Government Taxies Out of Control

One of the realities of dealing with government is that laws designed to regulate one activity or another in the public interest are invariably twisted at some point to protect the regulated, typically at the expense of the those who counted on the regulation to protect them.

No better example is provided than that of Quincy, Illinois, detailed in this story. The story speaks for itself, but illustrates what happens when politicians and bureaucrats decide their election or appointment invests them with the superior wisdom to regulate all aspects of life and not merely those to which a regulation is directed. The law loses all sight of itself and becomes the tool of those it was intended to control.

It is an all too common problem. Once we gain the reigns of any power we are inclined to use it to impose our own visions of fairness and justice. The intent of the law goes out the window and we become obsessed with arbitrating the activities and needs of others. This is why I always advise my local government clients who are writing zoning laws to ask themselves, for every provision they draft, why are they doing this and what is their public purpose. It is amazing how often that leads them to conclude they don't need it. If only...

Health Care Reform or Government Reform? The Answer Is Obvious!

America is in deep trouble. We have an out-of-control Federal government that is broke, yet arrogantly proposes to take over, in the name of reform, the most successful health care system in the world, on the preposterous theory that more government will solve the problems government has created.

Every single major problem with our health care is attributable to governmental interference, but we are asked to believe the unbelievable, that government can make it all better with reforms of industry, more bureaucracy and public options.

Reform cannot be imposed on others. It is a change of heart, a self-correction. We don’t need health care reform or insurance reform imposed by government. We desperately need government reform. We have a glorious opportunity before us to achieve it, if we but put forth the ideas.

That is what we must do to preserve our freedoms. Let us turn the tables on Leviathan and strike a sword for liberty, under law, by taking the initiative, by demanding reforms of government that reduce its interference in health care and open the doors to competition and innovation.

It is government that has made health insurance expensive. Legislators in many states have insidiously enriched their own political fortunes by imposing mandates on insurance companies to cover every conceivable item regardless of needs or demands. A few Northeast States have also required community rating and guaranteed issuance of policies, raising costs by 500-700% in some instances.

Each of these mandates effectively enslaves one individual to pay for the health care of another, eliminating all incentives to live healthier lifestyles or control costs. Our legislators have pretended to be giving us something for nothing, while dramatically escalating costs of insurance and driving out competition.

A 5th grader can understand why this is a dumb idea. It is only our own failure to demand accountability from politicians that has allowed it to happen. The result, unsurprisingly, is that policies in some states cost 3-4 times what they cost in others.

Moreover, many insurance companies, including my own, have left places like New Jersey and New York, depriving their consumers of choices. But, the politicians don’t care. They just want the power to dispense favors to us at our cost.

We must end this. We can do it by applying the legitimate power of the Federal government to promote interstate commerce and allow every American to buy their insurance from whatever state or company they’d like.

If its reform the Federal government wants, then use it to reduce the costs of government. Allow Americans to buy health insurance from anywhere the same way they buy car insurance.

It’s not hard. End the death grip of government on the insurance market and let freedom ring. Empower consumers to lower their health care costs by their own free choices. It’s the American way. Just imagine what could be achieved if we reformed government. It’s time we demanded it!

And, while we’re at, it let’s demand tort reform, which has lowered costs and attracted doctors everywhere it has been tried. Let’s tell Congress to create incentives to increase the use of Medical Savings Accounts that encourage Americans to take more responsibility for their own health care and receive the rewards of doing so. The legislation currently proposed would attempt to destroy both them and Medicare Advantage when it should be doing exactly the opposite.

Let’s help people with pre-existing conditions by targeting our Federal help to reinsuring of insurance companies that take on these high-risk cases.

Let’s allow individuals to take their insurance with them from job to job and state to state so they don’t lose it. Let’s end the cost shifting by privatizing more of Medicaid and Medicare for future recipients.

Let’s allow insurance pooling for small businesses, the self-employed and others so all individuals can benefit from the economies of scale currently available through employer coverage.

Every American should be free to purchase the health coverage of their choice without tax penalty. We should offer refundable tax credits for insurance so every American can participate in the market, not just those covered by employers.

If we make it easier for Americans to buy individual health insurance of their choice without tax penalty we will, overnight, introduce personal responsibility into the health care system and lower the costs for everyone, while preserving quality of care and the innovation that only our system delivers, and on which the rest of the world depends.

This what we must demand of our government, to get out of the way and let the free market work under laws that ensure competition.

Unfortunately, the plans being proposed in Washington are headed in the other direction. They propose a public option akin to taking over Coke and letting it write the rules and set the prices for Pepsi.

Only a fool would think this will do anything other than reduce competition, increase mandates and drive everyone into government health care. Indeed, that is the stated goal of honest proponents of the legislation now before Congress. It is merely one step toward a single-payer health care system … except that it won’t quite be single-payer.

No, Congress would have its own system because it immorally exempts itself from this legislation. That is precisely why we know its bad for us and should be opposed with every fiber of our being. Instead, let us proceed under the banner of freedom. The solution to health care is less government. Let’s slay Leviathan.

Get Your Hands Off My Health Care

I’m tired of hearing “health care has to be fixed.” This endlessly repeated line encompasses two falsehoods; first, that our health care system is broken and, secondly, that government can fix it.

The system is flawed and can be improved, but the Canadians who regularly come here to get what they cannot get at home, the best health care in the world, prove our system is far from broken. Indeed, 89% of Americans say they satisfied with their own personal medical care as do the majority of even those without insurance.

Moreover, when every problem this system faces can be attributed to government distortion of the market, it’s a safe bet more government will only make it worse. The problem is not health care but government health care. The reform we need is less government and more private market competition.

I have read the House health care bill, all 1,018 pages of it. I have also reviewed the Senate bill. They are a disaster; two massive attempts at fanatic social planning with no redeemable value. Both should be discarded so we can start over with real solutions.

The President would have us believe he wants respectful debate and then proceeds to assert doctors would downplay diabetes treatment to generate fees for amputations. He claims fears of rationing are unwarranted while he tells us some older people would be better off taking a pain pill than getting surgery. He relentlessly pursues the takeover of one-sixth of the U.S. economy while the economy itself is reeling from other problems. He seeks more and more personal power to pursue what can only be described as a radical agenda. His actions are those of a juvenile and Congress needs to reign him in.

There are innumerable problems with the House bill. They begin with the mockery the 5-year limit on the life of existing plans makes of the President’s claim we can keep health insurance we like. There are also the 40 pages of the bill devoted to promoting advanced directives for end of life care and associated research, clear signals of future rationing. Moreover, doctors and hospitals are reimbursed by the degree to which they promote these programs and avoid re-admissions of patients.

The bill creates an economic squeeze on providers to encourage acceptance of death over life. The Orwellian “Federal Coordinating Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research” is an exercise in utilitarianism, where our right to health care will ultimately be decided on a cost/benefit analysis that measures how many years of useful life we have left. It’s happening now in Europe and in states like Oregon that push assisted suicide in place of treatment for terminally ill patients. The bill also would fund abortions through the back door. That’s why proponents refuse to amend to say it will not.

Nevertheless, these issues, critical though they may be, are not the fundamental problem with this legislation. What is really at stake is my right to decide my own health care. Nothing could be more personal or foundational as a matter of civil liberties.

Yet, this bill would ultimately give the government to decide, based on nationalized electronic records, whether I am “eligible for a specific service with a specific physician at a specific facility.” The word “shall” appears 1,683 times in this legislation. Over and over again it identifies “stakeholders” in my health care, code for letting others have something to say about my health care. Why are we even considering such a massive intrusion into the lives of Americans? Where is the Constitutional authority for my government to mandate how I provide for my health care? There is none.

The political class is simply asserting power it doesn’t have. It is coercing Americans out of their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in the name of cost control. Yet, it is government and two Federal programs in particular that have made costs an issue.

Medicare’s unfunded liabilities now exceed $50 trillion and Medicaid obligations are overwhelming our states. Medicare spending per patient has risen one-third faster than other health care spending, while also forcing the shifting of costs to the privately insured.

This distortion of the marketplace is entirely the fault of a government that knows no bounds in its lust for power. Trusting it to solve the problem it created would be insanity. Letting it indulge its appetite in a mad rush to claim every scrap of liberty left on the table, at a time when we face such serious economic and security issues, would be stark raving lunacy.

This is why Americans are upset. We’ve had more than enough government overreaching in the last year with takeovers of banks and auto companies, out of control spending and massive regulation in a quest to control non-existent global warming.

If Congress wants to help, then start backing government out of health care by ending state mandates that needlessly drive up the cost of health insurance and keep people from buying what they need. Introduce more competition by privatizing elements of the Federal system. Promote Medical Savings Accounts, which have allowed me to reduce my premiums by two-thirds. We must put more personal responsibility for health care back into the system.

Instead, this legislation goes in precisely the opposite direction. It will magnify our government health care problems. Americans instinctively know this from experience. This is why they have risen up in opposition. They know a bill that doesn’t mention “tort reform” even once isn’t serious about controlling costs.

Rather, it’s about growing government and enhancing the power of the political class, those elites who like to think we are misinformed because we don’t accept their philosophy or want their help. Americans also know any legislation Congress exempts itself from can’t be good for them.

Living French

... the sovereign extends its arms about the society as a whole; it covers its surface with a network of petty regulations - complicated, minute, and uniform - through which even the most original minds and the most vigorous souls know not how to make their way past the crowd and emerge into the light of day. It does not break wills; it softens them, bends them, and directs them; rarely does it force one to act, but it constantly opposes itself to one's acting on one's own; it does not destroy; it prevents things from being born; it does not tyrannize, it gets in the way, it curtails, it enervates, it extinguishes, it stupefies, and finally it reduces each nation to nothing more than a herd of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.

These are the words of Tocqueville, a Frenchman who became America's most famous chronicler. He offered these words as a description of French society both before and after its revolution, describing America as a different type of country where he hoped this fate might be avoided; where the spirit of liberty, individualism and self-reliance would keep the authoritarian streak in man at bay. Unfortunately, we have softened and now we face the kind of soft tyranny that must be turned back if we are to avoid the hard kind.

We have obsessed on regulating everything, thereby slowly curtailing, enervating and extinguishing the entrepreneurial culture that has made us great. We pretend we can compensate and correct for this self-destructive behavior by promoting affordable housing, while simultaneously raising the cost of it by requiring absurdly large minimum lot sizes. We subsidize economic development while smothering it with environmental mandates that know no bounds and are subject to no tests of reasonableness. We promote smart growth while throwing up every obstacle to any growth. We admonish the landowner to exercise care of his land and the species that inhabit it while depriving him of every right to use it, thereby encouraging the destruction of that which seek to protect. We promote the saving of farmland while restricting the farmer with what he can do to raise the capital and produce the income needed to sustain it.

We have, in short, lost all sense of balance. We have become stupified, as Tocqueville predicted; ourselves no more than "herds of timid and industrious animals" on the same order as those we regulate. It's time for a new direction. We need to throw off unnecessary regulations and restore the power of regulation to the lowest levels of government where it can be done with the modesty, reasonableness and balance demanded of all law. We need to change our focus from expanding the scope of land use regulation to streamlining it and stripping it down to the essentials; from what the gentry desires, to what the common man requires to protect his rights and his liberty under the law. We have the tools of science and information to equip the least of governments, the ones closest to the people with the power to regulate themselves. Let's stop building up higher and higher levels of regulation and go precisely in the opposite way; toward self-government and individual liberty. It's the American way and it's superior to anything the French have ever done, with the possible exception of the Notre Dame Cathedral.

Wayne County Flag Day Rally

“Government is not the solution to the problem, government is the problem.” Ronald Reagan said it in 1981, but 28 years later this wisdom is lost on us. We have instead bought into the oldest and most elegant of lies, that letting some men decide everything improves on every man deciding for himself.

While some might call it new or reform, it’s the same tired old idea of substituting politics for capitalism, privileges for rights, tyranny for liberty and serfdom for self-reliance. It’s never worked, but the idea men can create a perfect world, if we just put the right men in charge, is a powerful lure.

This awful idea raises its head every few generations as memories of collectivism and its enticing falsehoods fade. We have already largely forgotten the totalitarian nightmares of the 20th Century – all built on the principle of the “common good before individual good.”

Someone says “save the planet” and, without thinking, we reply “why not,” implicitly buying into schemes to control where we work, how we live and what we can buy.

We ignore the utter incompetency of government and all the previous schemes that collapsed of their own weight, taking for granted the free market that has created a quality of life unmatched in the history of the world.

We imagine it’s possible to control anything and everything, even the sun, to improve on the heavens.

We let ourselves be lured by the promise of free health care without bothering to ask why Canadians, who have it, come here for health care when their lives are at stake. We blind ourselves to the implications of Oregon’s refusal to fund end-of-life care combined with its offer of free help with assisted suicide.

We are oblivious to the price of free health care, the loss of the greatest of our civil liberties, the right to make one’s own health care decisions and to keep private the most private of all personal information, one’s medical records.

And, so we are confronted with a government determined to control every aspect of our lives even though it’s made a mess of everything it’s tried. What are we do?

The answer will not be found in more efficient government, nor from some new leader or different brand of leadership. It will only come from us saying “NO MORE.”

If we don’t want politicians coercing money from us to throw back at us as programs for which they take credit, we must stop rewarding them with thanks them for bringing home the grants. We want nothing to do with their self-serving redistribution of the fruits of our labor. We want them to leave our money with us. We can spend it better than any bureaucracy. Imagine what would happen if, the next time a politician came here to hand over a check we simply spoke up and said “Do you think I don’t what you’re doing?”

We must also stop playing defense. We’re not interested in making government work better. We want less of it. Less government IS better government. We want politicians to slash public employment, stop regulating our light bulbs, get out of the mortgage business and obliterate every other non-essential program.

We don’t want them to restrain the cost of government. We want them to cut it back as we must do. We want them to lay off staff, reduce services and repeal codes, letting freedom ring.

We believe in individual choice, not policy. We want rationing of government, not health care. We’re tired of politicians pretending they’re helping us by imposing insurance mandates that raise the cost of health care and create the excuse for more of their meddling.

We’ll decide what we need and what we’ll buy. We want politicians to get their hands off our health care, out of our pockets and away from our children.

We don’t want guaranteed services – we want the individual liberties our Constitution guarantees – guarantees that have made America the best place on Earth.

We must tell our leaders government isn’t a public good, it’s a necessary evil and their job is to do as little of it as possible. If they say they can’t do it, they’ve been there too long, which brings me to my final point.

What makes a politician think they’re a public servant when they’ve made government their career? Let’s end that charade. Public service is my neighbor giving his time to his church or fire company or serving on a volunteer board. It’s not the self-aggrandizement of some Congressman or Senator.

We must put the governing class genie back in the bottle and return to the ideal of the citizen legislator. Term limits are essential. But, we’re only going to get them if we demand them individually from our friends and foes alike.

We must, from time to time, tell every elected State and Federal official; “your time is up, now go.” Given what’s been happening over the last year, the time is now up for a lot of them.

If we cannot do this, we deserve the government we get. This is our challenge and what it will take to restore power to the common man. So go forth, speak up and say “NO MORE!” Tell everyone you meet, especially your elected officials; “government isn’t the solution to the problem, it IS the problem.”

The Anthropovore

The San Joaquin Valley is an area of California where I have done work. It is one of the breadbaskets of the world and quite beautiful but suffers from a number of economic problems, including high unemployment and low incomes. The people who occupy this region are hard-working and community spirited in every way. It's sad to see how out-of-control enviro-marxists are now destroying them and their region, putting smelt (a non-indigenous species no less) before people. See this link. But, then again, isn't that exactly what today's absurdly high stream anti-degradation standards do? And, what about those mindless Indiana Bat and Bog Turtle study requirements on land only suspected of being potential habitat for these species? Unfortunately, we have created a new species – the anthropovore, a green monster with an insatiable appetite for power and natural antipathy to man. We have fed it with the power to sue on behalf of us and it now wants to consume us. One might say it's a process of natural selection, but that would be wrong. It's really a pathological and unnatural self-hatred that we must squelch before the anthropovore consigns us all to oblivion.

Parking in Your Driveway, No Laughing Matter

A few years ago Candid Camera or one its imitators did a segment where, for laughs, individuals were ticketed for parking in ther own driveways. But, it's no longer a laughing matter as this story makes clear. This tale indicates how easily we can be led into the false presumption we own what we regulate. Then again, all regulation is, indeed, a taking of value. This illustrates why it so essential all regulation be limited to what is necessary and not simply what is desired. The failure to appreciate this fundamental principle leads to more and more intrusion into the lives of the regulated and finally the false conclusion by regulators that it's our property and we can do what we damn well please with it, precisely the opposite of the truth, turning the law on its head and making what was laughable a cruel reality.