlier post about democracy, here is a great find from The Daily Paul. I constantly hear about us being a democracy, even by conservatives. It’s considered taboo to say anything bad about democracies, but we were not founded as a democracy, which is why our government was supposed to be extremely limited in what it could do. Our founders knew that democracy was a horrible system.

Democracy is …

…the majority turning their guns on the minority.

…the majority enslaving the minority.

…the creation of human sacrifices for the majority.

…the destruction of the individual.

…constant growth in government as the majority votes more to themselves.

…the road to absolute tyranny.

YouTube – Democracy is not Freedom!.

In just another example of why public education is a horrible way to educate kids, schools, with their overblown budgets, are now cutting back to four days a week.

A small but growing number of school districts across the country are moving to a four-day week, in a shift they hope will help close gaping budget holes and stave off teacher layoffs, but that critics fear could hurt students’ education.

Budget holes? There was just a recent discussion on Mises.org forums about the cost of public education, and it was actually much higher than the national average I had in my post a while back of $9,000 per student. While it seems like no one can find an actual number (go figure), the cost seems to range from $11,000 to $30,000 per student. Can you imagine what type of education the private sector could provide for that type of money. So, what does Obama say about this?

The heightened interest in an abbreviated school week comes as the Obama administration prepares to plow $4.35 billion in extra federal funds into underperforming schools. The administration has been advocating for a stronger school system in a bid to make the U.S. more academically competitive on a global basis.

Eh boy. Go figure. He’s throwing more money at it and wants a “stronger school system”. What does “stronger” even mean.  Does he want one with even less parental involvement, where the state could completely brain wash the children? Well, what do some of the local school board people say?

“We’ve repeatedly asked our residents to pay higher taxes, cut some of our staff, and we may even close one of our schools,” she said. “What else can you really do?” Despite a “lot of opposition” from parents, she said, the district is set to adopt a four-day week for next school year.

Ok, so same old same old. Higher taxes. They cut some of their staff? I am guessing they cut the staff that would annoy parents and students the most. Government, instead of looking for real ways to cut costs, only looks for ways to annoy the tax payer, so they can complain they need more money and have a sympathetic ear. Notice the first place locally to cut services is the public library. I’m sure the schools wouldn’t do that.

In the rural Peach County, Ga., district, a four-day week this school year helped school officials save more than $200,000 last semester, trimming costs for custodial and cafeteria workers and bus drivers as well as transportation expenses and utilities, said system spokeswoman Sara Mason.

“Sorry, we can’t pick your kid up for school. You’re $11,000 to $30,000 per student just isn’t cutting it.” Well, it sucks they laid off the poorer workers. Wonder if they laid off any teachers?

The district is on track to save 39 teaching positions and $400,000 by the end of the school year, helping to narrow a $1 million shortfall in the district’s $30 million annual budget.

Teachers who still work the same number of hours over four days, instead of five, generally don’t see a reduction in salary. But staff who can’t make up the lost time, such as bus drivers and cafeteria workers, are often hard-hit, losing as much as 20% of their pay.

Guess it pays to be in a powerful union. Not only was there no cut in pay, they now only have to work four days a week. It’s too bad they had to layoff the lower income folks to save the teachers. I guess there’s always welfare.

Officials in some districts say their students and teachers make good use of their day off. In Wyoming, many schools offer Friday tutoring sessions to keep students sharp, according to Dianne Frazier, an educational consultant with the state’s department of education.

via Districts Explore Shorter School Week – WSJ.com.

I bet they do make good use of their time. Teachers get to sit on the butts another day, but this time without those annoying students. Students on the other hand now have a free day, when mom and dad have to go to work.

When can we just quit with this idiotic school system that’s only function is to feed the teachers’ union more and more money by pillaging the workers of society. There is no concern for actually educating children. Anyone who doesn’t just blindly accept that our school system is to make sure all children can get an education can see it. If you looked at the performance of our schools, on practically every measure they are absolute failures.

Think about how much money is spent. For half a dozen kids, a person could start a private education business and if the cost per student was the same have revenue of $66,000 to $180,000. Of course the private sector wouldn’t stop there. They’d take on more students, and they’d capitalize on economies of scale to drop prices. Competition would drive the cost per student down substantially.

Add to that, that what we teach kids is completely useless. How many of us use even 10% of what we learned before college? I get so annoyed every night as my son spends hours doing school work. He goes to school all day, and then comes home and has at least an hour’s worth of home work every night. What really ticks me off is what the homework is. It’s things like social studies. Instead of learning history, which can actually be applied to current affairs, they waste time learning dances of another culture, a culture that he’ll probably never run into. Even if he did, wouldn’t it be better and more interesting to learn the culture in person than to waste school time learning about it? I think his time would be better spent learning reading, writing, math and history.

Of course though, the government mandates that all kids learn the curriculum set by a bunch of bureaucrats, who have a bunch of special interest groups trying to push their agenda down our kids’ throats. Do the bureaucrats care? Of course not. There is no incentive to care. They have these huge budgets and all this time to fill for students. Why not waste it on some cultural dances. Who cares if the kids can’t read or thinking logically. They made donors happy.

Well, I guess one good thing about this article is that the schools who implemented the four day week have one less day a week to make students dumber.

More and more government seems to be moving in on the freedom we have on the internet. Obama is pushing net neutraliy as a way to protect us from the evils of the companies who have already brought us ever increasing broadband and services. The FTC has begun cracking down on bloggers saying they have to disclose their relationships before blogging about a product. Police want warrantless access to your online data.

Now, the government is going to claim they need to protect us from internet attacks which have been around since the beginning of the internet. Oh no worries though, Microsoft, a company who’s having problems keeping up in the online arena, is backing the government.

A top Microsoft executive on Tuesday suggested a broad Internet tax to help defray the costs associated with computer security breaches and vast Internet attacks, according to reports. Speaking at a security conference in San Francisco, Microsoft Vice President for Trustworthy Computing Scott Charney pitched the Web usage fee as one way to subsidize efforts to combat emerging cyber threats — a costly venture, he said, but one that had vast community benefits.”You could say it’s a public safety issue and do it with general taxation,” Charney noted.

via Microsoft exec pitches Internet usage tax to pay for cybersecurity – The Hill’s Hillicon Valley.

Ok, I’ve always stuck up for Microsoft as far as monopoly claims go, but now I see why everyone hates them. Here is a company, who’s founder has more wealth than many countries, and they are saying the public should have more money stolen from them to “defray the costs associated with computer security breaches”, which are probably made possible by the crappy software they write. Maybe we’d all be better off if we got Apples.

The public should not have to defray the cost for corporate America. Businesses should consider security as cost of business, which they have up until now. The customer ultimately pays, but they are the ones benefitting from security measures. If my bank puts in security software and hires security professionals, am I not the one benefiting? Why should the guy down the street defray my bank’s cost to which he is not a customer?

So what happens once the government taxes the internet and internet security becomes a public good? Well, what happens with everything the government gets involved it. It basically turns to garbage (keeping it clean here). Innovation is stifled. Costs skyrocket.

It is not hard to see what’s coming. The writing is on the wall. Governments absolutely hate freedom. If they see people having too much freedom, they must get worried that the people are consipring against their power. So they do whatever they can to insert themselves into this freedomfest to make sure the people don’t realize that “Hey, this freedom thing works without the government. What if the rest of our lives were like this? ”

But, as I said, the writing is on the wall.

Don Corelone called his people in for a meeting yesterday.

WASHINGTON—The government’s top health official summoned health-insurance chief executives to the White House Thursday and told them they need to disclose more data justifying sharp premium increases.

The dressing-down, part of which was televised, was part of a campaign by the White House to build support for its health overhaul as President Barack Obama presses Congress to deliver final legislation to his desk in the next few weeks.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius called five insurance company executives, including the heads of UnitedHealth Group Inc. and WellPoint Inc., to the Roosevelt Room to request explanation on the recent rate increases.

Who is Kathleen Sebelius to summon private individuals to the white house to explain why they raised their prices? It’s none of her or Obama’s business. No one is forcing people to buy their products, so if people don’t want to pay the prices, they can choose not to. Oh yeah, they will be forced to at gun point real soon.

Mr. Obama dropped by and read them a letter from a 50-year-old cancer survivor from Ohio whose premiums rose 40% this year. He told the group that such rate increases are “unjustifiable,” White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said.

How about we read some letters from upstanding people that the government has imprisoned or pillaged for taxes? How about the family farm that had to be sold after gramps died, because the family couldn’t afford the death tax? How about the poor child who’s trapped in crappy public education, and because of Obama they had their charter school option taken away? Maybe we should read a letter from a child, who’s mother’s body was blown to bits by a drone attack? Oh that’s right, those aren’t American children, so they don’t matter. Maybe we should read a letter from a small business owner, who couldn’t sleep for weeks over the thought of having to layoff someone who’s become like family to him (or her)?

Insurers said the drug makers, medical-device makers, hospitals and other health-care companies are driving up the underlying cost of medical care. They said that trying to lower premiums without addressing those costs was destined to fail.

“The rate is really reflective of our other parts of the health-care delivery system,” Ron Williams, chief executive of Aetna Inc., told the group at the beginning of the meeting. In an interview after the meeting, Mr. Williams said the secretary should have included representatives from those industries.

I can see it now. “Please Mr. Obama. It’s not our fault. Please don’t point the gun at us.” Truly I think the insurance companies are the root problem of health care costs, but it’s not their doing. We have decided that insurance is supposed to cover everything, and then we complain when prices skyrocket and premiums skyrocket. Government of course played started it all off with their wage caps, HMOs, mandatory coverage, tax credits to businesses for supplying insurance, medicare/medicaide, etc.

The day started with gracious exchanges followed by sharper words afterwards

Ms. Sebelius asked the companies to begin posting information online for consumers to explain how much of their revenue goes toward administrative costs, marketing and actual care, along with other details of the rate increases. She called for “greatly increased transparency about what indeed is going on.”

This could make a great movie you know? Kathleen Sebelius can be walking around the room, nonchalantly waving a gun around as she’s talking. Not really pointing it at anyone directly, but they get the point. Then she says, “OK, I’ll tell you what. (Need mob sounding accent) Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to start posting all your information online.”

Insurance company: “But that information is confidential. We already are forced to disclose financial information for the SEC. That would give too much info to our ….”

Sebelius cocking the gun and turning towards the complaining insurance executive: “I think I’m being fair here. Now, are you going to do like I ask or what?” She stares down the executive, who meekly gives a nod.

Several executives at the meeting said they didn’t immediately commit to posting the information but were open to the idea. Much of that data is already detailed in filings to state insurance regulators, though they are difficult to access. Publicly traded companies report executive compensation and national cost trends, but keep some other measures under wraps as trade secrets. “There might be more transparency out there than you might realize,” said UnitedHealth Chief Executive Stephen Hemsley.

The two sides couldn’t agree whether insurers are highly profitable or just scraping by. Industry executives rolled out data showing their average profit margin was 2.2% last year, lower than other health industries. Ms. Sebelius cited figures showing that top insurers earned a collective $12 billion in profits last year, a 56% increase from the prior year, but that didn’t account for one-time gains.

Oh my world. You mean these companies are actually trying to make money by providing a service to customers? The audacity (and not of hope). How much does the Obama administration think these guys are going to make once Sebelius and Obama turn the gun on the people and force us to become customers? At that point, the government controls both citizen and the company, so who knows really. A 2.2% profit margin is nothing to write home about. Also, considering that health care is 1/6th of our economy, earning a collective $12 billion is not a lot of money. Think about the collective money Obama and the rest of government throw around.

The health overhaul, if passed, would require most Americans to carry health coverage or face a fine, meaning insurers would get more business.

Ah Ha! That will show those evil corporations! Wait….. wait… did I miss something?

However, insurers would be required to accept all applicants, including those who are sick. And they would see tougher restrictions on premium increases, particularly through the new state-based insurance exchanges.

Doesn’t state-based insurance exchanges sound so free market? This is sort of like the guy who comes to have a meeting with Don Corleone, so he can ask to do business in the neighborhood. Of course the Don is a reasonable man. He’s not going to be unfair. The new guy can do business. He just has to pay the toll to the mob…..I mean the government.

The White House has also proposed a new federal body with power to review premium increases. But that may not end up in a final bill due to procedural regulations that might require it to be jettisoned. That would be a relief for insurance companies, who say the panel would duplicate the rate regulation they already get from individual states. “If you have the rules written in the states and the prices written in Washington, there might be a disconnect,” said Angela F. Braly, chief executive of WellPoint Inc.

via Health Secretary Sebelius Debates Rate Increases With Insurers – WSJ.com.

Don’t forget though. All this additional regulation, bureacracy, panels, etc is going to lower cost. Obama said so.

Here are clips from the debate between Peter Schiff, Mrs. WWE, and some other guy. Notice how fluent Schiff is. He doesn’t have to pause and take his time speaking, because he is not lying. Now go watch Obama speak.

YouTube – Peter Schiff won the Republican U.S. Senate candidate debate in CT on 3-2-10.

Let’s hope Peter wins, and that this is just the first step in an 1800 style revolution.

While I can understand the initial aid flooding into Haiti, this article in the Wall Street Journal highlights another reason why foreign aid is a bad idea. In order for liberals to feel good about themselves, they take their fellow citizens money at gun point and hand it over to foreign citizens, which allows them to bypass their local business. So the people they want to help are actually hurt.

Business for Ilia Alsene, one of Haiti’s ubiquitous “marchands”—or merchants—who sell food and beverages at curbside stalls here, is a lot worse since the country’s devastating earthquake. But Ms. Alsene doesn’t blame the quake so much as the international relief effort that followed.

“I have fewer customers now because they are handing out free food down the street,” says the 52-year-old, pointing to the nearby Champs de Mars plaza where aid organizations regularly hand out food to tens of thousands of people camped there in tents.

But only a tiny fraction of that money is being spent in Haiti, buying goods from local businesses. Worse, the aid is having the unintended consequence of making life harder for many businesses here, because of competition from free goods brought in by relief agencies. The damage to Haitian companies is making it harder for them to get back on their feet and create the jobs the country needs for a lasting recovery.

Alex Zamor’s drinking-water factory is operating again at near full capacity after suffering damage from the earthquake. But he still hasn’t rehired 200 employees at the factory because sales are so weak. He blames free water handed out by the relief effort.

“Of course we welcome the relief, but nobody wants to buy water if there’s free water on the streets,” he says. Mr. Zamor says international relief agencies should be sourcing more of their products for the relief effort from Haiti itself. “We should be helping Haitian companies instead of companies in Florida,” he says.

Tom Adamson, a transplanted Canadian, runs one of only two mattress companies in Haiti. Three of his 10 retail stores around the country were destroyed, and his factory suffered minor damage. But he says the biggest effect from the quake has been increased competition.

In the weeks after the temblor, a mattress company in the Dominican Republic sent 10,000 foam mattresses for the relief effort, getting import duties at the border waived. He and U.S. officials say nearly all relief supplies don’t get charged import taxes. Meanwhile, Mr. Adamson’s mattress company has a container of chemicals used to make foam mattresses stuck for months in Haitian customs, where is still being asked to pay import taxes.

“Things like this make it very hard for me to compete,” he says

via Global Aid Is No Relief for Small Haitian Businesses – WSJ.com.

Why buy products from the local business who employs your neighbors, when you can get the products free from foreign aid. Why grown your own wheat when the US drops in all it’s subsidized corn, which drives the price of your goods through the floor? Oh, and don’t think for a second this corn and other goods are donated out of the goodness of the grower’s heart. King Corn gets paid for the corn with tax money stolen from the tax payers. I’m sure they love foreign aid. It’s just another opportunity for corporate welfare, and it makes it harder for the people that are supposedly trying to be helped get back on their feet.

A great article by Pat Buchanan on global warming, climate change or whatever those crazy kids are calling it now-a-days.

What we learned in a year’s time: Polar bears are not vanishing. Sea levels are not rising at anything like the 20-foot surge this century was to bring. Cities are not sinking. Beaches are not disappearing. Temperatures have not been rising since the late 1990s. And, in historic terms, our global warming is not at all unprecedented.

Dennis Avery of Hudson Institute wrote a decade ago that from A.D. 900 to 1300, the Earth warmed by 4 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit, a period known as the Little Climate Optimum.

How horrible was it?

“The Vikings discovered and settled Greenland around A.D. 950. Greenland was then so warm that thousands of colonists supported themselves by pasturing cattle on what is now frozen tundra. During this great global warming, Europe built the looming castles and soaring cathedrals that even today stun tourists with their size, beauty and engineering excellence. These colossal buildings required the investment of millions of man-hours – which could be spared from farming because of higher crop yields.”

Today’s global warming hysteria is the hoax of the 21st century. H.L. Mencken had it right: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed – and hence clamorous to be led to safety – by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

via Hoax of the Century by Patrick J. Buchanan.