Warren Buffett is a respected, if not beloved, figure in American culture in large part because he is about the richest man in American culture. Sadly though his ego seems to have gotten away from him. He is easily forgiven for clownishly playing the ukulele before fawning fans, and obnoxiously leading them in laughter at his constant stream of very bad jokes, but worst of all, he makes plain goofy political comments.
For example, he is very proud to be for the Estate Tax. His rationale is that one should not be given the right, by Republicans, to inherit money just because one is in what he calls "the lucky sperm club", i.e., a club whose members have wealthy parents who want to give their money to their kids rather than to the Democrats. The Democrats, he feels, must circumvent the loving wishes of parents. If one expands his theory of the family you have to conclude that above average parents should not be allowed to do much, if anything, that is above average for their kids, such as let them live in their big houses, eat their good food, and attend expensive schools. In fact, wealthy kids should not be allowed to benefit in any way merely as a result of who their parents are or how much they are loved. It's a concept that makes sense to Buffett and his Democratic friends, perhaps, but certainly not to Charles Darwin. According to Buffet, in theory anyway, it simply is not fair to those with average or below average parents. The Democrats must equalize parents' desires to do for and love their children.
Separating parents from children to equalize them in a classless society is, surprise, a good old fashioned communistic idea. It brings to mind the stories of scared, lonely 3 year old kids wondering lost in the middle of the night looking for their parents in the dormitories of communist kibbutzim ,or, Democratic teacher unions in America trying to force all children into failing hip hop public schools rather than let them attend competitive and mostly better private schools of their parents' choosing, or, the heroic Stalinist children who were encouraged to turn in their parents for execution, for hoarding a few grains of wheat during the Stalinist induced famines only to become orphanage heroes. It seems parental love must sometimes be circumvented by a state that feels it can more reliably socialize children into the commonweal than parents whose love can find expression in many different ways that are not always consistent with omniscient, Democratic, bureaucratic proclamations.
Of course, Buffet is a Democrat and as such wants the money that is taken from children to be given to the gov't which in turn would grow ever more powerful and then ever more powerfully assert its' right to more and more private sector money. It brings to mind another, but related, badly thought out aspect to Buffett's fractured and tendentious thinking. He loves the state much like all good Democrats but instead of giving his estate to the state he gave it to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation? Foundations are, of course, tax scams that enable rich guys to keep their money and spend it largely as they see fit rather than to let it fall into gov't hands where they wouldn't get full credit for the wonderful good works the gov't always does with it. Oddly, though, the Gates/Buffet foundation and the Federal Gov't will both provide about the same amount of welfare to places like Africa and get about the same dismal failure rates they got with American domestic welfare programs. Perhaps that is why Buffett seems evenly divided about whether the gov't or tax scam foundations waste his and the nation's fortunes?
Similarly, he and his new pal Hillary are supporting a higher capital gains tax on fat cat hedge fund operators, venture capitalists, and private equity firms? The real explanation for this can only be blind, dumb ignorance or a severe psychological ailment, to be gentle about it. Why else would you take money away from hedge funds when they are investing madly in new ethanol plants and related technology? And why else would you take money from venture capitalists when they played critical roles in funding companies like Google, Cisco, and eBay? And why would you object to a private equity firm trying to save the American auto industry after Democrat unions have decimated it for decades? Are gov't bureaucrats, most of whom have never held a real job in their lives, going to put the money to better use than that, or are they going waste every last cent of it and then beg for more until the entire nation is reduced to Soviet proportions?
Here's how JFK saw it in 1963 before his proposals took effect and created a boom in economic activity: "The tax on capital gains directly affects investment decisions, the mobility and flow of risk capital . . . the ease or difficulty experienced by new ventures in obtaining capital, and thereby the strength and potential for growth in the economy."
Here's how Sen. Orin Hatch saw it in 2005: "In 2003, our capital gains tax rates were set at 20 percent and 10 percent. Congress reduced these rates to 15 percent and 5 percent. And what were the revenue estimates? The Congressional Budget Office expected that revenues would expand somewhat – from $50 billion to $68 billion. It turns out CBO was a bit off. Capital gains revenues doubled. Let me repeat that. Capital gains receipts jumped from $50 billion to $103 billion."
Buffett and his bleeding heart Democratic friends, oblivious to the lessons of history , also purport to care about the tax burden on his receptionist, and other lower income Americans. But if they really need to sooth their bleeding hearts so badly about "the other America" why did they support amnesty for 12-20 million illegal immigrants in this country? A simple wall (like the kind around prisons that work so perfectly), and biometric ID requirements to work, would instantly open up 12-20 million new jobs for low income Americans, dramatically bid up the wages for those jobs, and reduce the ever growing strain on the gov't social services budget that has accomplished nothing except to cripple generations of Americans.
To demonstrate how broad his confusion stretches, Buffett recently made headlines by explaining that his receptionist paid a higher tax rate than he did? It was part of the silly Democratic chattering about tax cuts for the rich under Bush. But, according to "Tax Cut" software the average wage earner ($33,000/year) would owe Federal tax of $3466 or 10.5%, while someone with $1,000,000 in dividend or capital gains income would pay $153,889 or 15%. Please note that 15% is greater then 10.5%. And of course that does not take into account that Buffett's income came to him through a corporation (Berkshire Hathaway) which probably paid a 35% tax on any income it had before distributing it to Buffett as personal income. So in the end if you figure Buffett's assets at, say, $40 Billion he may have paid around $2 Billion in taxes while his receptionist paid just $3466? It would seem Buffett was mistaken, or lied, about the tax rate. He probably figured a little lie to highlight his caring, bleeding heart before a truckling nation eager to believe anti American Democrats was worth it.
But how fair is a progressive tax anyway when, in theory, everyone should pay the same for gov't services? When you go into a restaurant or clothing store you are not charged according to your income? The rich and the poor pay the same, and it is actually the law, except when paying for gov't? Does a rich person get more missile defense than a poor one? In fact, poor people use gov't goods and services far more than rich people and yet it is the rich who foot almost the entire bill for it? The top 1%, for example, pay about 22% of Federal taxes. And then of course it is the rich who create products and services and businesses that make economic activity and taxation possible in the first place, and then too it is the rich who employ the poor so they can have jobs, eat, and pay taxes. The idea that the rich are obligated to "give back" more or that it is even possible to "give back" more is testimony to how much communism still lingers in our subconscious, and not to the reality that capitalism is the force that made life possible and sustainable on this planet. If Warren Buffet only knew that, he could be very happy with himself. In his spare time he could tell bad jokes and play his ukulele and not subject us to his Democratic vision of the world. Does anyone believe that we'd be better off if rich kids aspired to forgo their inheritances to "give back" as gov't or tax foundation workers rather than if they aspired to be billionaire capitalist entrepreneurs who invent and finance the goods and services that create and sustain life on this planet?
And, not to miss one last risible beat, the sage from Omaha (Buffett) looks at how capitalism has instantly lifted 1.3 billion people in China out of 10,000 years of gov't induced poverty and recommends, what else, socialized medicine for America! Isn't it comforting to know that Buffett and the Democrats have subverted their way to becoming the leading political party in America despite standing absolutely against America? But maybe, just maybe, the ukulele, the bad jokes, and the goofy, deliquescent arguments are merely a sly way for one of the world's richest, and perhaps smartest, men to draw Democratic attention away from the mother load which is, after all, his beloved Berkshire Hathaway Inc. ?
Ted Baiamonte
f1136
comments: bje1000@aol.com
7.08.2007
Five Quick Shots At The Democratic Soul
1) Bush had no plan - Perhaps one of the longest lived refrains from the Democrats has been, "Bush had no plan". Technically this is not true since the plan was to win the war against Sadam and then quickly draw down the troops as Tommy Franks was arranging to do when he retired. When Bush said, "mission accomplished" all the Democrats were stone cold silent because, to all the world, it seemed like the Bush "plan" to spread democracy around the world was working magnificently. "Jon Stewart", often cited as the number one news source for Democrats. said, "I may have to apologize to this guy". But, as we learned in The History Boys, "history is one fucking thing after another". The Bush plan did work and then began to fail dramatically over time as a new reality evolved. Democrats began to pretend to themselves that they knew what the outcome would be all along, despite their sheepish silence at "mission accomplished". At this point Democrats are hysterically, continuously, and quite neurotically congratulating themselves on their perfect hindsight while accusing Bush of being a liar about what they have convinced themselves, they knew all along?
If we then fast forward to the Democratic debates we see the Democratic psychosis growing. When Hillary was pressed beyond her hippie roots about her plan for the war, beyond blaming Bush that is, she angrily shouted, "this is George Bush's war", as if to say, "hey, don't look at me for a way out of Bush's mess just because I want to succeed him". In truth, while it is Bush's war now, it will be hers the second she is elected. The astute questioner wanted to know Hillary's plan but she had none, except to blame Bush, despite years of blaming Bush for having no plan? One day she wants to withdraw the troops now, the next she wants to begin to withdraw the troops at some point soon, the next she wants to withdraw many of them but leave many them scattered throughout the region to contain the situation, and some days she wants to rescind her authorization for the war. All that, of course, is not really a plan, and in any case is probably exactly the plan Bush will pursue once the "surge" is finally declared a failure in September. So in the end, Hillary's plan is really Bush's plan.
But maybe Iraq is just too tough for her to come up with a plan, let alone an adequate plan? Certainly, though, since planning is so important to Democrats, she has a plan for the easier situations that might arise during her administration. For example, what would she do if
1) a genocide, after her withdrawal from Iraq, reaches 100,000, 500,000 or 1,000,000 Sunni Muslims?
2) Iran takes control of all the non Kurdish oil in Iraq?
3) Turkey invades Kurdistan
4) Iran learns how to make nuclear weapons?
5) Saudi Arabia decides it too needs nuclear weapons?
6) Shite Iran/Iraq wages and wins a war against Sunni Saudi Arabia?
7) Iran nukes Israel?
8) Hamas attacks Israel from Lebanon and Israel nukes back?
9) The oil supply is cut off, income drops by 75% in the West, millions die in China and India
10) al-Qaeda launches a weaponized anthrax attack on NYC from Iraq that makes it uninhabitable for 100 years
11) Russia retakes Eastern Europe with its new oil wealth as Mid-East collapses?
12) Pakistan falls to Muslim extremists; OBL elected president
13) On going genocide in Darfur
14) Hugo Chavas supports Iran/Iraq boycott of US oil market driving gasoline to $50/gal.
15) Pakistan nukes India and India nukes back
16) Pakistan gives nukes to all Muslim countries and massive support to al-Qaeda in Iraq
17) North Korea attacks South Korea
18) China attacks Taiwan
19) Egypt and Jordan fall to Shite extremists
20) Global warming turns out to be real, and drastic action is necessary
21) After withdrawal al-Qaeda beheads 10 people a day who cooperated with America.
22) One million Iraqi refuges head for Jordon and Syria.
Hillary has no stated position on any of these issues because they all might require the massive use of American military force, and each might result from her withdrawal from Iraq. Contingency plans to handle any of these crises would completely alienate her base. Even thinking about them is abhorrent to her and the girlie man Democrats who don't want to be distracted by reality from their pleasant dreams about health care and education reform at home. Even the relatively simple and on going genocide in Darfur has to be ignored because it would require military assertion from which they must hide as a matter of philosophy. In the end, death on a huge scale does not matter to Democrats more than preserving the illusion that by being gentle, peaceful souls the real world will somehow pass them by.
And oddly, Hillary is pretending to be the toughest of the Democratic lot and getting away with it. That way she'll have the necessary mainstream appeal in the general election, when in reality she is just like the whole Democratic bunch, only more manipulative. This is a woman, after all, who was a very unpopular First lady who said, "I'm not a stand by your man County Western bimbo" who then instantly became presidential timber when she did exactly what she said she would not do in the wake of her husband's affair. Then, she became a leading hawk in the Democratic Party, following the DNC formula she had learned from Bill Clinton in the wake of the McGovern defeat, even assuring us that there was an obvious and significant connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda. She has learned over and over that no manipulation can be figured out by dumb Democrats.
To expose her charade, all the MSM has do is ask for her plan while simultaneously explaining to her that they mean "her" plan for the whole panoply of things that may follow her proposed withdrawal from Iraq. But of course the MSM will never do that because they too prefer Democratic fantasy and anger at Bush to purposive caring about foreign policy.
2) al-Qaeda in Iraq - It seems the Democrats think we attacked the wrong county by attacking Iraq since there was no al-Qaeda in Iraq. They love to repeat this over and over and over because it makes them feel superior in some perverse way despite not knowing it before Bush attacked to discover it. To prove that they are not the cowardly America haters that Republicans think they are, they want to redouble our effort in the relatively peaceful war in Afghanistan from where the 9/11 attacks were actually launched.
But then one has to ask them: if you want to withdraw from Iraq where al-Qaeda is huge, why would you want to fight harder in Afghanistan where al-Qaeda is small and geographically isolated? The only plausible explanation is that they want to help al-Qaeda grow by attacking it where it is already in remission and ignore it where it threatens to engulf the entire Middle East oil region. At some point we have to hope that America will realize that the Democratic obsession with blaming a lame duck President will not miraculous or spontaneously generate a new foreign policy, and may actually be preventing the nation from generating one by rational means. The Democrats want to win an election by somehow holding a lame duck President accountable while concomitantly ignoring a future which they want to manage but do not have the courage to face. How smart is it to allow them in the political process at all when there are such serious issues at hand?
3) The Earth Has A Fever - The other day Al Gore struck again in the New York Times. He talked about "the fever's" potentially catastrophic consequences for star ship earth but failed again to say what the fever is? If you find that your child has a fever don't you immediately ask, "how high" or "what is it?" Not Al Gore; because if he admitted that it was only 1 degree over the last hundred years, despite the dreaded carbon revolution that made life possible, for the first time ever, for billions of human beings, it would immediately cause people to wonder how significant 1 degree might really be.
And once again he cited the 10 year tipping point? But when does the 10 years finally get to be 9 or 8 or 7 years? It always seems to be 10 years away? Let's not forget that Gore was turned on to global warming in the 1960's when he was in college and that his famous book "Earth In The Balance was over a decade ago? In between was the now famous 1970's cover story in Time Magazine about the coming Ice Age. So why don't we agree that if global warming isn't significant by 2010 we'll forget about it and propose a Constitutional Amendment to ban the Democrats as too hysterical, in their zeal to socialize American, to be American?
4) Elephantiasis for liberals- Let's face it, malaria is an age old disease that has always killed millions in Africa. So the other day the NY Times, with some resignation or defeatism, ran an editorial about elephantiasis, which is almost as serious. But unlike malaria, which costs a few dollars per person to cure, elephantiasis can be cured for mere pennies. The idea was to suggest that we in the West, if we're going to maintain the current fever pitch fad to help Africans, we ought to at least do it efficiently by treating the relatively cheap disease to see if we can't at least find some success there.
But isn't it odd that George Bush's recent $30 billion aid package hasn't helped and that the Gates/Buffet $50 billion annuity for Africa hasn't helped, and that the billions from the IMF/ World Bank hasn't somehow gotten through? People are still dying all over Africa for want of a few pennies among the billions of dollars that has floating around for generations? Maybe it's because the liberal welfare mentality does not work? The liberal mind cannot comprehend that Republican values: law and order, the traditional family, and capitalism lead to sustainable prosperity while their values lead only to continuous cycles of death. Yes, it is a sad sad truth that Democratic welfare values nurtured in American are responsible for the continuing malaria and elephantiasis deaths in Africa. In their hatred for and confusion about America, Democrats are denying Africa what our founders gave us, and it was not Democratic welfare, it was Jeffersonian Republicanism.
5) How sick is "Sicko"- Well, it is very sick. The premise is similar to the elephantiasis premise. Some Americans can't afford health care; so let's be sweet, caring, and morally superior by giving it to them. It's a theory that a two year old and a Democrat can understand. "To each according to his needs" was the way Karl Marx put it. It has since been loosely translated into English by none other than Hillary and the Democrats .
To avoid the emotion attached to the health care debate it is perhaps better to think about it in terms of food, clothing, and shelter since they have often been considered more important than health care. Imagine if the US gov't decided, as did the Soviet gov't, that they would pay for all shelter in American as the single payer? The price the gov't would pay would be determined by a gov't bureaucrat; not 300 million Americans comparison shopping. The kinds, shapes, styles, size, and quality of shelter offered would be determined by a gov't bureaucracy instead of 300 million Americans picking what they wanted, liked, and could afford with their available resources. The number of shelters offered would be less than needed since the gov't would probably pay too little to encourage production. Or, they might pay too much in which case production would be in surplus and wasted. Advances in quality would probably end since a gov't bureaucrat would have to guess at what new products to pay for (assuming anyone had the incentive to invent them) instead of letting a nationwide army of private consumers, builders, and bankers pick and chooses and nimbly adjust to the many innovative possibilities a free market produces. Yes, it is the story of the Soviet Union, Communist China, and Cuba but one still has to hope the Democrats will finally learn the law of supply and demand before they destroy America.
The American health care crisis does add a layer of complexity that even more thoroughly befuddles the Democratic mind in that by most estimates America spends 50-100% more than Canada, France, and England on a per capita basis to get approximately the same results. This can be explained in part because most of the innovative equipment, drugs, and personal are American which means Americans are charged more for them if only because they can afford to pay more. Other countries are charged less because they can afford less and because capitalism is naturally humanitarian. Additionally, Americans seem to incur more health related costs because they kill and injure each other a lot, abuse food, alcohol, and drugs a lot , and take care of their unborn babies a little less. But most importantly, American health care is an expensive, inefficient socialist mess while Canada, France, and England have a relatively efficient, if such a thing is possible, socialist single payer system. In the US you have competing and conflicting socialist-like, programs. Gov't inefficiency and mismanagement in programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans Administration, and s-chip, plus heavy regulation and restriction of insurance companies and the entire industry by a maze of both the Federal and State gov'ts, plus a huge and powerful gov't union controlling the supply of doctors, make our socialism less efficient than theirs. In the end you could say we now have a creeping spaghetti like socialism that is less efficient than the comparatively efficient socialist European/Canadian systems. You could also say that are better at socialism than we are.
The solution, as the USSR and China found, and as we have continuously found in the markets for food, clothing, and shelter, is more Republican capitalism and less Democratic socialism. And, because the demand for health care is unlimited while the quality is ultimately so low that each one of us will die from it, it is critically important that we move rapidly and thoroughly in the Republican direction immediately. The freedom to stay alive is, after all, the most important freedom isn't it?
Ted Baiamonte
bje1000@aol.com
t501
If we then fast forward to the Democratic debates we see the Democratic psychosis growing. When Hillary was pressed beyond her hippie roots about her plan for the war, beyond blaming Bush that is, she angrily shouted, "this is George Bush's war", as if to say, "hey, don't look at me for a way out of Bush's mess just because I want to succeed him". In truth, while it is Bush's war now, it will be hers the second she is elected. The astute questioner wanted to know Hillary's plan but she had none, except to blame Bush, despite years of blaming Bush for having no plan? One day she wants to withdraw the troops now, the next she wants to begin to withdraw the troops at some point soon, the next she wants to withdraw many of them but leave many them scattered throughout the region to contain the situation, and some days she wants to rescind her authorization for the war. All that, of course, is not really a plan, and in any case is probably exactly the plan Bush will pursue once the "surge" is finally declared a failure in September. So in the end, Hillary's plan is really Bush's plan.
But maybe Iraq is just too tough for her to come up with a plan, let alone an adequate plan? Certainly, though, since planning is so important to Democrats, she has a plan for the easier situations that might arise during her administration. For example, what would she do if
1) a genocide, after her withdrawal from Iraq, reaches 100,000, 500,000 or 1,000,000 Sunni Muslims?
2) Iran takes control of all the non Kurdish oil in Iraq?
3) Turkey invades Kurdistan
4) Iran learns how to make nuclear weapons?
5) Saudi Arabia decides it too needs nuclear weapons?
6) Shite Iran/Iraq wages and wins a war against Sunni Saudi Arabia?
7) Iran nukes Israel?
8) Hamas attacks Israel from Lebanon and Israel nukes back?
9) The oil supply is cut off, income drops by 75% in the West, millions die in China and India
10) al-Qaeda launches a weaponized anthrax attack on NYC from Iraq that makes it uninhabitable for 100 years
11) Russia retakes Eastern Europe with its new oil wealth as Mid-East collapses?
12) Pakistan falls to Muslim extremists; OBL elected president
13) On going genocide in Darfur
14) Hugo Chavas supports Iran/Iraq boycott of US oil market driving gasoline to $50/gal.
15) Pakistan nukes India and India nukes back
16) Pakistan gives nukes to all Muslim countries and massive support to al-Qaeda in Iraq
17) North Korea attacks South Korea
18) China attacks Taiwan
19) Egypt and Jordan fall to Shite extremists
20) Global warming turns out to be real, and drastic action is necessary
21) After withdrawal al-Qaeda beheads 10 people a day who cooperated with America.
22) One million Iraqi refuges head for Jordon and Syria.
Hillary has no stated position on any of these issues because they all might require the massive use of American military force, and each might result from her withdrawal from Iraq. Contingency plans to handle any of these crises would completely alienate her base. Even thinking about them is abhorrent to her and the girlie man Democrats who don't want to be distracted by reality from their pleasant dreams about health care and education reform at home. Even the relatively simple and on going genocide in Darfur has to be ignored because it would require military assertion from which they must hide as a matter of philosophy. In the end, death on a huge scale does not matter to Democrats more than preserving the illusion that by being gentle, peaceful souls the real world will somehow pass them by.
And oddly, Hillary is pretending to be the toughest of the Democratic lot and getting away with it. That way she'll have the necessary mainstream appeal in the general election, when in reality she is just like the whole Democratic bunch, only more manipulative. This is a woman, after all, who was a very unpopular First lady who said, "I'm not a stand by your man County Western bimbo" who then instantly became presidential timber when she did exactly what she said she would not do in the wake of her husband's affair. Then, she became a leading hawk in the Democratic Party, following the DNC formula she had learned from Bill Clinton in the wake of the McGovern defeat, even assuring us that there was an obvious and significant connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda. She has learned over and over that no manipulation can be figured out by dumb Democrats.
To expose her charade, all the MSM has do is ask for her plan while simultaneously explaining to her that they mean "her" plan for the whole panoply of things that may follow her proposed withdrawal from Iraq. But of course the MSM will never do that because they too prefer Democratic fantasy and anger at Bush to purposive caring about foreign policy.
2) al-Qaeda in Iraq - It seems the Democrats think we attacked the wrong county by attacking Iraq since there was no al-Qaeda in Iraq. They love to repeat this over and over and over because it makes them feel superior in some perverse way despite not knowing it before Bush attacked to discover it. To prove that they are not the cowardly America haters that Republicans think they are, they want to redouble our effort in the relatively peaceful war in Afghanistan from where the 9/11 attacks were actually launched.
But then one has to ask them: if you want to withdraw from Iraq where al-Qaeda is huge, why would you want to fight harder in Afghanistan where al-Qaeda is small and geographically isolated? The only plausible explanation is that they want to help al-Qaeda grow by attacking it where it is already in remission and ignore it where it threatens to engulf the entire Middle East oil region. At some point we have to hope that America will realize that the Democratic obsession with blaming a lame duck President will not miraculous or spontaneously generate a new foreign policy, and may actually be preventing the nation from generating one by rational means. The Democrats want to win an election by somehow holding a lame duck President accountable while concomitantly ignoring a future which they want to manage but do not have the courage to face. How smart is it to allow them in the political process at all when there are such serious issues at hand?
3) The Earth Has A Fever - The other day Al Gore struck again in the New York Times. He talked about "the fever's" potentially catastrophic consequences for star ship earth but failed again to say what the fever is? If you find that your child has a fever don't you immediately ask, "how high" or "what is it?" Not Al Gore; because if he admitted that it was only 1 degree over the last hundred years, despite the dreaded carbon revolution that made life possible, for the first time ever, for billions of human beings, it would immediately cause people to wonder how significant 1 degree might really be.
And once again he cited the 10 year tipping point? But when does the 10 years finally get to be 9 or 8 or 7 years? It always seems to be 10 years away? Let's not forget that Gore was turned on to global warming in the 1960's when he was in college and that his famous book "Earth In The Balance was over a decade ago? In between was the now famous 1970's cover story in Time Magazine about the coming Ice Age. So why don't we agree that if global warming isn't significant by 2010 we'll forget about it and propose a Constitutional Amendment to ban the Democrats as too hysterical, in their zeal to socialize American, to be American?
4) Elephantiasis for liberals- Let's face it, malaria is an age old disease that has always killed millions in Africa. So the other day the NY Times, with some resignation or defeatism, ran an editorial about elephantiasis, which is almost as serious. But unlike malaria, which costs a few dollars per person to cure, elephantiasis can be cured for mere pennies. The idea was to suggest that we in the West, if we're going to maintain the current fever pitch fad to help Africans, we ought to at least do it efficiently by treating the relatively cheap disease to see if we can't at least find some success there.
But isn't it odd that George Bush's recent $30 billion aid package hasn't helped and that the Gates/Buffet $50 billion annuity for Africa hasn't helped, and that the billions from the IMF/ World Bank hasn't somehow gotten through? People are still dying all over Africa for want of a few pennies among the billions of dollars that has floating around for generations? Maybe it's because the liberal welfare mentality does not work? The liberal mind cannot comprehend that Republican values: law and order, the traditional family, and capitalism lead to sustainable prosperity while their values lead only to continuous cycles of death. Yes, it is a sad sad truth that Democratic welfare values nurtured in American are responsible for the continuing malaria and elephantiasis deaths in Africa. In their hatred for and confusion about America, Democrats are denying Africa what our founders gave us, and it was not Democratic welfare, it was Jeffersonian Republicanism.
5) How sick is "Sicko"- Well, it is very sick. The premise is similar to the elephantiasis premise. Some Americans can't afford health care; so let's be sweet, caring, and morally superior by giving it to them. It's a theory that a two year old and a Democrat can understand. "To each according to his needs" was the way Karl Marx put it. It has since been loosely translated into English by none other than Hillary and the Democrats .
To avoid the emotion attached to the health care debate it is perhaps better to think about it in terms of food, clothing, and shelter since they have often been considered more important than health care. Imagine if the US gov't decided, as did the Soviet gov't, that they would pay for all shelter in American as the single payer? The price the gov't would pay would be determined by a gov't bureaucrat; not 300 million Americans comparison shopping. The kinds, shapes, styles, size, and quality of shelter offered would be determined by a gov't bureaucracy instead of 300 million Americans picking what they wanted, liked, and could afford with their available resources. The number of shelters offered would be less than needed since the gov't would probably pay too little to encourage production. Or, they might pay too much in which case production would be in surplus and wasted. Advances in quality would probably end since a gov't bureaucrat would have to guess at what new products to pay for (assuming anyone had the incentive to invent them) instead of letting a nationwide army of private consumers, builders, and bankers pick and chooses and nimbly adjust to the many innovative possibilities a free market produces. Yes, it is the story of the Soviet Union, Communist China, and Cuba but one still has to hope the Democrats will finally learn the law of supply and demand before they destroy America.
The American health care crisis does add a layer of complexity that even more thoroughly befuddles the Democratic mind in that by most estimates America spends 50-100% more than Canada, France, and England on a per capita basis to get approximately the same results. This can be explained in part because most of the innovative equipment, drugs, and personal are American which means Americans are charged more for them if only because they can afford to pay more. Other countries are charged less because they can afford less and because capitalism is naturally humanitarian. Additionally, Americans seem to incur more health related costs because they kill and injure each other a lot, abuse food, alcohol, and drugs a lot , and take care of their unborn babies a little less. But most importantly, American health care is an expensive, inefficient socialist mess while Canada, France, and England have a relatively efficient, if such a thing is possible, socialist single payer system. In the US you have competing and conflicting socialist-like, programs. Gov't inefficiency and mismanagement in programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, Veterans Administration, and s-chip, plus heavy regulation and restriction of insurance companies and the entire industry by a maze of both the Federal and State gov'ts, plus a huge and powerful gov't union controlling the supply of doctors, make our socialism less efficient than theirs. In the end you could say we now have a creeping spaghetti like socialism that is less efficient than the comparatively efficient socialist European/Canadian systems. You could also say that are better at socialism than we are.
The solution, as the USSR and China found, and as we have continuously found in the markets for food, clothing, and shelter, is more Republican capitalism and less Democratic socialism. And, because the demand for health care is unlimited while the quality is ultimately so low that each one of us will die from it, it is critically important that we move rapidly and thoroughly in the Republican direction immediately. The freedom to stay alive is, after all, the most important freedom isn't it?
Ted Baiamonte
bje1000@aol.com
t501
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