I attended the Town of Olive Republican caucus yesterday, the purpose of which was to nominate candidates for Town office. I do not know if this is a national trend, but the meeting was very well attended. There were 70 to 100 people there compared to a usual turnout at committee meetings of ten or fewer.
The issue at hand was whether the Republicans would nominate an incumbent Democrat, Berndt Leifeld, for Town Supervisor on the Republican ticket (Leifeld already runs on the Democratic ticket). Another Democrat also sought the nomination, I suspect as a matter of opposing Leifeld. He had threatened to seek the Republican nomination also unless the nominations were limited to existing Republicans.
This is a kind of paradox. It seems to me that the interest in the Republicans was largely stimulated by a conflict among the Democrats. Someone did say that he had attended because of his concerns about the big government trend in national politics. I am not certain how far that sentiment goes and I am not certain how far the attendance simply reflected interest in the possible conflict between the two Democrats. I think many of the attendees may have been Democrats, but I'm not positive.
In any case voting was closed to Democrats, that is, only Republicans voted, and it seemed to me that about 30 or 40 people voted, which is still a good turnout. Pete Freidel, currently a Town board member, won the nomination for Town Supervisor. As well, the Republicans nominated a full slate of candidates for Town Justice (I recall it was Earla van Kleeck who was nominated), as well as Cindy Johanssen for Town Clerk and the Republican Chair, Chet Scofield, for Highway Supervisor and Don van Buren was nominated as well.
Nina Postupack, the County Clerk, spoke to the meeting. She has done an excellent job at the County level and is one of the highest ranking elected Republicans in Ulster County.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
American Seniors Association/American Association of Retired People
Several people have contacted me concerning the American Seniors Association. Some time ago I wrote a blog about the American Seniors Association. I had sent the ASA $50 more than two years ago. I also sent them a letter offering my services with respect to policy issues and helping with information and possibly a newsletter, to which they did not respond. As well, I have a master's degree from the College of Insurance (now known as the St. John's University School of Risk and Insurance) and was a benefits manager for 10 years. I could have helped them set up a program. But since I contacted them I heard from them only once--when they sent me a letter asking for more money.
I cannot recommend the ASA because I have not seen any evidence of good performance.
The AARP is well known as a provider of insurance services. It also takes a "progressive" position with respect to politics. My feeling is that if you're desperate for cheap insurance, they offer a good deal. Join them and try to sabotage them from within. Spend time trying to overturn their leadership.
If you don't need the insurance, I wouldn't join the AARP unless I was going to devote myself to reforming it. On the other hand, I cannot recommend the ASA.
I cannot recommend the ASA because I have not seen any evidence of good performance.
The AARP is well known as a provider of insurance services. It also takes a "progressive" position with respect to politics. My feeling is that if you're desperate for cheap insurance, they offer a good deal. Join them and try to sabotage them from within. Spend time trying to overturn their leadership.
If you don't need the insurance, I wouldn't join the AARP unless I was going to devote myself to reforming it. On the other hand, I cannot recommend the ASA.
Rationing and Health Care
Several people have posted responses to my blog on the Obama proposal for a Soviet-style health care rationing plan. As usual, the Democrats provide evidence that is comprised of assertions by Democratic Party print sources, such as the St. Petersburg Times, as "proof". In parroting the propaganda, they insult anyone who questions it. They claim that those who question it lack "intelligence"; assert that they have "gone nuts"; or say that they "lie". That is the chief line of argument that "progressives" of both parties have followed since the days of Theodore Roosevelt and the Republican Progressive movement.
The "progressives" advocate incompetence in the name of emergency. In the emergency phase they are certain of the accuracy of their own ideas, much as investors in Cisco Systems or Drugstore.com were certain of theirs. They become frantic and insulting when anyone disagrees. They take the printed word as gospel, and claim that they are "enlightened".
Frequently, their programs pass. Sometimes, the incompetence of their ideas does not become evident for several decades. The New York City subways were "nationalized" in the 1930s but the most extreme deterioration occurred in the 1960s; Social Security was established and has functioned for seven decades; and so on. Social Security has transferred wealth from later to earlier generations. In the end, to rephrase Keynes, we are all impoverished, as 15% annual contributions have been sucked out of productive workers' paychecks to subsidize earlier generations. More often, though, their ideas flop almost immediately. OSHA, the occupational safety and health law, is an example. In the failure phase, government control has become entrenched and thousands of failed programs remain in place even though they harm the economy. In the 19th century the real wage grew two percent per year. Following nine decades of "progressive" reform, real wages have grown two percent over the last 35 years.
The argument that rationing already occurs is half true. There are degrees in most economic phenomena. Insurance companies do ration. But if I dislike the decisions of one insurance company, I can move to another. Market competition places some restrictions on insurance companies' abilities to curtail new ideas. There is considerable waste in the current system because many physicians over-treat and insurance companies aren't as good at rationing as the federal government would be. That waste would be eliminated by a national health insurance plan.
However, there is a separate market problem that "progressives" have never grasped. A centralized rationing agency would be conservative and unable to overcome the biases of the professional cadre. As a result, innovation would be much slower than in the current system and may be largely inhibited.
Although the American system is more expensive than other countries', it is also true that the majority of medical innovation occurs in the United States. Much as the socialist economy stalled economic development wherever it has been adopted, giving greater control of rationing decisions to a centralized economic agency would slow innovation world wide.
The concept of centralized health care reform is outdated. If anything, states should be in charge of reform, if reform is necessary. Moreover, the advocates of reform need to clarify how dynamic market innovation can occur under any kind of reform proposal.
So far, I have not heard any advocate of health care reform describe how innovation will occur under a centralized system. In fact, to the extent that the American economy has become regulated and centralized, innovation in the health care field has been considerably slowed. Several years ago Fortune ran an article about how university research in the cancer field has become dominated by entrenched academic interests that have inhibited innovation. The government agencies that fund research have been captured by the entrenched interests. Likewise, non-traditional cures have been illegalized.
Countries with national health insurance plans have not been innovative in the health care field. It is primarily the United States, which still has some elements of free markets, that has innovated. Moreover, the most important innovations in health care, aspirin, penicillin and the polio vaccine, were created before government intervention and regulation was escalated in the 1960s. That was also when health costs began to rise.
Thus, while Democrats can call those who question or think for themselves "stupid" or "nuts" they may step back and ask themselves how well the government programs, such as Social Security, that they have already adopted, have functioned. Given the decline in Social Security Benefits that has occurred, and that worse will follow, one would think that the Democrats might re-consider the lynch mob approach to reform that they have overseen since the 1930s. But they will not re-consider, much as a zealot will not reconsider his faith.
The "progressives" advocate incompetence in the name of emergency. In the emergency phase they are certain of the accuracy of their own ideas, much as investors in Cisco Systems or Drugstore.com were certain of theirs. They become frantic and insulting when anyone disagrees. They take the printed word as gospel, and claim that they are "enlightened".
Frequently, their programs pass. Sometimes, the incompetence of their ideas does not become evident for several decades. The New York City subways were "nationalized" in the 1930s but the most extreme deterioration occurred in the 1960s; Social Security was established and has functioned for seven decades; and so on. Social Security has transferred wealth from later to earlier generations. In the end, to rephrase Keynes, we are all impoverished, as 15% annual contributions have been sucked out of productive workers' paychecks to subsidize earlier generations. More often, though, their ideas flop almost immediately. OSHA, the occupational safety and health law, is an example. In the failure phase, government control has become entrenched and thousands of failed programs remain in place even though they harm the economy. In the 19th century the real wage grew two percent per year. Following nine decades of "progressive" reform, real wages have grown two percent over the last 35 years.
The argument that rationing already occurs is half true. There are degrees in most economic phenomena. Insurance companies do ration. But if I dislike the decisions of one insurance company, I can move to another. Market competition places some restrictions on insurance companies' abilities to curtail new ideas. There is considerable waste in the current system because many physicians over-treat and insurance companies aren't as good at rationing as the federal government would be. That waste would be eliminated by a national health insurance plan.
However, there is a separate market problem that "progressives" have never grasped. A centralized rationing agency would be conservative and unable to overcome the biases of the professional cadre. As a result, innovation would be much slower than in the current system and may be largely inhibited.
Although the American system is more expensive than other countries', it is also true that the majority of medical innovation occurs in the United States. Much as the socialist economy stalled economic development wherever it has been adopted, giving greater control of rationing decisions to a centralized economic agency would slow innovation world wide.
The concept of centralized health care reform is outdated. If anything, states should be in charge of reform, if reform is necessary. Moreover, the advocates of reform need to clarify how dynamic market innovation can occur under any kind of reform proposal.
So far, I have not heard any advocate of health care reform describe how innovation will occur under a centralized system. In fact, to the extent that the American economy has become regulated and centralized, innovation in the health care field has been considerably slowed. Several years ago Fortune ran an article about how university research in the cancer field has become dominated by entrenched academic interests that have inhibited innovation. The government agencies that fund research have been captured by the entrenched interests. Likewise, non-traditional cures have been illegalized.
Countries with national health insurance plans have not been innovative in the health care field. It is primarily the United States, which still has some elements of free markets, that has innovated. Moreover, the most important innovations in health care, aspirin, penicillin and the polio vaccine, were created before government intervention and regulation was escalated in the 1960s. That was also when health costs began to rise.
Thus, while Democrats can call those who question or think for themselves "stupid" or "nuts" they may step back and ask themselves how well the government programs, such as Social Security, that they have already adopted, have functioned. Given the decline in Social Security Benefits that has occurred, and that worse will follow, one would think that the Democrats might re-consider the lynch mob approach to reform that they have overseen since the 1930s. But they will not re-consider, much as a zealot will not reconsider his faith.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Democrats' and Republicans' Impoverishment Plans
The Democrats have this impoverishment plan:
1. Teach children that production of wealth is immoral while taxation is moral.
2. Tax output of productive Americans and redistribute it to the wealthy-–George Soros, Long Term Capital Management, Bear Stearns, the Washington nomenclatura, university professors and Keynesian economists.
3. Tell the poor that you are acting in their interest because of your “conscience”. Develop a social security and medicare plan that redistributes wealth inter-generationally from low wage earner to low wage earner. When it fails, institute a rationing scheme, call it “national health insurance” and raise the social security retirement age.
4. Convince Americans that receiving $180,000 in social security benefits for $200,000 in out-of-pocket contributions is a good deal. Convince Americans that health care in Cuba at $250 per year is better than in America.
5. Set interest rates at zero so that middle income people cannot save and induce them to invest in the stock market at inflated prices. Further ensure that middle income people cannot save by taxing incomes, property, inheritance, capital gains and sales.
6. Allocate freshly printed money (created to reduce interest rates to zero) to unproductive Wall Street, banking, hedge fund and corporate executives, insuring that wage earners will pay higher prices for milk while hedge fund managers buy $30 million houses in Greenwich, Connecticut and the Dakotas. Facilitate this process through subsidization of the stock and real estate markets, repeatedly inducing long term “sucker rallies”.
7. Convince Americans that taxation of 50% of your income is too little for the same level of services that used to be provided at 10% of your income.
8. Increase tax rates most on innovative and harder working Americans and transfer their money to Democratic contributors.
But the Republicans also have an impoverishment plan.
1. Read and parrot all Democratic Party information sources such as the New York Times and CNN.
2. Never repeal the Democrats’ impoverishment plan.
3. Do not educate Americans as to the effects of the Democrats’ impoverishment plan.
4. When elected, spend more than Democrats.
5. Declare a national emergency and emphasize the need to transfer even more printed money to unproductive, wealthy interests six weeks before the presidential election.
1. Teach children that production of wealth is immoral while taxation is moral.
2. Tax output of productive Americans and redistribute it to the wealthy-–George Soros, Long Term Capital Management, Bear Stearns, the Washington nomenclatura, university professors and Keynesian economists.
3. Tell the poor that you are acting in their interest because of your “conscience”. Develop a social security and medicare plan that redistributes wealth inter-generationally from low wage earner to low wage earner. When it fails, institute a rationing scheme, call it “national health insurance” and raise the social security retirement age.
4. Convince Americans that receiving $180,000 in social security benefits for $200,000 in out-of-pocket contributions is a good deal. Convince Americans that health care in Cuba at $250 per year is better than in America.
5. Set interest rates at zero so that middle income people cannot save and induce them to invest in the stock market at inflated prices. Further ensure that middle income people cannot save by taxing incomes, property, inheritance, capital gains and sales.
6. Allocate freshly printed money (created to reduce interest rates to zero) to unproductive Wall Street, banking, hedge fund and corporate executives, insuring that wage earners will pay higher prices for milk while hedge fund managers buy $30 million houses in Greenwich, Connecticut and the Dakotas. Facilitate this process through subsidization of the stock and real estate markets, repeatedly inducing long term “sucker rallies”.
7. Convince Americans that taxation of 50% of your income is too little for the same level of services that used to be provided at 10% of your income.
8. Increase tax rates most on innovative and harder working Americans and transfer their money to Democratic contributors.
But the Republicans also have an impoverishment plan.
1. Read and parrot all Democratic Party information sources such as the New York Times and CNN.
2. Never repeal the Democrats’ impoverishment plan.
3. Do not educate Americans as to the effects of the Democrats’ impoverishment plan.
4. When elected, spend more than Democrats.
5. Declare a national emergency and emphasize the need to transfer even more printed money to unproductive, wealthy interests six weeks before the presidential election.
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