Let's Fix Health Care!

Of course, before we can fix it, we need to know what's wrong with it. The primary complaint seems to be that medical care is outrageously expensive. Can the federal government do anything about that? Actually, the federal government is doing something about it, and that's the problem.

Pardon a digression, but when I was an engineering student, we used punched cards and were billed for computer time. I asked one of my profs, who had been director of the university's computing center, whether the billing was just funny money. He explained that the university was paying for its computer with sponsored research funds, and that the federal government will not pay a discriminatory rate. So undergraduates' computer time did cost the university real money.

What's this got to do with health care? Well, Medicare and Medicaid pay for some people's health care, but pay the providers pretty much whatever they want. The one thing that providers can't do is to bill you and me less than they bill Uncle Sugar for the same service. For example, my mother-in-law, who's on Medicare, was recently hospitalized. One of her doctors billed Medicare $300 each for multiple "examinations" conducted in the middle of the night while my mother-in-law was asleep. Ignoring the obvious violation of ethics, it should be apparent that this particular doctor, and all other doctors in the area, must be billing all their patients (on Medicare or not) $300 for every examination. The feds won't let them gouge Medicare without gouging you and me alike.

There are two solutions to this problem, which are the same as the two solutions to the fundamental problem of economics. Either we can revert to a free market, in which people pay for their own medical care, or we can adopt a full-blown Stalinist system, in which the government pays for all health care but also controls the providers' compensation. Personally, I prefer the free market, and it's not just a matter of taste.

The example of eastern Europe should have taught us that socialism simply doesn't work. Any government interventions in the health care market are unconstitutional, and there's a good reason for that. A government that can manage your health care can also manage every other aspect of your life. It can tell you what to eat and drink. It can tell you whether you're allowed to marry, and if so, whom to marry. It can tell you whether you'll be allowed to have children, and if so, how many. Obviously, it will need to manage your finances as well.

Regrettably, the American sheeple foolishly believe that they can retain some semblance of freedom under a paternalistic government that provides all their needs. For the foreseeable future, we'll probably continue to get the government that they deserve.

Observations of an Ice Cream Social

Being unable to find any honest work, I'm employed by a government contractor. The contract I'm on is big enough to have its own Diversity and Inclusion Council. Recently, the Diversity and Inclusion Council held an ice cream social in a conference room painfully close to my tiny cubicle.

Most people, rather than hang around and enjoy all the diversity and inclusion, seemed to just snag their half pint of "free" ice cream and go back to whatever they'd been doing. I myself did not partake, but was unable to avoid hearing that the Diversity and Inclusion Council was serving only vanilla ice cream. One might have expected tutti frutti, or at least Neapolitan. Apparently, diversity and inclusion have their limits.

Some individuals complained that there was no chocolate ice cream. Clearly, these folks just weren't thinking. Does anyone really expect free choice from an outfit styling itself a Diversity and Inclusion Council?

Walking by the conference room, I noticed the photos of the council members on a projector screen. Most seemed to be South Asian. The irony is that they're the least genetically diverse people on the planet, having married their first cousins for the last forty or fifty thousand years. My own ancestors came to America from three European countries, all of which have prohibited consanguineous marriage for at least a thousand years.

It was just another day in PC America.

Sailer Strategy?

Recent VDARE.com articles by Steve Sailer and Allan Wall tell us that the Republican Party can win by applying the Sailer Strategy, i.e., by raising its fraction of the white vote minimally [rather] than by somehow grabbing vastly higher fractions of the minority vote. Apparently, the GOP would accomplish this by becoming the party that welcomes the chance to defend the interests of what will remain the majority of the electorate well into the second half of the century. These assertions beg one question and raise a few others.

Sailer assumes that white Americans have common interests to which the GOP can appeal. Indeed, any white American with sense enough to tie his own shoes should oppose mass immigration (legal and illegal), affirmative action, HUD Section 8 housing, reparations, other income transfer programs that benefit non-whites disproportionately at their expense, and "gun control" laws that disarm law-abiding whites only to leave them at the mercy of non-white criminals. According to the New York Times, however, 43% of white voters helped elect a president who identifies with a hostile minority whose members believe that whites owe them, and who supports most everything that whites should oppose. Quite a few white Americans, it seems, have somehow failed to notice that we have common interests.

Even assuming, for the sake of argument, that a sufficient number of white Americans would support a party that supports them, why would anyone expect that party to be the GOP? You have ten seconds to name one significant bit of leftist legislation that the GOP has repealed. Time's up! You probably thought of the 1996 welfare reform, which was a joke. Welfare spending continued to increase monotonically. White taxpayers still suffer under Woodrow Wilson's income tax, FDR's Social Security and income tax withholding, LBJ's Great Society and "Civil Rights" legislation, and the CRA, which caused our present economic disaster.

Has the GOP ever done anything for the white American majority? No, but it has actively worked against the interests of white Americans. It has promoted various amnesties for illegal aliens. In 2003, the GOP created the Medicare prescription drug program, which even leftists describe as the "largest increase in entitlement spending in history." It should be obvious that beggaring our own grandchildren, while non-whites continue to proliferate at government expense, is not a good way to maintain a white American majority.

Even assuming that the GOP or some other party might act in the interests of white Americans, openly or otherwise, could such a party hope for political victory, given the bashing it would receive in our leftist, anti-white press? Are white Americans sufficiently intelligent to know that the "news media" are biased against their interests, and therefore ignore the name-calling? See the second paragraph above.

In my humble opinion, the time when white Americans could take their country back through peaceful political means is past. The Sailer Strategy is D.O.A.

Is It Because He's (Sort of) Black?

On rare occasions, an event occurs that shatters all one's illusions. Just such an event has destroyed my fond illusions about America. No, I'm not talking the election of our first mulatto president. Well, not entirely, anyway.

I've long known that universal suffrage would lead to this sort of trouble. The only reason that we Americans have enjoyed relative political stability for so long is that we didn't have a democracy. For much of our history, the franchise was limited to taxpayers and property owners. In the middle 1960s, however, during our "Civil Rights Revolution," we extended the franchise to every bozo who could find his way to the polls, and to a lot of bozos who couldn't.

So it's hardly surprising that a majority of American voters could have thought they were voting for change when they were only voting for more socialism. We've had a socialist government since 1933. Restoring free markets and the Constitution would be real change, but don't hold your breath waiting for it. Those who voted for Barry the Bolshevik will be very unpleasantly surprised when they behold the changes he'll make.

It's hardly surprising that a stock market crash led many to vote against the incumbent party. If only they had read "Planting the Seeds of Disaster" by Stanley Kurtz, they would have understood that their candidate had more of a hand in causing the crash than any Republican. Of course, someone would have had to sit them down and teach them to read. Those who voted for Barry the Bolshevik will be very unpleasantly surprised when (if?) they notice that his policies only prolong the depression.

It's hardly surprising that a large percentage of white voters would hand over the reins of government to a man who identifies with a hostile minority on the basis of a silly one word slogan. Dare I mention that this particular minority has failed to assimilate fully into American life in four hundred years, and that its members think that we owe them? Wage earners who voted for Barry the Bolshevik will be very unpleasantly surprised when they look at their pay stubs in 2010.

The event I mentioned, however, is not the election of the abominable Barack Hussein Obama to the presidency of a formerly great republic. It's that I can't find any Obama rifle targets. I'm going to the range a week from Sunday, and being one of those annoying white boys afflicted with that "future time orientation" thing, I've naturally started looking for some targets with BHO's image on them. None seems to be available.

Back in the 90s, targets with images of Clinton, both of them, were available. I enjoyed using them. Didn't you? I did find a pointer to an eBay ad for an Obama urinal target, but it was taken down before I could buy any. What sort of effeminate, PC, kumbaya cesspit has America become in the last decade, anyway?

Or is it because Obama is (sort of) black?

Why ICE?

Joe Guzzardi has recently published, on VDARE.com, a column entitled "Our Friend Michael Chertoff?" Mr. Guzzardi finds it encouraging that the Department of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs Enforcement division is expected to arrest about 30,000 illegal aliens this year. He goes so far as to say, "I tip my hat to Chertoff." Let's step back and look at this.

Personally, I find it rather discouraging to read in Mr. Guzzardi's column that ICE has field office managers named Nuria Prendes and Michael Rozos, rather than, say, Norman Preston and Michael Robinson. I suppose that the Hispanic domination of ICE stems from the foolish notion that it's necessary to speak to illegal aliens in Spanish when, really, the SIG P229 and M-16 speak a universal language. Hiring barbarians to police the borders did not work well for the Romans, and will not work well for us.

It's hard to work up any enthusiasm for the pitifully low ICE arrest rate. According to FAIR, illegal aliens give birth to 425,000 children each year. Merely to hold the reconquista to a stalemate, ICE would need to remove (not just arrest, but remove) 425,000 illegal aliens annually. Thirty thousand or so arrests (blithely assuming that every arrest leads to an actual deportation) amount to only 7% of the necessary annual minimum.

I know that I'm one of those annoying people who tend to see the glass as half empty rather than half full. In this case, however, anyone can easily see that the glass is at least 93% empty. One might be forgiven for believing that ICE exists not to stop illegal immigration, but to lull the American sheeple into a false sense of security.

So why bother to finance an agency that makes such a poor pretense of doing its job? As we enter World Depression II, we'll find fewer and fewer people wanting to sneak into the country anyway. We can find better uses for our tax dollars.

A Unique Opportunity

The Washington Post claims that Barack Hussein Obama has a lock on 311 electoral votes. Naturally, one expects the leftist press to predict the result it seeks, if only to discourage the opposition. But what if, just this once, they're not lying?

This is important because, just for the moment, any of us who still has money in a 401(k) plan may withdraw whatever part hasn't already vanished and keep 55% of it. The top tax rate is still only 35%. With a 10% early withdrawal penalty, that leaves you 55% net after taxes, if you get the money out before November 4.

Why November 4? To beat the run, of course. We can expect a run on 401(k) plans after President Obama's election. Many of the institutions that handle these plans might well become insolvent. If you don't withdraw your money before the election, you might never see a penny of it.

Why expect a run? We've all heard presidential candidate Obama say that he'll cut taxes for the "middle class" and soak the rich. (How many times have we heard that before?) You know as well as I do that street beggars and crack whores are Obama's primary constituencies. To support those folks in the style to which they'd like to become accustomed, President Obama will increase taxes and inflate the money supply. You might not think yourself rich enough to pay for Obama's social programs, but he does.

Obviously, it makes no sense to save money if the government is certain to devalue it, and no sense to defer taxes if the government ratchets tax rates upward. Faced with an economic disaster and presidential candidate who's already being compared to Franklin Delano Roosevelt (God save us!), anyone who still has money in a tax-deferred plan, and sufficient intelligence to tie his own shoes, will want to withdraw the money while he can still keep some small fraction of it.

More than Odious

One of my pet peeves is that our leftist press, when reporting on a piece of federal legislation, never report the bill number. Given the bill number, any of us could locate the text of the bill on the Thomas site, and read it for himself. Obviously, the press would prefer that we just take whatever drivel they give us a gospel.

Amazingly, however, the bill number of the infamous "bailout bill" may be found on the web site of the House of Representatives. There you'll find a link to the "Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (H.R.1424)." Following on through "Text of Legislation," you can eventually get the text of the bill in PDF.

It's 442 pages, so obviously, I haven't read the whole thing. (Neither has any member of Congress.) It does indeed give the Secretary of the Treasury $700 billion to buy "troubled assets," which is to say, mortgage backed securities that no private investor in his right mind would touch with a ten-foot pole, at the Secretary's discretion. But the really outrageous aspect of the bill is right at its front end.

You might remeber that we once operated under a Constitution. Article I, Section 7 of that Constitution says, "All bills for raising revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but the Senate may propose or concur with amendments as on other Bills." Section 102 of the bill empowers the Secretary to sell insurance on mortgage backed securities of dubious value, and provides for the collection of premiums. So the bill does raise revenue, even if it is a whole lot less than it spends. Title III of the bill also contains tax provisions. So how is it that this bill has been passed by the Senate but not the House?

Actually, the bill did originate in the House, but had an entirely different topic. The Senate then "amended" the bill into a monstrosity that bears almost no resemblance to the original. So the bill is more than unjust. (Rewarding people who committed systematic fraud, but somehow managed to go broke anyway, seems unjust to me. How about you?) It's more than odious. It's unconstitutional.

Danger Will Robinson! Communists Approaching!

I couldn't believe my ears when I heard Joe Biden say, during last night's debate,

"Number two, with regard to bankruptcy now, Gwen, what we should be doing now -- and Barack Obama and I support it -- we should be allowing bankruptcy courts to be able to re-adjust not just the interest rate you're paying on your mortgage to be able to stay in your home, but be able to adjust the principal that you owe, the principal that you owe."

"That would keep people in their homes, actually help banks by keeping it from going under. But John McCain, as I understand it -- I'm not sure of this, but I believe John McCain and the governor don't support that."

I believe that Biden misspoke when he implied that bankruptcy courts can lower the interest rate of a mortgage. One’s house and land are pledged as security, or collateral, for a mortgage. If the mortgagor (they guy who bought the house with borrowed money) doesn’t pay, the mortgagee (the outfit that lent the money to buy the house) may foreclose and take possession. I’m not a lawyer, but to my knowledge, bankruptcy courts cannot alter the terms of a mortgage in any way.

Just to make sure that this was an official campaign position, rather than just another gaffe, I checked the Obama/Biden web site. Sure enough, I found the following:

"Close Bankruptcy Loophole for Mortgage Companies: Obama and Biden will work to eliminate the provision that prevents bankruptcy courts from modifying an individual's mortgage payments. They believe that the subprime mortgage industry, which has engaged in dangerous and sometimes unscrupulous business practices, should not be shielded by outdated federal law."

Obviously, Biden is wrong in stating that such a measure would keep people in their homes. If any bozo could get his principal decreased just by being a deadbeat, then no one would ever make another mortgage loan. Effectively, this would abolish private home ownership in America, and put most of us into government housing. By the way, for those of us who've been paying our mortgages, it would destroy the market for single family homes and decrease the value of our homes to approximately the value of a CDO owned by Fannie Mae. Obama and Biden, as good communists, would very much like to do both of those things.

So I guess I'll have to hold my nose and vote for McCain and Palin. It's the only way to be certain that these brain-dead communists don't destroy everything I've worked for.