Recently, Republican Rep. Ron Paul of Texas took to the floor of the House to talk about Wikileaks, transparency in government, and the case of Daniel Ellsberg, the 
Pentagon Papers, and the New York Times. He spoke about how the Iraq War was based on lies. He asked how the U. S. government should prosecute a citizen of Australia for publishing classified U. S. documents that he did not steal. Paul also said the following: “Revealing the real nature and goal of our presence in so many Muslim countries is a threat to our empire, and any revelation of this truth is highly resented by those in charge.”
Paul posed a number of questions at the end of his talk:
Number 1: Do the America People deserve know the truth regarding the ongoing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen?
Number 2: Could a larger question be how can an army private access so much secret information?
Number 3: Why is the hostility mostly directed at Assange, the publisher, and not at our governments failure to protect classified information?
Number 4: Are we getting our moneys worth of the 80 Billion dollars per year spent on intelligence gathering?
Number 5: Which has resulted in the greatest number of deaths: lying us into war or Wikileaks revelations or the release of the Pentagon Papers?
Number 6: If Assange can be convicted of a crime for publishing information that he did not steal, what does this say about the future of the first amendment and the independence of the internet?
Number 7: Could it be that the real reason for the near universal attacks on Wikileaks is more about secretly maintaining a seriously flawed foreign policy of empire than it is about national security?
Number 8: Is there not a huge difference between releasing secret information to help the enemy in a time of declared war, which is treason, and the releasing of information to expose our government lies that promote secret wars, death and corruption?
Number 9: Was it not once considered patriotic to stand up to our government when it is wrong?
Thomas Jefferson had it right when he advised ‘Let the eyes of vigilance never be closed.’ I yield back the balance of my time.
Source: Huffington Post
– Elaine Magliaro
Much has been said here about the superiority of a nonprofit role for government in administering services, including heath care.
Let’s look at another example first. Did the private market fairly price education lending before the government arrived to provide all of it? What has been the outcome of government involvement?
Government student loan guarantees and subsidies have allowed education costs to soar. Universities have little incentive to contain tuition costs because students have very large borrowing capability at very low rates. This has caused over-consumption of education generally, as the government allows students to borrow extensively to study in fields where there is little chance of finding gainful employment. This means that many students spend unproductive years studying things that they never actually use. Private lenders, however, would be reluctant to lend into such a wasteful use of time or risky payback scenario.
A similar dynamic will eventually crush socialized health care. Our partially-socialized and highly-regulated system leaves insurers with a government-mandated copayment scheme that encourages health care consumption by the patient, who sees incremental procedures as free or nearly free.
Providers must make up for below-cost government reimbursement levels found in Medicare and Medicaid procedures in their billing rates to private payers. This spikes insurance and cash rates, and is creating serious shortage of providers to the elderly.
To fix the health system:
1. Repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
2. Allow insurers to create catastrophic insurance plans
3. Allow consumers to shop for plans from any state
4. Drop employer-issued plan requirements and tax incentives, and create a broader consumer marketplace
5. Ease regulatory barriers to entry for minute clinics and other low-cost providers to the cash marketplace
6. Radically cut provider documentation requirements for Medicare and Medicaid procedures. These were the genesis for endless paperwork now found in the third-party payment system
7. Substantially raise patient co-payments on all government-administered plans
8. Cut back the FDA and allow drugs approved in the EU/Japan to be sold in the United States immediately. Drop import restrictions.
9. Broaden prescribing powers among providers, and move as many drugs as possible to OTC
10. Allow providers to counsel realism in end-of-life measures, and legalize euthanasia for patients who seek it
I welcome today’s ruling. In my view the Supreme Court will eventually reject major parts of Obamacare requiring it to be entirely rewritten or abandoned in the next Congress.
“If you think that money was ever yours to begin with, you are among the dim-witted, unimaginative rabble, because if you didn’t pay the government for these services, you’d pay private sector gougers three times as much, and your standard of living would be 1/3 of what it is.”
But what about the profits, Tony! Who gets to profit! If I can’t profit, nobody profits! If it’s not profitable, it can’t be Libertarian utopia! To Hell with the children! For God’s sake man! Think of the money! THINK OF THE MONEY!
(That was
hardimpossible to type with a straight face.)@Chan: >>> Back that statement up with actual facts. <<<
What? It is obvious on the face of it. If you disagree it is YOUR responsibility to prove that what is obvious does not hold, I won't walk you through logic my daughter could follow in the third grade. I mean that literally; are you incapable of basic arithmetic?
Chan,
Is it possible to run a courier business for profit? Of course, there’s lots of local\national\international ones. Is it possible to do so for uniform fees to everyone in the country? No. Which is why the government does it. It’s impossible for the post office to fulfill it’s purpose (to provide low-cost mail to everyone in the country) as a for profit business.
There are some things that a just and well run society gives everyone access to: Schools, courts, mail, roads, the patent office, etc. are generally included on that list (you know, all the things that make the difference between a first and third world country). Giving everyone access to those things improves everyone in the society’s life, not just the people who couldn’t afford them if they weren’t subsidized.
In case you missed it, the desired goal is that EVERYONE has access to these institutions. That just doesn’t happen with a for profit business.
>> Therein lies the rub. How do you calculate “what is needed”? The most elegant and effecient system by far is a pricing system in a free market.
One way or another, people vote on what is needed, either directly or indirectly through their representatives, or by agitating for or against policies publicly.
The free market cannot “fairly” price a court trial, cops, licensing, inspections, or hardly any government function. The citizenry doesn’t want the richest to have access to the courts and the poor to be oppressed because they can’t afford it, the same goes for police investigating crimes. Licenses for professional services should not go to the highest bidder, we don’t want restaurants getting a free pass to endanger our health by paying an extra $1000 for the “express” service. We don’t want our military to be done as a for-profit operation either.
Government is the opposite of business. It does the functions we do not WANT done at a profit, whether they could be or not, because we need those functions to survive, and if they WERE done on a for-profit basis the vendors would gouge us into the poorhouse and then let us die there.
If every road you drove on was a privately owned toll road, it would take you hours to get to work and they would cost you five times the tax you pay at the pump. Because any road is a natural monopoly on the direct route between point A and point B, and in a free market the owner would charge whatever the market would bear — which would be most of your paycheck in transportation costs, because everything you eat and use to survive is on a road sometime, and those costs would be passed on to you.
As for government money growing on trees: Money is a paper product. It really does grow on trees.
In any case, our pay is almost entirely wrung from thin air; as a knowledge worker I don’t bring anything to work except my brain and hands, and I create value from those, and people buy it. Often they love it. I am paid for hours of my life spent using my brain on behalf of others. So are the majority of people.
Taxes are a formalization of the fact that you would not be living the life you are without all of the infrastructure around you, the protection of the police and fire department and emergency personnel, the work you never saw of building inspections that have kept your house from falling on you, or burning you alive, or your appliances catching fire at 3 AM and asphyxiating you with poison gasses from the wiring. Or the ones that keep the wheels from falling off your car at 70 mph, or keep that can of corn from being laced with lead and arsenic. Or the military that has kept you from being murdered by foreign hordes your entire life.
Taxes are a formalization of the fact that you live in a society that must be paid for, and your share is the value of some hours of your daily labor.
If you think that money was ever yours to begin with, you are among the dim-witted, unimaginative rabble, because if you didn’t pay the government for these services, you’d pay private sector gougers three times as much, and your standard of living would be 1/3 of what it is.
So kick back in your safe comfortable house that is not about to catch on fire, dig into your safe non-poisonous ice cream, and bitch about how the dig dog dag nabbit gummint ain’t never dun did nuttin’ for you and yorn. Nuttin’!!
Morons.
Gyges:
I say run it as a business or sell it so someone else can.
No harm in government making a profit, maybe if they did we could pay less taxes. Although outside of roads and the post office I cant think of anything else that might work.
Can you?
Tony,
You have no idea how many times I’ve had this argument:
A: “The government fails because it’s not a business.”
B: “The government shouldn’t be run as a business. It does things that businesses can’t do, like provide cheap mail delivery to everyone across the country. That provides a concrete net benefit to society, but is impossible to do if you’re looking to make a profit.”
A: “The post office doesn’t make money, so it fails.”
ekeyra:
most progressives are racists, maybe not Klan racists but at least the paternalistic kind that says oh poor minority you need the help of the great white father to make it in this wide world. Without our help and support you are nothing.
Give me a person who tells you to get off your ass and work hard and possibly have a chance at making something of yourself. The Gunnys of this world care more for you than some bleeding heart that pats you on the head and says poor little man of color.
But then just helping someone find a job doesn’t do anything for the progressive ego.
@Gyges: Yes, a typo. Damn it. The government does NOT need profits.
Bdaman, 7 billion dollars in the hole every year is close enough to break even for government work right?
Tony,
“Unlike a private enterprise, the government’s goal is not to grow and sell more; it is to provide exactly what is needed. ”
Therein lies the rub. How do you calculate “what is needed”? The most elegant and effecient system by far is a pricing system in a free market. Supply and demand, its econ 101 stuff. You could probably teach it to a 5 year old. If people arent buying your product, lower the price or lower your production. Otherwise you wind up with shortages or overstocks, which is exactly the outcome of centrally planned economies who grope in the dark for a magical equation to sum total of all voluntary human interaction. Also tony, charging fees for government services?! How dreadful a thought!
Which leads me to Chan.
“That Socialism would be immediately practicable if an omnipotent and omniscient Deity were personally to descend to take in hand the government of human affairs is incontestable.”
Wonderful book. Heres all you need to know about Woodrow Wilson.
“Wilson’s two-volume book, “A History of the American People”, was so racially biased that D.W. Griffith quoted the sitting president’s writings in his 1915 silent film, The Birth of a Nation, “The white men were roused by a mere instinct of self preservation… until at last there had sprung into existence a great Ku Klux Klan, a veritable empire of the South, to protect the Southern country.” Not only did Wilson proudly stand by those words, but he also had a private showing of the movie at the White House.”
Read more at Suite101: Woodrow Wilson and White Supremacy: An Examination of Wilson’s Racist and Antidemocratic Policies http://www.suite101.com/content/woodrow-wilson-and-white-supremacy-a126787#ixzz182JfzjuZ
Tony C:
“@ekeyra: Okay, I see, you are INSANE. The vast majority of the federal government’s revenue comes from payroll taxes. Money for roads usually comes from gasoline taxes; money for schools from property taxes.”
What do you think you pay when you buy gas? It is a tax on your income. In fact all taxes paid by individuals are a tax on income whether it is from labor or from investments.
“When the government offers a service it can charge a fee for it. If we want our drivers to be licensed, the DMV can charge a fee for giving a licensing exam that in a typical year covers all the salaries and overhead of employing people to give those exams.”
Back that statement up with actual facts.
“If we want a low-cost and reliable mail system, charge a fee per item mailed that covers just the expense of the delivery and the expense of the personnel to sort, drive, fly, and deliver the envelopes or packages.”
the post office is subsidized. Sell it to Fedex or DHL or UPS and turn it into a money maker.
The problem is that government has no incentive to cut costs because they are not expected to make a profit. There is no incentive to cut costs, in fact there is a disincentive because their budget is cut if they reduce it.
A good way to put incentive into that system would be to give a percentage of the money saved to people within a department or agency. Then maybe you have a point.
Tony,
“The government does need profits.”
I assume that’s a typo?
If we want a low-cost and reliable mail system, charge a fee per item mailed that covers just the expense of the delivery and the expense of the personnel to sort, drive, fly, and deliver the envelopes or packages.
These operations can pay for themselves; and that is ALL they have to do is pay for themselves, and that is what we call a “break-even” operation. They don’t have to be supported by taxes, they are supported by FEES or by a per-item charge (like letters requiring a stamp).
Don’t use the post office as an example. I don’t think they ever broke even.
@ekeyra: Okay, I see, you are INSANE. The vast majority of the federal government’s revenue comes from payroll taxes. Money for roads usually comes from gasoline taxes; money for schools from property taxes.
City and state governments run on sales taxes and income taxes, but so what? Where their money comes from is completely beside the point.
When the government offers a service it can charge a fee for it. If we want our drivers to be licensed, the DMV can charge a fee for giving a licensing exam that in a typical year covers all the salaries and overhead of employing people to give those exams.
If we want our restaurants inspected periodically, charge the restaurants for the time and effort of the inspectors and the clerks doing the paperwork behind the scenes.
If we want a low-cost and reliable mail system, charge a fee per item mailed that covers just the expense of the delivery and the expense of the personnel to sort, drive, fly, and deliver the envelopes or packages.
These operations can pay for themselves; and that is ALL they have to do is pay for themselves, and that is what we call a “break-even” operation. They don’t have to be supported by taxes, they are supported by FEES or by a per-item charge (like letters requiring a stamp).
This model has been in operation for centuries in other countries, and well over a hundred years for our country, and is perfectly sustainable. It is not inherently corrupt, and the government workers are not inherently any lazier or less efficient than corporate workers are.
We don’t need a profit margin to purchase labor, or raw materials, or maintenance, because in business we don’t call those expenses “profit margin,” we call them COSTS, and the government adds the expected cost of labor and materials and maintenance and all other expected expenses into the price of the item. Profit is the bottom line of what is left over after ALL expenses have been paid, and that is the line we can zero out. The government does need profits.
Unlike a private enterprise, the government’s goal is not to grow and sell more; it is to provide exactly what is needed. Or if the desired amount of service is essentially unbounded (as it turns out to be with roads), to provide the greatest amount of benefit possible within the budget provided.
ekeyra:
wasnt Wilson one of them there progressives? The kind that likes other people’s money to wage war and spend us into oblivion?
eykeyra:
they think government money grows on trees or appears out of the ether magically.
They are mystics and so cannot comprehend the real world, they are the new medicine men. Except they use government to conjure instead of chicken bones and the blood of a goat.
ekeyra:
have you read this book by Mises?
http://mises.org/store/Socialism-An-Economic-and-Sociological-Analysis-P55.aspx?utm_source=StoreEmail&utm_medium=email&utm_term=FeaturedProduct&utm_campaign=Weekly_Emails
if so what do you think of it?
Tony you fail to comprehend that the only resources the government has comes from taxes on products that are sold as profits. So, not only are taxes imbedded in the price of those goods and services offered by private industry, without private industry offering them, the government would have no resources to purchase ANYTHING. Furthermore, without any type of profit margin where do the resources come to purchase more labor, raw materials, and maintenance of already existing factors of production, all of which require reinvestment and not merely a one time fee. Sustainability is the brick wall your argument hits at 90 miles an hour.
Nurse,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-wolf/post_1394_b_795001.html
“The Espionage Act was crafted in 1917 — because President Woodrow Wilson wanted a war and, faced with the troublesome First Amendment, wished to criminalize speech critical of his war. In the run-up to World War One, there were many ordinary citizens — educators, journalists, publishers, civil rights leaders, union activists — who were speaking out against US involvement in the war. The Espionage Act was used to round these citizens by the thousands for the newly minted ‘crime’ of their exercising their First Amendment Rights. A movie producer who showed British cruelty in a film about the Revolutionary War (since the British were our allies in World War I) got a ten-year sentence under the Espionage act in 1917, and the film was seized; poet E.E. Cummings spent three and a half months in a military detention camp under the Espionage Act for the ‘crime’ of saying that he did not hate Germans. Esteemed Judge Learned Hand wrote that the wording of the Espionage Act was so vague that it would threaten the American tradition of freedom itself. Many were held in prison for weeks in brutal conditions without due process; some, in Connecticut — Lieberman’s home state — were severely beaten while they were held in prison. The arrests and beatings were widely publicized and had a profound effect, terrorizing those who would otherwise speak out.”
@Cato: Do you think “at cost” means FREE? Either you follow the logic or you don’t; take any private business that operates at a profit and the government can obviously hire exactly the same people at exactly the same price and buy the same materials and produce the same product or service, NOT MARKED UP FOR PROFIT.
If you fail to comprehend that or acknowledge that, you think only in terms of magic and fairies and fantasies instead of reality, and we have no common ground for discussion. But I will be happy to insult you; consider it my tax on continuing to educate you.