America: Resist Communism, Socialism and Marxism

Posted By J. D. Longstreet On March 9, 2010 (6:27 am) In Voices and Choices

Well, the BIG Push is on to ram ObamaCare through the Congress and down the throats of the American people.

Obama is jetting around the country holding pep rallies to try to gin up support for the “Bill from Hell” — Socialized Medicine. You should know these rallies include ONLY Obama supporters and ObamaCare supporters. The wild enthusiasm is staged for your benefit to, hopefully, give you the impression that ObamaCare is supported by the majority of Americans. The truth is – it is NOT.

These rallies are all propaganda. It’s “The BIG LIE” told over and over again just as the Nazis in Germany did to convince the people of an entire country they truly desired the socialism of the Nazi Party. I must tell you Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, would be proud of the Democratic Party in America today. The Obama Regime has taken a page from the leftist Nazis of the last century on how to brainwash an entire nation into believing a lie. A lie that, once accepted, will spell the absolute doom of America.

The Democratic Party, by itself, simply does not give a damn! They are interested in two things and two things only — and that is to maintain their hold on the government of the US and to ensure their reelection. They simply have no sympathy for what the American people truly want. Plus, THEY DON’T CARE WHAT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WANT! All that counts is what they, the Democrats, want.

It is called “Command and Control.” A strong central government in charge of a “command and control economy” is their dream — and it is their goal. They intend to reach that goal no matter what — even if it means shredding the US Constitution.

Those of us on the right vowing to throw the Socialists and Marxists, masquerading as Democrats, out of the Congress this November had better watch our backs. The dems are quietly lining up the resistance to our movement and between now and November the right will come under attack, intensifying each day as the election draws nearer and nearer.

They are quietly conspiring with the less literate democrat voters and those who, for generations, have depended on the government welfare dole for their existence. Their intention is to flood the polls in November of 2010 to offset and overwhelm the anti-ObamaCare. These “wards of the federal government” will be flooding the polling places, everywhere in America, to dilute the opposition to ObamaCare and defeat the efforts to save the constitutional republic we know as America. Their intent is to create, once and for all, a Socialist/Communist America. And they may very well succeed!

For years those of us who have had the foresight to see the Socialized Medicine Bill for what it is, even though it is wrapped in the pretty package of ObamaCare, have worked tirelessly to expose it as a true Socialized Medicine Bill anchored in Marxism and Communism.

There are times when this scribe feels as though I am standing in front of a wall shouting the warning at the top of my lungs only to have it bounce back onto myself with little, if any, effect on the people whom the Bible describes as a people who have “stopped their ears.”

I must admit to weariness and fatigue and frustration, as the realization sets in that the masses of ObamaCare advocates, like lemmings, have chosen to follow their own Pied Piper — this time straight over a cliff and into a Marxist/Communist hell-like oblivion.

During this fight, I have gained a better insight into Noah’s dilemma. He preached over and over the warning that a deadly flood was coming and would wipe out every man, woman, and child – but to no avail. As the story goes every one was killed except for the handful aboard Noah’s Ark.

America is on the verge of collapse. The final step ensuring that collapse is the passage of ObamaCare.

 

Who Owns Your Body? Under Obamacare, not you.

BY William Anderson

August 31, 2009, Vol. 14, No. 46

We are berated, ad nauseam, with imprecations that America is the only advanced nation that fails to have universal health care. This statement is often followed by the rueful remark that the debate over government controlled health care has been going on without progress for 60 years and, ipso facto, it is time to settle it.

All right, let’s do that. Let’s look a little deeper. Why is there no settlement of the issue, and why is America unique in its obstinate reluctance to follow the example of our older cultural brothers in Europe?

When a debate continues for decades without resolution, it is prudent to consider the deeper underlying assumptions. Principles which underpin the arguments are likely being ignored and marginalized rather than addressed in a forthright manner.

America is the only advanced country whose founding assumption is popular sovereignty. This is a proposition that stands with hardly a seconding voice throughout the contemporary international community. Yet it is the taproot of American exceptionalism.

Even here, however, the principle of government subordination to the people is by no means universally accepted. It has never been firmly ratified by our political class, those spiritual descendants of Europe’s nobility. Our soi-disant elite appear to view with dismay their countrymen’s continuing preference for self-rule.

Thus arises the question of corporal ownership. For Americans, the answer has been settled. Since the terrible bloodletting of the Civil War, and now excepting military service, ownership of one’s body is a matter between the individual and God, with no intermediation by government.

Yet assertions are now being made that government should have responsibility for, and thus authority over, the maintenance of our bodies. It necessarily follows that government must have the power to approve or withhold care. This concept collides destructively with the founding principles of individual responsibility and autonomy upon which popular sovereignty depends.

This is the reason that the debate never ends. It is also the reason that any resolution of the question will necessarily either confirm or deny the original intent of the Founders.

So let’s make up our minds. Does the government, in the last analysis, own your body, or do you? If your answer is the former, be aware that you have opted for veterinary medicine, for you are now accepting the moral status of a domestic animal. If your answer is the latter, you must accept responsibility to make mortal decisions for yourself, and pay for the care that you want with money that you have reason to see as your own.

Such money is not out of reach. Medical savings accounts, amalgamated with catastrophic insurance, could take the place of the ad hoc hodgepodge of plans, schemes, dissimulations, and promises under which we are now burdened and threatened.

And there would be greater efficiency and encouragement of individual choice. We all have an enhanced interest in thriftiness and fair value when we, and not third parties, are the payers.

The wisdom expressed in the Federalist Papers began with the insight that men are not angels. The system that the authors designed placed liberty at the head of other considerations. The Founders were determined that concentrations of power should be confounded.

The system now congealing in Congress for health care is not informed by such principles. Access to the most intimate personal information, direct interaction with bank accounts, and mandated Procrustean protocols remain features of the various schemes under consideration. Such programs would be managed by impenetrable, impersonal, and unaccountable bureaucracies. Do we wish to place such profound coercive powers in the hands of anyone, much less those who now stand expectant and eager to receive them?

The view of human nature recognized by the Founders is now in grave peril. Whither goes America? Was liberty merely an 18th-century fad, or is there still something exceptional about our country?

William Anderson, a retired physician, teaches at Harvard University and consults to the intelligence community.

 

The Whole Foods Alternative to ObamaCare

Eight things we can do to improve health care without adding to the deficit.

By JOHN MACKEY

“The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out
of other people’s money.”

  —Margaret Thatcher

 

With a projected $1.8 trillion deficit for 2009, several trillions more in deficits projected over the next decade, and with both Medicare and Social Security entitlement spending about to ratchet up several notches over the next 15 years as Baby Boomers become eligible for both, we are rapidly running out of other people’s money. These deficits are simply not sustainable. They are either going to result in unprecedented new taxes and inflation, or they will bankrupt us.

While we clearly need health-care reform, the last thing our country needs is a massive new health-care entitlement that will create hundreds of billions of dollars of new unfunded deficits and move us much closer to a government takeover of our health-care system. Instead, we should be trying to achieve reforms by moving in the opposite direction—toward less government control and more individual empowerment. Here are eight reforms that would greatly lower the cost of health care for everyone:

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Chad Crowe

• Remove the legal obstacles that slow the creation of high-deductible health insurance plans and health savings accounts (HSAs). The combination of high-deductible health insurance and HSAs is one solution that could solve many of our health-care problems. For example, Whole Foods Market pays 100% of the premiums for all our team members who work 30 hours or more per week (about 89% of all team members) for our high-deductible health-insurance plan. We also provide up to $1,800 per year in additional health-care dollars through deposits into employees’ Personal Wellness Accounts to spend as they choose on their own health and wellness.

Money not spent in one year rolls over to the next and grows over time. Our team members therefore spend their own health-care dollars until the annual deductible is covered (about $2,500) and the insurance plan kicks in. This creates incentives to spend the first $2,500 more carefully. Our plan’s costs are much lower than typical health insurance, while providing a very high degree of worker satisfaction.

• Equalize the tax laws so that employer-provided health insurance and individually owned health insurance have the same tax benefits. Now employer health insurance benefits are fully tax deductible, but individual health insurance is not. This is unfair.

• Repeal all state laws which prevent insurance companies from competing across state lines. We should all have the legal right to purchase health insurance from any insurance company in any state and we should be able use that insurance wherever we live. Health insurance should be portable.

• Repeal government mandates regarding what insurance companies must cover. These mandates have increased the cost of health insurance by billions of dollars. What is insured and what is not insured should be determined by individual customer preferences and not through special-interest lobbying.

• Enact tort reform to end the ruinous lawsuits that force doctors to pay insurance costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. These costs are passed back to us through much higher prices for health care.

• Make costs transparent so that consumers understand what health-care treatments cost. How many people know the total cost of their last doctor’s visit and how that total breaks down? What other goods or services do we buy without knowing how much they will cost us?

• Enact Medicare reform. We need to face up to the actuarial fact that Medicare is heading towards bankruptcy and enact reforms that create greater patient empowerment, choice and responsibility.

• Finally, revise tax forms to make it easier for individuals to make a voluntary, tax-deductible donation to help the millions of people who have no insurance and aren’t covered by Medicare, Medicaid or the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Many promoters of health-care reform believe that people have an intrinsic ethical right to health care—to equal access to doctors, medicines and hospitals. While all of us empathize with those who are sick, how can we say that all people have more of an intrinsic right to health care than they have to food or shelter?

Health care is a service that we all need, but just like food and shelter it is best provided through voluntary and mutually beneficial market exchanges. A careful reading of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution will not reveal any intrinsic right to health care, food or shelter. That’s because there isn’t any. This “right” has never existed in America

Even in countries like Canada and the U.K., there is no intrinsic right to health care. Rather, citizens in these countries are told by government bureaucrats what health-care treatments they are eligible to receive and when they can receive them. All countries with socialized medicine ration health care by forcing their citizens to wait in lines to receive scarce treatments.

Although Canada has a population smaller than California, 830,000 Canadians are currently waiting to be admitted to a hospital or to get treatment, according to a report last month in Investor’s Business Daily. In England, the waiting list is 1.8 million.

At Whole Foods we allow our team members to vote on what benefits they most want the company to fund. Our Canadian and British employees express their benefit preferences very clearly—they want supplemental health-care dollars that they can control and spend themselves without permission from their governments. Why would they want such additional health-care benefit dollars if they already have an “intrinsic right to health care”? The answer is clear—no such right truly exists in either Canada or the U.K.—or in any other country.

Rather than increase government spending and control, we need to address the root causes of poor health. This begins with the realization that every American adult is responsible for his or her own health.

Unfortunately many of our health-care problems are self-inflicted: two-thirds of Americans are now overweight and one-third are obese. Most of the diseases that kill us and account for about 70% of all health-care spending—heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes and obesity—are mostly preventable through proper diet, exercise, not smoking, minimal alcohol consumption and other healthy lifestyle choices.

Recent scientific and medical evidence shows that a diet consisting of foods that are plant-based, nutrient dense and low-fat will help prevent and often reverse most degenerative diseases that kill us and are expensive to treat. We should be able to live largely disease-free lives until we are well into our 90s and even past 100 years of age.

Health-care reform is very important. Whatever reforms are enacted it is essential that they be financially responsible, and that we have the freedom to choose doctors and the health-care services that best suit our own unique set of lifestyle choices. We are all responsible for our own lives and our own health. We should take that responsibility very seriously and use our freedom to make wise lifestyle choices that will protect our health. Doing so will enrich our lives and will help create a vibrant and sustainable American society.

Mr. Mackey is co-founder and CEO of Whole Foods Market Inc.

 

Seeing red as voters grow restless ahead of election

Read the Daily Breeze article here.

 

On eve of first state budget vote, California Democrats push jobs proposal

Read the Mercury News article here.

 

Just say snow – saving taxpayers millions

Just say snow – saving taxpayers millions
Posted By Doug Bandow On February 15, 2010 (7:43 pm) In Featured, Voices and Choices

For the first time in memory, the federal government has closed for three straight days. “Snowmaggedon” has shut down Washington, D.C. and its suburbs. With the third storm within a week hitting the region, causing white-out conditions, even Uncle Sam can’t function.

In theory the government closure is costing all of us. Some 230,000 D.C. area employees stayed home, costing an estimated $300 million “in lost productivity per day,” according to federal officials. But is the shutdown really hurting the public?

Using the term “productivity” in the same sentence as “federal government” is a dubious exercise. No doubt, in the sense of performing a task efficiently, the Feds can be productive. Just watch how quickly and completely the IRS attempts to clean out the average taxpayer. That explains the joke about Washington’s preferred tax form of just two lines: “How much do you earn? Send it in.”

But government efficiency doesn’t mean productivity in a larger sense. That is, does government activity yield a better life for Americans? On net, the answer is no. The only problem with Snowmaggedon is that it has not affected the 85 percent of federal employees who work outside of the D.C. area.

About two million people, excluding the postal service and armed forces, work for the federal government. Most are engaged in counterproductive activity.

Start with the 652,000 work for the Defense Department. Overall, their mission is vital, one of the few necessary tasks of government. But much of what they actually do has nothing to do with protecting America.

Many U.S. troops — and the civilian employees who back up the armed forces — are tasked with defending America’s prosperous and populous allies throughout Asia and Europe. Why? The European Union has ten times the GDP of Russia; South Korea has 40 times the GDP of the North. Military personnel also engage in nation-building and other forms of what Michael Mandelbaum called foreign policy as social work. Idling employees supporting these tasks would reduce subsidies for the international welfare queens now leeching off of U.S. taxpayers and military personnel.

The Department of Veterans Affairs employs 280,000 people. Give this department its due: it may not be the most efficient bureaucracy available, but Uncle Sam has an obligation to care for America’s veterans. The number of employees could be pared by integrating the treatment of veterans into the private health system, but the special needs of vets will always require special services.

Homeland Security comes next with 171,000 personnel. It’s an important function, but does anyone believe the department, a bizarre mix of everything from customs to immigration to disaster relief, actually is keeping us safe? Are we better off because of the geniuses who decided that terrorists would surrender by forbidding people from going to the bathroom and using blankets? Who benefits when personnel dole out “emergency” aid hither and yon even to the improvident and foolish? It’s hard to know how many of this department’s employees actually do useful work.

Another 108,000 people work for the Justice Department. The agency is theoretically essential. But the bureaucracy of justice — laws, police, prosecutors, courts — should rest primarily at the state and local level. One of most significant and most dangerous expansions of national power in recent years has been the increasing federalization of the criminal law. Now you can go to federal prison if you dump fill dirt on dry land that has been defined as a “wetland.”

The department also is filled with social engineers, dedicated to using the law to reorder American society along more collectivist and multi-cultural lines. An entire division promotes the federal government’s racial spoils system and its extension to the rest of society. Then there are all of the department attorneys who spend taxpayer money defending the worst depredations of government, often in contravention of the Constitution.

Some 88,000 people work at the Treasury Department. A few folks are necessary to mind the Treasury, but most of the agency’s employees are busy supporting the outrageously lavish $3.7 trillion budget approved by Congress this year. Cut back the spending and the $2.2 trillion in taxes to be collected, and the department would shrink substantially. Reduce the Treasury bureaucracy’s other threats to liberty — foreign economic sanctions, domestic financial spying — and the workforce would shrink still further.

The Agriculture Department comes in at 82,000 employees. There may be one or two people there who perform a useful and constitutional function, but it’s hard to believe there are many more. This agency’s job is to pay off special interests and manipulate food markets. This Department should be permanently snowed in.

Next is the Interior Department with 67,000 employees. There’s no reason for Uncle Sam to own hundreds of millions of acres of land. Sell off the grazing range and timberland (technically the latter resides with the Agriculture Department, but the same principle applies). Open up nonessential park areas to energy exploration and development. Keep at most a few sensitive parklands of enormous symbolic significance — such as Yellowstone and Yosemite — in federal hands or, better yet, turn them over to environmental groups. The number of people needed in their current roles at the department is very few.

Health and Human Services is a spending behemoth, but employs “only” 64,000 people. Social services, like justice, should primarily be dispensed at the state and local level. Anyway, whatever the legitimate role of the federal government, HHS should not survive in current form. The agency incorporates a multitude of ineffective, duplicative, and overlapping programs. In general, Congress never shuts down a bad program; legislators simply add new ones. Shift back functions and revenue sources to the states, as Ronald Reagan proposed, and there’d be no need for this department.

Some 55,000 people work for the Transportation Department. There are some interstate transportation issues, but the federal government shouldn’t be funding roads and bridges in communities across America. Indeed, the agency has become one of the worst sources of political pork at the national level. If local folks want a new left hand turn lane or park bike trail, let them pay for it. Most of this department’s employees are anything but essential.

The Commerce Department employs 39,000. Another 16,000 people work at the Labor Department. Both of these agencies are special interest bureaucracies, dedicated to subsidizing businesses and labor unions. Neither should exist. There are a few legitimate functions buried within the two bureaucracies — keeping economic statistics and conducting a census for the purpose of congressional apportionment, for instance. But most of these 55,000 employees should be working at useful jobs in the private sector.

Equally useless is the Energy Department and its 15,000 workers. The department is largely a forum for dispensing subsidies to favored energy interests. It also regulates the energy industry, usually to the detriment to consumers. Politicians love to dispense favors and micromanage the economy. The Energy Department is a vehicle for doing both.

The State Department also employs 15,000 people. The agency is legitimate, but many of its functions are not. There’s no cause for foreign aid: the U.S. has spent hundreds of billions of dollars on “foreign aid” programs which have turned out to be mostly “foreign hindrance” to the recipients. State should eliminate financial transfers other than limited, emergency disaster relief. Moreover, the department should cut back oversize embassies around the world. Washington should not be attempting to sell U.S. products or micro-manage other societies. There’s no reason for full-service embassies in many nations; small consulates would do just fine.

The Departments of Housing and Urban Development and Education have 9,000 and 4,000 employees, respectively. Neither of these agencies has a legitimate federal role. Housing and education should be state and local responsibilities to the extent that government is involved at all. There certainly is no reason for the federal government to create vast systems of wealth transfer from federal taxpayers to builders, local governments, developers, universities, federal bureaucrats, home buyers, students, renters, and everyone else involved in the housing and education industries. Indeed, the financial crisis, which started from an overheated housing market, demonstrates that federal involvement can be not just wasteful, but disastrously counterproductive.

A potpourri of independent agencies employs 180,000 people. The largest single bureaucracy is the Social Security Administration, which shouldn’t exist. People should be allowed to keep their own money to invest for their own retirement. Impoverished seniors should be helped because of their need, not their age. Most of the other agencies could be similarly eliminated or streamlined.

Finally, shrink government, and cut back the 33,000 people who work for the judicial branch and 30,000 who work for Congress. These two overgrown bureaucracies demonstrate how government has grown far too large. Indeed, their expansion has helped fuel government’s overall growth. More legislators, judges, aides, and clerks all want to do more. Which means an ever bigger government.

If you believe the official estimates, the three day federal shut-down cost Americans nearly a billion dollars. But don’t worry. Although Snowmaggedon has been awful for those of us who live in the region, it likely has saved the American people billions of dollars by slowing down the waste of tax dollars and limiting the harm of regulations.

Now if we could only shut down Washington permanently.

 

Officials ask Anthem to justify rate hike in California

Read the Marin IJ article here.

 

The last days of the Republic? – J. D. Longstreet

The last days of the Republic?
Posted By J. D. Longstreet On February 9, 2010 (6:33 pm) In Featured, Voices and Choices

Call it a “Constitutional Republic,” or a “Representative Republic,” the fact is – America, as a “republic,” is done for.

How did it happen? Well, those who would turn America into a Socialist Utopia used the very democratic process, in which Americans pride themselves, to execute a brilliant coup de tat and take over the US government. And they did it in plain sight, right before our eyes.

In a democratic nation the risk of electing a dictator, is always there, lurking in the shadows. All it takes is a bad mistake at the polls by freedom loving people misled by slick, smooth, oratory and, let us not forget, the promise of, or the implication of… something for nothing. I cannot overemphasize the importance of the electorate’s ignorance. It is my belief that ignorance played the largest role in the election of Obama to the presidency of the US than any other single causation.

In a mad rush to the polls to elect the nation’s first “black” president, everything else was overlooked. Important things like Obama’s socialist leanings, his obvious preference of Muslims over those of the Jewish faith, his bent toward collectivism, Marxism, and his penchant for a “command and control” economy for the US. None of this mattered to those ignorant of history, ignorant of the philosophies espoused by and believed in by Mr. Obama. No, what was MOST important to them was the election of America’s first black president, whatever the cost.

Well, the bill has come due. The cost? The cost was only our country – only the republic.

America is not the country it was as recently as one year ago. A year ago, America was still a constitutional republic. Today, America is a socialist nation with Progressives/Socialists/Marxists in control of our government and our economy. The nation is broke and on the cusp of total collapse. Andwe are being lied to by our leaders when they tell us the recovery from the recession has begun.

Just a few minutes before I penned these words, I read an article by a internationally known wire service in which they boldly stated the recent decline in unemployment numbers points to the beginning of the recovery from tne recession. What they didn’t tell their readers was this: The decline was caused by discouraged, unemployed, Americans who decided to simply stop looking for work, after having been unemployed for months on end. Those numbers are not counted. This explains the drop from 10% to 9.7% of America’s workforce out of work. If Americans were told the truth we would see the actual unemployed figures would be closer to 13% to 15%, or even 17%, unemployed in the nation.

I am convinced our government is lying to Americans. I am also convinced our government is cooking the books.

The plain truth is — it is going to get a lot worse over the months ahead. There will be a general bump upwards in the stats, which will point to a recovery, as we approach the election in November. Don’t believe them. It will be, as they say: “Bravo Sierra.”

What we are seeing in America’s economic decline today is what always happens when socialists, somehow, gain control of a nation’s government, and/or a nation’s economy. It dies. Eventually that nation dies just as America is doing.

Can America be saved? I doubt it. Even if there is a complete turn around at the polls in November it will take decades to get a grasp on the damage done in a single year by the Obama Regime and his minions in the Congress.

We may find that we must re-invent America. We may have to re-found America, as it were. The real America is gone. I doubt that it can ever be recreated.

 

We may also find that instead of a single country, always at war with itself, the states may decide to split into two or three coalitions or confederacies, or, dare I say it… countries. If we are honest with ourselves we will admit that America is, at the very least, two countries existing under the banner of one nation. A number of states are investigating the possibility of seceding from the current group known as the United States. It is obvious to anyone caring to look… we are anything BUT united.

First, however, we must stop America’s slide into oblivion. Then we can decide who and what we want to become. Even before we do anything we must accept the fact that America, as a constitutional republic, no longer exists. It may be gone forever. I sincerely hope not. I hope Americans will decide to recreate America as its original founders intended. But, we must face the fact that THAT is not likely to happen.

The Last Days of the Republic have come and gone. America exists today as just another socialist nation along with its counterparts in Europe. It is a completely predictable end for a nation, which deliberately chose ignorance of its history and of its government. Ignorance brought America down. There is no other reasonable explanation for the government we have in Washington, DC, today!

 

The New Wimpery: begging to be taxed – Garry Reed

Read the Libertarian News Examiner article here.

 

Farrell Files: The Tea Party – Libertarian Dreams – Socialist Lifestyles by Lindsay Ubinas

Read the full article here.