The Enemy Sugar!

The progressive point of view on evil sugar:

"With sugar, we’re in a situation where a dangerous substance is perfectly legal and available everywhere. It’s sold without restriction to everyone, and it’s marketed, with billions of dollars, to children before they can even speak, let alone reason… What choice do we have but to regulate it, just as we would — and do — regulate tobacco and alcohol and, for that matter, firearms?

This is so obvious that Florida state senators not known as forward-thinkers can see it, though the Department of Agriculture evidently can’t. But this is precisely what government is for: to protect us from the things from which we cannot protect ourselves. Sugar is not exactly an invading army, but it can be thought of as a hostile force, and the processed food industry has succeeded in getting us to eat way more of it than is good for us. Will power alone isn’t enough to stop that: we need national defense."

- Mark Bittman, New York Times.

There's no end to the things progressives think the government must control.  Apparently, only when the government is in total control of every aspect of our lives can we ever hope to be fully protected against ourselves.  The progressives won't be satisfied until every decision in our daily lives is made for us by the government.  We need national defense to protect us against our own weakness in consuming sugar??  Hey, socialists, we like sugar, it tastes good, we know it's not great for us, but we're willing to take some risks in order to enjoy life a little more.  It's called freedom, and it includes the freedom to make risky decisions if we think the benefit outweighs the risk.  We don't need the government protecting us against sugar.  Protect us against foreign armies and terrorists and leave the enemy sugar to us to deal with.

Illegal Everything

That's the title of this episode of John Stossel's show about freedom in this nation, or the lack thereof more often than not anymore.  Spending 3/4 of an hour watching this show will be a great use of your time, and will shed light on the waning freedom we enjoy as citizens of this still-great-for-now nation.

No longer can a kid set up a lemonade stand in his/her yard, no longer can an entrepreneur start a taxicab company without paying exorbitant corruption fees of $1 million, and no longer can consumers buy non-government approved milk (while the grocer is raided by a swat team with guns drawn).  Our freedom is at stake, and Stossel sheds some light on the clear evidence of this.  More people need to know what's going on, and watching this is a good step towards educating yourself on our government's assault on our liberties and the corruption that is ruining our nation.

Government Interference in the Free Market

This has gone under the radar for far too long - our federal government now has an equity interest in 371 banks in the United States!  That means our government is part owner of the banks, and in some cases the majority owner of the banks.  In a free market, where private banks compete and affect our economy in a myriad of ways, it's just good common sense that we should expect our government not to own any of these banks, either in a minority or majority capacity.

Here are a couple of studies that show that government ownership of banks is associated with slower subsequent development of the financial system, lower economic growth, and, in particular, lower growth of productivity.  See the following studies that support how bad an idea it is for the government to own and meddle in the banking system like this:

http://www.economics.harvard.edu/faculty/shleifer/files/GovtOwnershipBanks.pdf

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1042957311000271

In one instance, the government owns a 74% stake in a bank - Ally Financial, Inc., the former financing arm for General Motors.  That means the government basically runs the company.  And this is no small bank - over 14,000 employees; annual net profits exceeding $1 billion; and $172 billion in assets.

Our federal government is intended to ensure that the free market remains free, setting up a basic framework in which companies may compete and make profits.  It is not proper for our government to become an owner of these private companies - consider the conflict of interest when the entity making the rules owns some of the companies that play by those rules.

This is just another sign that our government is far too large and out of control, and if it isn't reined in soon, we should stop considering it a free market.  More and more, our free market resembles a government run market, and both companies and consumers will continue to suffer.  Political power should not dictate how the free market operates - fair competition between private institutions is how the free market is designed to work, and how it operates most efficiently to everyone's benefit.  The only one who benefits from a government run marketplace is the government, and the more government there is, the fewer freedoms we will have.

Continuing Attack on Liberty

This is from The Cato Institute, and succinctly sets out the problem with continuing growth of government and it's interference with our pursuit of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The Senate is scheduled to vote today on the “Blunt amendment,” part of a multi-year transportation funding bill. Sponsored by Roy Blunt (R-MO), the amendment would allow employers to opt out of providing employee health insurance coverage that violates their religious or moral convictions.

Democrats are vigorously opposing the measure as an attack on women’s rights, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius encouraging the Senate “to reject this cynical attempt to roll back decades of progress in women’s health.” Most Republicans support the amendment in the name of the religious liberty protected under the First Amendment, though some worry about the implications for the upcoming elections.

Both sides seem to be missing the deeper point: This battle is exactly what you get when—in the words the president uses so often, which have come to capture his fundamental agenda—“We’re all in this together.”

Dismissing the amendment as “politics masquerading as morality,” Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) declaimed:

"It allows any insurance company or any employer to deny coverage for any service they choose, based on a religious belief or a moral conviction. What is a moral conviction? I have moral convictions. You have moral convictions. We have different moral convictions."

Precisely. That’s why, in a free society, we don’t throw everybody and everything into the common pot. We allow individuals to pursue their individual goals according to their “different moral convictions.” We don’t force them into relationships, whether with employers or insurance companies or whomever, that offend those convictions. Yet the more we socialize ever more of life—as we’ve gone far in doing with everything from health care to retirement to education and so much more—the more we deny individuals the choices that would otherwise be available to them in a truly free society.

We haven’t yet reached the point, as in some societies, where we regulate, through force of law, where people may live, or travel, or go to college, or what medical procedures they may or may not have. But with Obamacare, especially, we’re headed down that road. That’s why an AP poll last August showed that 82 percent of Americans opposed Obamacare’s individual mandate.

Republicans would be smart, therefore, if they stopped talking about contraceptives and started talking about liberty—about where this country is headed. The Tea Party people understood that, for the most part, and look what they accomplished in the last election. The country is ready for bold but credible ideas about getting government out of our lives. We need people willing to say that the only thing we’re all in together is making this again a free country.

Upcoming Topics

I intend to write about the following topics in the near future:

* Gun rights and government control
* Keynesianism vs. the Austrian School
* Prohibition and the drug war
* Minimum wage
* Internet and the law

Prohibition's St. Valentine's Day Massacre - Chicago, Feb. 14, 1929 

If you have a topic you would like me to write about, leave a comment.

Mandates Galore

First, President Obama orders religious institutions to offer insurance coverage for contraception to its employees, even though they object to providing such coverage on religious grounds - a clear violation of the religious freedom ensured by the Constitution.

Then, after much backlash, the President offers a "compromise," telling religious institutions that, while they still have to offer such coverage to their employees, the government will make the insurance company pay for the coverage, rather than the institution.  This second mandate forces a company to offer a product without being able to charge for it - basically, the insurance companies are being required to give people insurance for contraception for free.  This is akin to telling a car dealership that it must give cars to people for free because it furthers some goal the President finds beneficial to a specific group of people or the nation as a whole.

And, of course, there's the now-infamous Obamacare mandate that requires Americans who don't have insurance through an employer to purchase it on their own, and if they refuse, they are penalized by steep fines.

Flow Chart of Obamacare, or Definition of Bureaucracy

The concept of mandates as employed by this administration violates those principles on which this country was founded - namely, that people are free to pursue life, liberty, and happiness as they see fit.  These mandates significantly disturb that freedom by forcing people and companies to offer products for free, forcing companies to offer employees benefits they are religiously opposed to, and forcing people to buy a product they may not want.

The liberal media is doing its job of "PR wing of the democratic party" by not exposing these constitutional violations, and by embracing them as positive changes in the marketplace.

You can't force people to buy stuff; you can't force companies to offer benefits they object to on religious grounds; and you can't force companies to give away products for free.  But then, the Constitution is merely an inconvenient impediment to progress for Obama and his socialist party members.

Public School Sings the Praises of Allah

A Colorado high school is making its school choir sing a muslim song praising Allah, but I bet you  haven't heard anything about this.  But we've heard plenty about how Christian institutions and conservatives are off their collective rockers for opposing Obama's mandate requiring religious institutions to offer contraceptive insurance coverage to their employees.  Does this seem like a double standard to anyone else?

In it's simplest terms, separation of church and state means that public schools can't favor one religion over another.  They can't display the 10 commandments, and they can't force their choir to sing muslim songs.  I can't think of a valid explanation for this, but some school personnel gave it their best try.  Check it out...

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/02/15/colorado-student-reportedly-quits-choir-over-islamic-song/?cmpid=cmty_email_Gigya_Colorado_student_quits_high_school_choir_over_Islamic_song_praising_'Allah'