I still hear this debate about the new federal mandated health care that is trying to be forced into existence. For one President Obama and other politicians are trying to push the passing of the new health care bill, and with parts constantly changing politicians can’t really read it. Though in their defense even if they had the time to read it they wouldn’t, so all in all I guess nothing loss or nothing gained. But there are real problems that many Americans should at least ask themselves before supporting this government project.
One, the government will be in control, and I’ll quickly go over the ineptitude of current government run programs. The TSA a government organization only catches 25% of contraband that they themselves test, meaning alot more stuff can get through. When the government enters health care it’s even worse, the government takes care of Medicare…and if you notice many private organizations needed to invent Medicare Supplements so that people don’t fall through the cracks. When you look at other countries health care systems you find many stories of people being denied treatment or people just being neglected. I told a story during one of the show, where France needed to institute a law that said you couldn’t wait in an ambulance for more than five hours, something absolutely unheard of in our current system today. I’d like to see how that’s treated here, “We arrived at the hospital, but you’re going to be here in this ambulance for the next four and a half hours…and then you can wait in the waiting room”. I’m sure that I’d want to call ahead and reserve seating, something like I can do for an Outback Steakhouse.
One of the biggest things I can’t understand that people are overlooking. People who should be opposed to this new “government health care” aren’t opposed to it. I know this isn’t big on people’s minds…but we want to pay more attention to that. We all want government health care because we don’t want the evil companies taking advantage of us anymore. Well if these people currently “screwing” us over, want this new health care we should start to wonder what’s in this legislation, or what we don’t know. Think health care is a big funder of our current congress, if they wanted to they could crush this bill, as they have done so many times before. Yet, their not why? Because one of the ideas floating around, is requiring people to have health care and if you don’t have it…well the government will buy it for you. See how the insurance companies can make a huge fortune off taxpayer backs? Then the drug companies who have congress in their pockets, will lobby congress to only cover certain drugs…and the rest we’ll end up paying more for…once again…more money for those evil companies that we want to get rid of…this might be why they want this to pass.
Congress is only to happy to quickly pass this legislation so that their buddies can make more money…and you the taxpayer will pay for it. Once enacted, this system will never ever be pulled back. I admit as anyone who has looked into the situation, is that the current system isn’t working, but getting the government involved isn’t the answer. The same people who invented the DMV should never be put in charge of health care, its just common sense. Instead moving away from health care and into a pay for service as needed like eye care is currently, and you’ll see prices come down a lot..because they would need to be affordable for the average person. Then the control will be yours and your doctor…and only your control…both of the other suggestions puts someone not you in control of your health. You can find countless stories of both insurers and governments denying health care for those who need it and when people beg nothing happens. In the free market system, you can get treated and there would be organisations that would help for those emergency situations…but more people would survive.
I know that all of this ranting will do nothing, that this government health care will pass, and because of it people will die. This is just a normal nature of the American person now of days. We all want the government to take care of us…and give up our freedoms in the process. Well I know, only because it can’t continue this way, that this government will cause itself to fail. Many state government are already going bankrupt and the federal government isn’t too far behind that. The system either has to tax us at a higher rate…and the is only so much of that they can do, or cut their services (and we know they can never do that). The system is doomed by it’s very existence…they can only grow so much before their system falls apart.
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Government and Healthcare A Win-Win for them
July 20, 2009 // Posted in Politically Thinking, Problem Is... (Tags: Congress, Conservative, Democracy, Democrat, Government, Healthcare, Jim Guckin, Jim Guckin Show, Liberal, Libertarian, Liberty, Media, Moderate, News, President Obama, Spending) | No Comments
Sotomayor
July 13, 2009 // Posted in Politically Thinking (Tags: Congress, Conservative, Government, Jim Guckin, Jim Guckin Show, Liberal, Libertarian, Liberty, President Obama, Sonia Sotomayor, Supreme Court) | No Comments
Supreme Court Nominee, sat today to begin the process of grilling that congress does before either accepting or denying a potential candidate. As we have come to expect the two sides where devided on the candidate, like school children deciding on what color iPod they want. The Republican sentators who are a little outnumbered (7-12), started exactly where you knew they would…the whole “wise latina woman” comments. I had always had the image in my head, that to be a politican you needed to be a master tactician. Instead, I only have come to see that politicans are like the people who can’t play any kind of stratagy game…I think that chutes and latters are to far adavanced stratagy game for these politicans. Rather than dig in and find something that has been in the media since shortly after her nomination, they take the easy lazy route. How can I trust a politican who doesn’t even hate this rival enough to dig and find more than that, they’ve gotten lazy.
There are many stances that the republicans could have focused on, that might have made more of an impact…something like abortion. There were several anti-abortion activists who were at the event, that attempted to shake Sonia Sotomayor up. Yet surprising the Republicans didn’t fixate, like a dog on a bone, and go after that. Atleast that then would have been more of a valid argument then she’s racist. They tried the “liberal activist judge” card, but like usual that doesn’t surprise many of us. These same people wouldn’t say sorry, your a religious conservative judge and we can’t have that in our court system. We all know this to just be the back and forth game that they usually play and not much more…making the viewing of this boring.
One of the few things that I would be surprised to see the republicans do to try to derail her, is ask her question reguarding her interpretation of the constitution, and would she support legislation that put 20 innoncent people in jail. Use your own laws that you support to stangle her…because the argument is there. Study up on some Libertarian blogs and use that to leverage herself and anyone that supports her into the corner, anything other than their current tactics.
Sonia Sotomayor, in her opening, thanked the senators for their time with her, and how meeting with so many of them, “Our meetings have given me an illuminating tour of the fifty states and invaluable insights into the American people.” Which leads me to think…is she that nieve. Does she think that our representative are actually representative of the American people? Because that’s grounds there to make me worry. I am nothing like my elected officials…for one I work hard and don’t have alot to show for it yet. I don’t get to sit around pass laws and get paid a decent amount of money for it. Also another thing that worried me, when she described her judicial style as “fidelity to the law”. This is not what we should want our Supreme Court Justices to be loyal to….at least I wouldn’t. Am I the only one who knows that the Supreme Court is suppose to act as a check to the congress? So being loyal to the law, is a flawed outlook on the process…meaning she’ll obay the law. Instead something she should be loyal to is liberty and justice…these are what we should expect the Supreme Court to uphold, not the law. Lower court justices are tied to the law, because they swear to uphold and protect it…but Supreme court should be the opostie…to make sure that liberty and justice run this coutry….not laws. This is what I think is wrong with this coutry…we’re loyal to laws…and not to freedom…the freedoms, that formed this country.
1 State down….49 to go!
July 6, 2009 // Posted in Broken Systems, Politically Thinking, Problem Is... (Tags: California, Congress, Conservative, Democracy, Democrat, Government, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jim Guckin, Jim Guckin Show, Liberal, Libertarian, Liberty, Moderate, News, Recession, Representative, Republic, Republican, Spending) | No Comments
“The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”
-Thomas Jefferson
As many of you are quite aware now, the state of California is now broke. The politicians are turning to their same old games once again on blaming each other so as to keep us well distracted. The state in order to operate is now passing out IOUs, the same ones we use to hand out as children. I am lucky to not live in California at this time, because all an IOU really is, is leveraging this money on the children of the state. These young children in grade school, playing kickball have no idea the debt that we are shoving upon them or the poverty which we are going to shove upon them. The even sadder news is, this isn’t just California many states are being forced into the same situation, and California is just the first in the series of dominos.
The major problem is, is that the states want to help everyone, and as they stretch their dollars thin, they need more taxes to fill the gaps. Now rather than cut their plans and ideas down, they opt for the more destructive plan, they tax more. The problem is that at a certain tipping point, the voters fight back, and they hold off. This is where we currently are at, politicians have pushed taxes as high as they were going to go, and we don’t want to pay anymore. State recently tried taxing the rich more, and the rich have moved from those states, causing less revenue. This situation has run into the proverbial end of the line, they are running out of money, yet they just keep spending. To me it seems like they just can’t help themselves, they are spending themselves out of existence. Their amount of IOUs will only keep growing, and when people realize that they are worthless, they will stop accepting them. Once the IOUs are gone, then they have two actions, tax more or cut spending drastically….and if history dictates, they will tax more until the politicians and the absolute poor are the only ones left.
This isn’t just a state level problem, even though many states are experiencing the same problems, the federal government is doing the same thing. There is just one catch though, the federal government can just keep printing the money and keep circulating it…this doesn’t solve their problem, just makes it harder to see…though we’ll all pay when the dollar is worthless. Our politicians spending are ruining this country…and we are the ones who all pay. Why should children playing in a school yard today be held with the frivolous spending of us currently? When did they agree to be saddled with our debt and our mismanagement? I think politicians need to wake up slash all spending by 75% and cut their juicy benefits. Then get this country out of debt and make sure I, you, and our children get as much of our hard earned money as possible. Politician’s pet projects need to be stopped, and instead of adding more laws they need to be cutting useless laws.
We need to watch California, so that we all don’t make the same mistakes in our states. With the Governor blaming one and the democrats blaming him…and nothing gets done. With the 4th of July that just passed, think about freedom, because freedom and protecting everyone’s liberty will cut spending…even if we don’t agree with it.
Placeholders in Passed Bills?
July 1, 2009 // Posted in Broken Systems, Politically Thinking (Tags: California, Congress, Conservative, Democracy, Democrat, Government, Henry Waxman, HR 2454, Jim Guckin, Jim Guckin Show, Liberal, Libertarian, Liberty, Moderate, Representative, Republic, Republican) | No Comments
By now most of us are use to the fact that congress doesn’t read most of the bills they pass, and how could they? They pass so many laws, that if they were to stop and read them they’d get nothing done. They generally get some staff member to glance through the bill, make sure they won’t get attacked the next time for elections. Well this has been surpassed by and even scarier trend that is even less known…the ability to put stuff into a bill, after it has been passed. Yes you read that right; congress now has the amazing ability to place “placeholder” text into a bill. When that bill gets passed with the “placeholder” in there, congress can then add text in that placeholder spot, once they have everything figured out.
Right now there isn’t much misuse of this special “placeholder” ability that congress has apparently just granted themselves, they generally just use to for pointless nonsense. Yet, I can only imagine some time where a congress person (I’m sure trying to be helpful) will put a placeholder in a bill and then, force a law down our throats. Now I’m not sure how many congress people are aware of this new special ability, but I do know that one of them is…Representative Waxman of the 30th district of California, because this placeholder appears in his bill.
Below is an excerpt of HR 2454 (entire bill can be found here). In the table of contents you can find this little gem:
Placholder in HR 2454
Now I thought that was weird, but when you actually go to the section mentioned, you can see that it indeed is part of the bill:
Well there you have it; obviously it still is in the bill. Though like me, you must think that I am making this us…but the link to government web page can show you I’m not making this stuff up (link). Well like me, you think, hey this bill didn’t pass yet and is still a work in progress; no one would sign a bill where anything can be inserted? Well you’d be wrong, according to govtrack.us; the bill has passed the House of Represent ivies on June 26th, 2009 with a roll call vote of 219 for and 212 against. “The American Clean Energy and Security Act” passed one of the steps needed to become a law…and it isn’t even completed yet.
To find out who voted for an incomplete bill…or really a bill where they can insert whatever they want if it passes, you can visit this site: opencongress.org to see the roll call vote on this. Though this generally falls along party lines, this is a scary prospect and shouldn’t happen in future bills. I wouldn’t go above to call for all these politicians to resign for letting such a threat to liberty get through their ranks. To me, this seems a treasonous act, to leave something so open that anyone can add anything to a passed bill. Not sure how long this was going on, or how many bills have this placeholder in it, but it’s scary. It’s only a matter of time, until this is used against the American people as a weapon against our freedoms.
The healthcare debate
June 17, 2009 // Posted in Broken Systems (Tags: Congress, Government, Healthcare, Insurance Companies, Jim Guckin, Jim Guckin Show, President Obama) | No Comments
With Congress warming up the debate on the future of healthcare in this country, I though it was a good time to go over why this is a bad idea. To name one, nothing that any congressional session or presidential office, that has made things easier and better, it will be a long time before you can think of something. There are many out there, who would want to argue that fact and may try to point to some minimal example of where they may have made something better.
The easiest point to make in this argument against government intervention is this simple point: government has no incentive to make things quick and more efficient. This is just a very simple and very powerful statement against this, the government will pay no more or less in healthcare for increased speed and better diagnosis. So under the extra amount of more people who would be visiting the doctors and hospitals, you will have added delays in the time it takes for diagnosis and treatment. There are incidents in other countries where care of people has been affected due to high volume. I did a show last year, which in Europe there had to be a law passed that you couldn’t sit in an ambulance pass four hours. That isn’t a problem that we currently expierance in this country in our current system.
“Government Healthcare will be good for everyone” - Well this saying is easily disputed by looking once again at other countries where healthcare is government. In Japan there was a story that the government enforced a weight limit for healthcare. Now this wouldn’t be a first step in the US Government run health care, but as time passed and people complained about the increase in taxes, they would have to find ways to cut cost, I think that overweight people would be dropped first. “Well it’s their fault for being overweight!” is an argument many of people would say. The problem is that it’s a disorder, and these people would need to be covered just as well. While people who currently have to avoid doctors could go, people who need doctors would have less access to them, causing issues. In fact some people actually come to this country from Canada to have surgeries done, because there isn’t a reasonable timeframe for them to be done in their own country.
Now I don’t want people to think I’m pro-HMO or current system, because I’m not. In fact I agree with people that the system is broken, and government paying for it won’t solve it. I think the opposite is true, that companies and government need to be out of healthcare. I think that we should pay for healthcare, the same way we would with getting glasses or laser eye surgery. I remember looking into laser eye surgery when it first came out, and it was so expensive that I would never be able to afford it. Though after time, and as the procedure has gotten better and gotten more affordable, the same would happen with the healthcare system as a whole. Now the savings wouldn’t be immediately, but as doctors competed for customers. This also would take the decision making power out of government (proposed) and insurance companies (current) and put it in your hands. Because you’d choose what you wanted to pay for and what you didn’t. Even though you hear the government would take your decision away, you don’t have that decision currently. Let’s make healthcare affordable and take it out of everyone else’s hands and bring it back to ours. I bet we’d see better healthcare now, because your doctor would need to compete for your business.
Ban Hate Speech and Guns…sure…that will solve everything
June 15, 2009 // Posted in Politically Thinking (Tags: Congress, Government, Gun Ban, Hate Speech, Holocaust Museum, Jim Guckin, Jim Guckin Show, Von Brunn) | No Comments
Ever since the horrific events that happened last weekend at the holocaust museum, where a lone nut job shot someone. I don’t think there is a sane person amongst us who agreed with what this person did, the insane might. Yet with this event happening about us, I am hearing what I consider scary ideas floating about, “We need Gun Control” and “We need to bad hate speech”. We as a people tend to do this after a tragic event, we jump to insane conclusions in order to protect ourselves. Now we are noble in our attempts to spare others the pain, or protect ourselves from that pain, but our good intentions are misplaced. In fact the very things that we want to do to be safe are in the very act anti-American and yet without a second thought give up the freedoms that many fought and died to protect. I don’t mean to sound overly patriotic, it’s just the same patriotic people who give up their freedoms, claim to love this country. In fact one of our founding fathers actually had a saying, that fits this circumstance exactly: “They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” This comes from Benjamin Franklin, whose quote now seems almost prophetic.
Let me split this dual reaction, into two simple and logical arguments. I’ll tackle the first one, “We need Gun Control”. Well this seems like a logical statement, we had a shooting, and if there had somehow been more strict gun policies then this event may not have been occurred. This argument sounds very logical and can sweep some people up in it’s faulty logic. For one there are things that are currently banned in the US (i.e. Drugs) and yet they are still very available in the black market, so more strict rules only would make the black market sales people more rich. Just like currently, people somehow believe that more strict rules will all of a sudden make criminals start paying attention to the law, this is just not the case, as long as there is money to be made, it will be made. More gun laws will only hurt the people who legally own guns and legally use them. To test you logic, how sane does this sound: “We need to make illegal handguns illegal” If that statement made sense to you, then there is no amount of argument that will change your opinion on this topic. Though more strict gun laws, don’t prevent murder. Heck look at all the school shootings that happened, those guns weren’t the kids, they got it from somewhere else. So let’s not tread on the freedom of everyone, to buy the illusion of freedom.
The second part of the argument, “We need to ban hate speech”. This is something that we can all agree about, we don’t like to hear hate speech. (Well those of us, who don’t hate others, but if you like it you may be one to speak it yourselves). When I have heard people on the streets, or in lines, or in groups, on the radio, spewing out hatred towards one group of people, I just can’t help to tune them out and wish they would go away. This is the way that most of us feel and it’s a normal reaction to that kind of hatred. Though there is also a problem with this line of thinking, that we don’t solve the problem, we just put it out of sight and drive it underground further. I am of the personal impression, that all forms of hate should be out in the open, where we as a society can see it and deal with it. When you drive things underground there happens to be an effect we don’t intend, and that is it because a drawing force for the people who don’t fit in. The problem is that if you don’t fit in, you tend to look for that friendship bond wherever you can find it, and this area is the target for hate groups and cults. These people need friends so bad, that they don’t realize that they are being slowly adapted to this new group. I think that if we let these ideas hit the air, then they would been seen for what they are, stupid ideas. Now by no means am I saying this would end hate groups, we would just know who they are and be able to avoid them. I don’t know about you, but I would want to know if any of my friends hold ideas that hate any group, sexual preference, religious sect or skin color; so I could just stop being friends with them.
The simple end of the argument, and to sum it up, is that by reacting to tragic events, like Mr. Von Brunn shooting, the only thing that happens is that we over-react. The problem is that when we over react, our politicians over react and then bad laws get passed. These laws are put in by people with the best intentions, but never actually think of the unintended consequences. The consequences happen to hurt innocent Americans, further the degradation of our freedom and liberties and puts the government one step closer to being tyrannical (if you don’t already think that). So if you believe we should ban guns, then say that…and don’t pretend like this incident spawned that thought. We need to protect our liberty and not hand it over to the government on a silver platter, because they will never give it back.
$100 Million in Savings
April 20, 2009 // Posted in Politically Thinking (Tags: Congress, Government, President Obama, Spending) | No Comments
President Obama asked government agencies to find and cut $100 Million dollars of pork. Now when I heard this, at first I thought great…I’d never see any of that money refunded in my taxes, but it was nice to see that money shifted to some senator’s pet project. Then I quickly remembered that congress and the president have spent over a trillion dollars. TRILLION! if we even stopped at spending $1Trillion, $100 Million is 1/10 of that!
So by my count the government still needs to at least cut $900 trillion more so my taxes don’t go up, and so eventually my taxes can go down. Though realistically I know my taxes will never go down, and regardless of political promises it will only go up. It’s something to think about when election time rolls around.
Yet most of us will forget and these politicians will raise taxes and spend more money…and make the same old symbolic gestures where they “slash” the fat. When honestly the are the ones creating the pork in the first place. I think it’s funny the first time we hit a trillion in spending, they think a measly 10% cut all across government, which is more than a trillion in spending…not including the trillion they gave as bailouts….that a cut that small is nothing more than symbolic. Let’s see them make some real change, and cut all government spending by 50%. Then you’ll start to see the change, when you hit the major three things the government spends money on, Welfare, Military and their Pensions are hit…until that time…don’t be fooled by their magic tricks.
Are Politicians going to get what’s coming to them?
April 8, 2009 // Posted in People Had Enough (Tags: Boston, Congress, Recession, Tea Party) | 1 Comment
I hear from more and more people who are now fed up with the government or close to being fed up with them. I’ve even heard of several major cities having “Tea Parties” in fact there are 350 major tea parties that the organizers have planned. These hark back to the Boston Tea Party, which Boston colonists threw tea into the harbor to protest taxation on them. Yet the name is where the similarities end, anyone who would pay attention to history would know that the people of Boston boycotted (the best they could) and where punished for what they did. These Tea Parties are mostly symbolic and most of them will end up paying the tax.
If we want to compare ourselves to our revolutionary counterparts, maybe we need to stick the commitment. We as Americans today don’t know the commitment that is needed to stand up to a tyrannical government. I think that if the revolutionary time is now…it would be less revolutionary and more “hey, it’s the best system around”. The people at the tea party, risked their lives for the protest, and I don’t think anyone at these tea parties is risking their lives or their freedom for their cause. We as Americans if we really are fed up with the politicians then we need to let them know, and not by doing something symbolic. We saw what symbolist protest gets us, like when congress symbolically wanted us out of Iraq with a non-binding resolution. We can’t do this, because politicians won’t really listen…they may fake listen and pretend to listen…but the best way to show them is to replace them….replace them with people willing to cut government. I was very much a guy who thought the government spent money to help people, I was very naive. I started listening to a radio show called “Free Talk Live” which is liberty oriented. Now I admit I am not a radical people when it comes to programs like that. I never want to completely get rid of government, because I honestly know that I don’t trust other people and know the masses can be led…because I was. Yet, I find myself agreeing with them on many things, the government is too big…they have lost touch with the people they “represent”. They use their own agenda’s to oppress people, when they should just make sure that we are safe…from others and not ourselves.
When you look at the government and their taxes, you can see a problem there. They need to keep pumping funds into their projects and their charities…and when in a recession people start spending less, they need to tax higher to get the same result. One of the most recent was the tax increase on the cigarettes, which proportionately effects the poor more than anyone. Yet, they say it’s to recover the cost of smokers on the system. How about the easier method…you don’t raise the tax and you don’t pay for medical benefits of smokers…in fact then we can choose what we want to do, and then no taxes are needed at all. If we want freedom from taxes, we need to drop this symbolic nonsense and really take the lawmakers to task…and I don’t care how mad people are…but most of these politicians that caused this tea party…will most likely be re-elected…yea…We’ll show them.