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You’ve bought the political lies.

23 Jul

How much of what you buy politically is totally disconnected from reality?

Today ends a week where the Democrats voted No on the second budget proposal put forth by the Republicans, which the President promised to veto anyway. The Democrats have had zero proposals so far. Today Obama gave a speech saying that the Republican party needs to decide if they can say Yes to anything. His speech is totally disconnected from reality, as he is now part of the Party of No.

Do you buy it?

It’s not just the President.There’s lots of lies we believe about politics:

All politicians are the same – corrupt liars
I can’t change anything
It’s acceptable to be uninformed and uninvolved
Republicans have no heart
Democrats are the party of equal rights
We can trust the Republican Party
We can trust the Democrat Party
If the media presents someone negatively, they’re unqualified for office.
The pursuit of profits is evil
Corporate Jets always are a waste of money
The New Deal helped the economy and Americans
Higher tax rates always means more revenue
When the country is in financial trouble the solution is to go further into debt.

Have you bought into any of these? What other lies about politics do we tend to believe?

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Posted in Politics

Health Care: When facts don’t matter

22 Jun

I’ve found it difficult to engage in this conversation because most people, from any perspective, have built their argument on a foundation of ignorance. Having worked in medical management, I’ve got a perspective that most medical professionals and patients don’t have. I understand contracts between medical providers and insurance companies. I understand how Medicare and Medicaid work. I understand medical billing. Having citizenship in two countries I also have a perspective that most people don’t share. Having had family members uninsured, on COBRA, personal insurance, group insurance, and government insurance, I have experience most people don’t.

Here’s some facts if you’d like to transition to a different foundation.

It’s a lie that only super wealthy can afford health care.

It’s simply not true. It may be that a doctor’s appointment cost someone $100. Now, we’re willing to pay that $100 to the cable company or the cell phone company. We’re willing to pay $100 to movie studios to watch and buy movies. Doctor’s visits are only for the elite in the same way that cell phones are for the elite: Not at all.

Here in Denver there’s a lot of offices geared specifically to those without a lot of money. The goal is to cut costs and ensure that everyone can get medical treatment. Offices that aren’t geared toward that provide discounts of cash patients, payment plans, and service those who are on Medicaid – tax-funded payment for medical services for the poor.

Cost of care in America

Those with insurance typically see the Explanation of Benefits (EOB) from their insurance company and are shocked at the original bill from the medical provider. A typical EOB reads something like:

Lab work. Billed: $3,000. Insurance discount: $2,994. Insurance paid: $6.

We walk away with the assumption that if we didn’t have insurance, we’d have to pay the list price of $3,000. It’s not true. Here’s a secret about how insurance payments work. Bureaucrats behind Medicare (tax-funded medical payments for the elderly and disabled) have a list of accepted medical procedures and how much the government will pay for those procedures. Each accepted procedure has an associated Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) code. The base Medicare payment rates are so low, they don’t even cover the doctor’s expenses in seeing the patient. Medicaid (tax-funded medical payments for the poor) pay even less. Medical practices enter into contracts with insurance providers, that boil down to something like: “For covered procedures, we’ll pay you Medicare rates plus 15%.”

When the government or insurance payer receives a bill of CPT codes and associated charges, they validate whether the CPT codes are covered, and then pay the contracted rate or the billed rate: whichever is less. Because of this, it doesn’t matter whether they get billed $10 or $10,000 for a blood draw, they’ll only pay the contracted $9.54. The problem is if the billed amount is lower, say, $8, they’ll just pay that. So medical offices mark up the price of everything really high to prevent under-billing.

Cash-paying patients often can pay even less than insurance if they’re up-front. Insurance doesn’t need to be billed, the doctor doesn’t have to wait weeks or months for payment.

Sometimes our medical bills are still high. I recently heard someone angry that they paid over $100 and only saw the doctor for a few minutes. They whined. A lot. But here’s what that $100 likely paid for:

receptionist (scheduling the appointment, placing reminder calls, etc.)
nurse and/or medical assistant (the person who checks your vitals before you see the doctor)
filing clerk (there’s a lot of laws about how medical records are handled, filing clerks track the files and have to go through training on how to handle records – that training is another expense paid for)
doctor (the doc only saw the patient for a few minutes, but spent time reviewing the patient’s history, writing up notes for the medical records, possibly writing referrals and prescriptions, etc.)
medical malpractice insurance
facility rent
medical equipment
lab work
the debt created by taking on Medicaid and Medicare patients
medical disposal costs (there’s special ways – that all cost money – to dispose of various things)
billing staff, especially if the patient didn’t say he was cash-only and pay up-front.

Cost of care in other countries

Meanwhile we have experiences or hear stories of cheap health care in other countries. A friend of mine recently went to a hospital in Asia and paid $5. Reviewing the list above of what has to be paid for, did the hospital really provide all those services for $5? That would be less than 50 cents for each item on the list. $.50 for the receptionist, $.50 for the medical assistant. $.50 for the doctor. $.50 for lab work.

No. The doctors are not living off 50-cents per-patient. The medical bills are just being paid for by another source, and the patient has no idea what the actual cost-of-care was. In many countries, that payer is the government.

The government decides what treatment you can have.
The government decides when you can have the treatment.
The government simply raises taxes to pay for the treatment.

This then makes a legal requirement that someone else pay for your medical expenses. When it’s all paid for through tax revenue, the implication is that tax payers are required to give their hard-earned money to pay for your medical bills. If they don’t? They’ll take away the tax payer property, or take the money forcibly from their paycheck, and in some countries put the citizen in prison for not paying their taxes.

The demand that someone else be required to pay your medical bills or go to prison is immoral.

International Medical Tourism

But what about all those people going to other countries for health care? What about Americans going to Canada for prescription drugs?

I used to live minutes away from the border of Canada. We took trips to Canada to buy certain things cheaper, and my relatives in Canada took trips to the US for certain things that were cheaper. Not only that, but it is normal behavior in Canada to go to the US if you need better or faster health care, and the Canadian healthcare system routinely sends patients to the US. American health care is part of the Canadian health care system, because America does certain things better/faster. It goes both ways.

Americans are traveling to India, Thailand, and other countries for significant medical treatments that are too costly in America. This is simple economics. Trousers in India may be significantly cheaper than in America. The cost of living is lower. They may have less government regulation to comply with. For various reasons, economies are different, and this has no necessary connection to the quality or accessibility of health care. Or pants.

These are the real problems with American health care

I do think America has the best health care – at least better than any other place I’ve had medical care, which is only about 5 countries on 3 continents. Here’s what the basic problems are that could be fixed very quickly:

It’s easy to sue doctors. This means the cost of being a doctor goes up to may for malpractice insurance. This also means that doctors frequently do more tests and treatments than are necessary as an attempt to prevent a lawsuit claiming they didn’t do enough.
It’s easy to collect big bills and then go bankrupt. It is the law that no hospital can turn a patient away. A Physician Assistant I know told me about working in a New York hospital where the same drunk homeless men would come into the E.R. complaining of chest pain every night. They were legally required to give a lot of costly treatment when the guys just wanted a warm place for the night. Others aren’t homeless, but purposely avoid paying for health care to later declare bankruptcy or otherwise avoid payment. This is equivalent of shoplifting, not paying for what you’re taking, and our legislators are the enablers. On the medical side, it’s costly to collect money that hasn’t been paid, and can take years.
Insurance billing is screwed up. The insurance has a set dollar amount they’ll pay the doctor, but the doctor is still required to bill them with a dollar amount. The only reason why the doctor needs to bill a dollar amount is so the payer (government or insurance) can try to under-pay the doctor if the doctor pays less than the agreed payment amount. If this was not the arrangement, doctors and hospitals wouldn’t have to sky-rocket the list price of services, which is what causes people to stress about the cost of care.
We need to take personal responsibility. I ought to be responsible for figuring out how my medical bills are paid. I ought not be responsible for figuring out how yours are paid. The majority of uninsured people already qualify for government insurance, but have never taken responsibility to sign up for it. We have a total aversion to personal responsibility and rejoice when we only have to pay $5 for a doctor’s visit. We’re simply rejoicing that we’re making a sucker of someone else who will be suck with the bill.
Government regulation costs money. And everything medical is regulated. While payments to doctors aren’t increasing, regulations on medical practices increase ever year.

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Posted in Culture, Politics

Good Earth FriDay: Religions in Conflict

22 Apr

Today is the observance two observances.

Christians today commemorate “Good Friday” – the day in which we remember the crucifixion of Jesus (regardless of what day of the week he was originally killed).

Today is also the annual observance of “Earth Day.”

Both focus on commitment to an entity bigger than ourselves, both focus on personal action and commitment.

Yet only one is religious. Right?

Strangely some very religious-sounding language is used by environmentalists and specifically the EPA’s website. Here’s a few examples:

Belief.Faith is not believing something without evidence, but is believing in something that you can’t see or prove. People can have faith, for example, in the reliability of a friend – this is not to say there’s no evidence, but it cannot be proven that the friend will come through, even if they say they will. Christian faith is strongly based on evidence of the authors of the Bible. Environmental faith, as Al Gore explains in this video, is based on the beliefs of Al Gore and certain holy writings which consist of select research that Al Gore canonized based on whether they agree with his opinion:
Repentance.Repentance speaks to the change of one’s mind that is reflected in a change of behavior. When Christians talk about repentance, they typically mean stopping harmful behavior and committing to healthier, holy, behavior. Here’s where the EPA falls with repentance:
Repent! Repent! Then participate in the 5 sacraments of environmentalism!
Personal Commitment.The Bible speaks to the need not just for one time of belief or a period of repentance upon belief, but personal, daily commitment to wrap your life around Jesus. The EPA uses the very same language encouraging all to “Make a personal commitment to make environmental protection a part of your daily life.”
Read your Bible, pray every day? No! replace that commitment with making environmental protection a part of your daily life.
Daily devotions. Many church kids grew up singing songs like “Read your Bible, pray every day!” There’s a general encouragement to be exposed to and affected by the Bible every day. There’s even daily text message services to get you a daily Bible verse, which is similar to what President Obama says is the extent of his worship. The EPA has an equivalent, and you can sign up to be notified every day with new instructions of how to be sanctified in their eyes.They’ve even got an alternative podcast to keep sermons in your ears!
Daily devotions in text and podcast from the EPA
Community. Christianity cannot be practiced alone. The Bible speaks of groups of Christians as a body, both connected to and supporting each other, and urges Christians to meet together. The first thing on the Earth Day web page of the EPA is a link to find a church.. er… environmentalist events in your area to keep you involved in the faith.
Get plugged into a community of those who share your beliefs and live them out every day, all year. Christianity? Nope. Environmentalism.
Evangelism. Even if a person has believed in Jesus, repented, committed, exercised daily disciplines, and is involved in community, they aren’t really a disciple of Christ unless they are also a disciple maker, spreading the word to others. The alternative is true as well – once you’ve committed your life to environmentalism, you must be an environmental evangelist to “spread the word” to get others to believe, repent, etc. Here’s my final clip from the EPA website:
Curiously, they've even capitalized "Environment" in the title but not the other words, similar to how Christians capitalize "God."

The EPA isn’t all. Earthday.org says you need to pledge, volunteer, evangelize, and even tithe… er… donate to the cause.

My purpose in highlighting the religious nature of environmentalism this Good Earth FriDay is not to say we should abuse the earth. That idea seems so absurd I’m not sure who thinks we ought to destroy our home, and normally when that claim is made, it’s simply to end the discussion by name-calling.

We ought to be responsible stewards of the earth. We should also recognize that environmentalism as it is being pushed by our government and others today is structured in a way to be opposed to other systems of truth claims, such as Christianity.

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Posted in Culture, Politics

Keep the Democrats in my uterus?

13 Apr

Protest Sign: Keep your Boehner out of my uterus!

The signs are back. Boehner, speaker of the house, wanted to remove federal funding of abortion from the budget as one of the cuts. The thinking goes something like this:

If someone wants to stop spending tax-payer dollars on killing an unborn yet scientifically distinct human life, it’s an invasion of someone else’s rights. They should not only have the right to take this human life, but you should pay for it through your taxes.

Where was the outburst of anger when Obama, Pelosi, and Reid rammed through the Obama health care mandate? This gave more government control over every aspect of health, where was the liberal outcry that government should stay out of our bodies?

Evidently, these protesters want Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi in their uterus and John Boehner out. They want legislation out of their uterus, but they want government-paid medical equipment in there scrubbing it. The signs seem like it’s a charge against big government intervention but the argument is the opposite. The sign would more accurately read: “Big government needs to be encouraging and funding abortion.” Statistically Planned Parenthood targets the poor, and a higher percentage of minorities are persuaded to abortion than whites. If the goal was to rid America of poor an brown folks, abortion would be the way to go. In fact, that’s why Planned Parenthood was started – to “to create a race of thoroughbreds” by rectifying “the unbalance between the birth rate of the ‘unfit’ and the ‘fit.’” Perhaps the sign should more accurately read:

Big government needs to be encouraging and funding abortion for the lower class and people with brown skin.

I’ve likely severely offended many readers, particularly if they found this article from a web search. Abortion is a highly charged issue for a few reasons:

For lack of measurable results, the feminist movement pinned their success to the legalization and subsequently federal funding of abortion. The entire feminist push in our culture became focused not on celebrating and valuing what women do, but in promoting abortion because it was a situation unique to women (making it a woman’s issue) and along with more freely available contraceptives, claimed to free up women to have consequence-free sex just like men.
Abortion is highly personal and highly emotional. Women who find themselves considering the option are in a huge crisis where the options seem like death of the child or suicide of self. If they keep the child their life feels like it will be destroyed, and they may not feel much more hope for the baby. With the political and cultural push for and funding of abortion, it’s not surprising that women make this choice. We’re paying their doctors to do it!

Frederica Mathewes-Green wrote an article about pregnancy centers a few years ago. Most disturbing to me are the statistics that it’s overwhelmingly those with wealth that want funding for Planned Parenthood to be used for providing abortions for poorer Americans. The rich are paying for abortion to be promoted for the poor who don’t want it. Here’s an exerpt:

Those who provide alternatives to abortion believe that pregnancy is just one facet of the woman’s larger and more complex life. They believe she is not best served by treating her as merely a polluted uterus in need of a good scrubbing. Her life is tangled with the life of her child growing within, woven with the lives of the child’s father, with her own parents, friends and co-workers in a tapestry of lives. To remove the child is to cut a hole in the tapestry, by literally cutting into human flesh, tearing the child apart and tearing the mother’s heart. Unplanned pregnancy is not one problem, but a host of problems, great and small; pregnancy care providers try to solve them, one at a time.

Problem pregnancy is associated frequently with poverty, and Planned Parenthood selects the poorer neighborhoods; it is popularly believed that abortion is the best solution for the poor. At any rate, this belief is popular with those who are not poor. Polls regularly show that those with higher income levels are the most likely to endorse public funding of abortion, a gift that the recipients are not eager to accept. David Gergen, in an editorial written before he joined the Clinton administration, pointed out that a 1992 Reader’s Digest poll discovered “poorer Americans are the most opposed to federal funding [for abortion]. Among those earning less than $15,000 per year, opposition ran 63 to 32 percent against funding, while those making over $60,000 favored it by 57 to 41 percent.” Gergen asks, “Is Clinton listening to the people he wants to help?”

When people offer to help you by giving you money to eliminate your children, there’s an implied message that’s hard to miss. A friend who worked in an abortion referral center stocked a flier which explained how we could reduce our tax burden by helping poor women have abortions; one day a Hispanic client came in, slapped the flier on the counter, and hissed, “This is what you really think of us.” Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, was an enthusiastic eugenicist who wanted “to create a race of thoroughbreds” by rectifying “the unbalance between the birth rate of the ‘unfit’ and the ‘fit.’” Planned Parenthood still has great admiration for Sanger, and president Faye Wattleton said a few years ago that the organization is “just following in the footsteps” of its founder.

Two brands of compassion, each offering what they think is best, but one gets the lion’s share of funding. While pregnancy care centers are a woman-to-woman operation, with funds raised in batches through bake sales and small grants, abortion is more lavishly supported from above. Planned Parenthood Federation of America is the recipient of impressive grants from a long list of foundations and corporations, from Helena Rubenstein to the Pew Charitable Trusts to the New York Times Company. In a typical year, $125 million was received via Government grants and contracts. Planned Parenthood has fought for federal funding of abortion, and with the expanded provisions of the Hyde Amendment will now be able to charge more abortions to the public purse. Some states, as well, use taxpayer funds to underwrite abortions: in Maryland the bill totals $3 million per year. There is plenty of money from above to eliminate the children of the poor, and little need for bake-sale fundraising from below. The director of Planned Parenthood in Maryland is a well-mannered, sober Bostonian in a dark suit; it is hard to imagine him raising funds by poking his head in an office door, like Gloria’s volunteers, and asking how many want a pastrami sub.

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Posted in Culture, Politics, Reason

Bugs or babies?

12 Apr

Bugs or the babies: which deserve more rights?

According to the United Nations, led by Bolivia, bugs and beetles out value our babies.

Bolivia will this month table a draft United Nations treaty giving “Mother Earth” the same rights as humans — having just passed a domestic law that does the same for bugs, trees and all other natural things in the South American country.

Bolivia recently passed the legislation on the basis of religious worship of the earth deity, “Pachamama.”

Ought wasps have the same rights as women?

This legislation is immoral. When there’s a total moral equivalence between a baby girl and an earwig, how can there be real respect for life? At minimum the conclusion is that it’s a toss up as to which life is worth compassion. Choosing between the life of a mother and her birthing baby is a moral dilemma. This legislation makes killing the mother the moral equivalent of stepping on a spider. In fact, killing a spider and it’s eggs would be a greater moral crime than killing a human mother and her unborn child.

The Judeo-Christian world view argues in the contrary that humans are unique and have both unity and distinction with nature. According to the biblical narrative, humans are created from the dust of the earth and as he breathes his breath, or spirit, into them, they are created in the image of God. Human life is sacred. Our responsibility to both dominate and care for the earth is also a sacred responsibility.

Yet there is a repulsive reaction to Judeo-Christian values in world government, this animistic theology is welcomed. This should bring clarity – religious values are shunned if the United Nations is opposed to the ideas, and embraced if the ideas help the UN achieve its goals. The problem for those seeking greater centralized government power is not religion – it’s certain values that they will reject whether religious or not.

Two Bolivian women. Bolivia is the poorest country in South America

The values pushed by giving the earth spirits rights is simply another way to push for stripping people of their rights. Bolivia is the poorest country in South America. The land is rich in natural resources, so business has been clamoring to come into the country. This legislation will stop work, stop jobs, and increase poverty. This is what the legislation is doing in Bolivia; this is what the UN is pushing for.

The UN isn’t interested in the planet, and they aren’t interested in Pachamama worship. This is, in the end, simply a power grab by governments. The legislation “establishes a Ministry of Mother Earth, and provides the planet with an ombudsman whose job is to hear nature’s complaints as voiced by activist and other groups, including the state.”

That’s right – the whole idea is that what the state says now becomes a matter of rights. To go against the government is a rights-violation issue. This turns the idea of rights on it’s head, taking rights away from people and giving them to the state in the name of ‘mother earth.’

Even in Bolivia it’s clear that this is primarily about governments accruing more power over the people, as the Bolivian president has been declaring for years that the first step to save the planet is “to end capitalism.”

The environmentalist movement is being used in an effort to strip you of your basic human rights and freedom. Rather than jumping on the bandwagon that provides the opportunity to escape from freedom, there’s a better approach.

Rather than basing our ideas on fear (that the earth is about to die) or hatred (of those evil capitalists), we should be basing our ideas on facts. Christians ought to be taking care of the planet in ways that are effective because it is a sacred responsibility; because it is God’s creation; because it is our origin. Much of the specific ways to be “environmental” are agenda-based to gain votes or reward certain companies and industries for political support. A healthier and more effective approach requires better self-education and less readily adopting political and cultural trends.

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Posted in Culture, Politics, Reason

A Case for Marriage – G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

14 Dec

Yesterday I wrote about how Christmas being about Christ would be better communicated by how Christians live that people attaching the abbreviated name “Xmas.”

Along the same lines is the debate about the governmental definition of “marriage.” There’s different cultural forces in the debate about that word. Christians are told that everyone is offended by them saying the name of the Federal Holiday “Christmas” so they must not say it. You must not ask people to be tolerant of your perspective. With marriage, there is a very purposeful effort to create a new definition, which would be legally forced on everyone to accept. One point being: you will not be tolerated for your beliefs (calling Christmas “Christmas”), but you will be legally required not to tolerate but to accept and have your children taught someone else’s beliefs (changing the millennials-old religious concept of “marriage.”)

This isn’t the first time in American history that marriage has come under attack. Possibly a greater attack was when divorce was made legally quick and easy. Today Christian marriage doesn’t stand out in American culture from non-Christian marriage. Christians, including multiple pastors by whom I’ve been taught, have divorced. We’ve caved. We’ve gone the convenient route of compromising our covenants. We’ve changed beliefs about marriage because it became legally and socially acceptable to break our bonds of covenant, which are supposed to symbolize the commitment of God to his people. We aren’t acting like Hosea, we’re acting like Hosea’s wife.

I’ve often thought that the case for Christian marriage wouldn’t be a verbal sparring or a federal constitutional amendment. (My libertarian side doesn’t think the federal government should get into this debate, but leave it up to the states. Neither side of the argument agrees with me as everyone would seemingly rather force their ideas on everyone rather than allow choice.) I’ve thought the stronger case would be for there to be a revolution regarding the theology of marriage among Christians.

G. K. Chesterton makes a surprisingly logical and secular case for Christian marriage in Orthodoxy. It’s part of a great chapter by a great book by perhaps my new favorite author – but I’ll write more on Chesterton and this book later. Here Chesterton is writing about his disagreement with his peers that believe a perfect utopia would be the dissolution of all personal bonds. He sees that as a dystopia. It seems that Chesterton’s comments lean toward a perspective that argues for protection of the marriage concept as something that is for the good of society.

What is your perspective? Here’s Chesterton:

I could never conceive or tolerate any Utopia which did not leave to me the liberty for which I chiefly care, the liberty to bind myself. Complete anarchy would not merely make it impossible to have any discipline or fidelity; it would also make it impossible to have any fun. To take an obvious instance, it would not be worth while to bet if a bet were not binding. The dissolution of all contracts would not only ruin morality but spoil sport. Now betting and such sports are only the stunted and twisted shapes of the original instinct of man for adventure and romance, of which much has been said in these pages. And the perils, rewards, punishments, and fulfilments of an adventure must be real, or the adventure is only a shifting and heartless nightmare. If I bet I must be made to pay, or there is no poetry in betting. If I challenge I must be made to fight, or there is no poetry in challenging. If I vow to be faithful I must be cursed when I am unfaithful, or there is no fun in vowing.

You could not even make a fairy tale from the experiences of a man who, when he was swallowed by a whale, might find himself at the top of the Eiffel Tower, or when he was turned into a frog might begin to behave like a flamingo. For the purpose even of the wildest romance results must be real; results must be irrevocable. Christian marriage is the great example of a real and irrevocable result; and that is why it is the chief subject and centre of all our romantic writing.

And this is my last instance of the things that I should ask, and ask imperatively, of any social paradise; I should ask to be kept to my bargain, to have my oaths and engagements taken seriously; I should ask Utopia to avenge my honour on myself.

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Posted in Books, Culture, Politics, Spirituality

TSA Procedures are not about safety (Part 1)

01 Dec

(I’ve thought about blogging on the Transportation Security Administration’s new procedures, but every time I start another news story hits. At this point, there’s too much for one post, so I figured I’d get started.)

TSA Patdown The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has implemented new procedures which include a special type of full-body X-Ray whose radiation is absorbed into your skin and the tissue just under the skin, to produce a naked image of the passenger, and/or the passenger must be patted-down including the passengers sexual organs.

One basic question about this is:

What’s the point of these new procedures?

Napalitano and the TSA says its necessary for safety.

For safety? Airport security was dramatically changed after 9/11. In the last 9 years, how many commercial plans have been successfully used in terrorism? 0. That means whatever’s been going on has had a 100% success rate.

“BUT THERE’S BEEN ATTEMPTS!” Certainly, there was the shoe bomber (Episcopal, right?), and now we take off our shoes to go through airport security. There was also the failed underwear bomber (Presbyterian I think?). There’s real questions about whether the new procedures would have even detected the underwear bomber’s device.

Further, these devices and pat-down-feel-ups will not detect anything hidden inside of one’s body.

So, as far as any information the public has, these new techniques will not improve on the 100% success rate we’ve had for 9 years without them.

Perhaps the government has other information that hasn’t yet been published on wikileaks. Perhaps we are under imminent threat by terrorists who will use on-the-skin devices to try to commit terror. Perhaps the only way we will be safe from known threats is to hit the terrorists with these new procedures. These new procedures were in place just in time for the busiest travel day of the year. If there’s ever times to use heightened security, it’s when there’s evidence of a threat at a specific time, or the busiest travel days of the year.

What better time to want to blow up a plane than when more people are flying, lines are backed up, everyone is stressed out and in a rush. It’s then that one would most easily slip through undetected.

And it was on the busiest travel days of the year that the TSA played a very sly hand and didn’t enforce the new procedures to deflate the threat of “Opt-Out Day” when many people were going to refuse the scan. When the threat was greatest, they stopped the procedures they said would keep us safe.

And no planes were used to crash into buildings. The standard procedures continued to be 100% effective.

I’ve heard Michael Medved and others write off concerns about this – it’s not that invasive, it’s not that embarrassing. But those aren’t the point. The point isn’t that you or I feel embarrassed, the point is that there’s constitutional issues here about unlawful search. The point is that the government is lying and in the name of security they’re testing to see how much freedom we’re willing to give up when promised safety.

Are you willing to take off your belt and your shoes? Yes.

Are you willing to have your bags x-rayed? Yes.

Are you willing to go through a metal detector? Yes.

Are you willing to be splashed with radiation that will increase your rates of infertility and cancer and/or be subjected to sexual assault by government employees?

Are you willing for your children to be splashed with radiation that will increase their rates of infertility and cancer and/or for your children to be subjected to sexual assault by government employees?

We do not forfeit our rights when we fly on a plane. The purchase of a product or service from a private company does not cause your civil rights to be terminated or suspended.

Clearly the issue is not about security. The TSA was very clever in playing up the concerns and then yanking out the rug from under”Opt-Out Day” so now everyone believes this was just media hype. In the process, the American people have agreed to submit themselves to sexual abuse by the government.

I thought we were supposed to be proud of the call “Give me liberty or give me death,” but instead we together chant “Give me liberty or take it away but tell me it’s for my own good.”

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Posted in Culture, Politics

Bad, bad, US Health Care

30 Nov

Proving the recent studies that say Cuba and other countries have better health care than the US, another international leader, the Saudi King, has traveled internationally for health care.

To Cuba? To the UK? France? Canada? Netherlands?

No. To the United States.

The problems with health care isn’t the treatment – we’ve got the best treatment in the world. Otherwise, perhaps the Saudi King, Canadian officials, and others, would perhaps stay in their own countries or head to Cuba.

The problems have been cost and an entitlement attitude of a large group of citizens.

Cost is high because of a few factors:

Cost of compliance with government regulation.

Cost of excess treatment to attempt to prevent frivolous lawsuits from being filed.

Cost of malpractice insurance and/or legal expenses to fight frivolous lawsuits that have been filed and which benefit trial lawyers (aka Democrat congressmen) more than anyone.

The entitlement attitude is not just among those on government healthcare. If the middle class didn’t feel entitled, we wouldn’t all be in so much debt, having “bought” things we cannot afford. What many Americans expect:

Someone else should pay for the health consequences of my behavior.
Someone else should pay for the elective treatments I receive.
Someone else should take financial care of my family and parents.
I deserve to keep the money I make for my work. Doctors that provide treatment and insurance employees that ensure it’s as affordable as possible do not deserve to be paid for their work.

The Obama-Pelosi-Reid health plan does a few things to ensure all the problems get worse:

Dramatic increases in government regulation are raising the cost of health care.
Purposeful ignorance of the frivolous lawsuits has empowered trial lawyers (Democrat congressmen) to continue to file even more frivolous lawsuits which is raising the cost of health care.
Adults up to 26 years old have been told that legally they are not needing to be responsible for their own health care.
Everyone has been told that pre-existing conditions, often the result of behavioral choices are not their responsibility and someone else will pay for them.

The costs continue to rise, and the entitlement attitude is being encouraged.

The Obama-Pelosi-Reid health care plan has successfully made the two main aspects of the problem worse.

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Posted in Culture, Politics

Why a Fair Tax Would Be Better.

01 Nov

This is the second of a 3 part series on taxes.

1. Flat Tax

2. Fair Tax

3. Basic Economics and the Laffer Curve

Here in Colorado, appointed-never-elected Democrat Senator Michael Bennet launched a deceptive attack ad on his opponent, Ken Buck, claiming he wants a 23% tax hike. Here’s the ad:

Other Democrats around the country are attacking conservatives for the same thing.

And really, who would want a 23% sales tax?

To answer the question, we have to clarify what we’re talking about. The conservatives talk about two types of tax alternatives. A Flat Tax and a Fair Tax. I wrote about the Flat Tax previously. The sales tax is called the “Fair Tax.”

The basic idea is this: Instead of penalizing earning money (income tax), saving money (interest tax), investing money (capital gains tax), and passing money on (death tax), we just collect taxes when money is spent.

Some liberal Democrats have suggested adding a federal sales tax in addition to income taxes. Some Conservatives are in favor of the sales tax, but instead of income taxes. This would likely require an amendment to the constitution.

The Math: Tax inclusive or exclusive?
The math on this is a bit tricky. We speak of income tax in tax-inclusive terms. A 23% tax means that 23% of your money goes to the taxes : out of $100 total, $23 is paid in taxes, 23/100 is 23%. We use different, tax-exclusive, terminology with sales tax. If a purchase total is $77, and the tax is 23%, we’d normally say it’s a 30% sales tax, as 23 (taxes)/77 (purchase amount) = 29.8% tax-exclusive.

This causes some confusion because the 23% tax could also be called a 30% tax when calculating it differently.

The Math: Why is 23% the magic number?
23% sales tax would be collected in place of income tax, Medicare tax, self-employment taxes, and corporate taxes. This would pay for:

replacing the revenue the government currently makes with the current system.
sending prebate checks for low-income Americans
a few percent to pay retailers and local governments for collecting the sales tax.

23% Seems really high, even as an income tax. However, our current system taxes us more than just our tax bracket. Most people fall in the 15% income tax bracket, everyone has 7.65% taxed in payroll taxes, and the employer has to pay an additional 7.65%. That’s already more than 23%.

What’s a prebate?
The fair tax prebate is a check mailed to poorer Americans at the beginning of every month to pre-emptively pay the sales tax for them.

What’s the benefit?
Suddenly everyone’s income would jump up without having to get a raise. Businesses would no longer have to pad their prices to pass corporate taxes on to consumers so every product becomes cheaper. Only new products are taxed, not used items, so anyone shopping at a thrift store for clothes just gets cheaper clothes.

Your life savings is no longer taxed, so everyone’s retirement funds are more valuable. The IRS would be able to be dramatically downsized because retailers and states would receive a portion of the tax revenue as payment for their collecting it. There would be no tax filing every spring.

The “fair tax” sales tax, like the flat tax, removes the system of loop-holes and allows everyone to pay a lower tax rate instead of just the poor and the super-wealthy. Both would stimulate the economy. Both would remove government financially rewarding and punishing Americans for behavior politicians favor or disfavor.

For more information, check out the FAQ over at the fair tax website.

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Posted in Politics

Why a Flat Tax Would Be Better.

22 Oct

This is the first of a 3 part series on taxes.

1. Flat Tax

2. Fair Tax

3. Basic Economics and the Laffer Curve

Flat Tax

Today in America we have a progressive tax system. The greater your income, the greater percent of your money goes to the government.

One rate to rule them all.
Google was in the news yesterday when it was discovered the company pays only 2.4% income tax.

As it works out, almost half of Americans pay no taxes and the wealthy can afford lobbyists to influence legislators to create tax loopholes and accountants to utilize them. The tax rates are so prohibitively high, it’s worth the extra cost of paying lobbyists, attorneys and accountants to figure out a way around them. If businesses and individuals didn’t have deductions and credits, businesses would shut down and people wouldn’t have enough money. We’ve created a tax system that’s unrealistic.

A flat tax means one tax bracket for everyone. The US government would make the same amount of tax revenue if everyone and every business paid 13% income tax. That’s about equivalent to rate that applies to the poorest Americans who pay taxes.

Almost no deductions or credits.
The only way for one tax rate to work is to get rid of all of the “loopholes,” or tax break incentives. Deductions and credits are used to provide incentives to manipulate people into certain behavior. We want people to be homeowners, so we reward them and renters have higher income taxes as we punish them for renting. We want people off cigarettes, so we smokers pay higher taxes. The government rewards people monetarily for behavior that the politicians-in-power like, and punishes people monetarily for behavior the politicians-in-power don’t like.

The theory is that taxes should be used to provide government with the money it needs to fulfill it’s constitutional responsibilities. Taxes should not be used as a reward and punishment system to manipulate choices of the citizens.

The resistance, of course, is that we like our tax deductions and tax credits. If this is an argument it simply reveals that it is not just those on welfare who are dependent on the government. It means we are if we’d avoid a more just system because we want to chase after government financial rewards for good behavior.

The 13% rate includes deductions for mortgage, rent (so renters don’t have a heavier tax burden than owners), and not much else. The system also includes help for poor Americans.

Benefits of a flat tax
A flat tax would mean everyone would have ownership of government. We would not be dependent on the government dole to give us back our tax dollars, we’d all pay something, relative to our income. A sense of ownership would do wonders for the half the country that doesn’t pay taxes today.

The IRS could all but shut-down. Payroll costs go down. Americans would save millions of hours and dollars preparing their taxes. How difficult would it be to calculate 13% of your income? The tax form becomes a half-page worksheet.

The greater your income, the more dollars you send to the government. The lesser your income, the fewer dollars you send. How straightforward! At the same time, it would help us back away from the class warfare language that the Obama administration has been pushing. We’re supposed to hate the rich (arbitrarily defined as those who make over $250K), and love the poor (arbitrarily defined as another income bracket). Why? If the poor have money, they have the ability to use what they have to move up through income brackets. If rich people have money they tend to invest it in companies that hire people at lower income levels, which is job creation.

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Posted in Politics

Second Jon

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Why a Fair Tax Would Be Better.

And really, who would want a 23% sales tax?

Why a Flat Tax Would Be Better.

Flat Tax

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What’s the point of these new procedures?

And really, who would want a 23% sales tax?

Flat Tax

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