Here’s a sliver of good news on the health care front.

Senate Democrats on Monday evening dropped a plan to expand Medicare, winning the support of moderates and the reluctant acquiescence of liberals, in another major step toward building enough support to pass a health-care overhaul.

The idea of letting people ages 55 to 64 buy into Medicare, announced just last week, had threatened to explode the Democrats’ hopes of getting a bill through the Senate when Sen. Joseph Lieberman came out against it.

via Democrats Drop Plan to Expand Medicare – WSJ.com.

While I don’t believe this prevents the government from create a disastrous government health care program, it is still good news. The problem now is the debate has already been framed, and it’s been framed by socialists. The debate is between health care reform and the status quo, and you know the status quo just means you hate people. The problem is government cannot reform the private sector. If the government was not involved in health care, reform would not be needed. Resources would be properly allocated, which would mean they would be allocated where they are needed the most at the least cost.

All this talk about health care reform by socialist pigs makes me sick. The only reform we need to fix health care is government reform. It needs to be reformed back into a limited government that protects liberty. That is all that needs done to fix most of our societal ills. The rest can be figured out by free people.

According to the Wall Street Journal, 10 Senate Democrats have decided the fate for all of us as far as far as health care insurance goes. You will buy what you are told, because after all you live in a democracy (once a republic).

WASHINGTON — Senior Senate Democrats reached tentative agreement Tuesday night to abandon the government-run insurance plan in their health-overhaul bill and to expand Medicare coverage to some people ages 55 to 64, clearing the most significant hurdle so far in getting a bill that can pass Congress.

So Democrats dropped the government-run insurance plan, but expanding a government run insurance plan? Considering our aging population and people living longer (for now anyways), it’s not hard to see that a majority of our country eventually falling under a government plan. Do you think they aren’t going to try to expand this further?

The agreement capped several days of high-stakes negotiations by a group of 10 Democratic senators — five moderates and five liberals. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) had advanced a bill that would have had the government directly operate a health-insurance plan, while giving states the right to opt out.

I love this. In our supposed Republic, we are forcing 1/6th of our economy under government control because of  5 liberals and 5 moderates. Who’s to say they are moderate? I guess they are moderate socialists. Wow, that makes me feel better. Moderate socialists are the ones protecting our liberty, so you can sleep well tonight.

In place of that, the senators embraced a more limited proposal that would empower the government’s Office of Personnel Management to put in place a new low-cost national health plan, congressional aides said. The office already administers plans offered to federal employees and members of Congress. The new national plan would be run by nonprofit entities set up by the private sector, and would be available to the public on the new insurance exchanges that would be created under the bill

If no private insurers sign up with the Office of Personnel Management to offer a national plan, the office would be authorized to implement a direct government-run plan, an unlikely prospect, aides said.

Didn’t they say they got rid of the government option? Instead they are going to have the government setup national plans and have them ran by non-profits? Sure sounds the same to me, except more corruption. Who’s going to pick the non-profits? Hey, isn’t ACORN a non-profit?

So here is where the government run plan comes in. If no private insurers sign up for the government designed national plan, then the government will create the plan itself. Despite what “aides” say, I would say it’s likely that no private insurers will sign up. Look at what working with the government has done with the banks. You sign up with them, you are going to do what you arer told, and what you are told changes at their discretion. How can a private insurance company plan for the future under conditiosn like that? Even if private insurers do sign up, it is no different than other quasi-government institutions like Fannie Mae, Amtrack or the Post Office. They will be ran into the ground, and we’ll be paying for them anyways. The politicians will setup the rules, so they will not be ran as a private institution.

The arrangement is attractive to Democratic centrists who worry about the government’s growing footprint in the private market.

Can this sentence be any more disengenous? So called centrist are worried about the growing government footprint in the private market? They sure have a funny way of showing it. Let’s see, TARP, Government Motors, bailouts, stimulus bills, newspaper bailouts, and oh this massive ass health care takeover.

In a nod to Democratic liberals still intent on expanding coverage, the group agreed to a proposal that would open Medicare, the health-insurance program for the elderly, to Americans ages 55 to 64. The proposal would benefit an estimated two million to three million Americans who have difficulty obtaining coverage elsewhere, including those who have lost their jobs. People in the 55-to-64 group who already get health insurance through their employers would continue to do so under the proposal.

Republicans criticized the Democratic negotiations. “What’s becoming abundantly clear is that the majority will make any deal, agree to any terms, sign any dotted line that brings them closer to final passage of this terrible bill,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.).

Sen. John Barrasso (R., Wyo.) said expanding Medicare “is putting more people in a boat that’s already sinking.”

The American Medical Association said it opposes expanding Medicare because doctors face steep pay cuts under the program and many Medicare patients are struggling to find a doctor. Hospitals also said expanding Medicare and Medicaid is a bad idea.

“We want coverage — in the worst way — expanded, but both of these means are problematic for hospitals and physicians,” said Chip Kahn, president of the Federation of American Hospitals, which lobbies on behalf of for-profit hospitals. “It’s going to make it difficult to make it work.”

Well, I guess the AMA can go screw themselves now. They had to back the Democrats health care bill before, and what do you know, it’s come back to bite them in the ass. Should have heeded my warning about making a deal with the devil.

The legislation is designed to extend insurance coverage to tens of millions of Americans. It would create new tax subsidies to help low- and middle-income people comply with a mandate to purchase coverage.

It would also bar insurers from engaging in a range of practices, such as denying coverage because of pre-existing conditions, and Senate Democrats were considering adding to those restrictions.

Under discussion among Senate Democrats was a proposal that would require insurance companies to spend no less than 90% of the insurance premiums they take in on health services, effectively limiting how much they can reap in profit. The health bill the House passed last month contains a similar provision, though it sets the minimum at 85%.

Aides cautioned that the accord reached Tuesday could be reopened if the CBO identifies major problems. Moreover, other issues, such as proposals to control the rapid growth of health costs, may still need to be negotiated over the next few days.

But if Mr. Reid has his way, he could begin the process of shutting off debate late this week. That would set the stage for another test on the Senate floor early next week that will demonstrate whether he has 60 votes for the bill. Final passage could come late next week.

via Senators Strike Health Deal – WSJ.com.

The government take over plan is so obvious. Expand, expand and expand the government programs in place. Then restrict, regulate and starve private insurance out of existence. The so called moderates like Joe Lieberman know better. They are just trying to save face when they hand over our liberty.

This bill is going to pass, so I hope we are all ready for it. We can only hold out hope now for public outrage next year to the extent that we elect enough new congress people that will then overturn all these government takeovers. They will need a veto proof majority, which is not going to be easy. Hopefully, insurance premiums adjust quickly and people feel it in their pocketbooks. If insurance premiums reflect the new costs imposed, people will notice it. They will be pissed off, and they will not have the government options until 2013. Hopefully, that will drive enough people to the polls to elect some real politicians who believe in freedom.

If you have not read my previous post, Thanksgiving, Statism and Life Outside the Matrix, you may want to do so first. This will be my first post where I will challenge the assumption of public education, which is what provides us our programming to live within the Matrix.

As I said in my previous post, both sides of the Matrix structure argue about how to best improve public education. One argues for more money. The other argues for more localized control. Neither side questions the existence of government controlled education, the results over the long term, or whether we’d be better off with no government education.

To start, why do statists claim we need a public school system? They claim that all children need an education, and only government can make sure all children regardless of race, class, and gender receive an education. That sounds reasonable, but are the children, especially the poor really getting educated? According to The Daily Beast, 7,200 students drop out every day. In some cities (usually ran by socialists), it’s even worse. In Detroit, only 25% of students graduate. According to CNN, the nationwide dropout rate is 16% or over 6 million students.

Every single school day, more than 7,200 kids, on average, drop out of high school—1.3 million each year. In many American cities, including Miami, Denver, Los Angeles, New York and Minneapolis, most public school students don’t graduate. In Detroit, the unhappy poster child for American industrial decline, a study from last year showed that a mere quarter of students earn high school diplomas.

via America’s Dropout Crisis – Page 1 – The Daily Beast.

Nearly 6.2 million students in the United States between the ages of 16 and 24 in 2007 dropped out of high school, fueling what a report released Tuesday called “a persistent high school dropout crisis.”

The total represents 16 percent of all people in the United States in that age range in 2007. Most of the dropouts were Latino or black, according to a report by the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, and the Alternative Schools Network in Chicago, Illinois.

via ‘High school dropout crisis’ continues in U.S., study says – CNN.com.

As you can see, the groups most affected by the dropout rate are the groups that socialists claim to champion. Students are dropping out left and right, which does not provide them many options for the future. Then again, why worry? We have a “safety net”. You know if you don’t go to school, you can at least live off the government dole. On top of that, you can partake in criminal activity and receive tax free income. “Cash only please for all drug and stolen good purchases”.

“Yeah, OK Prof, but literacy was horrendous.” Well, let’s take a look at the “improving” literacy. As we all know, slaves were systematically prevented from learning to read and becoming educated, so we can’t really count their literacy under slavery. We can look at how quickly they became literate after slavery ended.

Although the black literacy rate soared from 20% in 1850 to nearly 80% in 1890, blacks were still having a difficult time finding work.

via ljonespage4content.

Wow, that’s damn impressive. Black literacy reached 80% in 1890. Well, what is it now? Hmmm, under our socialized, secular government ignorance programs, it stands at about 60%.

Six decades later, at the end of the twentieth century, the National Adult Literacy Survey and the National Assessment of Educational Progress say 40 percent of blacks and 17 percent of whites can’t read at all. Put another way, black illiteracy doubled, white illiteracy quadrupled.

via Intellectual Espionage – John Taylor Gatto.

White literacy was near 100% at the beginning of the 20th century, and as you can see, it is now at about where the formers slaves were in 1890. According to John Quincy Adams, only 4/10ths of 1 percent of New Englanders were illiterate. Also, I think everyone would agree the books that were read back then were much more challenging.  Isn’t progress wonderful?

How about math and science scores? Well, according to international testing, American children are not what they used to be. The bad news is the longer they are in school, the worse they get.

At science and math, American students trail those in other advanced democracies. The longer students are in school, the worse things get. Among fourth graders, U.S. students rank high on the International Test of Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). Despite this head start, by eighth grade, American adolescents have slipped to the midpoint on the TIMSS; by age 17, their scores trail all but those in a few developing countries

via Hoover Institution – Hoover Digest – The Decline and Fall of American Education.

So as you can see, the public schools in our country have failed as all government planned goods and services do. The debate then goes straight to “how do we make them better?” This is the debate that rages inside the statist Matrix. Both sides argue back and forth about how to improve it. The cheerleaders hooray their side and boo the other side, and it’s completely incomprehensible to them that maybe the government should not be forcing people into government schools. All coercive monopolies are bad, and government is a coercive monopoly. If you do not believe so, try to “choose” to keep your children out of government approved schooling. See how long before you go to jail.

What is the solution? Well, let’s start off by agreeing that we should not stick a gun to people’s heads and tell them they are either going to send their children to government schools, or else they will go to jail. Can we agree that is the moral thing to do? I’m sure some will argue that some parents just are too stupid to make sure their kids get educated, so government must stick a gun to your head. The argument goes that because a small group isn’t responsible with their children, the government should stick a gun to everyone’s head and force their kids into public schools. Pro-government school people argue it’s child abuse to not let your child get an education, but then have no problem with the abuse government schools are inflicting on our children at increasing rates as the statistics above show. Let’s not even get into the lunch programs they inflict on children.

Next, let’s let people choose how they want their kids to be educated. If you do not want to send your child to a government school, there is no reason you should have to pay for government schools plus a private school. Do you think this has something to do with why poorer students are worse off? Their parents cannot afford to pay for public and private schools, so they suck it up and send them off the the ignorance factories. You should be able to keep your money. At the very least, you should be able to take your tax dollars to the school of your choice.

Then the government should allow the free market to deliver education options. They should not set standards, because their standards are pretty much useless. They deliver horrible results. Private schools will have to deliver to the parent’s liking, or they will automatically be punished with lost tuition. Government, on the other hand, has no accountability. If you don’t like the results, you still pay for it. If you try not to pay for it, well you know what happens.

Why is it so hard to imagine a world without public schools? It’s hard to imagine because it’s part of your programming. You were brought up in public schooling and taught that you must have public schools. It’s like most of society in the early 1800s, who couldn’t comprehend how former slaves and former slave masters could live in the same society if slavery was abolished.  Instead of admitting it was immoral, abolishing the institution, and letting free men figure their own way out of it, the government legalized slavery every step of the way. They couldn’t see outside the Matrix in which they were living. If the government had not enforced slavery through fugitive slave laws, it’s hard to believe slavery would have lasted long at all. It would have cost plantation owners too much money to chase slaves down when they escaped. They were only able to do so, because government (really the tax payer) ate the cost of chasing them down and returning them. It would have actually been cheaper for plantation owners to hire the slaves or any other workers had they not forced the cost of fugitive slave laws on the society as a whole. What I am saying here is just because you can’t imagine something other than government schools, because you have been programmed to only see it that way, doesn’t mean it’s not possible and better.  When men are free to make choices in their best interest, society progresses more quickly. It is not happenstance that the least regulated areas in our life are all the fast growing and evolving areas, and there is no reason education cannot be the same.

It’s very easy to see how education if unleashed from government shackles could quickly skyrocket in the success it delivers. It’s not hard to envision bountiful options to meet the needs of all children. Does your child excel in math? How about a school that focuses on math, engineering, and computers? Has your child always loved being the center or attention? How about a school that focuses on the arts? Does your child love to fix things and find out how they work? How about a tech school? Do you want your child to focus on reading, writing, and math? How about an elementary school that focuses exclusively on fundamentals? Does your child have special needs? How about a school that specializes in teaching kids with the same needs as your child? Does your child have many interests? How about a school that brings in great teachers from around the country via video conferencing? Better yet, if your child goes to any of the other schools mentioned, how about those schools bringing in the best teachers in their focused area via video? How about sending your child to a school whose competitive advantage is small class sizes? How about a retired NASA scientist being able to teach students without a teaching degree? How about parents, who know their kids best, deciding what school is best for their child. It is not hard to imagine options and schools opening all over the place.

Why would so many schools open? Because there are greedy profiteers out there, and guess what. They have to deliver a quality service in the private sector. According to the 2007 census, the average cost per student in public schools was $9,000. Do you think for one second there wouldn’t be businesses competing for that $9,000 per pupil and driving the cost down? It happens in every other sector of our economy. Well, it does until the government gets jealous and decides to jump into the game.

While I’m sure the diehard statists can never imagine education without Uncle Sam forcing us into a one size fits none system, I hope some of you question your assumptions about our supposed need for public schools. Hopefully, when you hear politicians debating more funding for education, higher national standards, or any other top down school program, you will question it more deeply. You will ask why they would do that in the first place. How does that open up choices? Does not having choices provide better results? Who benefits from this?

Take the Red pill, and ask yourself, “If I could disregard all laws related to education, what would I choose for my child or for myself when I was a child? Would I send them to government schools, or would I send them to schools who must prove themselves in order to get my money?”

PS. Please ignore all spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors. I learned those in public school.

You can pretty much say goodbye to the days of ever increasing advances with the internet. Everyday there are more and more articles about government involvement. Eventually the debate will switch from should they be involved, to which policy is best. Once that happens, you are back to the “head or gut” question.

WASHINGTON — The Federal Communications Commission began to lay the groundwork for a bigger federal role in the broadband business Wednesday, outlining the hurdles the U.S. needs to overcome to improve the availability of high-speed Internet access.

The FCC identified a number of issues the government should address, including the high cost of laying new broadband lines in rural areas, a lack of airwaves for wireless Web access and ill-informed consumers.

“This focus on broadband is a reflection of a recognition that the U.S. is lagging behind,” FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said Wednesday at the agency’s monthly meeting.

The FCC is drafting a National Broadband Plan, which will lay out ways the government can improve broadband service in the U.S. The plan is scheduled to come out in February, and it’s uncertain how many of its suggestions will ultimately be adopted. Already, some big cable and telecommunications companies are concerned the agency wants to impose rules that could undermine their business strategies and profitability.

via Bigger U.S. Role in Broadband Is Likely – WSJ.com.

Why is this such a big damn issue? No one in the public is demanding it. The government is going to tell us why we are lacking broadband?

Notice one issue they claim is the cost of laying new line in rural areas. So the rest of us who live in more populated areas have to pay for someone’s internet who decides to live out in the boonies. That’s just great. More of the majority paying for the minority. Besides, satellite already delivers this, but this is the problem when the government looks at a “problem”. It’s not that they don’t have the ability to get internet, it’s that they don’t have it by means of cables under the ground. You always get a misidentification of the problem (in this case there is no problem) when you have central planning. Satellite used to be fast only on download, and it was still dialup for the upload. Now you have it fast in both directions. This is what is called innovation. But you can’t have that. We all need it by wire.

Next is the lack of airwares for wireless. In this case, just as all cases where the government controls something, you have scarcity created by the government. If the airwaves were owned or handled by the private sector, they would be used for their best use. If people were demanding more airwaves for wireless, then it would happen. Instead politics is entering into it (PBS is not happy about it).

Next, the government falls back to it’s default position. The people are just too stupid to know what’s good for them. The people are too dumb to realize they don’t need 100mbs broadband to every house like Japan has. Who cares if Japan has 100mbs to every house. Are they better off than us overall because of it? Are we harmed by only having 20mbs, when we decide that is all we need at the cost that it’s delivered at? My 93 year old grandma shouldn’t have her phone bill raised when she doesn’t even know what the internet is.

We are told we are lagging behind. This is just like the “keep up with the Jones” mentality of the consumer. It’s not that we truly need 100mbs broad band. It’s that someone else has it. It’s not fair. Didn’t we learn our lesson over the past decade with this mentality? Again, I say, why do we think things are so different at a governmental level than they are on a personal level. If keeping up with the Jones is bad personally, it is bad governmentally.

The government is creating an illusion of lack of supply. If there was more demand and not enough supply, prices of broadband would be increasing. As we all know, broadband is constantly decreasing in prices. Thanks to the free market and technological innovation, supply is increasing faster than demand. When that happens, prices go down, as they have. So, why are we even looking at this? We’ve already established we have more supply than demand. Who is benefiting from this? Could it be some of the big businesses that bought and paid for your politicians? Could it be Big Brother? It sure in the hell isn’t you. You aren’t even demanding it.

This morning on Morning Joe, they had on NBC’s medical expert to discuss the government’s medical panel’s recommendation that women should wait till they’re 50 for mammograms, and then only get them every two years.

So the death panels are not real? This is your death panel. If government controls health care, either this task force or some other central planning board will decide these type of issues based on cost. No panel can be independent when it is funded by the government. Also, their answer has to have a question. What was the question? Who posed the questions, and why? If I tell my wife, we need to cut our coffee budget by $50 a month, she is going to look and say, “well we really don’t need to have a cup of coffee after lunch, so I’d say we only have coffee in the morning going forward. That should reduce our cost.” This is similar to how this is being decided. We only have so much money for health care (thanks to the government), so do we really need to start mammograms at 40? Is the extra cost worth the saved lives? Under government controlled health care, the value of your life will be determined by these boards, or as Sarah Palin correctly called them, death panels.

I love how this lady starts putting down the Susan G. Komen charity.  Apparently, she doesn’t know what freedom is all about. No one is forcing people to donate time and money to this charity. People who have been touched by breast cancer donate to fight breast cancer. This is what real compassion is all about. Of course, that is great until it interferes with government policy. Now, she decides to turn it into greed.

Next, she says, (paraphrasing) “This is rationing. We ration food, sleep, etc.” Yes that is true, but we ration it based on our own personal choices and needs. The government does not force rationing. We decide what foods we want based on the money we have and the need we want to fulfill. This is how the free market works, and why you don’t need a government agency telling you how often you can eat meat (oh this did happen when the government controlled the economy during WWII). Only government creates unnecessary rationing.

When talking about rationing, she says, “Let’s take money to invest in ‘new treatment tools’” OK, this is silly. Treatment only matters if you are identified first, so they don’t do you any good if you aren’t getting tested. Also, who is the government to decide where money should be invested. If there is demand for mammograms by women, then it should be up to the woman and the doctor where that money should be invested. Are we to believe that companies aren’t investing in new technologies when there are so many people touched by breast cancer and so much money flooding into fighting breast cancer? If there is a need, the market will meet it.

But to her, this is “smart health care rationing”. I’m sure the Soviets and the Chinese thought they were doing smart rationing as well when tens of millions died of starvation. The problem is you can’t have a person or group of people who aren’t party to the transaction being the decider of rationing. Rationing is done by consumers and suppliers based on needs and pricing.

You have to love how compassionate she is about it though. It only saves 1 out of 2000 she says.  I guess one person doesn’t count. Joe has a great point. If that’s your relative, you don’t care if it’s only one out of two million. Also, this is voluntary. If it saves only one in 500,000, who cares as long as people want to get mammograms and doctors are willing to provide the service. Oh wait, that’s right. It is against the public good once government takes over health care. Also, what they are saying is confusing. It isn’t one life is saved out of 2000. It is one person is identified out of 2000 to have cancer. That does not sound too bad to me. Hopefully, it will eventually be only one out of 10,000. This has to be one of the most stupid reasons for not having mammograms. “Not enough people have cancer, so we shouldn’t check.” The government doesn’t mind when the poor spends hundreds of dollars per month on the lottery when their chances are one in millions. Oh, but that benefits the government . Never mind.

Then she talks about we don’t scan for these other things till 50 like colon and prostate cancer. So what. Could that be because those don’t normally occur till 50, and because maybe men just aren’t as prudent about things like that?

Next she delves off into the sex and the breast. I have no clue what that has to do with whether it’s worth having mammograms that catch cancer early, so I’ll just skip past it before I start blushing.

As with all media, there is no question as to whether the government should even have a role or say in this. Joe Scarborough says “We’ve been able to afford these fiscally(that means government money) in the past, and we just can’t anymore.” I’m sure glad he’s a Republican. He doesn’t even understand the market and that government is creating this shortage. Nor does he realize this is a free society, and the government should have nothing to do with these decisions.

As with all consumer purchases, this is not the place for the government to be involved. It should be up to a woman and her doctor. If a woman wants to get mammograms at 40 and every year, that should be her perogative. This is what I’ve been saying in all my post. If you ask the government to give you something, you give up your liberty. Ask them to pay for your health care, and you give up your right to have  your mammogram.

So, I wonder what’s next?

An article in the Wall Street Journal discussing jail time if you don’t buy health insurance.

The notion of imprisonment has its origins in the bill’s requirement that most Americans must get health insurance, with the help of government subsidies if necessary, or pay a special income tax of up to 2.5%. If someone refuses to get insurance and refuses to pay the tax, that person would be guilty of tax evasion. Criminal penalties for willful tax evasion, which are pursued in rare cases, include a fine of as much as $250,000 and up to five years in prison for the most egregious cases, Republicans point out.

Rep. Peter Roskam (R., Ill.) said on the House floor that this means the health overhaul comes with handcuffs. “Now, I am not talking about figurative handcuffs,” he added. “If you don’t comply with the individual mandate, what happens to you? You can be subject to five years in prison and you can be subject to a quarter of a million dollars in fines.”

Supporters of the health overhaul say this is a distortion and prosecutors don’t pursue criminal penalties for tax evasion except in drastic cases. “It’s like saying you could be jailed for jaywalking,” said Rep. Robert Andrews (D., N.J.).

via Coverage Mandate Under Fire – WSJ.com.

So there you have it. Don’t worry about jail time. You can rely on the Government to only use it in “drastic cases”. Who decides what’s drastic? Also, just because you don’t get sent to jail doesn’t mean you are free? The IRS would inflict high penalties on you, and ultimately could confiscate your property and your bank account. Oh but don’t worry. You still live in a “free” country.

The Government is responding to who about the supposed lack of broadband? I don’t think I have heard one complaint from anyone about lack of internet access, but supposedly there is a serious injustice going on out there. Luckily for us Captain Government is here to fix it.

WASHINGTON — Federal regulators are considering whether the government should take greater control of the Internet and ask consumers to pay higher phone charges in order to provide all Americans with cheaper access to broadband Internet service.

The Federal Communications Commission Wednesday will lay out the case for expanding broadband Internet service, outlining current obstacles to making it widely available. The agency is considering whether to force Internet providers to share their networks with rivals and raise fees charged on consumer phone bills to pay for the broader access.

The proposals, which have sparked criticism from telecommunications and cable companies, represent a reversal from the Bush Administration, when regulators cut back on government control of Internet and telephone service.The new commission, controlled by Democrats, is considering whether more government control is needed to ensure competition and more affordable Internet service.

via Feds Mull Rules, Fees to Spur Net Access – WSJ.com

I’m pretty sure the free market has done a great job expanding broadband access without government intervention. Not that long ago, I remember having dial up. Then I got cable with 400k download speeds. Then cable gave 1mb, then 2mb, then 6mb, and now Verizon has jumped in, and you can get 20mb for $60/month. Are you telling me competition isn’t working?

Also, because of competition, you have different levels of service to fit your budget. You can get DSL from Verizon for $15 month. Granted, the speed is slower than other plans, but it’s still light years ahead of dialup and fits the needs of many consumers.

So government is going to increase competition by forcing people to pay more for phone service. Does this sound like competition, or does it sound like a tax? Many people don’t even have regular phones anymore. That’s the beauty of the internet. You can ditch your old phone for a free or extremely cheap phone service. So, how is the government going to make those who use something like Skype for their phone pay increased phone rates? Are they going to force you to have a phone service like they are going to force you to have health insurance?

Democrats say that they want more affordable internet service. Are you serious? There are even free dialup services out there now. What they want is everyone to have the same exact service despite what consumers decide they need. This does not help competition, and it sure doesn’t incentivize providers to innovate and consumers to make wise decisions. This will be the beginning of the end for the internet revolution.

Well, one must ask why is the government pushing this if there doesn’t even seem to be a problem? Could it have something to do with controlling you? Maybe the smart grid? The smart grid is just one entry way for the government to step into your house. There will be more. Once everyone has broadband, it will be easy to put new monitoring and control measures in place. Think the government isn’t already spying on your internet usage?

We used to believe in the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We gave up the right to life with abortion. Conscription also says you don’t have a right to your life. While we don’t have it now, there have been talks of it, whether it be a draft or mandatory “National Service”. We gave up the pursuit of happiness, because it’s not fair that your are achieving happiness while someone else isn’t. All along we’ve been giving up liberty.

We’ve replaced those rights, with the right to health care, welfare, education and now broadband. Americans better wake up. We have not cracked the code of building a righteous government, and history has shown how all societys progress from limited governments to tyranny. There is a reason civilizations never last, and we are about to find out why this one won’t either.

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal had a front page article about those with arrest records are finding it increasingly difficult to find a job in the current economy.  It reminded me of a tweet I put out last week, that government’s role in society is to create criminals our of ordinary people.

Aren’t we supposed to be the most compassionate country on earth? How about a little forgive and forget for our fellow man? Let’s start with Wally Camis Jr.

One petitioner is Wally Camis Jr., who wanted to clear the air about the time he threatened two men with a hairbrush.

Mr. Camis was hungry for work amid a divorce last fall. The 41-year-old Air Force veteran, who had worked as a security guard and owned a restaurant, filled out an application for temporary employment in Eugene, Ore., checking a box saying he had never been arrested.

When he followed up a week later, the temp agency told him no thanks — they’d turned up a 1986 conviction. Stunned, Mr. Camis recalled the night the two men threatened him and he pulled a silver brush from his back pocket, saying it was a knife. He called the police, he says, and later pleaded guilty to aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, a misdemeanor. The judge entered a “no judgment” finding and ordered Mr. Camis to pay a $60 fine.

“I thought that was the end of it,” he says.

Instead, 22 years later, Mr. Camis found himself fighting to erase traces of the arrest, joining the growing ranks of Americans who hope that clearing their records of minor crimes will boost their odds in a tough job market. To help, entrepreneurs have set up record-clearing services and local governments have passed laws to speed the expungement process.

So, here is a veteran who served his country being punished because he threatened someone with a hair brush? Are you kidding me? This goes beyond ridiculous, and no one should have to go out of their way to expunge a dumbass ruling in the first place. Oh, how about this next mad man. Surely, he deserves what he has coming.

One Chicago 53-year-old, who has worked for an overnight delivery service and as a bricklayer, is nervous that his record’s sole smudge may come back to haunt him.

In 1974, he says, he was walking down a street near his Chicago home rolling a marijuana cigarette. He was arrested by an undercover police officer and convicted of possession. “That was back in the days when I had hair, and I just said, ‘Forget about it.’ I was like 17 or 18 years old — what did I care?”

His employers never learned of the conviction, he says, nor have his own children. But, hoping to coach high-school basketball when he retires in a few years, he’s working with a Chicago attorney to clear his record. “Nowadays they look for anything so I figured I better take care of this,” he says.

Wow, this guy smoked marijuana when he was 17 or 18. Who knows what he’s liable to do next. I know he’s 53 now, but you never know when those evil ways will return. How about these statistics.

These convictions are increasingly coming to employers’ attention. Background checks have become more commonplace in the years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and cheaper. More than 80% of companies performed such checks in 2006, compared with fewer than 50% in 1998, according to the Society for Human Resource Management, an association of HR professionals.

Millions of Americans are in a similar position. In 1967, 50% of American men had been arrested. Since then, arrests made in connection with domestic violence and illegal drugs have pushed the number to 60%, estimates Alfred Blumstein, a criminologist at Carnegie Mellon University. The annual number of arrests for possession of marijuana more than tripled to 1.8 million from 1980 to 2007, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Holy sh!t. 60% of American men have been arrested, and then they have to worry about the arrest, which I’m guessing a large chunk are frivolous, coming back and preventing them from being productive and contributive members of society. What in the world are our politicians doing? Maybe we need to change our criminal laws to something similar to the points system used for automobiles. If you commit a “crime” (and crime is debatable in some of these instances), you get points. After a certain period of time, those points are erased off your record. Now, I’m not saying all criminals. There are crimes that we can all agree should not be removed. Most of those would be violent crimes, and I don’t mean threatening someone with a hair brush.

I have an even better idea. If you want to really get this worked out, how about anyone who has been arrested cannot serve in the government anywhere. With 60% of men having an arrest record, I’m guessing many of those are politicians, bureacrats, judgets, police, etc. Maybe seeing the stupidity of criminalizing our society, they will be a little more reasonable when branding someone for life as a criminal.

The house version of the healh care reform bill has fines and jail time for those who refuse to buy health care and pay the new fine. Wonder what that 60% of men will go up to?

The truth be told.

The typical argument for ObamaCare is that it will offer better medical care for everyone and cost less to do it, but occasionally a supporter lets the mask slip and reveals the real political motivation. So let’s give credit to John Cassidy, part of the left-wing stable at the New Yorker, who wrote last week on its Web site that “it’s important to be clear about what the reform amounts to.”

Mr. Cassidy is more honest than the politicians whose dishonesty he supports. “The U.S. government is making a costly and open-ended commitment,” he writes. “Let’s not pretend that it isn’t a big deal, or that it will be self-financing, or that it will work out exactly as planned. It won’t. What is really unfolding, I suspect, is the scenario that many conservatives feared. The Obama Administration . . . is creating a new entitlement program, which, once established, will be virtually impossible to rescind.”

Why are they doing it? Because, according to Mr. Cassidy, ObamaCare serves the twin goals of “making the United States a more equitable country” and furthering the Democrats’ “political calculus.” In other words, the purpose is to further redistribute income by putting health care further under government control, and in the process making the middle class more dependent on government. As the party of government, Democrats will benefit over the long run.

This explains why Nancy Pelosi is willing to risk the seats of so many Blue Dog Democrats by forcing such an unpopular bill through Congress on a narrow, partisan vote: You have to break a few eggs to make a permanent welfare state. As Mr. Cassidy concludes, “Putting on my amateur historian’s cap, I might even claim that some subterfuge is historically necessary to get great reforms enacted.”

No wonder many Americans are upset. They know they are being lied to about ObamaCare, and they know they are going to be stuck with the bill.

via John Cassidy on ObamaCare – WSJ.com.

Here’s is a great post about the moronic regulations that move through government, and how they user our lack of trust in others to take away freedoms.

We all want freedom for ourselves, but many people have doubts about the way others might use their own freedom. Under these conditions, the state is there to help. Get enough people to favor enough restriction, and the state is good to go, administering every aspect of life.

Every day presents more cases, but the most recent case is stunning. It turns out that 97% of people polled support a universal ban on texting while driving. Half of those surveyed say that the penalty should be as severe as that for drunk driving. Among these, how many do you suppose do text and drive but don’t want to admit it to a pollster? Probably plenty. And yet I couldn’t find a single online defense of the practice anywhere on the web.

The truth is that it is not necessarily unsafe to text behind the wheel. It all depends on the situation. If you are in a traffic jam, and are late to an appointment, the ability to text can be a lifesaver. Or if there are no cars around, you can do it. On the other hand, it would probably be a mistake to attempt it while doing 80mph around slower traffic.

How can we know the difference between when it is safe and when it is not? The principle applied on American roads is that the driver himself makes that decision. If this principle didn’t make sense, there would be no way that the roads themselves could work.

Think of this the next time you are in a big city, zooming around curves and between lanes along with thousands of others, doing top speeds. Here we have 4000-pound hunks of steel barreling down the road without aids other than a dotted yellow line. These are real-life death machines in which one wrong move could cause a 100-car pileup and mass carnage. We do it anyway.

What’s remarkable is not that there are so many wrecks. The miracle is that it works at all and that, for the most part, people can get to where they want to go. And consider too the demographic behind the car: old, young, abled, disabled, experienced, inexperienced. Some people have a facility for driving and others do not. Some people have spatial agility and others do not.

How does it all work? Don’t tell me that it is due to central planning and the police. The police aren’t driving every car and controlling every wheel (much as they might like to). Our human volition on the road, and the decisions we make that affect other drivers, are nearly 100% our own.

And yet it works, and why? The reason is that it is not in anyone’s interest to get in a crash. It is in everyone’s interest to get to where you are going in one piece, and to do it efficiently. Roll together tens of thousands of people with the same broad goal, and you get spontaneous cooperation. Something that people normally think could not work does in fact work. Looked at from that angle, the orderliness we see on the roads is a general expression of the capacity for human society to work in the context of self-interested individualism.

via The Freedom To Text by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr..