http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=67

In her history of the Great Depression, Amity Shlaes recalls a speech delivered by Yale professor William Graham Sumner in the winter of 1883. Sumner said, "As soon as A observes something which seems to him to be wrong, from which X is suffering, A talks it over with B, and A and B then propose to get a law passed to remedy the evil and help X. Their law always proposes to determine what C shall do for X or, in the better case, what A, B and C shall do for X." Sumner called C, the man coerced into action on the part of X, the "Forgotten Man."

A half-century later, New York Gov. Franklin Roosevelt, in the first national radio address of his presidential campaign, again invoked the Forgotten Man. Roosevelt said, "These unhappy times call for the building of plans that rest upon the forgotten," plans "that put their faith once more in the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid." This Forgotten Man was X, not C -- the recipient of government support, not the provider.

C has continued to be forgotten in the years since 1932, and is now more forgotten than ever. Marking his 100th day in office, President Obama briefly recalled the Cs of America, calling them the "folks waving tea bags around." That's more than they got on April 15, when the White House said Obama was "unaware" of anti-spending demonstrations across the nation.

While thankfully Obama's 100 days fell short of the FDR mark, he was strikingly effective in pushing through a radical agenda in a very short period of time. A $787 billion stimulus package and an appropriations bill pockmarked with some 8,000 earmarks were just the appetizer before a $3.55 trillion budget for the 2010 fiscal year was pushed through on Day 100. The cumulative national debt is expected to hit 14 digits by the end of the next decade.

But it is not just spending, no matter how spectacular, that made Obama's first months in office so significant. In March, Obama said, "Because these are no ordinary times, I don't just view this budget document as numbers on a page or a laundry list of programs. I see it as an economic blueprint for our future." The White House has set the course for a planned economy. He essentially fired the CEO of General Motors -- without consulting major shareholders -- and has played a central role in moving Chrysler into bankruptcy. (This puts a new spin on former GM president Charles Erwin Wilson's adage that "what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa.")

The Federal Reserve and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation have doled out the equivalent of the entire federal budget for 2007 -- and have no obligation to say where the money went. The massive government intervention into the health care sector -- which makes up 17 percent of the U.S. economy -- is likely to be squeezed through via parliamentary procedure. Deficit spending is expected to amount to four percent of the gross domestic product for at least the next decade. While on the same day he spoke of a "blueprint" Obama also said he would "welcome and encourage proposals and improvements from both Democrats and Republicans," his words behind closed doors tell a different story. During his first week in office, he told Republican members of Congress that he would call the shots on spending because, "I won." After liberal Democratic Rep. Peter DeFazio voted against the stimulus bill, the President reportedly warned him, "Don't think we're not keeping score, brother."

As the Wall Street Journal wrote on Day 100, Obama wants to "make the federal government the guarantor of middle-class security. He wants to make a college education a new entitlement, regardless of the cost. He wants state-financed health-care available to all, even if it means jamming a $1 trillion bill through the Senate with 51 votes. And he wants a cap-and-trade tax that would punish the main current sources of U.S. energy and hand Washington a vast new source of revenue. Oh, and by the way, he also wants to fix the financial system, run the auto industry, and build a nationwide, high-speed rail network. And on the seventh day, he rested."

This may be what A and B -- or in this case O -- want to do for X, but what about C? At some point, someone will have to pay for all of this -- and then the "Forgotten Man" will quickly be remembered.

By Jeffrey Braddock

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=52

In the wake of the environmental crisis, government intervention is the buzzword on most citizens lips. I shall show the concerned citizen that intervention leads not only toward inefficiency, but reduced benefit, and inevitably, a monopoly.

I will begin with a definition of externalities. Recall that an externality is any cost or benefit of a transaction that affects parties not involved in a transaction. Thus, a restaurant sells food and the consumer eats, but the carbon dioxide emitted by the kitchen's stove is not directly involved in the transaction, and thus an externality. Welfare economists use different methods to measure the benefits or costs in terms of "society's welfare." That these words are meaningless shall not be addressed here.[1] Example of intervention in an externality: The EPA decides the pollution emitted by factories must be reduced. The EPA may set a level for emissions, collect Pigovian taxes, or issue tradable pollution permits in order to meet these goals. There are other methods, but these three are extremely popular.

Let us now alter the three EPA methods to read properly: "exclusive right to pollute to level X" (emissions standard), a "pollution trading oligopoly" (tradable pollution permits), or a "pollution tax" (Pigovian taxes). These impositions on firms lead toward the same end -- monopoly. Why is this so? Practically any measure forced on employers results in higher costs of production and therefore a change in the conditions of competition.[2] Thus foreign producers can compete with US firms under more favorable conditions, both at home and abroad. Consider: if a firm cannot pollute above level X (without punitive taxes), or a pollution tax is leveled on the firm, it will either end production, lobby extensively to achieve a higher pollution standard, or relocate to a place where it can pollute without regard. The consequence is such that firms which can successfully lobby for exemptions will remain in country, while those that cannot will either move abroad or close down. The pollution problem appears settled -- but that only hides the true state of affairs. Pollution has merely shifted abroad[3], while higher domestic prices and increased unemployment result from the monopoly. The accrued "social benefit" is eroded by the depressed standard of living, resulting in no change save a perceptible shift in public opinion toward protectionism.[4]

Now, if the government is given exclusive right to create/distribute permits (or levy politically-expedient taxes with impunity), what would prevent the government from distributing (or rescinding) those permits (taxes) to (from) "essential industries", "exclusive enterprises", or "very important financial donors?" What are the implications of a transfer of wealth from the consumer and private industry (who bear the total cost of the excise) to the government? I leave these issues for you to consider. Finally, I offer a solution to the pollution issue. Allow private entrepreneurs to seek private financing, experiment, and then market "green"[5] technologies as cost-reducing measures. Many will fail -- some will succeed. But there will be no monopolies. "Monopoly," as Ludwig von Mises wrote, "is not inherent to the capitalist system or the result of unhampered capitalism, as most socialists would have us believe, but rather the result of government policies aiming at the reform of the market economy."[6]


[1] An extremely good account of the changes in language can be found in Hayek, F.A.'s The Road to Serfdom (1944), pg 106-119.
[2] Ludwig Von Mises, Omnipotent Government: The rise of the total state and total war. 1944 [3] Christopher L.Weber* and H. Scott Matthews. "Embodied Environmental Emissions in U.S. International Trade, 1997-2004." Environmental Science Technology, 41 (2007), pg 4875-4881.
[4]Literally, more government intervention to protect US jobs from foreign competition.
[5] I use this word for expediency, disregarding the didactical issues associated with its use.
[6] Ludwig Von Mises, Omnipotent Government: The rise of the total state and total war. 1944

By Siobhan Reynolds

We keep hearing about how the War on Drugs has failed. But the truth is, the War on Drugs has been tremendously successful, that is if you wanted your country to be a police state, your Congress completely unresponsive to the needs of the people, and your doctors letting you and your loved ones live and die in unnecessary pain.

The marijuana activists have made a lot of progress toward marijuana legalization and overall, that is a positive development. What isn't positive is that they have done so, at least in part, by covering up the crackdown on medical pain management that has been going on full tilt since 2001. Veterans, cancer patients, people who have been unfortunate in any number of ways (and I am talking here about millions of Americans) have been unable to get pain medications that are supposed to be legal, but which, in reality, are only "semi-legal" -- drugs whose legality can be withdrawn by law enforcement whenever the DEA decides that this or that doctor isn't controlling his patients sufficiently.

This has meant that while no one was looking, our most vulnerable citizens, those in crushing chronic pain, have been denied pain care and allowed to die abandoned by us all.

The Controlled Substances Act makes it a crime to buy or sell controlled substances except as authorized by the Attorney General of the United States. When the act was passed in the early 1970's doctors were told that possession of a medical license and the issuance of a DEA certificate would automatically exempt them from prosecution -- in other words, if a doctor was acting as a doctor, he or she would be safe. Shortly thereafter the Department of Justice included some language in the Code of Federal Regulations that changed the terms of the deal. A doctor had to write such prescriptions not only in "the course of professional practice" but with a "legitimate medical purpose." Now the coast was clear for the USDOJ to criminalize any physician whose practice of pain medicine didn't meet with a single prosecutor's notions of how medicine ought to be practiced.

When then Attorney General John Ashcroft went into the state of Oregon and attempted to defeat the state's assisted suicide law by declaring the practice of assisted suicide "illegitimate," the ruse was exposed. It was US government attorneys themselves who in court documents acknowledged that they had been prosecuting pain treating physicians on what amounted to medical disagreements. District Judge Jones scolded the government and later the United States Supreme Court forcefully clarified that the act only criminalized physician conduct that was drug dealing as "conventionally understood." But the Feds were undeterred. In direct defiance of the Supreme Court, the Department of Justice continued its crackdown on medical pain management, prosecuting some 400 physicians since 2003. Many of these doctors are serving decades -- long prison sentences, having been found guilty of writing "illegitimate prescriptions" by lay juries. How does a jury come to conclude that a prescription was illegitimate? Patients looking for reductions in their sentences testify that they exaggerated their pain to the doctor, and, too, the government brings in one of several hired gun "expert witnesses" to testify that the doctor "should have known" the patients were abusing the medications, based on the presence of certain "red flags" that the "expert" says should have been a clear warning to the doctor that the patient should have been cut off his medications. Sound to you like witch trials? That is exactly what they are.

Recently, the FDA got into the act and withdrew some 13 pain medicines from the market. Those few patients who had been getting by were now told by pharmacists that they would not be able to fill their prescriptions. Shockingly, academic medicine, funded by government grants, has nothing to say in the face of these outrages. Moreover, the mainstream press such as the New York Times and the Associated Press continue to trumpet the government's press strategy -- portraying actions taken against sick people as responsive to an utterly undemonstrated "health crisis" of prescription drug overdoses. Time and again, stories about what's actually happening to the patients are buried by editors.

The political consequences of this latest crackdown are almost as grim. The Federal government has managed to completely subvert the regulation of medicine in the states, as concerns the management of pain, turning medical boards into kangaroo courts where doctors who mistakenly thought their job was to heal the sick and relieve suffering, get their medical licenses summarily taken away on the DEA's say so.

Patients are afraid to speak out, lest they lose the medicine that keeps them working. Physicians are counseled by white collar attorneys to put their heads down and take a plea deal. And all of us are being registered with pharmacy computers so that those who take any controlled substances -- or in the latest insanity, even cold medicines -- are being monitored by the government. And the abuses proliferate.

The War on Terror was not the first overblown fear campaign that was used to destroy our liberties. The War on Drugs and the nearly one hundred year old Federal campaign against us all, called "drug prohibition," pioneered the tactics that many people now view as transparently authoritarian. Once you come to understand that "drug control" was never intended to control drugs, but rather to create a pretext for the Federal control of citizens, you come to see that the "War's" goals have been met. . . and then some.


Copyright © 2009 Campaign for Liberty

by Robert Murphy

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=42

For those of us who consider it our duty or even our career to defend traditional liberties from ever-growing government, I would like us to reflect a moment on what just happened in the last 8 months. In the global battle of ideas over the proper size of the State, the American libertarians just lost the capital city.

Some cynics might argue that our times are nothing new, and that Washington, D.C. had been captured by collectivist ideas long ago. In a sense, that is true. And yet I think it is an ominous sign when European politicians balk at the massive "stimulus" spending proposed by the American government.

Besides the massive increase in debt, the government's response to this financial crisis has been qualitatively different from previous recessions. To take just one example, the Federal Reserve chairman has demonstrated that he has the ability to grant literally trillions of dollars to any businesses he chooses. Congress was so befuddled, it couldn't even get Bernanke to tell them who the recipients of the money were.

I should also mention that having worked a lot on global warming issues, I am perhaps qualified to say that most American libertarians are underrating the significant increase in power that "cap and trade" legislation will give to DC bureaucrats. Anyone wishing to ruin a perfectly pleasant Saturday afternoon can try flipping through the 648-page "discussion draft" of the newly-released Waxman-Markey "The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009." Among other things, the bill gives the Executive Branch incredible discretion in determining which businesses are eligible for free allowances of carbon permits. It also apparently gives the Executive Branch to the power limit imports of certain goods, so long as it is produced in a country that has inadequate carbon limitations.

Last bit of evidence: The president of the United States recently discussed his views on car warranties. Why? Oh, because the U.S. government is now in the business of making cars. I'm pretty sure that was not on the American libertarians' List of Possible Concessions. And let's not forget the AIG bonus brouhaha, where several dozen very unpopular rich people were publicly robbed.

It gets worse. Not only is the government poised on becoming possibly more powerful than it was even during the New Deal, but the whole crisis leading us to this point has been successfully pinned on "deregulation." In a sense, the two necessarily go hand-in-hand: The only way the government can expand to fill the crisis is to first convince the public that it wasn't the government's fault.

Now we've reached the terrible conclusion: If only the American libertarians had done their job -- and I'm especially including all of us (yes me too) who work for liberty-oriented think tanks -- then we might have been able to avert this catastrophe.

So a moment's reflection is in order. I don't know exactly what went wrong. In many respects, "we were winning." The organizations with whom I am affiliated were all growing, spreading the word to more and more people. It seemed that as long as there weren't another terrorist attack, we might have gradually gained more and more influence in the media and academia.

Well so much for that plan.

I am not pointing fingers, and I don't even have any solutions. In fact, even if I did think I knew exactly where we went wrong, and how we should redeploy our various talents, time, and money, I wouldn't put it in this article. My point isn't to give marching orders, but just to make the announcement: Fellas (and ladies), we really screwed up.

In closing, let me offer a glimmer of hope. One amazing thing that we haven't had time to savor is the incredible collapse in the prestige of the Federal Reserve. A few years ago, if you had told me there would be Wall Street Journal symposium on whether Alan Greenspan's boneheaded moves had caused a worldwide recession, I would have been elated. And I would have thought it too good to be true if, out of the six participants, only two defended Greenspan, and that even one of the Greenspan apologists said in his article that the Fed should be abolished.

So there is hope. For those of us who think the Federal Reserve is one of the primary threats to private property, we now have two items to examine: How did we give up so much ground in the struggle for liberty, and how did we so quickly turn the tables on the media treatment of the Fed?


Copyright © 2009 Campaign for Liberty

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=42

By James Bovard

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=36

The computerization of personal health care records is one of the showcases of the stimulus. President Obama promised: "We will make the immediate investments necessary to ensure that within five years all of America's medical records are computerized." Congress ponied up $19 billion to subsidize doctors and hospitals computerizing patient record and creating electronic health care tracking systems.

The ultimate goal of the Obama program is "the utilization of a certified electronic health record for each person in the United States by 2014," as the stimulus legislation states. But having a massive electronic database will make it far easier for the government to coerce both doctors and patients. This is a peril as bad as or worse than the Patriot Act.

At this point, less than 20% of the nation's physicians have gone full speed on computerization. Obama's plan offers grants of between $40,000 and $65,000 to doctors' offices who computerize patient records, and up to a million dollars per hospital. But if health records are digitized on the federal dime, it will be far easier for politicians to claim the resulting information.

While the Obama administration is showing the smiley face now, its plan calls for federal penalties for doctors who have not computerized their records by the year 2014.

One of the goals for the new federally subsidized computers is to create systems able "to exchange electronic health information with, and integrate such information from other sources." This is a huge step towards a national database.

Team Obama and their congressional supporters promise that the government will scrupulously respect the privacy of the newly-computerized private medical data. This is reminiscent of President George Bush's 2004 false promise that no American was being wiretapped without a warrant.

The feds have an appalling record for protecting the confidentiality of veterans' health care records. The issue is not whether the personal health information government commandeers will be abused. Instead, it is simply a question of when, where and how it will be exploited.

Medical data does not simply track the number of times a person went to their doctor seeking a cure for a runny nose or stubbed toe. Medical records could include details on long-ago abortions, impotence or sexually transmitted diseases, anti-depressants and details of breakdowns, or HIV Positive status.

Access to personal mental health records makes it easier to exploit someone's vulnerabilities. Psychologists were brought to Guantanamo to exploit the weaknesses of detainees for interrogations. The same peril could be faced by the millions of Americans who received psychological treatment if their records are fed into centralized databases.

When a policeman pulls you over for a speeding ticket, he could quickly access a database with your health records -- including any therapy. Even before he walked up to your car window and demanded your identification, he would know if you had a "problem with authority."

What if the IRS agent who audits you knows all of your secret fears, as disclosed to a therapist years ago? Would you trust the government to play fair in such a situation?

Yet politicians tell us not to worry. Actually, privacy is very lucrative for congressmen: they reap millions of dollars when they betray it. Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) and Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) each received more than a million dollars in contributions from health professionals and the pharmaceutical industry since 2000, and each sponsored industry-favored amendments in the stimulus bill that would undermine patient privacy, the Washington Post reported. Campaign contributions will ultimately determine how centralized health data is used.

For people who preferred not to have their data online, as Sue Blevins of the Institute for Health Freedom notes, their health information could be stored electronically on "cards that patients could take with them from doctor to doctor, rather than establishing a centralized system through the federal government." This would allow them to help new doctors to quickly get up to speed on their medical history and to avoid re-taking tests when they switched medical providers.

The perils of a database on 300 million Americans' health records must be seen in light of the other data that the federal government has already gathered. The Pentagon's pursuit of Total Information Awareness on the American people -- combined with Congress's contempt for assuring that federal agencies obey the law -- illustrates why the surveillance horrors have only begun.

The computerization of individuals' health records is another stepping stone towards Obama's proclaimed goal of "universal coverage." But there will be no universal coverage without universal submission. The terms for universal health care coverage would be dictated by political pull, not by humanitarian rhetoric.

The Obama mandate is guaranteed to further subjugate doctors and patients to politicians and bureaucrats. Citizens will be stuck with the huge bills for creating their own digital fetters. But destroying real privacy for a bogus promise of health care is a fool's bargain.

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=36

by Ron Paul

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=43

Last week the House passed another budget that increases federal power, raises taxes, and increases the national debt. I voted against it, and was pleased to see that not a single Republican representative voted for it. Legislators often see bipartisanship as constructive, but I disagree especially where the destruction of our economy or our liberty is concerned. There has been too much bipartisan consensus on expanding government far beyond the bounds of the Constitution which we all swore to defend and uphold. Because of this, I have never been able to vote for a budget. However, it was good to see Republicans come together on this important vote, even if their alternative budget was almost as bad.

Despite the deterioration of our economy, this is the largest budget ever passed, at $3.6 trillion. Gross domestic product and tax receipts are shrinking. The government has less money to spend this year, and so it spends more -- $1.5 trillion more -- than it has. When the economy expands, the government expands. Worse, when the economy contracts, the government expands more. Even more troubling is that even though the size of the budget boggles the mind, it is never the final word on federal spending. No allowance has been made for future bailouts and stimulus plans that are highly likely. There are always supplemental bills passed later in the year. War spending is one of those. Spending on Afghanistan is only partially included in budget, with a supplemental request expected in the future. History shows that true costs far exceed estimates. So even though these numbers sound appalling enough, I predict spending will top $4 trillion this year, raising the national debt by over $2 trillion when all is said and done.

Some may notice that the neo-conservatives who masterminded the policy of global interventions are not complaining about the level of military and foreign spending. This is because rather than drawing down our costly interventions, Obama is largely staying the course on these issues. In fact, this week a group of leading neoconservatives met to discuss how best to support the President on foreign policy! I am disappointed and concerned that, in spite of a change in leadership, we will remain the policeman of the world, placing ourselves at grave danger in many ways.

As our mountain of debt is projected to double with the new budget, many are wondering how long our country can keep this up before serious repercussions are felt. Obviously we can't continue down this road indefinitely. Certainly, no country has ever prospered when their public sector spent half or all of the nation's GDP. Yet we are saddled with leadership that seems unwaveringly convinced that the key to prosperity is public spending. This will be exposed for the lie that it is when our creditors wake up and call in our debt. The temptation at that time will be for the government to simply print up dollars in the amount needed. This type of debt repudiation could signal the end of the dollar as its value sinks to zero. We are seeing all the signs that this could happen. Certainly there are no signs of the alternative, which is paying down debt and taking the path of fiscal responsibility.

Tragically, it is those who save their dollars, the most prudent and responsible among us, that will be hurt most by this irresponsibility in Washington.

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=43

By David McKalip, M.D.

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=33

Americans are ready for change in the way they receive and pay for health care. Surprisingly, it may not be the changes that most politicians, big businesses, insurance companies and special interests are pushing. Americans are ready to take back control of their health care. They are ready for a change from unaffordable insurance that comes only from an employer they may prefer to leave -- insurance that seems to provide more of a hassle than convenient protection from unexpected expenses. They are sick of sitting for an hour to see a doctor, then seeing a nurse for 10 minutes and the doctor for three and often left to wonder about what happened. They are burdened by high taxes for government programs that seem to provide health benefits for everyone but them while the same government clamors to cover even more in financially unsustainable programs. They have heard enough of empty promises from politicians who care only about getting re-elected and having more power. Yet even with all these and other problems, many Americans have given up and figure that it is up to the government to solve the problem. They wonder if the government solution will still allow them rapid access to high quality health care they deserve.

The current proposals for reform are cloaked as big changes, but as it turns out, they are actually more of the same. They can be summed up in this way: turn more control over to the government and insurance companies while politicians and special interests jockey for credit and work behind the scenes to benefit -- at the expense of individual Americans. Albert Einstein once defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results -- but that is what is being proposed today. While most American want more individual control over their own lives, the health reform proposals will expand the control over health care held by third party payers (insurance companies and government). This would make matters worse for Americans.

The story of how we got to where we are today is long but has its roots in the World War II era policy that stated that a tax deduction could only be applied to health insurance provided through a job. That lead to employers control of health insurance purchase and removed the consumer from the decision -- decisions they make every day for auto, homeowners and life insurance (products that are affordable). Insurance companies then sold to employers -- not to consumers. Insurance products then began to expand from "accident and sickness" policies, to "health" insurance. Thus they cover every minor expense except for a token deductible from patients. While this seems desirable on the surface, in the end it leads to little control over demand for medical tests and treatments and drives up the cost of health care and insurance for all. Instead of asking your doctor, "Do I really need another pill" or an MRI, or a surgery, consumers take the "free" benefit. Unfortunately, doctors often do more tests and treatments to survive government-fixed prices through high volume services and to protect themselves from lawsuits. This leads to what the government and insurance companies call "over-utilization", the boogeyman they seek to kill by having more control over what kind of care every patient can be authorized to receive. Authorized by someone else besides the patient through cookbook medicine and rationing of care. That is the same thing that happens in socialized medicine in other countries.

There are many other problems created by government: requiring that young and healthy people pay the same high insurance rate as older and sicker patients, allowing anyone to buy insurance (even after they are sick or injured!), mandating that every insurance policy cover some things that not everyone wants to buy insurance for (like hair prosthesis, acupuncture, chiropractic care, maternity care for men and Viagra for women).

So what solutions do politicians like Barak Obama, Senator Max Baucus, Tom Daschle, and groups like the AARP, Families USA, big insurance and big business propose? They want to mandate that everyone buy the same expensive insurance that many can't afford (with a tax if you don't buy) - a plan that is failing in Massachusetts. They would create a "Health Care Fed" that would create cookbook medicine and rationing protocols and force your doctor to follow them under the threat of lower pay or a phony report card score that has nothing to do with quality and has everything to do with how much third-party money was being "wasted" on actual patient care. This would be enforced through a mandate to enter your health data into a computer that would be forward to the government where it would be subject to loss or accidental exposure of private health information. They would expand the Medicare program, which is scheduled to bankrupt its own trust fund next decade, to people who are 55 years old. They would put more children in government health programs even though such a plan failed in Hawaii after only 7 months -- leaving many children previously insured privately without coverage!

The way we pay for health care must change. It is clear that the politicians are making more promises that they can't keep and will resort to "bailout" mode with high taxes and lower quality health care when it fails. The good news is that there is a better way. Instead of expanding control of third party payers -- the same parties responsible for our current mess -- we can put the control of health care financing right where it belongs: into your hands. Right now, you can buy a low cost health insurance package and fund your own private health savings account with tax free money. You can use that account to bargain for lower prices from hospitals and demand that your doctor spend more time with you and explain how you can be managed without every test and treatment they can provide. Your insurance will provide 100% coverage for preventive care and for true medical catastrophes that occur rarely in our lives. You can ask for your right to have a tax break when you buy insurance on your own (outside your employer). You can demand that the government stay out of the patient-physician relationship and not institute cookbook medicine and rationing. You can require that your politicians reserve government assistance for the poor and those who have no other means for health care -- not expand that care to everyone merely to get re-elected on an empty promise. There are reform plans that will put you back in the driver's seat with your doctor at your side as your advisor and partner. They are proposed by people like Senator Tom Coburn, Representative Tom Price, Representative Tom Shaddeg and Representative Paul Ryan. However, they will be very difficult to pass through Congress. It will require that you demand changes that empower you economically as individuals. Demand that you be able to have an individual tax benefit when you purchase insurance outside of employment. Demand that you be able to purchase insurance from another state. Ensure that Health Savings Accounts remain an option and grow in scope and size. Fight against expanded public saving for health care. Make sure that Government committees like the Comparative Effectiveness Coordinating Council don't create rationing protocols. In short, demand that you be in charge of your own health care financing and decision making. When you are in charge of your own health care, the politicians will not decide what kind of medical care you receive. Only you will.

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=33

Stimulating the Economy Into the Ground
By William Anderson

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=35

Not long ago, it seemed that the economic possibilities in this country were endless. The unemployment rate was low, the official inflation numbers seemed to be in check, and the housing market was booming. Who would have thought -- other than some of those pessimistic Austrian economists -- that the United States really had what Peter Schiff has called a "phony economy"?

Today, as unemployment creeps toward double digits and economic growth is headed south, people clearly understand that the U.S. economy is in trouble and, naturally, they want to blame someone. Unfortunately, it seems that most people are taking the cue from the political classes and turning their anger on private enterprise. While we see protests outside various businesses, it is interesting -- and very telling -- to note that it was not until very recently that anyone was protesting in front of that Greek temple known as the headquarters of the Federal Reserve System, and they are still a precious few.

For that matter, there are no protests whenever President Barack Obama promises to spend the country back to prosperity via massive borrowing, all pushed along by the Fed's virtual printing press. It is as though people really believe that Obama can work magic and turn spin straw into gold, or at least paper worth even less than straw into gold.

However, there is no way that this can occur, and the very "stimulus" program and accompanying three-plus trillion dollar budget is the problem, not the "solution." It is time for some very hard truths to be told about this budget and the disastrous direction it is taking the people of this country. Far from leading this country back from the brink, this is an economic "plan" (if we can call it that) which, if implemented, will turn this once-proud country into a banana republic.

The first and most important, Americans are being told that they really don't have to work and they really don't have to produce anything. All that is needed, according to the president and his underlings, is for the U.S. Government to borrow a few trillion dollars with people spending it on consumption goods. Furthermore, most of the borrowed dollars will flow to China and other countries that export those consumer goods to the USA; American officials expect the Asians to dutifully stuff those dollars back into U.S. Government bonds, with the whole process repeating itself.

For all of the modern leftist talk of "sustainability," this is not sustainable. It is a Ponzi scheme that ends when Uncle Sucker runs out of buyers of its depreciating bonds.

Second, in the real world, one pays for imports through exports, and about the only thing this country is exporting is debt and green pieces of paper. In short, Americans are not earning their current standard of living, and the current house of cards is falling down.

Third, in the normal boom-and-bust cycle, the malinvested lines of production are liquidated or transferred to those areas supported by patterns of consumer choice. The recovery is led by those firms with strong balance sheets that were not part of the malinvestment parade.

I emphasize the word "normal." This is not a normal business cycle, not because it has failed to follow the proscribed patterns, but rather because of the government's response to the initial crisis, which occurred when the housing bubble popped. Not only has the government tried to prop up one failing firm after another, it has demonized those sectors that still are relatively healthy, the very economic sectors we will need to begin to rebuild the economy.

Take energy, for example. In normal times, we would want a healthy energy sector to help lead the recovery, but Obama, citing the "global warming" bogey, seems to be calling for the destruction of the coal and oil industries and to replace them with. . . corn-based ethanol and windmills. This is like trying to replace automobiles with the horse-and-buggy and claiming one is making an economic advancement.

Between the environmental and the other anti-business initiatives, the Obama administration is making it clear that it wants to force up business costs. Of course, doing such a thing at any time is going to drag down the economy, but to do it during a downturn only makes the recession more intense.

What this administration seems to believe is that on one side, it can decrease the production capacity of the U.S. economy, but on the other side, stimulate it by printing new money. Perhaps this seems like a sound economic plan to a politician, but to anyone with a whit of common sense, it is madness.

This administration is not presenting as much an economic recovery plan as it is creating a recipe for turning this country into a First-World Zimbabwe. There are historical examples, as Argentina comes to mind.

In the first half of the 20th Century, Argentina was one of the wealthiest countries in the world. However, after its political leadership followed a regime of price controls, protectionism, and outright inflation, its economy sank into a morass and the country has been trying to sort out the mess ever since.

People like Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke believe they are too intelligent and too clever to repeat the mistakes the Argentine leadership made. However, if history is any guide, the joke is on Bernanke, as well as the Americans who have put their blind faith in Obama and the faux "magic" of the Federal Reserve.

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=35

Public Advocacy Is Not a Crime
By Mike German

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=38

What do former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney have in common with former presidential candidates Ron Paul and Bob Barr? Not their politics, certainly. But they do share a commitment to public service and a willingness to challenge the political status quo with bold stands on controversial ideas. These honorable traits, which are essential to a functioning democracy, have helped them establish themselves as effective advocates for social reform both in and out of public office. But the courage to stand up and represent unique viewpoints also gave each of them a less-than-honorable distinction of being named in fusion center intelligence bulletins purporting to describe threats to our domestic security.

Fusion centers are state, local and regional intelligence centers, funded and staffed in part by the federal government, that represent the latest manifestation of a growing national surveillance apparatus. They were originally created to increase terrorism-related information sharing between state, local and federal law enforcement, the intelligence community, the military and the private sector. Over time the mission for these centers has expanded to encompass "all crimes and all hazards," an overbroad and ill-defined mandate. The analysts working in fusion centers have access to a vast amount of information about their fellow Americans, from criminal intelligence records complied at the state, local, and federal levels, to other government records and even data held by private data aggregators. These analysts might be sworn state and local law enforcement officers, FBI agents, Department of Homeland Security officials, National Guardsmen, active-duty military or even employees of private companies. The ACLU warned about the risks these new intelligence operations posed to privacy and civil liberties in a report issued in November 2007, and updated in July 2008.

One of the major problems we identified was the secrecy that shrouded fusion centers from public accountability. It's dangerous in a democracy for the government to know more about the citizenry than the citizenry knows about the government. But thanks to a few recent press leaks, we can now get a glimpse of the intelligence products being produced by fusion centers. In February 2009 the North Central Texas Fusion System issued a "Prevention Awareness Bulletin" that featured former Attorney General Clark and Representative McKinney as part of a conspiracy to spread "tolerance" in the United States, which would provide "an environment for terrorist organizations to flourish." The other conspirators included Muslim civil rights organizations, lobbyists, "international far Left groups," the U.S. Treasury Department and hip-hop bands.

On the other side of the political spectrum, the Missouri Fusion Center released a report the same month on "the modern militia movement" that claimed militia members are "usually supporters" of presidential candidates Ron Paul and Bob Barr. These reports would be laughable except that they come with the imprimatur of federally-sponsored intelligence operations. Implicit in these bulletins, which are disseminated to a multitude of law enforcement and non-law enforcement agencies, is that people who support these individuals, or the ideas they espouse, should be considered as potential threats to security. It's impossible to know if any action was taken in response to these reports, but it is clear that they were intended to influence law enforcement decisions. The Texas fusion center declared it "imperative" that law enforcement officers report the activities of lobbying groups to the fusion center. Reports like this don't just impinge on the rights of those falsely accused, they undermine democracy by chilling free speech and association and they actually harm security by wasting resources and misdirecting law enforcement efforts against real threats.

Public outrage over these reports has drawn a response. The Missouri Highway Patrol has reportedly ceased distribution of the Missouri militia document, and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security sent officials to the Texas fusion center to provide remedial training. But closing the barn door after the horses are gone is not a sufficient solution. Domestic intelligence operations have a troubled history in the United States and no new intelligence apparatus should have been built without the proper guidelines and oversight necessary to prevent this type of abuse. The fact is we simply don't know how many other fusion center reports which have not yet become public published the same sort of misleading smears and innuendos. It is one thing for famous politicians but what about the other groups named in these reports, that can't possibly clear their names from the taint of being labeled a suspected terrorist? How do they recover their reputations and how do they continue their work to forward their ideas in an environment where the government has labeled them a potential threat? The network of fusion centers is more than just a sum of its parts. Someone has to take responsibility for policing their activities and ensuring the information they distribute is accurate, appropriately collected, and relevant to actually improving the security of our communities.

In its seminal decision on the limits of domestic surveillance for national security purposes in the Keith case, the Supreme Court warned that, "[h]istory abundantly documents the tendency of Government -- however benevolent and benign its motives -- to view with suspicion those who most fervently dispute its policies." Knowing this tendency we must tightly restrict law enforcement's authority to gather and disseminate information about our political and religious beliefs. Liberty cannot exist without the freedom to dissent, and any suppression of dissent must be confronted as an attempt to suppress liberty. While we don't all have to agree with what Ramsey Clark, Cynthia McKinney, Ron Paul, or Bob Barr have to say, we must stand together to defend their right to say it and we should applaud them along with all the other courageous souls who dare to speak truth to power.

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=38

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=37

A listener of my "Free Markets" radio show suggested that the government should use taxpayer funds to merge the big-three auto companies under Ford (apparently the strongest of the three) to restore all three to health. There are moral, economic, and historical reasons why not to do that.

Moral

You create a moral hazard when you reward bad behavior. The behavioral psychologists tell us, "Whatever behavior you reward, you get more of." We need to allow failure. Failure has painful consequences, but failure is a great teacher. As I've said in my articles about the banking industry bailout, rewarding bad behavior with taxpayer money is never a good idea. Giving taxpayer money to people who have failed is a reward.

Economic

There are multiple economic issues here. First, if the government "encourages" a strong company to take on the problems of two failing companies, it is most likely that all three will fail. Keep in mind the word "encourage" is in quotes because government is coercive by nature.

Second, it is important to put aside all the emotionally charged rhetoric about bankruptcy. If a company, such as GM, goes bankrupt the physical assets do not go away. Those assets will be sold to auto makers that know how to a run an auto manufacturing business at a profit in the United States (Toyota and Honda are two obvious examples).

The assets of the bankrupt company may be sold at only 30 or 40 cents on the dollar, wiping out the stockholders, but those assets will be quickly put back into productive use. Real jobs will be created, replacing the "fantasy jobs" that are currently supported by American taxpayers.

Third, merging companies with problems doesn't make the underlying problems go away. The underlying problems at the big-three auto makers must be dealt with before it's possible to return to financial health. Labor-management hostilities, out-of-control wage and retirement costs, customer dissatisfaction, bloated bureaucracy, etc., etc., are real problems which must be solved. Taxpayer support can prolong but not solve these problems.

Historical

Americans are failing to learn from history, even recent history. The British auto industry got into trouble in the 1960s. Beginning in the late '60s the British government began intervening with mergers, regulation, and taxpayer money. Not surprisingly, things got worse. Even Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher refused to cut off taxpayer support in the 1980s.

In 2005, the British government closed down what remained of the generation-long government-sponsored fiasco, but not before the British taxpayers had spent a fortune on their too-big-to-fail auto industry.

You might ask, "But didn't Britain benefit from a generation-long intervention into the auto industry?" No. Britain's long-term policy of supporting its auto industry with taxpayer money weakened the country by misallocating valuable resources. Resources spent on the auto industry could have been spent in industries with viable business models.

Too Big To Fail

Nothing is too big to fail. GM has already failed. GM has lost billions of dollars, and continues to lose millions of dollars every day. Failing or not failing isn't the question. GM has failed.

"What should be done with this failure?" is the question. We should choose the free-market, capitalist, reality-based solution: If a company fails, it should be liquidated in an orderly bankruptcy proceeding; the assets should be purchased by a company that can put the assets to productive use. Toyota, Honda, and other manufacturers can put GM assets to productive use. Let's create real jobs in America and put an end to taxpayer-supported "fantasy jobs."

This is the best solution for GM, Chrysler, Ford, or any other company that fails.

http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=37