Friday, November 9, 2012
The day after...
Frankly, I can't find the bipartisan platitudes inside myself any more. I am, sadly, persuaded that the American spirit is giving (has already given?) way to a European-style, entitlement mentality. People no longer aspire to excel and BECOME rich on the merit of their own efforts. Rather, they aspire to mediocrity, supplemented by benefits and subsidies extracted from the 'wealthy' by governmental force and intervention. They feel society 'owes' them. "Give me my 30 hour work week and free contraceptives!"
The inconvenient truth about the wealthy, hidden in plain sight from most, is that even taxing those so-called evil rich at the rate of 100%, only a week or two worth of revenue (at current spending rates) would be generated. We don't have a taxing problem, friends, we have a spending problem. A moral compass that has been demagnetized by a love of comfort -- at someone (ANYONE) else's expense...at ANY expense. (Who is John Galt?) It was "unpatriotic" to have amassed $4 trillion in debt in 2008, but we are to believe it was perfectly patriotic to snowball that to $16 trillion by 2012?!? By God, we will REALLY be patriotic at the end of the next 4 years!
Above all else, I fear for the future my children face in repaying the bills - and worse - namely, that they may live in a violent, apocalyptic society such as is emerging in Greece or Spain. Because, sure as the sun rises tomorrow, the bills are coming due - and those accustomed to their cushy subsidies WON'T be happy when the government or pension checks start bouncing. I am left approaching my middling years wondering if I have done my children the gravest injustice simply by bringing them into such a world as I am passing to them.
So yes, I am left pessimistic at the selfish whims and inexcusable ignorance of the American electorate as a whole. Votes cast, seemingly, for free cellphones. Payments to unions before debtors - by government fiat. Subsidies for unsustainable (pun intended) businesses owned by campaign bundlers.
Chickens DO come home to roost.
And Atlas may soon shrug.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Sunday, September 6, 2009
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Stimulus? Stimulate this.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Congressman Mike Rogers' opening statement on Health Care reform in Washington D.C.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
"We're sorry, but the fingers you have used to dial are too fat..."
As someone who has previously contacted our office to share your thoughts on issues important to you, I would like to take this opportunity to invite you to participate in a live statewide healthcare tele-town hall meeting this Sunday, August 23 rd , at 7:00 PM. Along with people like you from across the state, I will be joined by Dr. Denis Cortese, CEO of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, and Mary Wakefield, the highest ranking nurse in the federal government. The three of us will discuss the need for health care reform, including ways to make the American health care system more affordable and more stable, and I will answer as many questions as I can from citizens from around the state.
If you would like to participate in this important discussion, the only way to guarantee your involvement is to visit our website at http://klobuchar.senate.gov or click HERE and enter your contact information. Once you’re registered, you’ll get an automated reminder phone call on Friday evening and you’ll be called again on Sunday to be joined to the call. The phone number you provide will be kept private.
If you have any questions, you can call the office toll free at 1-888-224-9043.
I look forward to hearing from you on Sunday.
Sincerely,
Amy Klobuchar
United States Senator"
Saturday, August 22, 2009
A Doctor's take on State controlled medicine...
"I quit when medicine was placed under State control some years ago," said Dr. Hendricks. "Do you know what it takes to perform a brain operation? Do you know the kind of skill it demands, and the years of passionate, merciless, excruciating devotion that go to acquire that skill? That was what I could not place at the disposal of men whose sole qualification to rule me was their capacity to spout the fraudulent generalities that got them elected to the privilege of enforcing their wishes at the point of a gun. I would not let them dictate the purpose for which my years of study had been spent, or the conditions of my work, or my choice of patients, or the amount of my reward. I observed that in all the discussions that preceded the enslavement of medicine, men discussed everything-except the desires of the doctors.
Men considered only the 'welfare' of the patients, with no thought for those who were to provide it. That a doctor should have any right, desire or choice in the matter, was regarded as irrelevant selfishness; his is not to choose, they said, but 'to serve.' That a man's willing to work under compulsion is too dangerous a brute to entrust with a job in the stockyards-never occurred to those who proposed to help the sick by making life impossible for the healthy. I have often wondered at the smugness at which people assert their right to enslave me, to control my work, to force my will, to violate my conscience, to stifle my mind-yet what is it they expect to depend on, when they lie on an operating table under my hands? Their moral code has taught them to believe that it is safe to rely on the virtue of their victims. Well, that is the virtue I have withdrawn. Let them discover the kind of doctors that their system will now produce. Let them discover, in the operating rooms and hospital wards, that it is not safe to place their lives in the hands of a man they have throttled. It is not safe, if he is the sort of man who resents it-and still less safe, if he is the sort who doesn't."
A Canadian M.D.? British, perhaps?
Neither -- Dr. Hendricks spoke those words after dinner in the home of Midas Mulligan, on page 744 of "Atlas Shrugged", by Ayn Rand -- in 1957.
It can't be argued too strongly -- if you are given to reasoned, rational consideration of things political; if you have a tendency to view government as an operational arm of your charitable impulses -- whatever your stripe, there is something for you in this tome.
"Atlas Shrugged" has been an epiphany of sorts for me. Ayn Rand, the so-called founder of Objectivism, has left us a virtual prophecy of the perils of government taking on the role of Nanny-State. We are guided through a world where man has rejected the 'philosophy' of reason and self-sufficiency and has adopted a new standard of whatever is in the "public good". Government-run corporations: Good, Capitalism: bad. Sound familiar?
If I had to distill this book down to a word, I would say: frightening. Second choice: prescient.
Someone noted that I was carrying "Atlas Shrugged" with me in a waiting room recently. After confessing that he hadn't read it since college, I heartily recommended that he pick it up and dust it off for a fresh read.
Same to you.