I haven’t much to say except to that what happened in Washington tonight has very probably set off a tinderbox, and we will now be in rebellion. May it be a non-violent one, but if violence is what it ultimately takes, we are a people whose nation is founded on such in the defense of human liberty.
[Monday morning update]
Professor Jacobson has a pep talk.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Paul Hsieh on the coming battles. And Victor Davis Hanson says that Obama has crossed the Rubicon. Fortunately, Julius Caesar he’s not.
[Update a while later]
Had enough?
As I have argued now for months – first, in August, here; then, in November, here and here; and, more recently, here, here, and here – a genuine political realignment may be in the offing. This has happened at irregular intervals in our nation’s past – most notably, in 1800, 1828, 1860, and 1932 – and on each occasion the political party benefiting from the upheaval was able to paint a plausible picture depicting their opponents as being parties to a conspiracy to overthrow the liberties possessed by their fellow Americans. This is what Thomas Jefferson did to the Federalists in and after 1800; it was what Andrew Jackson did to John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Nicholas Biddle, and the Whigs in and after 1828; it was what Abraham Lincoln and the Republicans did to the slave power conspiracy and its fellow travelers in the North in and after 1860, and it was what Franklin Delano Roosevelt did to Herbert Hoover and the business-minded progressives in and after 1932. When FDR claimed, at the 1936 Democratic convention, that “a small group” of his fellow Americans was intent on concentrating “into their own hands an almost complete control over other people’s property, other people’s money, other people’s labor – other people’s lives,” he was merely rephrasing the charges lodged in an earlier time by Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and their political allies.
Of course, one cannot plausibly advance such a claim except in circumstances where one has a great deal of help from one’s opponents. In 1800, Jefferson profited from the quarrel pitting Alexander Hamilton against John Adams, and by exhibiting secessionist propensities at the Hartford Convention, the New England Federalists destroyed their own party. Something similar can be said regarding Nicholas Biddle and the supporters of the Second National Bank. The same is true for the supporters of the slave power in and after 1860, and Herbert Hoover was in similar fashion a godsend for FDR.
If the Republicans have a comparable opportunity in 2010 and 2012, it is because of what I described in my very first blogpost as “Obama’s Tyrannical Ambition.” Barack Obama has a gift. He has told us so himself, and he is right, but he errs in supposing that his oratorical skill will enable him to fool all of the people all of the time, and over time he has, in effect, unmasked his own party as a conspiracy on the part of a would-be aristocracy of do-gooders hostile to very idea of self-government in the United States. There is no need for me to review the record of the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress in the last fifteen months. It is enough to say that, in an administration that promised transparency, everything has been negotiated behind closed doors in a manner suggestive of tyranny and that, in an administration that promised to distance itself from the lobbyists, every major bill has been written by them and is loaded with special deals that give new meaning to the old phrase “corrupt bargain.” The stimulus bill, cap-and-trade, healthcare reform: with these Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid have brought home to the American people, as never before, the tyrannical propensities inherent in the progressive impulse. Thanks to them, everyone now knows that there is no such thing as a moderate Democrat.
I’m not sure that everyone knows it, but enough to now to make the whirlwind that they’ll reap pretty big in the fall. And perhaps years to come.
[Update a few minutes later]
Another pep talk, from Bill Whittle:
…in terms of limiting the practical and immediate damage, holding it here — just holding it — is important and essential. Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have an IQ of 130 — that would be combined between the three of them and you can get to 150 if you throw in Biden — and so they actually believe that a few months from now, they will be able to add single-payer to this goat rodeo, this bloodbath, this circus of incompetence conducted by this museum-grade confederacy of dunces. It got them a bill that requires people to pay for private insurance — which I am, of course, utterly opposed to on every level — but that is way short of single payer and we MUST hold the line here and not an inch further until reinforcements arrive in January. And they will. In numbers that will astonish and amaze the most optimistic among us.
We need to understand the great lesson we have learned about these people in this debate. Barack Obama is, to the liberal cause, a politician that comes not once in a decade, or once in a generation, or even once per century. Barack Obama is, to them, a once in history opportunity for progressives to control this country, and they will fall on a forest of swords to achieve those ends because this is the best chance they have ever had or ever will have to permanently shackle the people to the state. They know that this Health Care fiasco will cost them the House and now perhaps the Senate in November, but that new Congress will not seat until January and in the ten months between now and then they will, I predict, start an orgy of legislation that will make this Health Care circus look like a tea party.
But it seems to me that they have spent every dime of political capital in the bank and have done nothing less than awoken from it’s long and deep slumbers the American Giant, who in attempting to sit upright discovers the Lilliputian threads that have been staked into the ground with finishing nails and who looks around, blinking and disoriented, fatter and softer and much, much poorer than he was when he last opened his eyes back in 1941, but possessed now as then with a terrible anger and capable still of mighty exertions.
So, to the short term: everybody knows that Reid and Pelosi and The Lightworker himself, obviously, are all hoping to use this bill as the foot in the door for the stuff they really want: A single-payer National Health System, or at least the “public option,” which is simply single-payer on the installment plan. We can’t let them get that. Going forward, we can’t let them get single-payer, or cap and trade, or amnesty, or any of it.
We’ll see if their political tone deafness continues.
[Update mid morning]
Another pep talk, from Moe Lane: things we were told we couldn’t do.
[Update a few minutes later]
Jim Treacher says it’s not fair to call this a political Jonestown for the Democrats, because Jim Jones only killed 900 people.
I can’t see there being a reason pressing enough to warrant knowingly wiping a species off the map.
How about risking it? And it might be (say) a mosquito?
I’m not aware of a mathematical symbol for “much less than”.
<<
Hey Rand, I saw Jurassic Park, the mosquito is the only thing that will allow other species to continue to exist. 😉 Don’t you want the robot from A.I. to bring you back?
Are we really going to start talking about the ethics of environmentalism in a thread about the healthcare bill? To answer the question anyway: It would depend on the severity of the risk. And yes, even if it was a mosquito. They’re vital parts of the food web in areas they inhabit.
Rand said:
something I can’t seem to type without locking up IE6, our fine corporate standard.
I thought of that, but being an IT guy, that reads to me as shift left.
Ethan said:
“If you can afford insurance and don’t buy it anyway, then you’re fined the $750.”
Yes, I fully expect a whole lot of people to do that math, pay the fine, and depart from the risk pool, once they realize they can get back in at any time without penalty. Why wouldn’t I go that route and save nearly $10,000? Right now, I’m paying over $8,000 a year in order to save $100 dollars each of the three times I visit the doctor’s office annually. I expect that number to increase to around $14,000 year once the new law is fully implemented.
Ethan said:
“even if it was a mosquito. They’re vital parts of the food web in areas they inhabit.”
Including my backyard, I suppose. I’m still using the bug spray, though.
Yeah, but you killing the mosquitoes in your backyard isn’t extincting the whole species…..
You guys are not doing very well against Ethan, I’m sorry to say. The reason is that you have allowed him to set the terms of the debate. For example, when he says:
he is begging the question. He has assumed that resources are available to provide everyone who needs them with blood thinners and the medical plant and personnel to monitor their progress and reactions and adjust their regimens accordingly.
That is the bottom line problem with this health care fiasco: it increases the demand for medical services while simultaneously reducing the prospective supply of trained personnel and equipment, and stifling future innovation. That is a recipe for failure.
Opponents of this measure must not get trapped into the position of seeming to advocate a law-of-the-jungle insouciance to the plight of the uninsured. If they do, they will lose.
What everyone knows is that A) we do not currently have the resources to commit to providing personalized care to everyone B) the current strategy of relying on medical personnel to become martyrs for the privilege of administering to the needs of those who believe they have the right to demand they do so will only decrease the supply and quality of those available to do so C) this will lead ineluctably to rationing, and a decrease in the quality of medical care available to those who currently have it already, which is the great majority of citizens.
A workable strategy to extend improved medical care to everyone would focus on training more medical personnel and relieving the burdens they must assume to do so, and encouraging innovation and advances in productivity in the provision of medical services. Prices go down either when you increase supply or decrease demand. Demand is not going to decrease naturally. By failing to increase supply, and indeed actively taking steps to diminish it, the government will be forced implicitly or explicitly to decrease demand artificially through rationing. This is an iron law of economics. There is no way around it.
something I can’t seem to type without locking up IE6, our fine corporate standard.
Can you type an &? If so, this: << will do the job in HTML…
Wouldn’t the new demand for care cause demand for new doctors and new medical facilities? I’m not sure where you’re getting the idea that the bill “actively takes steps to diminish” supply.
“Wouldn’t the new demand for care cause demand for new doctors and new medical facilities?”
Well, yeah. But, we do not need more demand. We need more supply. And, if you’ve done nothing to entice those new doctors and contractors for medical facilities and products into fulfilling that demand, if in fact you have actively made the prospect less appealing to them, then how are you going to meet the new demand? There is only one way: the demand will have to be rationed to the available supply.
Yeah, HMO plans are fine if you’re at the age where people tend to get strokes. Otherwise, lacking a chronic condition, you’re better off just getting a physical every couple of years and paying out of pocket. Mandating that everyone buys one is mandating bad financial planning. HDHP are much better, and will be legal at least for another four years, maybe longer when the GOP takes back Congress.
Becoming a doctor will still pay more than most professions. There may be a period where it’s harder to schedule an appointment, but wouldn’t it be safe to say that the new demand will eventually lead to more supply?
“…wouldn’t it be safe to say that the new demand will eventually lead to more supply?”
How? You are going to pay them less. You are going to increase their caseloads. You are going to regulate them more heavily. You are not going to reform the tort system. What possible reason can you see that you are going to get more people to opt for such a career?
Please explain this to me. What thought processes are you bringing to bear on this question that makes you see more people volunteering to martyr themselves simply because you want them to?
I will help you out before you blow a fuse trying to reconcile the contradictions.
What socialized systems rely on worldwide is this: they relax standards so that less qualified people can get their degrees, and they import doctors from poorer countries on a massive scale. The latter, of course, can only be temporary, as their Americanized children will not immolate themselves similarly, and the countries from which they hail become wealthy enough that their citizens no longer need to seek employment elsewhere to better their condition.
Then, in the steady state, we will have a pool of poorly qualified and motivated medical staff working with increasingly antiquated equipment, along with the occasional talented martyr-for-the-cause here and there.
This is where we are heading. This is what it is like in Europe right now, along with chronic double digit unemployment such as we are also experiencing now. That is what you have/are/will no doubt continue voting for.
There is no free lunch. You makes your choices and you takes your chances. Welcome to the Worker’s Paradise.
You don’t get it, kid. The brains generally go where the money is. If health care doesn’t pay very well, smart people won’t get into medicine. You may get more practitioners but how good will they be? I don’t want the ones that get in to med school because the smart kids decided not to go. When you make doctors and nurses bureaucrats, you won’t have doctors and nurses who are bureaucrats, you’ll have bureaucrats who practice medicine. That’s a bad thing just so you know.
Nice guess, but I’m not a libertarian. Philisophically, I’m an objectivist and thus politically a laissez faire capitalist.
Oh great. A follower of the cult of Ayn Rand. Hopefully it will be buried by history just like that other cult by Karl Marx. To be honest my preferred Russian writer is Dostoyevsky. I tried reading Das Kapital and Atlas Shrugged a couple of times, but found the writing in both books so turgid, boring, and uninteresting, I never did read them that much. Sure there’s a paragraph here and there that catches the eye, but reading either feels more like a chore than a pleasure.
Where is your personal tipping point on government power (or, How much government power is too much in your opinion)?
There are loads of places where I feel governments should be limited by either granting rights to citizens or establishing limits to rulers:
* Freedom of speech.
* Freedom of association (including corporations and unions). However this does not mean I have much tolerance for cartels.
* Freedom of movement.
* Abolition of the death penalty.
* I also think rulers should have short mandates with a limited number of terms (i.e. I think what Chavez did by making himself dictator for life is utterly despicable).
* Multi-party system (i.e. Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union were despicable).
* Proportional representation. One person one vote. I can tolerate something like the Senate with per state representatives for some kind of check or balance, but even then elections inside the state for example should be proportional.
* Direct election. None of this I vote for a guy, that votes for another guy, nonsense. Reminds me too much of the Soviet Union. IMO the more layers there are the more corruption the system gets. Easier to bribe less people.
This is not an exhaustive list. If you want to know my opinion on supposedly important social issues I am against euthanasia, against gay marriage, however I am pro-choice (fancy newspeak this one), and think drugs should be legal (as long as users don’t consume them in a way that I get exposed to the drug’s effects).
Oh great. A follower of the cult of Ayn Rand. Hopefully it will be buried by history just like that other cult by Karl Marx.
Yes, that’s right. Because the followers of Ayn Rand have slaughtered so many tens of millions of people in their cause…
Just the idea of rational ANYTHING when it comes to human beings is laughable.
Just the idea of rational ANYTHING when it comes to human beings is laughable.
Try it sometime. Then get back to us on whether it’s laughable or not. You’re still stuck with cognitive dissonance, for example, believing that we can’t trust government to police our roads, but we can trust them to police our health care, something at least as intimate and vital to us as getting from point A to point B.
Just the idea of rational ANYTHING when it comes to human beings is laughable.
Speak for yourself. But you’re certainly a poster child for the proposition.
FIFY
Godzilla says, that among Russian writers, he prefers Doestoevsky to Ayn Rand. (Let’s all pause now, genuflect, and say in unison, “Wow, what a smart guy!”) Apparently he skipped over the Grand Inquistor chapter in THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV. Or maybe he read it and thought the Grand Inquisitor was a good guy. “Hey, bread for liberty! Sounds like a good deal to me! We should elect someone like that president!” That part of Doestoevsky is coming true, just so much of ATLAS SHRUGGED is.
“So what youre saying here, Ethan, is it’s ok for me to stick a knife in you as long as it’s a small knife. But of course, you don’t get to choose, I’m choosing the knife size for you. This is clearly not an infringement on your liberty because I’m a compassionate guy and would only make you bleed a little.”
And Ethan (not getting the point–or pretending not to–as usual) responds:
“That is a textbook strawman argument. ”
No, kid; that would be an analogy, with elements of the “reductio ad absurdum.” The point being that in einitiating force on someone, the wrongess of the act is not affected by the size or scope of the act, or the whether the person committing the act is ultimately intending for you to get some benefit from it.
“cult” seems to have grown in meaning recently.
Either that or its a stand in for “I disagree with you, and rather than debate, I’m going to call you names.”
Follow that up with a pleading argument for intellectual superiority constituted by a reference to one’s preference of ethnically similar writers. Because ethnicity matters. And the writer you like is boring.
And then go on to state that your prefered government grants people rights, or establishes limits for rulers. As if the two were morally equal. And here is your list of such arbitrary rights, with no mention of integrating principle.
With regard to intellectual superiority, your argument has convinced me.
Look at Toyota’s rapid growth…followed by massive recalls. They made their profits by cutting corners.
Ethan, that is just libelous and grossly wrong. Toyota made its profit by providing superior, high quality cars. Even in the early 70s when they were a dinky outfit selling little, boxy cars, their cars were better quality than the American ones. They broke down less often, they needed less and cheaper maintenance, etc. That was how they beat Volkswagon who had a car that needed the engine replaced every 120,000 miles (IIRC).
When the oil crisis hit, the Japanese car makers (all seven of them) were uniquely positioned to take advantage of it. Their little cars used a lot less gas and had much lower maintenance costs than anything else on the road. When the US car makers dropped the ball by producing some of the lousiest cars they have ever made (Vega and Pinto), then the Japanese moved big time into the US garage.
It’s worth noting that this happened long ago. Whatever problems Toyota has now with its cars are completely unrelated to their rise to a market leader decades ago.
I am deeply suspicious, to a near certitude, that the campaign against Toyota was planned and excreted from within the bowels of Government Motors and the White House. I’m still not buying any bailout-mobile, now or in the future.
Also keep in mind that the rules for building cars in the US were set by the government in the 70s…(Carter) for improved gas mileage and the US companies were already behind the power curve there. Toyota should have told the government at the recent hearings that the device failures were due to design specs given to them by the government.
Becoming a doctor will still pay more than most professions.
You think Doctor’s are making as much as the Wall Street bankers that Obama bailed out? I’ve talked to many Doctor’s who wish they had gone into computers rather than medicine. Then they could work less hours and still make plenty of money. Most importantly, they could have made the money with just a Bachelor’s degree and a lot less debt in student loans.
All that before getting into the good points made by Bill Maron.
You think Doctor’s are making as much as the Wall Street bankers that Obama bailed out? I’ve talked to many Doctor’s who wish they had gone into computers rather than medicine. Then they could work less hours and still make plenty of money. Most importantly, they could have made the money with just a Bachelor’s degree and a lot less debt in student loans.
It’s bullshit. I know it, I had a doctor tell me the same thing. It was one of the factors that drove me to software in the first place. That plus a couple of other things. The chief factor, other than a doctor I respected telling me he wished he had not gone into medicine in the first place, was that learning medicine today involves memorizing a lot of factoids and I hate degrees which force you to memorize stuff as if it was some kind of badge of honor. The sooner medical teaching drops that requirement the better. It’s like when you tune in to Al-Jazeera and they are showing this boy “genius” that memorized the whole Koran. Nice. Give the guy an e-book reader.
Does not matter. Regardless of state intervention in the insurance market a doctor (or a software developer for that matter) is still an expert worker with specific domain knowledge that people need. You can still begin your own practice with little starting capital.
Also if you think people in software, or other segments of the computer business work for less hours than a doctor, you are sorely mistaken. Oh and we do not get paid for overtime. When you do the math on that you figure out we do not earn as much as you would think we do.
There’s a huge initial cost to being a medical doctor. For example, most people in the software industry work less hours than they do in residency training which apparently lasts around a couple of years. Glancing through Wikipedia, I see that current accreditation programs limit residency work hours to 80 a week. There are a few IT jobs that have that many hours consistently, but they aren’t common. So we have a vast different in entry costs. A doctor puts in a lot more schooling and low paying, on the job training.
Further, the liability associated with being a doctor is vastly worse than anything an IT worker sees. The latter simply can’t make a mistake that can ban them from working in the field or subject them to unbounded liability.
Also if you think people in software, or other segments of the computer business work for less hours than a doctor, you are sorely mistaken. Oh and we do not get paid for overtime. When you do the math on that you figure out we do not earn as much as you would think we do.
Sorry. 100+ hour weeks over the course of several months? Done it on more than one project. I still wouldn’t compare it to a doctor.
I agree with what Karl wrote.