Parker Griffith radio interview

U.S. Representative Parker Griffith, whom I've written about before in this space, was recently on WBHP.

I like his positions on the stimulus, bailouts, cap & tax, and healthcare: all no!

I was happy to hear him speak out against the AMA, which many doctors can't do out of fear of losing their licenses. The AMA cartel is a big source of what's wrong with healthcare in America.

He was also correct that the so-called reform proposals are really "overreach" and a "power grab," nothing to do with improving health care. In a 1961 speech, Ronald Reagan warned, "One of the traditional methods of imposing statism or socialism on a people has been by way of medicine."

So far so good. But then he got to his solution.

I understand the poor guy was sleep deprived, but he fell back into the usual feel-good blah-blah-blah about making health insurance companies "play by the same rules." In real life, this will mean more federal oversight, higher prices, less competition, and therefore less consumer satisfaction.

As a physician, he ought to understand the folly of treating the symptom. The real problem is adults still believe in Santa Claus but use the code name "health insurance." Imagine if State Farm were expected to pony up every time you took your car in for an oil change or other routine maintenance. Health insurance is no such thing: it's really a sort of pre-paid entitlement program, but entirely perverse. For example, legislation requires everyone to pay the same premium in employer-sponsored group insurance. This means healthy people are overcharged, and the couch potato gets a free ride. The system subsidizes and therefore encourages poor health!

In the market, sellers compete against sellers, but buyers also compete against buyers. Throwing deep-pocketed "insurers" into the mix inevitably drives prices beyond affordable levels, especially given the way "insurance" destroys patient price-sensitivity.

I like Peter Schiff's proposal much better. Health "insurers" exist only because of aberration in the tax code. This special tax treatment is why open-market consumers can't purchase their products for reasonable prices. Schiff proposes ending this subsidy but simultaneously raising the personal exemption so as to make the change a wash for taxpayers. The true costs of health "insurance" would then be laid bare. The much cheaper option of major-medical policies would become more attractive. Insurers would have to compete with each other on price, terms, service, and so on. We'd no longer be chained to our employer-sponsored plans.

This would create enormous downward pressure on healthcare prices because people would pay for oil changes.. err, routine doctor visits out of pocket from money that they gasp saved in anticipation of such expenses. Of course when the out-of-pocket limit hits, their bona fide insurance would kick in and cover the rest. Economic arbitrage doing its work means that such a system would also benefit those who opt not to purchase insurance policies.

The jingoistic breast-beating about money versus commitment was poor cover for the fact that Uncle Sam is drowning in debt and flat-out broke. The feds can barely afford to pay their bills now. How will they afford a new program that will dwarf Social Security and Medicare?

We have universal legal care

Wow, is it awesome too!

After his appeal had failed and before he was exonerated, Lloyd filed a complaint with the state. He told them Slameka [Lloyd's public defender] never gave him the time of day. Harlin still has a copy of Slameka's rebuttal, which she read out loud:

“This is a sick individual who raped, kidnapped and strangled a young woman on her way to school. His claim of my wrongdoing is frivolous, just as is his existence. Both should be terminated.”

When asked if he really thought his own client should be executed, Slameka said yes, that's what he wrote at the time and that's how he felt.

Read the full story at NPR.

After having 17 years of his life stolen over a horrible crime that DNA evidence showed he didn't commit, Lloyd got out but died two short years later.

His sister, Ruth Harlin, says if someone close to her needed a defense lawyer today, she would do whatever it took to pay for a lawyer.

“I'd mortgage the house,” Harlin says. “I would not let a public defender defend anyone in my family ever again. Ever, ever again.”

Universal legal care's problems—chronic underfunding, unmanageable caseloads, top talent unwilling to participate in the insanity, poor standard of care, and on and on and on—are built in despite its proponents' good intentions.

Economics 101: Incentives Matter!

“The statists are in control.”

I'd like to be as sure as Peter Morici is in this CNBC clip about the fate of cap-and-trade and the Bride of HillaryCare.

In support of his bullish view, he uses an odd metaphor of an aircraft landing on the deck of a carrier and then, “The politics are very important here. I think cap-and-trade's going down. I think healthcare's going down. And when investors see that, and when the public sees that, and when entrepreneurs see that, they'll say, ‘Hey, America's back! The statists are out!’”

Peter Schiff responds: “I hope these things are defeated. If they're not defeated, it's just gonna take a bad situation and make it worse. But the statists aren't out. They're here; they're in control.”

I'm pleased that this pejorative has been making a comeback in recent months, but it's at least eight years too late.

If you're picking up despair, it's an after-effect of Valkyrie's cinematography, which my wife and I watched last night. Portraits everywhere of Der Führer. Endless arrays of Nazi black, white, and red on stark display. The rule of man. The horror of people being tyrannized by this evil criminal gang and, even worse, so many enthusiastically taking part in its atrocities. It's a frightening historical demonstration of the ratchet effect's potential.

Here in America, the cutting-edge, heady mathematical techniques of addition and subtraction show the situation has also gone out of control, albeit along a different axis. The feds will never pay off their debts—not in real terms, that is. They cannot possibly make good on their promises of Medicare and Social Security: certainly not with Bush's addition to the former, and with the latter, everyone up to around my age cohort is being forced to pay fully fifteen percent of annual income into a system from which realistic hope of receiving benefit is zero. The same goes for paper money and the rest of the welfare state. Already, people are arguing over who should be forced to the back of the line, and the state-run rationing system for healthcare hasn't yet been instituted!

In the long run, the bad guys can't win because they're fighting economic law, but between now and then can be dreadful. The decent remnant of Germans, whom it's easy to forget when jingoistically lumping them all together as “dirty Nazi krauts,” ultimately depended on calamity to knock them off the bad course they were on.

Not a great place to invest one's hopes. Ideas have power.

A huge step!

As of today, more than a majority of the U.S. House of Representatives have cosponsored the Federal Reserve Transparency Act, but Parker Griffith is still taking a wait-and-see approach. This bill matters to ordinary Americans because all government activities should take place in sunlight. The Fed's easy-money policies are destroying the value of the dollar, which will cause increased prices for everyday goods such as gas and groceries, and destroying families' balance sheets by enticing households to go deeper into debt.

Ron Paul's staff issued a press release heralding the achievement.

Why hasn't the Fed already opened its books for all to see? What do they have to hide?

Peter Schiff on The Daily Show

No legal plunder

In The Law, Frédéric Bastiat argues that a lack of what he derisively refers to as legal plunder is “the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony, and logic.”

Although it was written more than a century and a half ago, Bastiat's frank criticisms have held their edge, but public ministers continue making the same mistakes he so harshly condemns. Consider the section called The Proper Function of the Law:

And, in all sincerity, can anything more than the absence of plunder be required of the law? Can the law — which necessarily requires the use of force — rationally be used for anything except protecting the rights of everyone?

Note that Bastiat uses “rights” in the same sense as Jefferson and Locke did, under which all are equal and must abide within the limits of this universal equality. Some characterize the concept as “negative rights,” e.g. no one may steal from, defraud, or murder others. Columnist Charley Reese put it in downhome terms: “The best way to understand the difference between a true right and a falsely claimed right is that a true right does not compel anyone else to do anything except leave us alone.”

Although not at all glamorous, Bastiat asserts (and later supports) that protecting these rights is a big enough problem for the law. He uses the rhetorical question to assert that broadening the scope of the law beyond this essential function is irrational.

I defy anyone to extend it beyond this purpose without perverting it and, consequently, turning might against right. This is the most fatal and most illogical social perversion that can possibly be imagined.

As experience and history show plainly, placing great power in the hands of a few rulers creates a vicious struggle to control its reigns. The concern moves from seeing that right prevails to becoming the mighty. During the Bush years, Democrats wailed about the abominable “Patriot” act and how it was forced upon them, but they then nominated for vice-president a man who claimed to be its intellectual forebear. Now that they control the White House and the congress, the alleged party of the common man has failed through inaction as terribly as the alleged party of small government that levied this surveillance-state measure.

It must be admitted that the true solution — so long searched for in the area of social relationships — is contained in these simple words: Law is organized justice.

Although anathema to the wonks and their grand schemes, they need to first master their humble assignment before pursuing more ambitious goals. Bastiat continues concerning justice:

Now this must be said: When justice is organized by law — that is, by force — this excludes the idea of using law (force) to organize any human activity whatever, whether it be labor, charity, agriculture, commerce, industry, education, art, or religion. The organizing by law of any one of these would inevitably destroy the essential organization — justice. For truly, how can we imagine force being used against the liberty of citizens without it also being used against justice, and thus acting against its proper purpose?

Consider the horrid mess of the Wall Street bailouts. Diane Feinstein openly admitted constituents' opposition was better than 9-1, but this “representative” voted for it anyway. The U.S. auto industry is a complete trainwreck, but Washington is forcing Americans to continue propping it up despite years of bailouts in the form of protective tariffs. Californians overwhelmingly rejected proposals for huge tax hikes, and now with the prospect of a federal bailout for Arnold & Co. (rivers of paper money flowing into the Golden State!), the people are likely to be forced to pay up even though the vox populi spoke an unmistakable No!

Unjust measures all! Each one is legal plunder. Carry the economist's old saw “there ain't no such thing as a free lunch” a step further: who must pay, and is it justice or might-cum-right?

Dear Congressman Griffith

Before entering office, you gave your solemn word to support the U.S. constitution. Article I, Section 8 of that instrument invests in the Congress oversight of the currency of the United States: “The Congress shall have power to … coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin …”

As an aside, the English verb coin has a couple of meanings. One is to stamp metal with guarantees of weight and fineness. The other is to invent out of thin air, as in “coin a phrase.” The delegates in Philadelphia clearly intended the first sense, but others have substituted the latter via stealthy amendments.

I write to urge you to join with 186 (as of this writing) of your colleagues in the people's House and cosponsor HR 1207, the Federal Reserve Transparency Act.

In earlier correspondence, you passed the buck to the Financial Services Committee, writing that you will keep my views in mind "should this legislation reach the House floor for a vote." More than forty percent of your fellows have forsaken the slick politician's fence-sitting, non-committal, wait-and-see opportunism in favor of leadership by taking clear stands.

In the same letter, you assured me that you “support the highest level of accountability.” HR 1207's sunshine on the Federal Reserve, a body that acts in your name thanks to the oath of office you took willingly, would create accountability where secrecy and subterfuge have been the standard, and your active support would demonstrate your commitment to open, honest, accountable government.

Sincerely yours,
Greg Bacon

UPDATE: Mr. Griffith has cosponsored HR 1207!

Whatever happened to “Question Authority”?

Sometimes a rout is still fun to watch, e.g., Don't Know Much About Capitalism by Tom Woods.

What it all boils down to is this: one side of our political spectrum favors the central planning of Iraq, while the other favors the central planning of Americans. We can only hope for the continued growth of a third side, one that rejects as unworthy of a free people all the superstitious nonsense about the magical powers of our overlords, whether that power is exercised at home or abroad.

"What is needed to stop the trend towards socialism and despotism is common sense and moral courage."

With certain unalienable Rights

I have an etymology calendar on my desk, and today's word is freedom. The author makes a serious mistake in writing, "'Liberty' … also means 'free' but in the sense of rights granted rather than any innate quality."

Liberty carries its natural-rights sense as used by enlightenment thinkers such as Locke and Bastiat, viz., government is the servant of free people and not their master.

For a contemporary example, consider Ron Paul who wrote (with emphasis added), "Democracy represented unlimited rule by an omnipotent majority, while a constitutionally limited republic was seen as the best system to preserve liberty. Inalienable individual liberties enshrined in the Bill of Rights would be threatened by the 'excesses of democracy.'"

In 1943, the U.S. supreme court declared, "One's right to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections."

Thomas Jefferson took an even more radical position: "Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add 'within the limits of the law,' because law is often but the tyrant's will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual."

The tenth amendment to the U.S. constitution (so-called these days) makes plain that the federal government is not the source of the people's rights, and this in turn is consistent with the Declaration's connection of government's just powers to "the consent of the governed."

Mr. Obama, tear down this "PATRIOT" act!

Back up the campaign-trail talk about civil liberties with real action: demand that a repeal of this abomination be on your desk no later than the end of your first week in office. Given your party's control of the congress, you are the lone obstacle to blotting out this shameful spot.

If this is not an urgent priority for your administration, then congratulations for conning millions of Americans.

What could have been

As Doug Newman put it, "I write this on July 4, when we celebrate the ouster of a 'tyrant' who taxed his subjects at the rate of about three percent."

Today, Gary North wrote, "When Jefferson wrote [the declaration of independence], the British were extracting approximately 1% of national income from the American colonies. For the southern colonies, it may have been 2.5%. If we could somehow get back to the tyranny of Great Britain in 1776, I would be willing to celebrate the Fourth of July with greater enthusiasm. But that would take a revolution."

"I would introduce this novel idea that we ought to follow the constitution."

Dr. Ron Paul on MSNBC:

It's official!

Not long ago, I was on the same flight to DC with Bud Cramer. When we reached the terminal at Reagan, I said to him, "Congressman, give my best to Ron Paul!" An honest man and perhaps the humble American republic's last hope, Dr. Paul is officially a candidate for president!

Notable quotes:

• "I'm very confident about the message of liberty and the constitution. I'm very confident that the American people are sick and tired of what they're getting. And I'm also very confident that the Republican party has gone in the wrong direction. We used to be the party of small government, but now we're the party of Big Government."
• "My main thrust would be I would emphasize my oath of office. As a congressman, I emphasize that. As president, I would emphasize that. And that is, to obey the constitution, which strictly limits the power of government. It strictly limits the power of the executive branch. It strictly limits the power of the congress -- and even the courts. That would be my goal: to shrink the size and scope of government, believing very sincerely that the benefits to people are far better off in a free society than in an authoritarian society. When government is involved in central planning, and running the world, running the economy, and running our personal lives, we're not better off: we're worse off."
• "If we don't get a handle on the entitlements, if we don't get a handle on all this foreign adventurism, this country is going broke. Actually, I think the country is insolvent. It's just the fact that the world still accepts our dollars that we can still get away with this. Yes, we can have full accountability, but the ultimate accountability has to be to make sure that we hold government under control -- that we not allow it to continue to grow or try to do everything conceivable at the central level."
• "Very simply, governments always like inflation, that is, the creation of money out of thin air to debase the value of your currency. This is the reason that we don't have a gold standard: because big-government conservatives and big-government liberals like to spend money. But they really don't like the taxes, and there's a limit to how much they can borrow... and every time they create new money, they devalue the money we have in our pockets. So it's a tax on us; it's a sinister, immoral tax..."
• "[Inflation is] so destructive because it's the most regressive of all taxes. Poor people and the middle class eventually get wiped out by rising prices. Now government tells us there's only a 2% inflation rate, but that's not true: the inflation rate for poor people and the middle class might be 6 or 8 or 10 percent. Who benefits the most? It's the wealthy class: the bankers, the domestic industries, the military-industrial complex."
• "The answer to this is gold and silver, and that's still the law of the land. Under the constitution, only gold and silver can be legal tender, yet it's been a good many years since we've completely forgotten about it. We've had no connection -- our dollar's had no connection to gold since 1971. If you look at the problems we've had since that time, they're definitely related."
• "I would come home [from Iraq] as soon as possible."
• "Liberty will provide the answers that we need."

Dr. Paul is for peace and friendships among nations. When he gives his solemn word to uphold and defend the constitution, he'll really do it: he won't merely be reading a script. A politician is actually making an issue of sound money!

Ron Paul is a true American. See the video below for more details.

Timeless political commentary

Insincerity. Gratuitous appeals to emotion. Tired clichés. Focus-groupped pablum. Wanton demagoguery.

Refuse to allow your mind to be filled with this trash! Instead, enrich your mind with reasoned, intellectual analysis:

What is the attitude of the democrat when political rights are under discussion? How does he regard the people when a legislator is to be chosen? Ah, then it is claimed that the people have an instinctive wisdom; they are gifted with the finest perception; their will is always right; the general will cannot err; voting cannot be too universal . . .

But when the legislator is finally elected — ah! then indeed does the tone of his speech undergo a radical change. The people are returned to passiveness, inertness, and unconsciousness; the legislator enters into omnipotence. Now it is for him to initiate, to direct, to propel, and to organize. Mankind has only to submit; the hour of despotism has struck.

The passage above comes from The Law by Frédéric Bastiat, available as a two-part audio book from FreeAudio.org.

Ron Paul on CNN

In this appearance from February 26, Dr. Ron Paul talks about economics, foreign policy, immigration reform, and upholding the constitution.

A candidate worth supporting

Ron Paul filed papers to form an exploratory committee!

In an interview, Dr. Tom DiLorenzo said, "No one is proposing anything near constitutional government. I consider the act of voting to be treasonous to the Constitution." Unlike so many of his colleagues, Paul has read but also works diligently to apply the constitution properly.

Peace. Freedom. Property. Vote for Dr. Ron Paul.

"On Parade"

I had a piece published on LewRockwell.com today!