You have a right to your life, you have a right to your liberty, and you have a right to your justly-acquired property. All three rights are aspects of a right to property. There is no way to derive a right to force others to pay for a service for you, whether it be healthcare or anything else. Moreover, the entire “healthcare” meme is a kind of fraud. Medical treatment has some moral sanction in society and has always been recognized as, while not a “right”, an obligation or duty placed upon the community. “Healthcare” as coined by modern statists contains a whole raft of things never dreamed of in four or more millenia of historical medicine. So even if there were some kind of vague “right” to medical treatment, appropriate to certain civilizational norms, a “right” to “healthcare” is simply a front for a particularly gross kind of corporatism, as illustrated by the ObamaCare Plan’s action of handing over 40 million new unwilling customers to the insurance companies at the point of a gun.
Archive for the 'Ron Paul' Category
Remember, the game of the big commercial banks, central banks, and the IMF and World Bank is to get control of the entire world economy so as to do 2 simple things; 1) Run all commerce and trade through their books so they can profit off of every transaction by every single person on earth, regardless of the economy, and; 2) To juice economies around the world( by issuing bonds to governments, and inflation by central banks and fractional-reserve commercial banks) to increase the flows from which they skim. It is why, for instance, “conservative” governors have been elected in the US to try to balance state budgets – not to help the poor state taxpayer, but to keep the bonding party going. That is why ALL levels of government must DEFAULT.
Whatever your stand on the health-care legislation at the center of this article, this open revolt by libertarian members against local and state Republican parties should be applauded and encouraged;
Not your average Republican power broker
Sarah Anderson is peculiar. For one thing, she’s a Republican. At 22, that makes her a statistical anomaly, even in El Paso County.
She spent her formative years reading a series of books that explain the free-market theory to teens. She will gleefully argue the superiority of the market-based Austrian School economic model of F.A. Hayek and Ludwig von Mises over the Keynesian mixed-economy version. On her Facebook page, she describes her political views as “a beautiful blend of Anarcho-Capitalism and Minarchism.”
Another thing: Anderson is a born campaigner. Home-schooled, with college on hold, she says she’s worked on more than 60 campaigns over the past seven years. She started at age 9, after pleading with her mother, by volunteering at county headquarters while Bill Owens was running for governor. Six years later, she went door-to-door for Douglas Bruce, then a party hero who wanted a seat on the county commission. From 2004 to 2007, she worked at the state Capitol for legislators including Sen. Kent Lambert of Colorado Springs.
This past February, at the meeting of the county GOP’s central committee, she was elected party secretary in a decisive victory over party stalwart Holly Williams, wife of County Clerk and Recorder Wayne Williams. Anderson says her speech — referencing work done for Lambert, former state Sen. Dave Schultheis, U.S. Senate candidate Ken Buck and plenty more — clinched it.
“Let’s not just say we want youth in the party,” she told the crowd. “Let’s put experienced youth in leadership.”
Feisty, ambitious, intelligent and pretty, Anderson’s exactly the kind of person that the aging GOP is eager to draw into the fold. Except that, as she happily offers, “My beliefs aren’t popular with the majority of the powerholders of the Republican Party.”
It is still a disgrace that in America, in 2011, fundamental human rights still depend on the electoral whims of politicians.
Recognizing in art the unreality of fiat money
Well, not the Good Doctor himself, but apparently his message about the Federal Reserve and the dollar is permeating the art world. Hans Peter Feldmann, winner of the 2010 Hugo Boss art prize, took the $100,000 he earned, converted it to one-dollar bills, and pinned it to a wall in the Guggenheim Museum. From the catalog description;
“Bank notes, like artworks, are objects that have no inherent worth beyond what society agrees to invest them with, and in using them as his medium, Feldmann raises questions about notions of value in art.”
Of course, it devolves into vaguely anti-capitalist cant after that, but when was the last time you saw a critique of the Fed in a museum?
I am DEFINITELY going to catch this one.
(Image from the Guggenheim)
Hard to know what to make of this sudden elite “epiphany” on the futility of criminalizing the consumption of certain disapproved substances by adults. After all, it has been articulated for years by many principled, patriotic, sane, thoughtful, credible people, notably recently by Ron Paul (to wild applause, in SOUTH CAROLINA). Is it a global tax-grab to save the world’s nations from their self-inflicted mortal financial wounds, or a reacharound to soften us up for something even worse?
Housing Crash Intensifies
Completely predictable, and predicted by ourselves and others, but a very, VERY scary development;
“It’s worse.
Gerson, neocon that he is, uses Ron’s principled stand for liberty and against putting people in prison against him, as though rabid criminalization were somehow evidence of “compassion”. I politely argued otherwise;
“Congressman Paul was speaking of principles, not of policy. He has stated, clearly and repeatedly that the states can and should be the locus for any (slight) conditions under which adults can consume certain (or any) substances. And he makes the point within a framework where the choice to abuse drugs, being no longer supported within a welfare state, carries high personal and economic costs, high enough to be a deterrent to most people, even if his exposition was a tad too facile. The problem with Gerson’s allegedly more “complex” conservative response to drug use, prostitution, etc is it fails to consider any of these issues other than in a sterile vacuum. For most of our history drugs were legal, widely recognized for their dangers, and their use self-limiting. The medicalization of everything in our culture and the concurrent criminalization of certain substances has effectively subsidized irresponsible, widespread, and growing use of illicit drugs, while at the same time greatly increasing overall societal costs from their use. The current course is financially unsustainable, and deadly to personal and political freedom. Kudos to Dr. Paul for having the courage to finally declare it.”
So, now, can we Just Come Home?
Afghan City Builds DIY Internet Out Of Trash – Insteading
OMG, I have been pounding home this point – that wireless completely obviates the “last-mile-monopoly” for YEARS, and people think I have a screw loose (more like 3). But in 2005, in rural Oklahoma, I built a 4-square mile 11 mbps, 100-duplex wireless network (for air monitoring instruments) and I am a blithering (networking) idiot;
Afghan City Builds DIY Internet Out Of Trash – Insteading.