.comment-link {margin-left:.6em;}

Milton J. Madison - An American Refugee Now Living in China, Where Liberty is Ascending

Federalism, Free Markets and the Liberty To Let One's Mind Wander. I Am Very Worried About the Fate of Liberty in the USA, Where Government is Taking people's Lives ____________________________________________________________________________________________ "Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice. Tolerance in the face of tyranny is no virtue." -Barry Goldwater-

Friday, July 31, 2009

Thought of the day....

Yet there's good news in the McKinsey study, which is packed with data, analysis, graphics and recommendations. Americans are already becoming more efficient, the study says:
"Since 1980, energy consumption per unit of floor space has decreased 11 percent in residential and 21 percent in commercial sectors, while industrial energy consumption per real dollar of GDP output has decreased 41 percent."
All of this without government intervention. Probably, when the government gets its fingers in this, innovation and investment will be directly towards the singular solution as they deem to be the 'best' solution and we will probably see the natural trends towards efficiency that are embedded in a free society to cease.

From here.

And "Cap-and-Trade" is just another leftist abomination.....



Foolish people in the US that do not want to recognize that the government will have their fingers in nearly everything that you do, will also have the privilege to pay for all of this. It is estimated that the cost for the average family will be somewhere between $700-1400 per year.

And of course the hundreds of billions of dollars in new taxes that this fiasco generates will be spent on the smartest things that government can think of instead of the smartest things that YOU can think of.

Welcome to the world of the New American Marxism. The legacy of mediocrity coming to your neighborhood soon.



But of course, even though you will be paying somewhere between $700-1,400 more for your electricity, there are loads of other areas where you will see incredible savings as the above White Hose (oops I mean House, not that you will get hosed by the White House) representative argues. You will see unbelievable savings from healthcare and savings from all the investments that you will be compelled to perform on your own residence and lowered consumption that will balance this out. Huh?

Thursday, July 30, 2009

The morality argument of providing access to healthcare to all.....

“Morality” is always the justification. Inaugurating Britain’s National Health Service on July 5th 1948, the Health Minister Nye Bevan crowed: “We now have the moral leadership of the world.” That’s how Obamacare is being sold: Even The New York Times (buried deep down in paragraph 38) reports that 77 per cent of Americans are content with their own health care. But they feel bad about all those poor uninsured waifs earning 75 grand a year. So it will make us all feel better if the government “does something”.
So, in the US to fulfill the need to be 'moral' on the wicked healthcare system that we now have, we have to completely uproot millions of people that already have perfectly suitable healthcare and enroll them in a 'new' improved but better and more efficient system and drastically change what they have. What will drastically change for these people is that many will pay much more, some will get a lot less and most will suffer over the long-term as the last bastion of innovation and increased efficiency is squeezed into a sclerotic Euro like box.

Thought of the day from here....
What’s so moral about relieving the citizen of responsibility for his own health care? If free citizens of the wealthiest societies in human history are not prepared to make provision for their own health, what other core responsibilities of functioning adulthood are they likely to forego? Oh, Smith and Jones can still be entrusted to make their own choices about which movie to rent from Netflix, or which breakfast cereal to eat. For the moment. But you’d be surprised how quickly the “right” to health care elides into the government’s right to tell you how to live in order to access that health care. A government-directed medical system can be used to justify almost any restraint on freedom: After all, if the state undertakes to cure you, it surely has an interest in preventing you needing treatment in the first place – or declining to treat you if your persist in your deviancy: Smokers in Manchester, England have been refused treatment for heart disease, and the obese in Suffolk have been told they’re ineligible for hip and knee replacements. With a staff of 1.4 million, England’s National Health Service is supposedly the third biggest employer on the planet after the Chinese People’s Army (2.3 million) and Indian National Railways (1.5 million). And those couple of million Chinese and Indians are mere drops in oceans each over a billion strong, not a significant chunk of the adult population of a tiny strip of land in the North Atlantic. But they still have to ration treatment.
Save money for a rainy day? Not! So no need to save or plan ahead for retirement, healthcare or anything, one just has to make those critical adult decisions in your life on what to have for breakfast or what movie to see. The state will take care of all of your other needs as long as you behave correctly... according to what someone decides is appropriate behavior.

But of course, if you misbehave and it results in pregnancy, you will NOT lose your access to an abortion. That is defining morality in a whole new way!!!

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Government run healthcare.....

More effective and better for everyone and at no additional costs what-so-ever.....

More signs.....

The government needs to address this national problem of birds sitting on signs particularly the signs that convey the message that they are not allowed. The birds are just laughing at the 'rule-of-law' and pointing their tails at all of the law abiding birds.

As I mentioned before, I am sure that there is lots of money available to strengthen American signage, particularly the massive problem of birds sitting on no-birds allowed signs (it makes my blood boil) in the Obamessiah's $787 billion Pork-u-lus spending extravaganza. Sign infrastructure obviously needs to be addressed.



Someone is being teased and this is clear evidence that Americans are nothing but a seething mass of racist radicals. No other proof is needed...

Evil Goldman Sachs....

I read this piece today on the evil Goldman Sachs....
Rumor No. 5: Goldman Sachs is “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”

Those words are of course taken from a recent issue of Rolling Stone magazine and they are transparently false.

For starters, the vampire squid doesn’t feed on human flesh. Ergo, no vampire squid would ever wrap itself around the face of humanity, except by accident. And nothing that happens at Goldman Sachs -- nothing that Goldman Sachs thinks, nothing that Goldman Sachs feels, nothing that Goldman Sachs does --ever happens by accident.
There are 4 other rumors on Goldman that are debunked in the piece.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Thought of the Day....

I am bound to say I feel queasy even writing this, because I do sincerely feel it is wrong for the poor not to have good medical care. But maybe this is the province of the states or of charity. Maybe it is something that can be worked out without the federal government dictating terms to the affluent. Maybe as important as health care is, individual freedom and private property are indispensable, too. The whole subject is almost terrifying.
From here.

The critical point in the above passage is this....
But maybe this is the province of the states or of charity.
Bingo. Zing. The problem that this writer has, is that despite his belief that healthcare is a basic human right, he also understands that the 'human right' can morph into a whole host of other 'human rights.' And increasing claims on resources will inevitably raise the need to seize more of people's property.

So the question becomes, where do these rights end? Where does the necessity end and the comfort enter the picture in what can be a huge obligation. Isn't a car necessary for most people and therefore it too be a 'right' to own one? Since when does everyone have a right to every thing that is necessary or maybe just makes their life a little more comfortable too? And personally for me, its especially egregious that many people are trying to sell this concept by pushing the burden onto a handful of people as defined as the 'rich' and implying that most people will pay NOTHING. The opiate of Obamacare is a symptom of a sickening disease that has infected the US, its lurch towards a sclerotic Euro state and the ultimate risk that we will not achieve under the dead hand of the state is a risk that is not worth taking.

Saturday, July 25, 2009

This REALLY scares me....

Record temperatures are being recorded in various places around the globe. Please read it here and give the prophet Al Gore a call.

For those men....

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Neither can I....

I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on the objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents."
-James Madison-

Quote of the day....

Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of freedoms of the people by gradual and silent encroachment of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
-James Madison-
This is what we have been going through the past 70 years.

And Ronald Reagan warned us of the movement towards socialized medicine and it consequences on other liberties more than 40 years ago....

Thought of the day.....

Arrogance
By John Stossel

It's crazy for a group of mere mortals to try to design 15 percent of the U.S. economy. It's even crazier to do it by August.
Here.

I have had to endure a lifetime of blubbering by arrogant, headstrong and fierce people that argue for a government takeover of healthcare. It just happens that it won't impact them one little bit since they already have their gold-plated health plans and will be able to draw their benefits today unimpeded but it will gravely affect many others that will have to depend upon some yet to be designed government plan tomorrow. This abomination will be their legacy.

Many people will suffer and we can thank these pricks for their arrogance as this thought argues....
most people are oblivious to F.A. Hayek's insight that the critical information needed to run an economy -- or even 15 percent of one -- doesn't exist in any one place where it is accessible to central planners. Instead, it is scattered piecemeal among millions of people. All those people put together are far wiser and better informed than Congress could ever be. Only markets -- private property, free exchange and the price system -- can put this knowledge at the disposal of entrepreneurs and consumers, ensuring the system will serve the people and not just the political class.

One of the foundations of a free society is Voluntary Cooperation....

The great accomplishments have been achieved through people pursuing their own interests on things that they are deeply interested and believe in....



What people are trying to achieve today, is not voluntary cooperation to solve problems, but mandated solutions enforced by the deadhand of government intervention. It will cost the American public, not only money, but efficiency, liberty and the freedom to make choices on one's own.

One can sum this up in an opposite Orwellian thought....
Coercion does not equal liberty.
-Glenzo, 2009-

Just in case you didn't realize it, the Obamessiah has "rescued the economy."



I guess that the Obamessiah and his army of Renfields are thinking that their wacky and wonderful Pork-u-lus extravaganza of spending can be thanked for the booming economy that we are now enjoying.

Back in the old days, economies used to free fall, and they bounced back. Today, due to the socialism introduced by FDR in response to the great depression, we face a situation where Americans now expect the government to respond to every problem that faces the citizens. I hate to break it to people, but government is not only ill prepared to deal with these situations, but they have been the primary drivers creating the problems to start with.

People have to be empowered to deal with problems on their own, with their families and communities. This is very different to the big government solutions that are now frequently floated and expected from large swaths of society. Good luck Americans, you have one of the biggest challenges facing you from neo-American Marxism.

The net affect of government policy from 1982 is still appropriate today......

As these people argue, government policies actually hurt those they intend to benefit more than they help. The war on poverty was being won, as economist Walter Williams explains, prior to President Johnson declaring war on poverty.....



But the 60's and 70's had a negative impact on minorities, when they were the ones that were supposed to be beneficiaries of the government largesse and rules. Minimum wage, government licensing and labor laws actually reduced the choice and ability of people to gain experience and is an obstacle to their being able to get their first job or experience.....



And then the social safety net of welfare leads to the breakup of minority families. The fabric of family life where people are dependent on each other is destroyed as government dependency programs attracted young women to have children out of wedlock.



The man can better support the family by leaving as compared to staying at home since if they leave, the family has the ability to access welfare programs.

The reality is that government programs take away people's ability to carve out a better way, make their own decisions and make a better life. This will be the problem with government takeover of healthcare. It will also reduce the ability to make one's own decisions, reduce responsibility and end up costing much more as the government deadhand will be a weight on the whole business. Good luck, you will regret this change.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Beauty?

Buy American....

In the campaigner-in-chief's porkulus bill, there was a buy American provision that may-or-may not have been effective or maybe it was even cut out. But even the Apple Ipod it not 'really' American, as we see here.



But even Honda, the American produced cars at Honda USA, are more that 51% produced in the USA. But I like the bikini clad ladies smashing 'non-American' goods, the best and most effective thing to come out the recent government pork-u-lus bill.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

60 minutes on Clarence Thomas....

I read his autobiography a couple of years ago and was moved by this story being one man's journey. No one asks to be put through difficult times like he has, but he has learned and grown from his experience.





An amazing part of book is the story of how Joe Biden sleazily stabbed him in the back during the confirmation hearings and we never hear one peep about this from the press during the year-and-a-half that he was campaigning for President then Vice-President. Another fine example of the amazing job that the media is doing for the benefit of Democrats over the past 30 years. This quote from the book....
Senator Biden was the first questioner. Instead of the softball questions he’d promised to ask, he threw a beanball straight at my head, quoting from a speech I’d given four years earlier at the Pacific Legal Foundation and challenging me to defend what I’d said. ”I find attractive the arguments of scholars such as Stephen Macedo, who defend an activist Supreme Court that would strike down laws restricting property rights.” That caught me off guard, and I had no recollection of making so atypical a statement, which shook me up even more. “Now, it would seem to me what you were talking about,” Senator Biden went on to say, “is you find it attractive the fact that they are activists and they would like to strike down existing laws that impact on restricting the use of property rights, because you know, that is what they write about.”

Since I didn’t remember making the statement in the first place, I didn’t know how to respond to it. All I could say in reply was that “it has been some time since I have read Professor Macedo … But I don’t believe that in my writings I have indicated that we should have an activist Supreme Court.” It was, I knew, a weak answer. Fortunately, though, the young lawyers who had helped prepare me for the hearing had loaded all of my speeches into a computer and at the first break in the proceedings they looked this one up. The senator, they found, had wrenched my words out of context. I looked at the text and saw that the passage he’d read out loud had been immediately followed by two other sentences: “But the libertarian argument overlooks the place of the Supreme Court in a scheme of separation of powers. One does not strengthen self-government and the rule of law by having the non-democratic branch of the government make policy.” The point I’d been making was the opposite of the one that Senator Biden claimed I had made.
Besides the comment that I made earlier that I felt moved by the book as one man's journey, I think that the most compelling message that Clarence Thomas tells is two-fold; first his change of support for the affirmative action and other race based programs that affect people in unintended ways and the recounting of vitriol leveled at him since he is not a conforming man of color on issues that have been determined to be 'important' to other blacks and liberals in the nation.

The money quote from Thomas during the hearings....
This is not an opportunity to talk about difficult matters privately or in a closed environment. This is a circus. It's a national disgrace. And from my standpoint, as a black American, it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas, and it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate rather than hung from a tree.
The Supreme Court is a battle site on what has become the sacrosanct ground of false rights surrounding the abortion of new life. A litmus test for new justices of supposed rights of a limited number of people over the unborn is a disgrace and is a symptom of the nihilism that has infected Americans and particularly the liberal arm of the Democratic party.

Monday, July 20, 2009

Saturday, July 18, 2009

Another big government lie......

One of the reasons being floated for a take over of American healthcare by the central government is that government will focus on preventative care and this will save money. The government, somehow, has sold large swath of naive Americans that it can somehow increase the availability and quality of medicine and at the same time lower costs. Preventative care is one of the processes that government has been arguing that it can effect and they argue that this can save money. This is just not silly, its outright absurd.

The reality, is that any medical procedure, even it is preventative in nature will cost money. However, something will eventually kill you and this will probably cost money too.

So, as John Stossel says.......
I take Lipitor. The drug may extend my life. But this doesn't lower my health-care costs. Years of pill-taking increases costs. If the pill works, I may live long enough to get an even more expensive disease. And maybe I, like millions of others, take Lipitor unnecessarily because we would never have had heart attacks. We then spend more, not less, on health care.

Health-care expert John Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis says there are "literally hundreds of studies from over the past 40 years that show preventive medical services usually increase medical spending ... Contrary to popular belief, checkups for children and adults do not save the health care system money."
There is no way that government will inject itself in the delivery of healthcare and not make it much worse.

Friday, July 17, 2009












The government's BRILLIANT plan to make healthcare more efficient and affordable....



Good luck. This will make healtchare for the the typical American more expensive, less effective and ridiculously complicated.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Tough times lead people to make sacrifices.....

Thought of the day......

If Medicare and Social Security continue on their current course, the obligations of taxpayers will grow. In the spring, the Social Security/Medicare trustees reported that if Social Security and Medicare were to continue indefinitely, the present value of the unfunded obligation is $101.7 trillion, or seven times the size of the national economy.
From here.

Normally, what is expected of most people in the world, or better said, what they expect to do, is to save money for obligations that may arise after they finish their working careers. Retirement, that is an indulgence that is unknown for most of human history, is a new entitlement developed over the past 40 years.

Is one entitled to retirement? Is one entitled to retirement if this person has not planned nor saved for that eventuality? Is one entitled to retirement, a life of leisure, if it has to be paid fro by someone else?

The bottom line, is that the US has not saved for retirement, has not planned for a life of leisure and is relying upon others to pay for their retirement through the Ponzi schemes called Social Security and medicare. People that are hoping for these benefits, despite paying taxes for these promises, will never be delivered. This is the legacy of my parents generation and their lovefest of Marxist ideals that have created monumental levels of risk for the nation.

Why is th teenage unemployment rate higher than the general population?

Throws like a girl.....

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Now, fall to your knees you unworthy producers of carbon....



He can get things done!!!!!!!!

Quote of the day.....

Barack Hussein Obama is a great and bright man, and I am Haley's Comet.

-Milton J. Madison, 2009-

Looking forward to the new improved government run substandard universal healthcare

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Thought of the day....

"I want to keep what I earn" is regarded as greedy and unenlightened.

"I want to take what you earn" is regarded as selfless and progressive.

From here.

Diss of the day....



Maybe, just maybe, some people do not worship this clown like some Americans and the sycophants in the press do.

If it was me, greeting this gasbag, I would just pee on his shoes.

Thought of the day.....

I have the sense that many defenders of an even-more-fully-government-run health care system have a hard time taking this question seriously. But they should. It’s just a fact that much of the world’s medical innovation comes from the U.S. This goes a good way toward explaining with why survival rates for many potentially mortal health problems are highest in the U.S., and also partly explains why U.S. costs are so high. Indeed, that a certain strata of Americans spend so much, often on stuff that makes no difference, also partly explains the high U.S. level of innovation. Profligate U.S. spending on state-of-the-art treatments acts as a subsidy to the health care systems of other countries, who get to free-ride off American innovation and (often “wasteful”) market experimentation.
The relentless march towards Marxism in the US, forces a large swath of the American public to blind themselves from reality. Obamacare and the inevitable drift towards totally socialized healthcare over a short period of time will lead to higher costs and less care available to the average American. But as this and this article argue, not only will costs and outcomes suffer, but innovation and technology will be stifled in the business.

Good luck Americans, you are blindly moving towards communism and it will not work out very well.

Sunday, July 12, 2009

How about investing in a new sign?



Maybe the Campaigner-in-Chief, as part of the $787 billion Pork-u-lus extravaganza of spending can set aside some of the money to rebuild signage in the US. It maybe deteriorating and is a worthwhile use of the money (as compared with what it is slated for).

In awe of the Obamessiah.....



The guy deserves nothing of the adulation that he receives from people and particularly the slobbering press. God save us.