Coming Climax?

As you may already know by now, the Senate has passed both the House version and the Senate version of medical care reform. Such legislation requires no additional comment given the archives of this blog. However, unless I am mistaken, there is still time to defeat this bill. I am not well versed as to the technical details of how the various political offices operate, but from what I have heard the House version and the Senate version must be reconciled and voted on one more time in the Senate before it can go for Presidential signature, so that means the legislation has not really "passed" the Senate yet.

As always, consider writing to you senators: http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

We are running out of time, but there is still a sliver of hope. Rest in the battle now and you could find decades of fighting to be added, or perhaps even an institution that will exist the rest of your life.

Here is what I sent to my senators:

Dear Ms. Stabenow,

Upon reading the list of the few Democrats that have voted against the presently entertained medical care reform legislation I felt betrayed when I did not see your name on that list, meaning you voted in favor of the bill.

To every single one of my messages you have been sending me a mere copy-and-pasted response, leaving unacknowledged my arguments about how this bill is impractical AND immoral. It is impractical because legislation of this type has never and can never succeed in securing general individual physical health and it is immoral because it violates my right to voluntarily contract with others I choose on the terms that I agree to. Practicality and morality lie in freeing man from men, not enslaving men to men.

I will say this one last time: if you do not vote against the medical care reform legislation then I will vote against you in the coming election. I have been following this issue for months and will not forget whether or not my senators were loyal to me. The public may tend to have a selective memory, but I assure you I exert effort to be otherwise.

Regards,

Dear Mr. Levin,

Upon reading the list of the few Democrats that have voted against the presently entertained medical care reform legislation I felt betrayed when I did not see your name on that list, meaning you voted in favor of the bill.

The majority of my e-mails to you have not been given the responses I have requested, leaving unacknowledged my arguments about how this bill is impractical AND immoral. It is impractical because legislation of this type has never and can never succeed in securing general individual physical health and it is immoral because it violates my right to voluntarily contract with others I choose on the terms that I agree to. Practicality and morality lie in freeing man from men, not enslaving men to men.

I will say this one last time: if you do not vote against the medical care reform legislation then I will vote against you in the coming election. I have been following this issue for months and will not forget whether or not my senators were loyal to me. The public may tend to have a selective memory, but I assure you I exert effort to be otherwise.

Regards,

A Trillion Monopoly Dollars

It was no joke when I said incidents for activism would continue to be handed on a golden platter. In less than a month, Obama worries about "too much" government spending, changes his mind, and will now have the opportunity to sign into law yet another trillion dollar spending bill. I said before that his previous spending projects were historical expenses; now it just seems as if though he is trying to make his record unbreakable. The answer is too obvious in whether or not he will sign it.

And, last I have heard, a significant portion of the first spending bill has not even been spent. -- and yet they want to put another trillion on top of that.

It can be quite frustrating to imagine how many years of intense work it took to create the value that backs that money -- and it is all being destroyed within months. While my optimism for long-term cultural change is unaffected, the economic prospects are not good.

Permanent Disclosures for the FTC

Following Ari Armtrong's lead, I fear I too am forced to offer up complete disclosure about my blog, lest I suffer an allegation from the nonobjective rules passed by the FTC.

This will be my permanent disclosure page, meaning I will post a permanent link to this page within my blog layout regarding all my disclosure information for Benpercent and Musing Aloud. If the facts are otherwise; that is, if it is the case I have received a product for review or engage in a financial relationship with an organization, I will edit this page or note the individual exceptions at the beginning of the relevant blog posts.

As of March 2010, I have joined the Amazon Associates program, which compensates me financially if any reader on my site follows an Amazon link and purchases the advertised product.

I am also a participator in Google Adsense -- though I don't know my official active date since I wasn't notified of my application approval -- which financially compensates me when readers click the appropriate advertisements.

This is the extent of my financial relationship with these companies, and that is all I have to say.

"WHAT THE 'AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE FOR AMERICA ACT,' HR 3962, ACTUALLY SAYS"

If you can recall, Professor John Davis Lewis took it upon himself a few months ago to read the language of the legislation HR 3200 and post an analysis that isolated key aspects of the bill and translated into layman terms the technical passages. Well, he has taken the task upon himself again in analyzing the language of HR 3962 in the same format as before. He answers these key questions:

1. Will the plan punish Americans who do not carry the required
insurance, or employers who do not provide it?
2. Will the plan make private insurance illegal?
3. Will the plan ration medical care through budgets?
4. Will the plan ration care through waiting lists?
5. Will the plan impose special, higher taxes on Americans who earn
more than others?
6. Will the plan levy special taxes and surcharges on medical devices?
7. How will the plan affect health insurance provided by employers?
8. Does the plan allow the government to set fees?
9. Can the government officials audit taxpayers, employers, and
insurance plans to enforce compliance?
10. What limits are set to the powers of government officials?

This is a critically important article that deserves to be sent far and wide, for the extravagant length and technical difficulty involved in reading the bill is certainly far too much for most people to undertake, including myself. See for yourself, and make known to others, how the preceding questions are confirmed or denied by the actual words of the bill.

Another Successful Reality Evasion Maneuver by Pilot Obama

Two posts ago I noted the irony of Barack Obama being concerned about excessive government spending damaging the economy after he had already participated in not merely record, but historical levels of government spending and intervention into industries. Well, it turns out he changed his mind and is no longer worried:

President Barack Obama outlined new multibillion-dollar stimulus and jobs proposals Tuesday, saying the nation must continue to "spend our way out of this recession" until more Americans are back at work.

After being concerned about too much spending he now wants more spending since he thinks the last round was not enough? Make up your mind!

"We avoided the depression many feared," Obama said in a speech at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. But, he added, "Our work is far from done."

Actually, no one is at liberty today to say whether or not America has avoided a depression since the concept is not precisely defined; that is, it has not been given strict standards that give us the precise measurements that would determine when a depression is officially present. As of right now the concept is merely a vague approximation used to describe an economic situation that is more intense than a recession, though exactly how much more intense is what is unknown. For what we know we could be in a depression right now but not really aware of it since our present standard of living does not give away to national suffering so quickly.

A major part of his package is new incentives for small businesses, which account for two-thirds of the nation's work force. He proposed a new tax cut for small businesses that hire in 2010 and an elimination for one year of the capital gains tax on profits from small-business investments.

Tax cuts that will amount to nothing given Obama's proposed spending. For every dollar the government spends that is one fewer dollar for a private citizen to spend. Since rising taxes would be far too obviously hypocritical on Obama's part, I predict that he will resort to printing money, and, of course, printing money amounts to a hidden tax since it devalues/confiscates the value of the money of private citizens. The ridiculous episode of hyperinflation in Zimbabwe, for instance, has made it so that one-hundred-trillion Zimbabwean dollars ($100,000,000,000,000) is only valued as equivalent to ten U.S. dollars ($10).

Obama also proposed an elimination of fees on loans to small businesses, coupled with federal guarantees of those loans through the end of next year.

Which will do further damage. Elimination of fees on loans will make loans unprofitable and thus unbeneficial from the investor's perspective, and the federal guarantees will only exacerbate the problem by making it almost certain that loan companies will have to suffer loan defaults and thereby risk going out of business. Remember the Community Reinvestment Act, which caused the financial crisis in the first place?

I could go on analyzing this article, but it becomes depressing to think not only are economic mistakes continue to be made and are continuing to harm the economy, but that our politicians are making precisely the same mistakes down to the last detail. It should become quite apparent now that, despite his impressive education, Obama is an intellectual and philosophical mess.

Economic recovery is very much longed for, but it seems we must bear the difficulties for a while longer yet.