Mandating health insurance

Speaking of health care (at least we were back in Feb when last I posted!), this post from the LA Times is a winner.  In it Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli makes the comparison between health care and guns.  The health care law requires you to buy health insurance. What if legislation required you to buy a gun?  Do you think that would pass?

Don't hold your breath....

Why health care?

Right now, the big issue is "health care", specifically, "government provided health care."  Why?  Why is it that suddenly people seem to expect that it is the responsibility of the government to provide health care?  I would say that food is more important than health care (you aren't very healthy if you starve to death)--should the government provide food?  Arguably, housing is more important than health care (you aren't very healthy if you freeze to death)--is the government going to provide homes for everyone?

Here's a hint--the government has no money!  The government does not produce anything--it only takes from the citizens.  So "government provided health care" really means "healthcare funded by taking money from those who earned it and paying for healthcare for those who didn't." 

I would REALLY like some senator or congressman to show me somewhere in the Constitution that says they can do that...

Great quote from Alfred S. Regnery

This quote comes from the February 2010 issue of the "American Spectator" in the article "Suicide Prevention" by Alfred S. Regnery:

Politics, in the final analysis, is the art of taking things away from people who don't support you and giving them to people who do.

There's a reason our Founding Fathers built a Constitution that didn't allow for transferring wealth from one person (or group of people) to another.  It's a very slippery (and seductive) slope that allows little hope of escape once you start down that path.  And we have long since started.

Check out this great article.  And also give a look at another resource mentioned in the article--the pamphlet "Economics in One Lesson" by Henry Hazlitt.  It's a 234-page lesson, but a great one.

Wall Street to challenge tax on bonuses

Wall Street is considering a plan to fight back these huge taxes on bonuses.  I know many people feel that such taxes are appropriate, but I keep thinking of this poem by Pastor Martin Niemoller:

First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out.

Right now it's bonuses for Wall Street executives.   What's next?

New gun bill in the Georgia House/Senate

There are new bills being introduced in the the Georgia House (Rep. Tim Bearden (R-Villa Rica)) and Senate (State Sen. Mitch Seabaugh (R-Sharpsburg)) to clarify the confusing Georgia firearm laws.  Putting aside the merits of a long overdue clarification of the obscure rules in Georgia, I was quite amazed by the comments of several readers of the linked articles.  Here are just a few:

Shouldn’t those law makers be spending their time trying to create jobs for unemployed Georgians?

Our school sytems are awful, unemployment is out the roof, forclosures are among the worst, banks are failing right and left, terrible high school completion rate, one of the worst teen pregnancy rates in the nation, high child abuse rates, addiction issues are afflicting many of our population, huge numbers of children and families with no health insurance…and yet our “esteemed” legislators are worrying about where we can carry guns!!!

I found these comments (and other like them) quite disheartening.  First of all, nowhere in our Constitution is our directed (or allowed) to create jobs, put kids through school, keep teens from getting pregnant, and so on.  It IS listed, right there in the Second Amendment, that we are to have the right to keep and bear arms.  This freedom is one of the most crucial protections against the potential of a tyrannical government.  The Georgia Congress is doing well to make a confusing law more "user friendly."

I think that the real reasoning behind those comments is better illustrated in one other comment to the first story:

For me, I don’t want to be anywhere, around anyone that has a gun, be it concealed or brazen, on them.

Some people are just afraid of guns.  I can understand that.  A lack of familiarity can be daunting.  But many of these people who are afraid of these "deadly" guns don't have the slightest problem getting into a car, and cars kill MANY more people a year than guns do.  And cars can't protect you, unless you're running away...