What Comes After Stupid?

One of my previous health care posts was entitled, “Quit Talking Stupid”, but I should have stopped at “Quit Talking”.  This week, the Senate will vote on a new Health Care Bill that redefines stupid.  

The “cost” of this bill is scored by the Congressional Budget Office at $849 billion, and CBO estimates it would reduce the deficit by $130 billion.  That is stupid squared.

Let’s give just one minute of thought to those two statements.  The CBO number is a net number; that is, all of the new costs less all six of its new taxes = $849 billion of net additional government spending.  That increases the deficit by, duh, $849 billion.

And the $849 billion “cost” assumes a $500 billion gutting of Medicare in the out years; as if that would ever actually happen. The bill creates a panel to provide for “adjustments” if necessary – yeah, like when 100 million old people rush the Russell Senate Office Building with pitchforks, ropes, and torches.  So let’s drop that lie and call it $1.35 trillion of double-down stupid.

An earlier Senate version got to its equally stupid CBO score of $827 billion by cutting doctor’s fees by 25% and leaving them there.  That must still be in this new one, as it was a $257 billion sprinkling of fairy dust which will also never happen.  Tres Stupid. And now we are talking $1.5 trillion.

To repeat my past warnings of ENRON accounting in the CBO scoring of these bills, the new and improved Harry Reid Bill puts off most benefits until 2014, so they count 10 years of new taxes and only 5 years of paid benefits.  Stupid times four. 

Take 10 years of taxes and a full 10 years of benefit costs and the real net cost of a decade under this new health care system is over $2 trillion.  That is the number that we need to double to account for every single government welfare program costing twice as much as we think it will. 

Still want government health care?  Ok, but talk $4 trillion of the stuff, and tell us where you will get the money from.  Tax the rich? Already included.  Increase Medicare taxes?  Them, too. Forced premiums – ditto.  Employer payroll taxes – yup.  Tax premiums – way ahead of you.  Tax flex savings – c’mon, man!  Fines, forced premiums, payroll tax hikes - all in. 

Remember all that talk about making our health care system more affordable?  Yeah, well, this new one is so expensive that they had to add in a subsidy to families making up to $88,000 to help them pay all the new taxes and fees you are going to get stuck with.  Chad Stupidcinco. 

And the coup de stupid?  Our current system, with all of its problems, covers 90% of legal American citizens who want to purchase health insurance but can’t.  The new Senate Bill increases coverage to 94%.  4 lousy percent. We are about to throw away the best health care system in the world and bust the bank by over $4 trillion to increase coverage by a nit, and that doesn't even happen for five more years. 

This is stupid to the 10^th power.  It is unbearably stupid.  Now I know why texters have so many different ways to abbreviate laughing hysterically out loud.

Don’t even bother to read the 2,074 page bill.  Whatever the Senate passes will get tossed aside along with last month’s House bill when Nancy and Harry write up a brand new conference bill that will be even more stupid than the two versions they throw out.  Axelrod already said they would. And then 100 different agencies will write up rules and regulations on a whim – like rationing mammograms, for instance.  How was that for a wake up call?     

Besides, you don’t need to read it to make up your mind, you just need to ask yourself one question:  if it is as good for you as they claim, then why do they have to lie this much to get their own members to vote for it?     

They know this will suck.  I believe them on that one point.  So should you.

Tim Nerenz is the Libertarian Party Candidate for U.S. House of Representatives from Wisconsin's 2nd District. To support Dr. Tim's campaign, please visit the campaign website at www.timnerenz.com.

Affirmative Action

You either believe that institutionalized racism is wrong or you don’t.  I happen to believe it is wrong, and therefore oppose Affirmative Action in any form.

To support Affirmative Action, you must first accept its prerequisite belief that people of color and women are inferior to white males.  This is a vile and ignorant idea; one that people of conscience should vehemently reject.       

In fact, I reject the whole notion of group rights and group responsibilities – we are not a flock of geese.  I believe that each individual person has been endowed by their Creator with a unique set of talents and potentials, rights and responsibilities.

These rights preceded government.  Governments are created to protect them, and governments are thrown off when they don’t - this is the lesson of history.

Affirmative Action does not protect the equal rights of all persons; it diminishes the rights of some in order to bestow favors to others.  It chooses its victims and beneficiaries on race and gender alone, not on merit.  And it dehumanizes the very people it claims to be helping; forcing them to surrender their individuality and take up membership in a herd. 

It assumes that Martin Luther King and Rodney King are cut from the same cloth; that Nancy Pelosi and Nancy Reagan are one.  It is shameful that we fill our children’s heads with such nonsense.

We teach the majority of them that they are not capable of individual achievement, that they are not good enough to compete with the minority of white boys.  We teach them to wait for someone else to level a playing field, instead of learning to run uphill.

Politicians love to use that term – level playing field.  As if life was a straight-line march across 100 yards of manicured lawn with white lines and referees and yard markers; where you get a reward every ten yards and everyone else stops a waits for your instant replay whenever you perceive a slight.  Good luck with that.

Real life is a full speed off-road chase with no destination, no time clock, and no instant replay.  It is the thrill of victory and it is the agony of defeat.  Reaching the summit is only meaningful when you pick your peak and climb it yourself; taking a helicopter ride to the top only enriches the pilot. 

The view from the top is the same for the climber and the rider; but they see vastly different things.  And only one will be prepared to conquer the next peak, and the next, and the next.  Affirmative Action turns climbers into riders; it enriches only its own helicopter pilots, those who have made millions marketing victimhood.

Democrats would rather be race pimps than risk losing the votes it buys them, and Republicans are so PC they are afraid to call a spade a spade – in fact, I would bet that many of them just flinched reading that agricultural reference.

Libertarians are the Party of Principle - it is not difficult for us to see things clearly and speak plainly about them.   Affirmative Action is bigotry encoded into law; it is immoral, unconstitutional, un-American, and it has deprived persons of all races and both genders from reaching their full individual potential.

50 years of Affirmative Action is enough.  If it has worked, it should no longer be necessary; if it has failed, it should no longer be desirable.  In either case, it should no longer be.

Tim Nerenz is the Libertarian Party Candidate for U.S. House of Representatives from Wisconsin's 2nd District. To support Dr. Tim's campaign, please visit the campaign website at www.timnerenz.com.

Public Option Airways

Every time we fly we are treated to a dose of applied Libertarian philosophy – we are told to put on our own oxygen mask first before we choose to help others.   

Simple principles, really: no person has a claim on the life, liberty, or property of another; voluntary exchange is the only just relationship between equals; you can not give a thing you do not have.  This is sense that was once common; wisdom that was once conventional.  Today it is heresy of the first rank.   

Pay attention to this lesson in liberty while you still can, because it won’t be long before the government buys one of our perpetually bankrupted airlines; after all, that’s what they do in Europe.  And things will be different on Public Option Airways.

For starters, on POA, there would be no oxygen masks, only an empty Oxygen Trust Fund full of useless IOU’s.  But don’t worry – the CBO projects that there are theoretically enough oxygen masks to last until 2017, statistically speaking.   

If there is a loss of a cabin pressure, POA would appoint a special commission, a Czar maybe, to regulate the distribution of masks that it doesn’t own.  Passengers of limited ability would band together and lobby the commission to receive preferences, set-asides, and mandated assistance - affirmative oxygenation. 

The National Association of Oxygen Mask Producers would lobby the commission for requirements and specifications that would double the price of the masks and insure no new competitor could ever get a license to produce one.   

The Eco-brutes would force the commission to mandate masks that are “green”; solar and wind-powered, with cap and trade filters that limit the amount of greenhouse gasses can be exhaled.  Nancy and Harry would compromise on 8 allowed breaths per minute and write it into law, then add an earmark to build high-speed rail from San Francisco to Las Vegas.  Ex-governor Doyle would sell them some Spanish train cars and make another killing.  

Archer Daniels Midland would lobby the POA commission for the masks to be made of 15% corn; Northrup Grumman would finagle them to be armed with cruise missiles; the liberals in Congress would first balk at that, but then cave in once Dave Obey earmarked a new oxygen mask factory in every single Congressional district with some leftover stimulus money he had laying around. Rep. Murtha would get two.

The Bailout Banks would finance all that factory construction will free Fed money, and the projects would be insured by AIG.  They would siphon off their bonuses in gold this time.  All the pickup trucks at the job site would have to be GM, of course.  A class action lawsuit would be necessary at some point – not for any particular reason, just to make sure the trial lawyers get their snouts in the trough.   

Public Option Airways flight attendants’ and pilots’ unions would lobby the commission for a pay increase for the extra work of handing out masks that used to drop automatically.  The commission would go one step further, requiring everyone on the plane to join the union, including all the passengers.  ACORN would get a grant to sign them up with Card Check.  Later they would be caught on tape advising Hare Krishna’s on how to set up prostitution rings at all the major hubs.

When John Stossel reveals that there were no actual oxygen masks at Public Option Airways, the POA commission would blame George Bush. That would satisfy the journalistic curiosity of the media. 

MSNBC would counter with a special report on the gap between the excess number of oxygen masks on rich corporate jets and the critical shortage at POA.  Jesse Jackson would cry racism, Barney Frank and Chuck Schumer would be back on Meet The Press speaking in tongues about the 47 million un-oxygenated, and President Obama would make a prime time speech, causing Chris Mathews’ leg to tingle again, and Sting to discover God for the second time.  

Another Obama speech?  That would jolt those five senile Norwegians from their comas and they would give him another Nobel Peace Prize, the first back-to-back winner since Archie Griffin at Ohio State…….oh, wait, that was the Heisman Trophy, the one you must actually do something to win.  Never mind that part.

And what about those passengers on the POA flight that lost cabin pressure?  Oh, they have been dead for months now.  But this was never about them; this was always about expanding power and control of the Parasite Class – the people who live off the ability of those who produce things and create wealth.   

However, the flying public takes dying on POA more seriously, and they will switch to private sector airlines where a real oxygen mask drops in case of emergency and you simply put it on yourself.  Radical Libertarians! 

The POA commission will call them dangerous, domestic terrorists, racists, enemies of the state, and compile a list of their emails.  It will mandate all carriers follow the same rules as POA to “keep the private carriers honest.” 

Would you fly Public Option Airways?  Then why do you accept “Public Option” education, energy, agriculture, health care, transportation, finance, housing, and research?  Where did you think I got the ideas for this amusing little fable?

We must quit pretending that government incompetence and impotence are rare side effects that must be tolerated to achieve some grand public ambition. Incompetence and impotence are the essential qualities of the beast; its only ambition is control, and there is nothing grand other than its appetite for power.

So the next time you fly and the flight attendant reaches for the oxygen mask, remember Public Option Airways and remind yourself to vote for Tim, Not Tammy.

Tim Nerenz is the Libertarian Party Candidate for U.S. House of Representatives from Wisconsin's 2nd District. To support Dr. Tim's campaign, please visit the campaign website at www.timnerenz.com.

Cap And Trade

We do not use too much energy because we are wealthy - we are only wealthy because we use energy.   Energy equals prosperity. 

Do you want to Cap your prosperity?  Do you want to Trade your prosperity?   Nancy Pelosi is betting your job that Al Gore might be right about Global Warming.   Did you give her your permission?   Your job is not Nancy's to wager; your choices are not Al's to judge.   

You will pay a new tax of over $1,500 each year because liberal politicians think they deserve it more than you do.   That is what Cap and Trade is:  another tax from liberals who think you have too much wealth and who will give to someone who did not earn it - again.  Another looting of your property from those who swore an oath to protect it.  It is government, not energy, that needs to be limited to preserve our standard of living.  

  

Limiting energy limits your prosperity; eventually it will eliminate it altogether.  If your employer can't get the energy he needs, you will lose your job.  If you own the business that is starved of the energy it needs, you will lose it.   The worst will be knowing that it was not necessary for you to suffer; that you could have stood up to Cap and Trade and said no. 

Your foreign competitors will face no such obstacles - Cap and Trade is the best thing that could happen to them, and you will even pay for their newfound competitive advantage.    

China is using more energy, not less.  India is using more energy, not less.  Brazil, Indonesia, Russia, Mexico - they all know that energy equals prosperity.  They will gladly take your job if you don't want it anymore.   Our companies will gladly develop their energy resources if we are foolish enough to leave ours in the ground.

There is one sensible form of Cap and Trade we can all support.  We should enact term limits to Cap the tenure of those who lust to rule over us, and we should Trade out the whole miserable mess of socialist liberals from both parties next November.