Ron Paul makes case for ending health care mandate

Posted By Steve Adcock On April 15, 2010 (8:24 am) In Voices and Choices

SOUTHERN ARIZONA – Small government activist and Texas Representative Ron Paul has introduced a bill that would reverse the health care mandate that was passed into law by President Barack Obama earlier this month, calling it a “blatant violation of the Constitution”.

“Defenders of this provision claim the Congress’s constitutional authority to regulate “interstate commerce” gives Congress the power to mandate every American obtain a federally-approved health insurance plan,” Paul said on the House floor on Tuesday.  ”However, as Judge Andrew Napolitano and other distinguished legal scholars and commentators have pointed out, even the broadest definition of “regulating interstate commerce” cannot reasonably encompass forcing Americans to engage in commerce by purchasing health insurance.”

The new health care law requires that all Americans carry “minimum essential coverage”, which places additional requirements on businesses and individuals to pay for “approved” coverage plans based on the number of employees in the company, incomes and several other factors.

“When the cost of government–mandated insurance proves to be an unsustainable burden on individuals, small employers, and the government,  Congress will likely impose price controls on medical treatments, and even go so far as to limit what procedures and treatments  mandatory insurance will reimburse,” Paul argued.

“Congress made a grave error by forcing all Americans to purchase health insurance. The mandate violates fundamental principles of individual liberty, and will lead to further government involvement in health care.”

 

The land of diminishing returns

Posted By Steve Adcock On April 5, 2010 (11:45 am) In Top Page News

Michael Barone wrote an excellent piece in the Washington Examiner yesterday that indicates young people, who had previously thrown their support behind Barack Obama in fairly large numbers, may be realizing the magnitude of their mistake.

When people actually begin to pay attention, you know it is bad.

“The Pew Research Center’s poll of the millennial generation, which voted 66 to 32 percent for Obama in 2008, found that they identify with Democrats over Republicans by only a 54 to 40 percent margin this year,” he wrote.

“Perhaps they are coming to realize that the burdens the Obama policies are placing on the private sector economy are reducing their choices for the future.”

As Obama and Congress continue to pound home the idea that success in this country is something to be punished, so goes the desire to strive for bigger and better things among our younger population – heck, among our entire population.

There is a quite significant reason why unemployment continues to flirt with double digits.  The policies from Washington that punish success and reward underachievement are archaic job killers.  They fundamentally destroy the natural desire to work hard and succeed.  They remove the very motivation that most people need to make their societies and communities a great place to live – for better or worse.

I reported recently that the public sector is alive and well, while the private sector continues to struggle.  The government is systematically developing an environment where government is the entity that provides for the livelihood of Americans.  This includes the recent passage of nationalized health care, and certainly includes the collective implementation of an environment that strangles private sector investment and enhances areas for government bureaucracy.  This is accomplished through excessive taxation, scores of rules and mountains of bureaucracy that do nothing but cost businesses money – costs that those businesses ultimately pass on to the consumer.

CNN reported recently that even many Democrats, disgruntled with the heavy hand of our government, are beginning to join the much-maligned tea party movement.  When you see people from both ends of the political spectrum banding together to fight back against obscene government encroachments into the lives of the American people, then you know firsthand how serious the situation is.  When people actually begin to pay attention, you know it is bad.

As popular radio talk show host Neal Boortz likes to write, how’s that hopey changey thing working out for you?

 

Increasing gov’t pay continues economic struggle

Posted By Steve Adcock On March 31, 2010 (8:59 am) In Top Page News

While many private corporations are forced to downsize, cut costs and find new and creative ways to stay in business and remain viable, government workers appear to be living large, earning 6-figure salaries and enjoying nearly 30% net increases in pay over the last decade as the economy continues to struggle.

According to a report by the Wall Street Journal, compensation for government workers increased 28.6 percent in a 10-year period ending in 2008, while the same period saw only 19.3% increases in the private sector.

Knowing that this nation’s producers are forced to fund the nation’s spenders – and lucratively, I might add – it may not take much of a private sector rebellion before this nation finds itself in serious trouble.

What does this mean?  The main impetus for wealth creation in any economy, the private sector, must find responsible and economically viable mechanisms to stay afloat while the government, funded entirely by this very wealth, feels altogether insulated from responsible compensation practices.

In other words, government does not have to compete using the same rules as the private sector because government is not in the business of making money – they only spend it.

On average, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, federal employees earn nearly $8,000 more than private sector employees who do the exact same job.  In 2008, federal workers earned an average salary of $67,691, while private sector employees earned $60,046.  Worse yet, pensions and other benefits bring federal compensation another $30,000 higher than comparable jobs in the private sector.

In the state of California, in fact, taxpayer-funded contributions to public sector pensions increased a whopping 2,000 percent, soaring to costs that many believe, including the State Treasurer, will flat bankrupt the state.  And because many of the state’s workers are unionized, the problem is only growing worse.

Or how about this one – a New York Democrat is quietly pushing through legislation that would make it even more difficult to let go of government workers within a bill nicknamed “Rubber Rooms for All Act”.  It expands “tenure-like job protection to all public workers, countering efforts to roll back rigid regulations like those that keep hundreds of failed teachers on the city payroll,” according to the New York Post.

The state already has strict tenure laws in place that make it next to impossible to fire unwanted teachers.  Instead, the state keeps those teachers on the payroll, to the tune of over $40 million every year, in “Reassignment Centers” where these so-called “educator” spend their days milking the taxpayer out of their hard earned dollars doing little to nothing.

I am afraid for the time that private sector employees throughout the nation will get frustrated enough to simply stop working, at least as hard as they once did.  Knowing that this nation’s producers are forced to fund the nation’s spenders – and lucratively, I might add – it may not take much of a private sector rebellion before this nation finds itself in serious trouble.

 

Assemblyman wants city government to ban salt in restaurants

Posted By Steve Adcock On March 12, 2010 (10:39 am) In Voices and Choices

In further evidence that the police state in some parts of the United States is alive and well, one assemblyman in New York wants to use government to ban the use of salt in New York City’s restaurants, a move that chefs and restaurant owners call “absurd”.

Democrat Felix Ortiz introduced bill A10129 that implements $1,000 fines, per incident, to restaurants that add salt to any of the foods that they serve to customers.  “No owner or operator of a restaurant in this state shall use salt in any form in the preparation of any food for consumption by customers of such restaurant, including food prepared to be consumed on the premises of such restaurant or off of such premises.”

“The consumer needs to make their own health choices,” remarked Abigael’s executive chef Jeff Nathan.  “Modifying trans fats and sodium intake needs to be home based for optimal health. Regulating restaurants will not solve this health issue.”

“My Food, My Choice”, a NYC-based group dedicated to opposing the city’s move to legislate food preparation, is stepping up efforts to combat the apparent war on [certain] foods – dubbed “the food police” on the group’s web site.

“The Bloomberg administration is pursuing a sweeping sodium reduction campaign that makes NYC residents test subjects and pressures food companies to drastically change their products regardless of the desires of consumers. Worse yet, this bureaucratic agenda is not based on sound science, but on political science and alarmism,” the group claims.

 

Legalizing drugs may save $50 billion

Posted By Steve Adcock On March 11, 2010 (6:30 pm) In Voices and Choices

A complete legalization of drugs throughout the United States would save governments at all levels nearly $50 billion per year, according to a study by Harvard economics professor Jeffrey Miron.

While the majority of the savings would be seen primarily a local levels, according to the report, the federal government would accrue more than $15 billion in savings from ceasing to enforce expensive and wasteful drug regulations.

“The report also estimates that drug legalization would yield tax revenue of $34.3 billion annually, assuming legal drugs are taxed at rates comparable to those on alcohol and tobacco,” according to Miron’s summary of his findings.

“The fact that legalization would reduce government expenditure and raise tax revenue is among the least significant arguments for legalization.  Far more important benefits are increased freedom for drugs users, reduced crime, improved public health, greater respect for civil liberties, and lower violence and corruption in source countries,” he added.

Read the complete report here.

 

Paul’s Federal Reserve audit under consideration in Senate

Posted By Steve Adcock On March 15, 2010 (6:43 am) In Voices and Choices

In legislation that Texas Representative Ron Paul has attempted to get through Congress for a number of years, his proposal that would require an GAO audit of the nation’s Federal Reserve is pending inclusion into a financial reform bill in the Senate.

Paul’s D.C. office said they are hopeful that the bill will be officially included by the end of next week.

Paul’s “Audit the Fed” legislation has already been approved by the House of Representatives last year and is awaiting passage in the Senate.  The bill would require the audit’s findings to be presented to Congress and be made publicly available.

“With unprecedented turmoil in the financial markets, the people are demanding to know and understand the extent of the Federal Reserve’s involvement in the creation of out-of-control business cycles, who they are helping, and how,” Paul argued shortly before his bill’s passage in the House.

Federal Reserve officials and some legislators, who are used to operating under a cloak of secrecy, are naturally opposed to the move to open up the Fed’s system of accountability.  “Legislators supporting secrecy and more power for the Fed are wildly out of touch with the nation and their constituents, not to mention the Constitution,” wrote Alex Newman for the New American magazine.

“Congress should swiftly audit the Fed. And after the American people find out what has been going on, it should be promptly abolished.”