I thought this was a great article about the extremes of property rights and the need to temper utopian ideals with reality.

Why Rand Paul Is Right ... and Wrong Julian Sanchez Cato Institute: Commentary

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“But if capital and collateral are adequate, and enforcement against misrepresentation and fraud is enhanced, losses will be restricted to equity shareholders who seek abnormal returns, but in the process expose themselves to abnormal losses. Taxpayers will not be at risk. Financial institutions will no longer be capable of privatizing profit and socializing losses.”

Alan Greenspan before Congress on April 7, 2010

From D. Todd Christofferson:

"Policemen and laws can never replace customs, traditions and moral values as a means for regulating human behavior. At best, the police and criminal justice system are the last desperate line of defense for a civilized society. Our increased reliance on laws to regulate behavior is a measure of how uncivilized we’ve become.”

I thought this video was well worth the watch. I encourage you to watch it.

a href="/people/michael-cannon"Michael F. Cannon/a discusses health care on FOX's emFreedom Watch/em

Mainstream media doesn't tell you the whole story - it is all propoganda and support for politicians rather than speaking the truth on policy - on both sides. Seek truth. Learn the facts. Deal with the facts. I encourage you to write your Congressman and tell them to find a better way. Here is my letter - feel free to copy.


Dear Representative Larson,

I am writing you to urge you to vote against the Health Care Reform bill that was passed by the senate in December and that will be reconciled starting in the House.

I believe that health care reform does need reforming and I do believe in many of the parts of the bill. However, there are ways to reform health care without raising taxes and decreasing the deficit. I don't believe that these ways have been seriously considered as they are not represented by a majority of Republicans or Democrats. Sadly, the Republicans have become the party of "No" rather than a party that is portraying a vision of progress. And, sadly, the Democrats have also not listened to the American public on this bill as they are, at least a majority, clearly against it. I don't believe that you should simply vote against the bill because the public doesn't support it. But you should vote against this bill because:

1. The process lacks integrity. Our system of government is losing its credibility and this will further disgust the sovereign people.
2. The bill does not address the true causes of the increase in health care costs
3. The bill lessons, rather than strengthens, the free market approach to health care. We don't have a free market system of health care. We have a system that is monopolized by insurance companies and government. This bill will only further monopolize health care which always increases costs and decreases the quality of services
4. This bill adds additional liabilities on the shoulders of the American public that we cannot carry. We are heading into the worst financial burden from our government in our Nation's history without this bill. Adding the additional $984 billion over 10 years - and the untold trillions after it - is too much.

I beg and plead with you to not lay upon our shoulders this burden and to realize the true cost of this bill. There are ways for you to reform the system that will lesson costs, lesson the burden on the public, and help to cover the uninsured. I have written about it here and I invite you to read these ideas:

http://forliberty2008.blogspot.com/

These are the respective posts:

* An Introduction to Health Care Reform
* Is Health Care a Right?
* The Government's Business in Health Care
* The 47 Million: A Closer Look
* Never Waste a Good Crisis
* Michael Tanner Discusses Health Care Reform
* Rationing of Care Brought Home
* Reducing Health Care Costs: the Government's Way
* Evil Succeeds Most When it is Made to Appear Perfectly Normal
* To Take Another Human Being's Property, Without Their Permission, is Stealing
* Injustice as a Path Means Injustice as a Destination
* The Fundamental Unit of Society: Government or Family?
* Am I My Brother's Keeper?
* Obama vs. Mathematics
* Can we Justify Ourselves?
* Health Care Reform Costs: Peddling Dreams
* Time Travel & Deficit Spending
* Health Insurance Exchange: a Sheep or a Wolf?
* True Health Care Reform
* Establishing Justice in Health Care
* Cooperatives as a Source of Competition in Health Care
* Promoting Justice for the Uninsured
* Expanding the Reach of HSAs
* Creating New Markets for Low Income Families & the Elderly
* End the Preferential Treatment on Employer Sponsored Health Plans
* Employer Vouchers vs. Employer Sponsored Health Plans
* Reform Tax Treatment for Health Care Costs
* The Modified Health Care Exchange
* Pre-Existing Condition Reform
* Change the Way Health Care is Paid For: Results vs. Procedures
* The Outcome of Free Market Health Care Reform
* The Forces at Work in Health Care Reform
* A Look at the President's Health Care Reform Plan
* Health Care Reform: Conclusion

Thank you for taking the time to read this. Please vote against it, regardless of what this politically means for the President. What is most important is what this means to Americans.

Respectfully yours,

Ken Coman

I just thought this was very interesting and worth sharing. Know the facts. Deal with the facts.

Here is the opening of an excellent article by Jonathan Ernst/Reuters that I found on the New York Times' website. It is another warning of government spending that must be reigned in.

"WASHINGTON — In a federal budget filled with mind-boggling statistics, two numbers stand out as particularly stunning, for the way they may change American politics and American power...

The first is the projected deficit in the coming year, nearly 11 percent of the country’s entire economic output. That is not unprecedented: During the Civil War, World War I and World War II, the United States ran soaring deficits, but usually with the expectation that they would come back down once peace was restored and war spending abated.

But the second number, buried deeper in the budget’s projections, is the one that really commands attention: By President Obama’s own optimistic projections, American deficits will not return to what are widely considered sustainable levels over the next 10 years. In fact, in 2019 and 2020 — years after Mr. Obama has left the political scene, even if he serves two terms — they start rising again sharply, to more than 5 percent of gross domestic product. His budget draws a picture of a nation that like many American homeowners simply cannot get above water.

For Mr. Obama and his successors, the effect of those projections is clear: Unless miraculous growth, or miraculous political compromises, creates some unforeseen change over the next decade, there is virtually no room for new domestic initiatives for Mr. Obama or his successors. Beyond that lies the possibility that the United States could begin to suffer the same disease that has afflicted Japan over the past decade. As debt grew more rapidly than income, that country’s influence around the world eroded.

Or, as Mr. Obama’s chief economic adviser, Lawrence H. Summers, used to ask before he entered government a year ago, “How long can the world’s biggest borrower remain the world’s biggest power?”

The Chinese leadership, which is lending much of the money to finance the American government’s spending, and which asked pointed questions about Mr. Obama’s budget when members visited Washington last summer, says it thinks the long-term answer to Mr. Summers’s question is self-evident."

To read the full article, click here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/02/us/politics/02deficit.html?sudsredirect=true#

Additionally, this morning I read another excellent article giving some perspective on the polarized congress who is supposed to be trying to fix this problem as the custodians of the government. It reads:

"After decades of warnings that budgetary profligacy, escalating health care costs and an aging population would lead to a day of fiscal reckoning, economists and the nation’s foreign creditors say that moment is approaching faster than expected, hastened by a deep recession that cost trillions of dollars in lost tax revenues and higher spending for safety-net programs."

To read that article, click here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/17/business/economy/17gridlock.html?sudsredirect=true

Finally, as evidence of Congresses inability to govern, Democratic Senator Bayh has chosen not to run for a third term. I quote, "Mr. Bayh, a centrist and the son of a former senator, used the announcement that he would not seek a third term to lambaste a Senate that he described as frozen by partisan politics and incapable of passing even basic legislation.

“For some time, I have had a growing conviction that Congress is not operating as it should,” Mr. Bayh said. “There is too much partisanship and not enough progress — too much narrow ideology and not enough practical problem-solving. Even at a time of enormous challenge, the people’s business is not being done...

“This is colored by having observed the Senate in my father’s day,” Mr. Bayh said. “It wasn’t perfect; they had politics back then, too. But there was much more friendship across the aisles, and there was a greater willingness to put politics aside for the welfare of the country. I just don’t see that now.”

“In my father’s day, you legislated for four years and campaigned for two; now it’s full time. The politics never stops,” he said. “My bottom line is that there are a lot of really good people trapped in a dysfunctional system desperately in need of reform.”

To read that full article, click here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/16/us/politics/16bayh.html?sudsredirect=true

Something has to give... Regardless of our political idealogies, we all can agree that cannot sustain the kind of spending we have experienced for the last 9 years. We must think with soberness and realize that the evidence is not political hype - but a real problem that must be corrected.

I saw this article today and wanted to share it. I cannot believe that they are even having this conversation... where we have to raise the debt by 1.9 trillion dollars to make interest payments on debt already contracted. I know it would be painful to live within our means but I believe it will be even more painful when we have to face what we have created for ourselves... We will have to say no eventually - now is a better time than tomorrow. Let's pay our obligations, constrict (not just limit the growth) government, and be responsible. The decisions of our elected officials over the past several decades have proven their inability to make hard choices and to put America on a course of honor, security, and domestic tranquility. We can no longer say that they do what is best.

I urge you to call your congressman today about this measure.

https://writerep.house.gov/htbin/wrep_findrep?HIP41324885.24673.7133

WASHINGTON – Facing a politically excruciating vote, House Democratic leaders are counting on new budget deficit curbs to help smooth the way for a bill allowing the government to go $1.9 trillion deeper into debt over the next year — or about $6,000 more for every U.S. resident.

The debt measure set for a House vote Thursday would raise the cap on federal borrowing to $14.3 trillion. That's enough to keep Congress from having to vote again before the November elections on an issue that is feeding a sense among voters that the government is spending too much and putting future generations under a mountain of debt to do it.

Already, the accumulated debt amounts to $40,000 per person. And the debt is increasingly held by foreign nations such as China.

Passage of the bill would send it to President Barack Obama, who will sign it to avoid a first-ever, market-rattling default on U.S. obligations. Democrats barely passed it through the Senate last week over a unanimous "no" vote from GOP members present.

To ease its passage, Democrats attached tougher budget rules designed to curb a spiraling upward annual deficit — projected by Obama to hit a record $1.56 trillion for the budget year ending Sept. 30. The new rules would require future spending increases or tax cuts to be paid for with either cuts to other programs or equivalent tax increases.

If the rules are broken, the White House budget office would force automatic cuts to programs like Medicare, farm subsidies and veterans' pensions. Current rules lack such teeth and have commonly been waived over the past few years at a cost of almost $1 trillion.

Skeptics say lawmakers also will find ways around the new rules fairly easily. Congress, for example, can declare some spending an "emergency" — a likely scenario for votes later this month to extend jobless benefits for the long-term unemployed.

And, indeed, there already are exceptions to the new rules, such as for extending former President George W. Bush's middle-class tax cuts past their expiration a year from now. That would add $1.4 trillion to the federal debt over the next decade.

In agreement with Obama's budget earlier this week, there is no exception for taxpayers in the two highest tax brackets whose marginal rates are due to rise by 3 percent or 4.6 percent to a pre-Bush maximum 39.6 percent next January.

But some new White House initiatives, such as doubling the child care tax credit for families earning less than $85,000, also would have to live within the rules, as would continuing subsidies for laid-off workers to buy health insurance — unless lawmakers make another exception.
The so-called pay-as-you-go rules have been a mantra with conservative "Blue Dog" Democrats in the House, who insisted they wouldn't vote to raise the debt ceiling without them.

"We don't have a choice," said Rep. John Tanner, D-Tenn. "We are on an unsustainable march toward a fiscal Armageddon."

Obama's budget projects the government's debt doubling to $26 trillion over the next decade. It offers few solutions for seriously closing the gap other than promising to appoint a bipartisan commission to come up with a plan to address the problem.

___
The bill is H.J. Res. 45.
___
On the Net:
Congress: http://thomas.loc.gov

Found at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100204/ap_on_go_co/us_congress_debt_limit on February 4, 2010

I thought this was a good video with an important perspective...

Michael F. Cannon discusses health care on FBN

The money has to come from somewhere and it will come from all of us. There are better ways and it is sad to me that the President and Congress are sacrificing those better ways for political wins. The future is just as important, if not more so, than the short term now and the current election. A defeat of this legislation, although I hope for it, is not a win. The status quo is nothing to celebrate. We must come together, be honest about the problems, honest about the outcomes, and then work for a better America.