If you haven’t watched the SNL skit ‘The Bubble’, I
recommend you watch. It’s funny and
unfortunately not completely inaccurate.
AV - So the NCAA gives out participation medals these
days. They treat athletes like a bunch
of sissies.
“Then
there’s the question of quality care. It’s
been all-too-often the case that even with Obamacare plans,
individuals can’t find the doctors or care they need. To take just one example,
let’s look at California, often hailed as a poster-state for Obamacare.
Researchers called more than 700 primary care doctors listed in the marketplace
directory and found that a staggering 75 percent were unavailable to
see Obamacare patients.”
That’s amazing, but not all that surprising. The Affordable Care Act pays providers using so-called
value based reimbursement as a way of controlling costs. But there are always unintended consequences. By paying good doctors value based
reimbursements rather than market rates, those doctors are encouraged to stop
accepting patients who are covered by the Affordable Care Act. It’s unclear to me why the government thinks
they can ignore markets.
“But
the goal should not be to replace Obamacare with another top-down,
one-size-fits-all program. Nor should it be to simply focus on the insurance
element of health care.
As Obamacare has proven, a health insurance card does not mean anything if individuals cannot
access affordable, quality care.”
“Any teacher should use common sense. They’re a
public employee, they’re put into a place of trust, they’re using tax dollars
and public resources,” he said. “To promote a candidate over another candidate
is an offense on two levels. The first is just the right use of public resources.
Number two, it’s a violation of trust. Parents need to trust that they can
enroll their kid into a school and know that their own tax dollars aren’t going
to be used to politicize.”
I know government employees
are not held to the same standard as private sector employees in many (most? All?)
cases but please just do your job and teach.
At the same time, parents should teach their kids to critically engage
with what the teacher says to them.
Don’t take everything they say as dogma, they are people too and have
their own biases and opinions.
The government never ceases attempts to extend power.
“Anecdotes
and online braggadocio about tax avoidance are not a reasonable basis to
believe that all Coinbase users are tax cheats whose financial lives should be
opened to IRS investigators and the hackers looking over their shoulders. There
must be some specific information about particular users, or else the IRS is
seeking a general warrant, which the Fourth Amendment denies it the power to
do.”
This is absolutely the fundamental premise I try to live
by. I can and do have my opinions on
what you do and whom you choose to do it with, but I won’t try to stop you via
government force because the slope is just too slippery.
“Under the
capitalistic system the ultimate bosses are the consumers. The sovereign
is not the state, it is the people. And the proof that they are the sovereign
is borne out by the fact that they have the
right to be foolish. This is the privilege of the sovereign. He has
the right to make mistakes, no one can prevent him from making them, but of
course he has to pay for his mistakes. If we say the consumer is supreme or
that the consumer is sovereign, we do not say that the consumer is free from
faults, that the consumer is a man who always knows what would be best for him.
The consumers very often buy things or consume things they ought not to buy or
ought not to consume.
But the notion that a
capitalist form of government can prevent people from hurting themselves by
controlling their consumption is false.
….
Granted, that it is good to keep people from
hurting themselves by drinking or smoking too much. But once you have admitted
this, other people will say: Is the body everything? Is not the mind of man
much more important? Is not the mind of man the real human endowment, the real
human quality? If you give the government the right to determine the
consumption of the human body, to determine whether one should smoke or not
smoke, drink or not drink, there is no good reply you can give to people who
say: “More important than the body is the mind and the soul, and man hurts
himself much more by reading bad books, by listening to bad music and looking
at bad movies. Therefore it is the duty of the government to prevent people
from committing these faults.
…
Freedom really means the freedom to make mistakes. This
we have to realize. We may be highly critical with regard to the way in which
our fellow citizens are spending their money and living their lives. We may
believe that what they are doing is absolutely foolish and bad, but in a free
society, there are many ways for people to air their opinions on how their
fellow citizens should change their ways of life. They can write books; they
can write articles; they can make speeches; they can even preach at street
comers if they want—and they do this in many countries. But they must not try to police other people
in order to prevent them from doing certain things simply because they
themselves do not want these other people to have the freedom to do it.”
I like this quote:
“I just voted for the guy, I didn’t sign on the
dotted line in blood. If he starts throwing people in camps, I’ll be the first
guy to form a militia. But until then, I can’t be bothered to keep up with all things that are racist these days.”
And this one:
” I’m not delusional. I
know black people in this country have had it pretty bad, and I think we need
to do more to help them. But one way to help them would be to bring back some
good jobs, and unlike Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump wasn’t paid millions of dollars
by Wall Street fat cats to look the other way while they continue sucking the
country dry.
Oh, great. So we’re
sexist, too. Look, the problem here is not that I don’t think women are held to
unfair standards, Caitlin. It’s gotta be tough being a lady. But the problem
here is that this particular woman has never been held to any standard of
accountability.”
And finally,
“Greg explained to me why he couldn’t vote for Clinton. You see, when he
was in the Navy he had to get a security clearance. And when he was in the
Navy, he knew a guy who was court-martialed for leaving a purchase order for
nuclear submarine parts on his desk when he went to lunch, instead of locking
it up in a safe like he was supposed to. The guy did
time. And the purchase order was only ‘confidential’ information,
the lowest level of classification. Hillary Clinton had top-secret information
in her stupid emails. Why does she get to run for president when she’s
committed crimes that would put you or I in jail? Riddle me that.”
“But first I want you to understand
something: I sure as HELL don’t have to agree with you, because loving each
other should be enough for the both of us to get past some differences of
opinion.”
“In contravention of their constitutional traditions and founding based
upon the presumption of liberty, the American people have come to accept a
system of government that defines authority not by virtue of individual rights,
not by individual moral standards regarding political force, but by the idea
that the might and desires of the collective supersedes all other
considerations.”
“All
concerns are now seen as worthy altars upon which to sacrifice human liberty – as
long as they are popular enough in the eyes of the sovereign public. Democratic law has become justified
by the mere might of the majority and by the notion that questions of truth and
justice are to be decided by the majority’s authority. Such is a blind and
foolish surrender to the idea that “might makes right” masquerading as justice,
as law, and as liberty!”
A grave warning about one man being above the law is a dangerous
precedent. This is nothing new to the
American presidency but something we must constantly remind ourselves.
“The damage done
by Bill Clinton is not measured by what has happened right now, but by what
dangers his acts create for the future. If a president -- any president -- can
commit perjury and obstruction of justice with impunity, then we have opened
the floodgates that the writers of the Constitution tried to seal shut.”
We don’t live in a true capitalist society and we don’t live in a
free trade state either.
“In fact, according to a recent analysis by Credit Suisse, when you add up all forms of trade barriers
imposed between 1990 and 2013, the biggest protectionist in the world isn’t
China or Mexico but none other than… the United States.”
Yikes.
“The Founders recognized that when someone expresses their opinion or
prays to God, they do not harm others and so it is not right for others – even
through government – to control their actions. So the question should be: does
the action cause harm to others? If not, then the government cannot prohibit
it.”
This is a great short video.
I highly encourage you to watch especially if you lean towards a pro
safety net society. It is not that poor
people are lazy, most in fact are not.
They are also not stupid. They
can make more money from welfare than working, especially considering income is
taxed and welfare benefits are not.
4% of the vote for Gary Johnson is a major success for the Libertarian
Party considering he
1. Is NOT a libertarian
2. IS a moron
3. Ran a horrible campaign.
“Thus, we have long held here at FFF that the
best thing every person can do to advance freedom is simply to spread ideas on
liberty. This can be done by sharing articles, speeches, videos, podcasts, and
the like with everyone you know. We shouldn’t be overly concerned about how
they are received. We should just do whatever we can to introduce sound ideas
on liberty into the marketplace of ideas and then just let the power of the
ideas take over.”
The article makes a strong case for utility deregulation - though
I admittedly am convinced by free market ideas rather easily.
Don’t get your hopes up for tax reform, William. I’ll believe it when I see it.
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