neoperspectives archives

4/21/08 Neoperspectives.com by Kyle Hunt

    After three long weeks of work at my new job, I needed a respite from the world of bits and pieces. I was able to find one right outside my door.

    I sat silently in the small Los Angeles courtyard, gradually forgetting the challenges and stresses of running a company. I felt the comforting presence of the tree above me, shading me from the sun when I got too hot, and breathing with me in time. The tree let little glimpses of light shine through, while its neighbors reflected the sun with their leaves, creating a dynamic, daytime star field as they swayed in the breeze – telling their ancient story:

    Throughout the history of man, trees have played a crucial role in our development. Years ago, they were our shelter, giving us a better perspective from up high and protecting us from predators. We shared this home with many other creatures who also sought a place in which to flourish. But like those other animals, we needed to leave our homes to gather resources, find mates, and exchange goods. Life was simple, but fraught with danger.

    And then man learned of fire through some act of nature, God, Prometheus, or Lucifer. He discovered how to contain the flame and then how to create it. Those with this knowledge held a clear advantage over those left in the dark.

    The carriers of the light traveled north to explore the uninhabited lands. The trees became more coniferous, the nights grew long, and the winters became a blistering cold. Trees, preferable in their decaying state, were burned to keep our internal flame going. We were safeguarded against night stalkers and hypothermia. The flame even became a sign of civilization – a gathering point around which a community of humans might form. The torch currently symbolizes this phenomenon.

    Though originally made of earth and stone, the houses of these humans once again became the trees. But this time, the trees were felled and reordered into more and more suitable shelters. They provided a sufficient barrier against the outside world, giving a sense of safety in a perilous existence.

    They even became our vessels against the sea, opening up new worlds. Man was able to move people and goods in much higher quantities, at much greater speeds, because of the amazing properties of wood. How else could so many Irish, Chinese, and African people have been shipped to labor in the New World, but for our mastery of trees?

    We can look around today and see how integral the tree has been to our way of life. But does our relationship to the tree not go any deeper? Perhaps.

    For one, we share the same calendar with trees. Trees mark their solar years in a circular fashion, while we blow out the flames of our years stuck into a cake.

    Tremendously, the most intelligent data structures imitate the tree. When organizing family histories, the internet, and knowledge in general, the tree becomes the most appropriate resulting diagram – unfortunately it is often squashed down into two-dimensions and rendered useless.

    Triumphantly, we are trees. Our toes, feet, and legs are our roots. Our trunks are.. well, our trunks. And our arms, hands and fingers branch out, probing into the world. They allow us to produce, obtain, and consume energy.

    We lack the chloroplasts of the tree, which makes us unable to sufficiently synthesize enough energy from the sun without also eating. But like most forms of life, we have melanin to protect our sensitive bodies from the sun's radiation. With the proper amount of sunlight, the melatonin hormone within us helps us to be happier, healthier, and more radiant people. Hence Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), the ridiculously acronymed "disease" that occurs when a human does not spend enough time outside.

    But unlike the tree, we can pull up our roots – our support structures – and plant ourselves all over the world. Some people are of hardier strains, with more fully developed brains containing many branches and roots. These humans are much like the hemp plant, incredibly useful, abhorred by big corporations, and able to flourish in even the harshest of conditions.

    But of course with the Tree of Life comes the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Macbeth was right to worry when 'Birnam Forest come to Dunsinane'. The wizard Sarumon could not stand the onslaught of Ent tree-herders angered out of Fanghorn Forest. Have you never seen a tree with eyes?

    They are full of power and force, and yet we take them for granted in our daily lives.

    I wonder: what would the wind be like if there were no trees to give it life and voice? and will the Cradle drop?

Taxes were on the forefront of many Americans’ minds this week as they scrambled to meet the April 15th deadline to file their returns. Tax policy in this country hurts taxpayers twice – once when they pay taxes, and then when the government spends the money. Americans are sick and tired of the financial burden and the endless forms to fill out. To add insult to injury, after collecting this money the government does some very detrimental things to the economy.

The burden of complying with the income tax is tremendous. Since its inception in 1913, the tax code has gone from 400 pages to over 67,000. The Tax Foundation estimates that around $265 billion dollars and 6 billion hours are spent just on compliance. That expense amounts to about 22 cents of every dollar the IRS collects. Imagine the boon to the economy if we spent that time and money expanding our businesses and creating jobs!

Aside from the direct loss of money and productivity, the funds from the income tax enable the government to do some very destructive things, such as vastly over-regulating economic activity, making it difficult to earn money in the first place. The federal government funds over 50 agencies, departments and commissions that formulate rules and regulations. These bureaucracies operate with little to no oversight from the people or Congress and generate around 4,000 new rules every year and operate at a cost of about 40 billion dollars. There are some 75,000 pages of regulations in the Federal Register that Americans are expected to know and abide by. Complying with these governmental regulations costs American businesses more than one trillion dollars per year, according to a study by Mark Crain for the Small Business Administration. This complicated system drives production to other countries and shrinks our job market here at home.

Big government is destructive when it takes your money and when it spends it. There is no economic benefit to supporting a government sector as massive as ours. In fact, this country thrived for well over 100 years without an income tax. Today, if you took away the income tax, the government would still have revenue from other sources equal to total government spending in 1990, when government was still too big. $1.2 trillion should be more than enough to fund a government operating within its constitutional confines, and that is exactly what we need to get back to.

I have introduced legislation many times to abolish the IRS and the income tax. It is fundamentally un-American to require taxpayers to testify against themselves and be considered guilty until proven innocent. Abolishing the IRS altogether would trigger an avalanche of real growth in the economy.

With these financial hard times only just beginning, this would be the most efficient and logical way to get our economy growing again, and Americans would need not dread the 15th of April every year.

Pretty outrageous if you ask me, for the state to seize over 400 children from their families on what have turned out to be false charges and then fish for crimes. What happened to innocent before proven guilty?

This is not the first time we've written about Texas Child Services on this website.

Today, we are drowning in laws, we are contorted by judicial decisions, we are driven to distraction by omnipresent lawyers in all parts of our once private lives. America has a place for laws and lawyers, but that place is modest and reasonable, not vast and unchecked.

An interesting perspective with some worthwhile facts in here; if you can cut through the rhetoric.

Kenya's expanded new government will spend 80 per cent of the entire national budget on luxury vehicles, inflated salaries for ministers and general running costs, a local anti-corruption group claimed on Wednesday.

President Mwai Kibaki's administration now boasts 43 ministries - up from 34 - in a deal with the Orange Democratic Movement, led by Raila Odinga, following the bitterly disputed election.

Of the 222 MPs, almost half now have government jobs. Cabinet members benefit from annual salaries exceeding £83,000 and numerous perks, including official cars and "entertainment" allowances of £600 per month.

What percentage of US citizens work for the government? How lucrative is it to be employed by the government as opposed to work in the private sector in the United States? The answers to these questions show we differ in scale and scope, but not in substance from Kenya. In fact, how much of Kenya's budget is from US taxpayers? Last question, how many aid groups are operating in Kenya but are not addressing the root cause of Kenya's poverty: the corruption and socialism of the Kenyan government and economy?

Half the population has received no dental care on the NHS in the last two years.

And thousands of suffering patients are turning up at hospital emergency departments for treatment because they cannot find an NHS dentist.

Dentists complain the contract does not reflect the amount of work they actually carry out - for example, they receive the same amount of money regardless of whether they provide a patient with two fillings or ten.

Last year, a survey found that one in 20 patients had resorted to DIY treatment, in some cases pulling out their own teeth.

Earlier this month Elizabeth Green, 76, from Winchester, Hampshire, told how she was turned away by 12 dentists.

A very interesting talk; a personal experience on left brain vs right brain and our perceptions of the world, related to enlightenment.

What if there was a way to artificially and safely temporarily cause the 'good' part of the effects of the stroke she had by somehow inhibiting that part of the brain?

Here is the powerpoint of the presentation given two days ago at Touro University AMSA/SOMA health policy week. It is 110 slides and the presentation lasted about two hours. There is some video and audio, recorded on digital camera and mp3 respectively, but because of technical limitations doesn't cover the whole thing and so I didn't post those. Perhaps I'll try to venture down this path again in the near future and create a more dynamic internet presentation, maybe on youtube or something.

Chen, who studies the Chinese economy, argued in a lecture Tuesday that the Chinese government ought to decrease the stake it holds in its economy in order to even income distribution among citizens.

Presenting data that he said reflected an inverse relationship between the number of state-owned enterprises and the level of economic development, Chen argued that instead of promoting economic equality, state ownership centralizes wealth and produces a wider gap between the rich and the poor.

Interesting article describing the uselessness of a half dozen California agencies. Notice that there is a 'private' tomato board, in conjunction with the state board. Best to just get rid of the state one and let these jokers manage their own companies.

Sometimes all it takes is a bit of simple math. I'd like to apologize to readers, as I quoted the $13,00 number repeatedly in 'A Charter School Tale'. Coulson makes a pretty strong case here that the number is actually twice that:

We're often told that public schools are underfunded. In the District, the spending figure cited most commonly is $8,322 per child, but total spending is close to $25,000 per child -- on par with tuition at Sidwell Friends, the private school Chelsea Clinton attended in the 1990s.

A powerpoint presentation titled:

'The Virtues of Free Market Healthcare' will be given tonight (Tuesday) at 6pm at Touro University.

Touro U is on American Pacific dr, just past Gibson in Henderson near where the 515 and 215 meet. You will need to sign in at the front desk before hand. They know people not affiliated with the school will be coming. The talk will be in lecture hall two. I've been allotted two hours, although I won't use up that much, hopefully! :)

Hope to see you all there!
-Travis

DESTIN — Two years and 28 monster burgers later, Geoff Dobson’s mission is accomplished.

Let us be the first to congratulate neoperspectives contributing author Geoff Dobson on his incredible feat. :)

Why we shouldn't trust politicians. This story demonstrates a few things; an inaccurate worldview, a factual misunderstanding of the US health system, and an irresponsible, almost reckless approach to informing the public on key issues affecting the nation. For example:

Bryan Holman, had played host to Mrs. Clinton in his home before the Ohio primary. Deputy Holman said in a telephone interview that a conversation about health care led him to relate the story of Ms. Bachtel. Deputy Holman knew Ms. Bachtel’s story only secondhand, having learned it from close relatives of the woman. Ms. Bachtel’s relatives did not return phone calls Friday.

“It hurts me that in our country, as rich and good of a country as we are, this young woman and her baby died because she couldn’t come up with $100 to see the doctor.”

Health service dentists have been forced to go on holiday or spend time on the golf course this month despite millions of patients being denied dental care.

Many have fulfilled their annual work quotas allotted by the National Health Service and have been turning patients away because they are not paid to do extra work. This is despite the fact that more than 7m people in Britain are unable to find an NHS dentist.

Eddie Crouch, secretary of the Birmingham local dental committee, estimates that up to a third of dentists in the West Midlands have run out of work or have had to reduce the number of NHS patients they treat.

The British Dental Association fears that other dentists have been unable to meet their quotas and will be forced to pay back thousands of pounds to the NHS.

Ran across these interesting graphs comparing Canada and the United States Healthcare while compiling a 'Free Market Healthcare' Power point presentation for an upcoming talk (this ppt will be uploaded when finished).

Amid rising food and fuel costs, the assistance is becoming worth less and less.

And supplemental food programs for poor families are struggling to keep up with the added demand as donations are on the decline.

Nationally, more than 26 million Americans were on the food stamp program last year, according to the federal agriculture department.

"We never have enough food to totally give everybody what they really want," Nardella said.

IMO, these welfare agencies will never 'have enough' regardless of how many Americans are on welfare - the same welfare that is the very reason for their poverty. These agencies have already decimated Appalachia.

Despite the varied theories espoused by many establishment economists, it was none other than the Federal Reserve that caused the Great Depression and the horrific suffering, deprivation and dislocation America and the world experienced in its wake. At least, that's the clearly stated view of current Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke.

In "A Monetary History of the United States," Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman along with coauthor Anna J. Schwartz lay the mega-catastrophe of the Great Depression squarely at the feet of the Federal Reserve.

Well, this is nice to see! However, does Bernanke apply this knowledge? Or does he believe that it was not the 'power of the Fed' to begin with that caused the great depression, but just how it was applied? He apparently believes he could do better:

Most sweeping changes since Great Depression Proposal will give the Federal Reserve new regulatory power
MSNBC ^ | March. 28, 2008 | AP writer

The proposal would designate the Fed as the primary regulator of market stability, greatly expanding the central bank's ability to examine not just commercial banks but all segments of the financial services industry.

The Associated Press obtained a 22-page executive summary of the proposal. It seeks to make sense of the mishmash of overlapping oversight in which an alphabet-soup roster of agencies regulates banks, thrifts and credit unions.

Under the current hodgepodge, institutions that take deposits and are federally insured face multiple regulatory bodies. By contrast, hedge funds, private equity firms and investment banks endure substantially less regulation.

IMO, the more power given to Federal agencies to meddle in the affairs of the market, the more likely the Fed will cause another 'great depression'.

Six young brothers and sisters face being taken from their parents and put into care because they are overweight.

Social workers have warned they will intervene if three of the youngsters – including a 12-year-old boy who weighs 16 stone – do not shed several pounds in three months.

The parents have been told they risk losing all their children if there is no improvement in the 12-year-old or two of his sisters aged 11 and three – who weigh 12 stone and four stone – by June. <.>

Last year, an eight-year-old girl from the Cumbria area was taken into care because she weighed nine stone.

Government records of political candidates are tightly restricted because of concerns they could be used against candidates or the data could be altered as part of campaign dirty tricks.

No word yet on any 'restrictive protections' for the rest of us. Government data collection on its citizens has little useful purpose IMO, and can only lead to corruption and invasion of privacy. I don't see any reason why the government should keep records of where we've gone.

Undercover FBI agents used this hyperlink-enticement technique, which directed Internet users to a clandestine government server, to stage armed raids of homes in Pennsylvania, New York, and Nevada last year. The supposed video files actually were gibberish and contained no illegal images.

ETHANOL MADNESS (2006)
Executive Intelligence Review (excerpt) from Technocracy.org ^ | 06/02/2006 | Staff
Well, first, we'll get 20% less gas mileage from our fuel that way. Second, we can pay a good deal more for fuel, in direct prices and subsidies; in fact, we'll be able to use a fuel whose price is inflating much faster than the price of gasoline. Third, we'll be able to spend tens of billions of dollars more a year in tax revenues, subsidizing ethanol makers, including some of the biggest global cartels. Fourth, we can use up more petrochemical energy making ethanol than we get by using it. Fifth, we can use up large volumes of scarce regions of the country, and overburden our transport infrastructure as well. Sixth, we could soon deny corn exports to nations that need them — maybe even cut our own consumption of corn and burn it in our cars instead...

And last but not least, we can delay or cut off the revival of nuclear power for industry and economic expansion; instead, we could take a major scientific and technological step backwards, a great leap back toward primitive ages when mankind burned straw for fuel.

Is this not similar to the previously posted story on how Hydrogen cars pollute more (plus are more expensive) than regular gas cars?

3/20/08 Neoperspectives.com (By Kyle Hunt)

The "news" does not interest me much these days. It is too disheartening.
I am more interested in the principles and concepts that can be considered "timeless." I have been most interested in the field of energy that sustains all life. Unfortunately, many are unable to grasp the complexities and ultimate simplicity of this concept.

In an effort to increase understanding and engage in a meaningful discussion on this topic, I would like to present some of my favorite movies that deal with the manipulation and control of energy in space-time. I could reference a bunch of books that I have read, but that would be less fun and take way too long. In an odd way, this is where I cite my sources:

Brad Pitt Understands Consumerism – Bruce Willis is sent back in time from an apocalyptic future and put in an insane asylum. There he is introduced to the evils of the world through an oddly-attractive lunatic who later goes on to be a terrorist leader.

Breaking Boundaries – A true genius attempts to find a unifying theory. The government puts him to work, he discovers too much, and is sentenced to a terrifying future of electro-shock and insanity. There are patterns everywhere.

Intro/Beginning – In this movie, there are pale/grey men who control the reality of every person alive. That sounds familiar. Also, let us not read too far into the "KH" seen on the briefcase.
The End – Mind over matter to the full extent. Jennifer Connelly has been in my thoughts since Labyrinth!

Trailer – Watch for "they made me do it" – or is it "The y made me do i x" This is touched on in X * Y. Time Travel is discussed in Continuing the Spiral.

Mad World – Great lyrics and great production design for the film by Alec Hammond.

Head Over Heels – An amazing sequence showing life in school. Reality is only a matter of perspective.

A Genius Interviews with the NSA – Although I don't like or respect many shrinks, Robin sure seems like an exception. He hits the nail right on the head. It is not uncommon that a genius lacks direction in such a society and is unable to commit in relationships. There is also a comparison drawn between Will and the Unabomber in the movie. One must be crazy to not want all of the "great things" our civilization has to offer.

Opening Scene – Chilling. "And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History Became Legend. Legend Became Myth."
Two Towers Trailer – There is an obvious Twin Towers link. The multi-cultural coalition against the powers of evil is of note. So is the ability of the pale-skinned elves to see the future possibilities.
ROTK Trailer – Neither the Stewards of Gondor nor Sauron want Aragorn to take the throne, as he would usurp their powers.
Matilda

Dancing with the World – "She's a witch.. Burn her!" (Monty Python logic)

Original Trailer – Paranoia and confusion in the high-tech age. Reality vs. illusion while waiting for a savior.
Neo Meets the Architect – The Architect is an old white male. Neo is not the first anomaly, but he is the One. Was the First Matrix that is described the Garden of Eden? Note the logical, perfectionist Father Architect and the intuitive, loving Mother Oracle. Neo chooses the non-logical choice because an emotional response – something very difficult to calculate. It is interesting to see that although the Architect and Oracle created the system, they never claim to be God.

Mad As Hell – It is pretty easy to be these days. What a great description of society.

Travolta on Energy – Mr. Kotter taught him well. I attempt an explanation in Star Theory.

An Explanation of Connection – Again, the light-skinned magician. The 3rd eye (6th chakra) is discussed. Powder's code of ethics seems strikingly similar to the Jedi's. I will admit I am very pale, but I have a bit more melanin and more of a pinkish/red tone.

Yoda's Wisdom – A discussion of the life force. Search "Yoda" on Youtube, and all you get is inanity.
Yoda on Premonition, Death, and Attachment – The Jedi have a philosophy very much in line with Buddhists and many other mystical belief systems.
The Usurpation of Power – The force is balanced much in the same way Shiva dances, but unfortunately this means the bad guys can grab the reigns of power for a time. It is interesting how the expendability and controllability of the clone army is ultimate.

Time Travel Kyle – Kyle Reese travels into the world in the infamous year of 1984 – a year after this Kyle came in. He had been sent back in time to save the future of humanity from the machines that eventually take control. He must kill a buffed up Terminator who intends to kill the mother of the resistance's leader, as he is ultimately successful. I chose this clip because Kyle Reese is the ultimate badass, eluding cops without hurting a single one.

Jean Grey Flips Out – Here is the same ultimate and total control of mind over matter. It is notable that Jean Grey ends up transforming into the Phoenix much in the same way Gandalf the Grey turns into Gandalf the White. We should also not forget the hostility that the majority of the population has for the mutants. Nor the over-priced trading cards I used to adore.

Some of these movies are better than others, but there are many important correlations between them. What I would like to suggest is that some, if not all, of the powers portrayed in these movies do, in fact, exist and will continue to become prevalent in our realities. We all know that science fiction quickly becomes science fact. Welcome to the real world.

This review should have been up a long time ago for a pretty good reason: it is simply the best book I have ever read.

A fictional epic, in the style of Tolkein and C.S. Lewis, it delivers a gripping tale of fantasy adventure, as a band of advanced Pylorians, 'wizards' who are able to harness the power of the 'mind sense', fight against an evil menace rising in the east. The nations of Calmer and Zireth take sides as intrigue and treachery ensues and a princess and sorceress fight for country, honor, and love.

It is definitely a family novel. Judeochristian values predominate and the tale is rife with teaching symbolisms. I've read this book 3-4 times, the last few unintentionally because I just couldn't put it down. :)

Quote section updated! The following quotes have replaced some of the others in the quote section:

I do mean that wickedness, when you examine it, turns out to be the pursuit of some good in the wrong way. You can be good for the mere sake of goodness: you cannot be bad for the mere sake of badness.

I flatter myself [we] have in this country extinguished forever the ambitious hope of making laws for the human mind.

Matthew 17:25-26
……and Jesus said, What do you think, Simon? From whom do the kings of the earth take custom or taxes? From their sons, or from strangers?
Peter said to Him, from strangers. Jesus said to him, Then truly the
sons are free.

See, when the government spends money, it creates jobs; whereas when the money is left in the hands of taxpayers, God only knows what they do with it. Bake it into pies, probably. Anything to avoid creating jobs.

After two world wars, countless smaller wars, mass murders, religious and racial persecution, several species of tyranny, punishing taxation, erosions of ancient liberties, debasement of money, and state-sponsored moral decadence, you’d think modern man would have drawn certain lessons about the modern State. All of us ought to talk about the State the way the Jews talk about Hitler.

One afternoon when I was seven I complained to him of boredom, and he batted me hard on the head. He told me that I was never to use that term in his presence again, that if I was bored it was my fault and no one else's. The obligation to amuse and instruct myself was entirely my own, and people who didn't know that were childish people, to be avoided if possible. Certainly not to be trusted.

Freedom is essentially a condition of inequality, not equality. It recognizes as a fact of nature the structural differences inherent in man - in temperament, character, and capacity - and it respects those differences. We are not alike and no law can make us so.

If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

The more artificial taboos and restrictions there are in the world, the more the people are impoverished....
The more that laws and regulations are given prominence, the more thieves and robbers there will be.
The wisest course, then, is to keep the government simple and for it to take no action, for then the world stabilizes itself.
Therefore the Sage says: I take no action yet the people transform themselves, I favor quiescence and the people right themselves, I take no action and the people enrich themselves....

When all government, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the Center of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

Inside Sylvia de Vries lurked an enormous tumour and fluid totalling 18 kilograms. But not even that massive weight gain and a diagnosis of ovarian cancer could assure her timely treatment in Canada.

The Ontario Health Insurance Plan says it won't pay for the $60,000 cancer treatment because Ms. de Vries did not fill out the correct form seeking preapproval for out-of-country care.

As well, it says no medical documentation was submitted that indicated a delay in obtaining the service in Ontario would result in death or medically significant, irreversible tissue damage.

That administrative misstep has left Ms. de Vries, a 51-year-old corporate communications manager, with a staggering cancer bill.

The private funds earned an average 10 percent return since their start, ensuring that typical workers who contributed since 1981 now collect about 85 percent of their final wage upon retirement. That's more than double the average 40 percent paid to full-career, middle-income Social Security recipients in the U.S.

Public interest law professor John Banzhaf, whom the media has dubbed a "driving force behind the lawsuits that have cost tobacco companies billions of dollars," and the "law professor who masterminded litigation against the tobacco industry," has written to the health commissioners of the fifty states suggesting that they warn their state's doctors about such law suits based upon a recent article in a leading medical journal and an even more recent study about saving smoker lives.

The letter notes a recent study which shows that physicians are killing more than 40,000 American smokers each year by failing to follow federal guidelines which mandate that the doctor warn the smoking patient about the many dangers of smoking and provide effective medical treatment for the majority who wish to quit.

"Since physician malpractice kills over 40,000 smokers annually – more than motor vehicle or product liability accidents – it should not be surprising if antismoking lawyers, as well as those in private practice working on contingency fees, find physicians who deliberately flout federal guidelines to be a major target of litigation."

Lets us go back to July 5th, 1997, when the landmark tobacco settlement against Tobacco companies was being negotiated. The AMA (and one assumes the AOA) were in favor of the hundred billion dollar settlements, which, incidentally, turned many lawyers into multi millionaires.

Two public health groups, the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids and the American Medical Association, were involved in the negotiations that led to the accord.

CHICAGO, June 24 /PRNewswire/ -- Continuing its commitment against the dangers of cigarette smoking, the American Medical Association (AMA) this week joined several other public interest organizations in a friend-of-the-court brief reaffirming support for a Florida class-action victory against the tobacco industry.

In July 2000, the $145 billion punitive damages verdict in Engle v. Liggett Group Inc. et al sent a strong message to tobacco companies that toying with the health and lives of Americans can be a prohibitively expensive business. The damages awarded in this case, however, could be overturned because an appellate court has reconsidered the case's class certification. The AMA believes the Florida Supreme Court should overturn the appellate court's ruling and compel the tobacco defendants to pay for the damages they continue to inflict on society.

"As long as the tobacco industry profits from business as usual, they must bear responsibility for the human suffering and economic costs that result from tobacco-related illnesses," said AMA Trustee Ronald M. Davis, MD. "Preserving the penalties in this case will provide a strong incentive for tobacco companies to change their behavior."

First they went for the tobacco companies, but the doctors did not care because they disliked the tobacco companies. But when they came for the doctors there was no one was left to come to their aid.

About 20 hours of teachings, lectures, songs, chants, and other recordable events are contained in the above link. Feel free to peruse them on the other page, but the very beautiful Satsungs have been excerpted here for your listening pleasure. :)

The following recordings are from the 2008 ATTC (Advanced Yoga Teacher's Training Course). This was a month long, intensive course on yoga, meditation, and philosophy. Its prerequisite was the TTC (teachers training course), another month long course. These courses take place at Ashrams, communal type retreats, with peaceful regimented daily livings dedicated to spiritual advancements. In my personal opinion, the TTC was an immediately gratifying shock of a course, but whose main effects dissipated, while the ATTC is a more subtle course, with seemingly longer lasting effects and positive change.

The recordings below can be downloaded by left clicking on them and saving them to your computer. They are all WAV files. You will need to turn the volume up. If it is still too low try right clicking on the sound icon on the lower right hand corner of your menu bar and finagling with it. Feel free to convert these WAV files to MP3s and play them on your Ipod or MP3 player!

If you are new to the subject of Yoga, the philosophy, or even if you are not :), I recommend you start with the 'Satsungs'. Satsungs are the equivalent of church gatherings, and the 'preaching' parts have been recorded here. These particular Satsungs are taught by Swami Sadasivananda, a friend, teacher, and spiritual leader. He lives what he espouses and these brief teachings are truly joys to behold.

If you are considering taking the Sivananda Teacher's Training Course, you can hear Swami Sadasivananda give an introduction below under 'Miscellaneous'. And if you are looking for a great yoga class, especially if you are familiar with Sivananda yoga, the 95 minute Yoga 'meditation' class also under 'Miscellaneous' will take you to a whole new level. This is truly how Yoga was meant to be practiced. It was the last class of our course.

Rush pens, or should I say, orates, a touching tribute to a giant in the conservative movement. A highlight:

I went through one year of college and I was having trouble, flunked speech, should have called the course Outline 101. Flunked speech, did every speech, showed up at every class and still flunked it. I said, "This is not for me." And one morning I was sitting in the house at 20 years old and I said, "I'm quitting." I told my dad, "I'm quitting. I can't handle this. I'm leaving. I've got a job offer in Pittsburgh, and I'm going to go there." And, of course, he came from the Great Depression, and that was the worst news he could hear. The formative years of his life were the Great Depression and World War II. You go through the Great Depression, and if you didn't have a college degree you had no chance of getting a job.

He had great fears. I'm the only member of my family I think that doesn't have a college degree. He was very concerned he was a failure as a father, and I remember telling him, "Well, I want to be like Bill Buckley." He said, "What do you mean?" "Well, I want to be able to sit around and write and think and speak," and so forth, and my dad blew up at me. "What are you talking about?" He gave me a two-hour lecture on, "Where do you think Bill Buckley went to become what he is? Do you think Bill Buckley just sits around and writes and thinks and speaks, and people like you have this reaction to him?" I got a serious lecture on how hard and time-consuming achievement is. When you see the output of someone's work but you don't see what goes into it, you can make the mistake of assuming it comes easy to them, especially those who are great at what they do. They make it look so easy that you think you could do it, too. And you form impressions of how they do it, and you see these people on television and so forth, you really don't see any of the prep or any of the hard work that goes into the final product, and my dad was right about that.

So it wasn't until I left the formal academic setting at age 20, that I got serious about education above and beyond what I'd learned at home. I was reading omnivorously and voluminously, meaning anything I could get my hands on that was of interest to me.

Isn't it interesting? Rush Limbaugh flunking speech in college? Rush's Dad was right about what it takes to succeed and the humility necessary to achieve accomplishment, but wrong about the importance of college.

The school, which will run from fifth to eighth grades, is promising to pay teachers $125,000, plus a potential bonus based on schoolwide performance. That is nearly twice as much as the average New York City public school teacher earns, roughly two and a half times the national average teacher salary and higher than the base salary of all but the most senior teachers in the most generous districts nationwide.

The school’s creator and first principal, Zeke M. Vanderhoek, contends that high salaries will lure the best teachers. He says he wants to put into practice the conclusion reached by a growing body of research: that teacher quality — not star principals, laptop computers or abundant electives — is the crucial ingredient for success.

“I would much rather put a phenomenal, great teacher in a field with 30 kids and nothing else than take the mediocre teacher and give them half the number of students and give them all the technology in the world,” said Mr. Vanderhoek, 31, a Yale graduate and former middle school teacher who built a test preparation company that pays its tutors far more than the competition.

In exchange for their high salaries, teachers at the new school, the Equity Project, will work a longer day and year and assume responsibilities that usually fall to other staff members, like attendance coordinators and discipline deans. To make ends meet, the school, which will use only public money and charter school grants for all but its building, will scrimp elsewhere. <.>

Ernest A. Logan, president of the city principals’ union, called the notion of paying the principal less than the teachers “the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers, called the hefty salaries “a good experiment.” But she said that when teachers were not unionized, and most charter school teachers are not, their performance can be hampered by a lack of power in dealing with the principal. “What happens the first time a teacher says something like, ‘I don’t agree with you?’ ”

Only when teachers and the educational system is outside the control of the teachers unions can these sorts of experiments happen. This decentralized control, bottom up approach to education with the money going strait to the classroom might just work.

While millions of Haitians go hungry, containers full of food are stacking up in the nation's ports because of government red tape — leaving tons of beans, rice and other staples to rot under a sweltering sun or be devoured by vermin. <.>

Jean-Paul Michaud, a Canadian, said he sailed to the capital of Port-au-Prince late last year carrying 60 pounds of donated clothing and medicine — and that port authorities demanded $10,000 in "customs fees" — code for a bribe to make the fees disappear.

"I'd have rather thrown the aid in the water," said Michaud. The Canadian Embassy intervened and the fee was later waived.

Krabacher's group says it has paid nearly $16,000 in fees in the first six weeks of 2008 alone, compared to $23,418 for all of 2007.

British charity Oxfam has had to pay the Sri Lankan government $1m in import duty for vehicles used in tsunami reconstruction work.

As oft stated: it is not lack of food, commodities, health care, etc.. which cause a lack of these things. Socialism causes shortages of these things. The people of Haiti could produce all they need and more if it wasn't for the criminals running their government. Even without the corruption, this aid is a major reason for perpetuating and encouraging the socialism already present in Haiti, and further disrupting their economy. Indeed, throw the aid in the water! And burn our tax dollars! Better that than have our government spend our money hurting the good people of Haiti.

DiFiore said in a letter to the clinic’s owners that Desai ordered his nurses to reuse syringes and reuse single-dose vials of medication when administering anesthesia to patients who received endoscopic procedures. The practice, which allowed cross contamination of patients’ blood, caused six people to become infected with hepatitis C.

Desai, who was a member of Gov. Jim Gibbons’ transition team in 2006, is the majority owner of the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada

Desai used to sit on the Nevada State Board of Medical Examiners, which has now launched an investigation into the clinic. <.>

Thank goodness we have medical licensing by the government. Who knows what horrors free enterprise would yield?

“The fact that, once caught, you have agreed not to engage in a technique well known to the medical community to subject patients to death or serious illness again does not persuade me that you won’t do it again,” DiFiore wrote.

Regardless, this scandal has been rocking the Las Vegas medical community since the beginning of this week. Our office has had over 50 lab referrals to check for Hep A, B, and C. The staff has been quite frustrated with all the calls coming in as well. The papers told people they could get tested at UMC Quick Cares, but the UMC gubermint people who told the papers this forgot to tell their employees, and so people were getting turned away and being told to 'see their primary care physician'. So, it's been one screw up and mix up after another...

Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

When pain enters the consciousness the soul uplifts, the mind becomes joyful, and thanks and praise is given to God. What a wonderful opportunity, delivered by pure grace, sent by the wings of angels. Oh pain, oh suffering, oh teacher, lead me to the light and fill me with your blessings. How grateful am I for your coming.

Previously it was discussed that happiness does not arise from external events; life experience does not emerge from the set, but from the camera; our current perceptions, our very consciousness, arises entirely from within, and changing the processing, without exclusive focus on the input is the key to increasing our happiness and understanding.

If this premise is true, then pain and suffering must be viewed quite different from standard convention. Pain is a red flag, a blaring "fix me!", a lighthouse in a frothy sea of turbulent emotion and thought. Pain is our imperfections jumping out at us, allowing us to address them and increase our understandings.

In fact, should we not be as thankful for pain as we are for so-called 'gems' (vexing persons that appear to give us pain)? If not for pain how can we know we are walking in the wrong direction, with our habits, values, and ways of thinking askew? Look around, what it is that really gives us pain shall be our greatest uplifter if we open our hearts to it and act and address it in the proper way.

Of course, it is easiest to blame the outside world for pain in order to temporarily ignore or suppress these negative thoughts and feelings. These maneuvers are undertaken as true self revelation about the nature of the pain would cause much angst and violently shake our egos and worldviews, causing great further discomfort in the short term. It is not human nature to ponder and philosophize and think of long term happiness during a painful experience, rather we become emotionally fixed and attached to our immediate experience and seek to relieve it through any means necessary. It requires great concentration and strengthening of the higher thought processes to detach from the immediacy of painful sensual experience and emotion. Indeed, much of our conscious experiences could be said to resolve around this constant mental battle between short and long term pleasure. The simplest example is one we've all experienced: eating those chocolates and feeling immediate gratification vs long term tummy ache and accompanying mental cloudiness. The way we feel after such a sugary gorge tells us many things if we care to listen.

If viewed correctly and carefully pain could even become a central plank of spiritual and emotional development. It is sought out joyously (although not sadistically), for each new discovery means more eventual healing, greater enlightenment and increased emotional maturity. But these advances are only possible if pain is viewed as almost a form of pleasure, an apparent oxymoron except that one attempts to witness the pain as third party, to detach from suffering in order to appreciate beauty in its meaning. In other words, when the intellectual joy, the higher thought processes overcomes the natural emotional fixation of pain, true learning and permanent happiness unfold.

Phobias are the easiest pains to cure because they are obvious and blatant, as by definition we understand their nature. Most people with phobias understand their sufferings are irrational and so the higher mind already has a decent jumpstart. It is the deeper fears which are tricky enough to entice the logical reasoning part of our mind into believing we are justified in our fear (or that our fear comes from an external event). It is necessary to cure these phobias not because of the inconvenient avoidance of said phobia, but because the emotion of fear itself, our emotional wrong understanding of the world is rooted in our phobias. Better said, a phobia is worth eliminating because the very idea of fear in an external event is incorrect and strongly perpetuated (emotionally) by a phobia.

One proven method of curing phobias is by desensitization. What is your phobia? Heights? Force yourself to the tallest place you can tolerate and embrace the fear as it envelops you. Observe it as a scientist would observe electrical fear impulses in a brain on a machine. It will soon lessen. Bugs, insects, bees, wasps, spiders? Seek out these creatures and meditate upon them, observe the mind as it recoils in abject terror; think, 'silly mind, bless the fear in thee'; laugh at the mind as you would a young child. Such phobias are more disturbing and their effects more widespread then we realize. They invade even our dreams, unsettling the subconscious, enabling nighterrors, and ruining countless hours of sleep.

I recall a story by a lecturing psychologist about a woman who had been in a horrible car wreck and thereafter had a panic attack every time she sat behind the wheel. He put her in his car and said, "we're going to stay here until you can drive." She immediately had a panic attack, but didn't leave the car. She had another one when she started to drive. His response, "go ahead wreck it!". She pulled over and recovered and then drove and drove. It took them all afternoon, but she was cured. It felt as if a great weight had been lifted and her whole emotional state shifted, better sleep, and sense of well being ensued. That she is now able to drive is somewhat irrelevant, the improvement of her life and PTSD symptoms is the real story.

Dislikes are more insidious than phobias because there often appears to be some valid reasonings for them. In other words, the higher thinking mind will often concur with the lower emotional mind. When we smell putrid milk, we actually feel emotions of disgust. These emotions are painful (smelling putrid milk is not fun!), yet we reason this pain is natural and is there to tell us not to drink the milk. Now this is true, from an evolutionary perspective, but why can't we function without being consumed by these negative emotions arising? There is nothing intrinsically 'bad' or 'negative' about putrid milk. It simply is what it is. The qualities we assign it are false, arising from imperfections within us. In fact, could one not experience the beauty of spoiled milk, and still refrain from drinking it? Certainly there is something beautiful about the unique sensation of spoiled milk as it percolates through our consciousness. Indeed, there is something glorious about the very nature of consciousness itself, regardless of origin and flavor.

Upon reflection, we might even find our sensation of the spoiled milk, negative though it may be, highly dynamic, with our given experience greatly dependent on our immediate mood. For example, if we are already stressed and late to work vs on the phone with a loved one sharing a happy moment, our discovery of the spoiled milk will manifest quite differently. If we could raise our base happiness to a certain bar, we might even find our experience of the spoiled milk not painful at all. In fact, we might find very little actual pain in life, a goal only achievable by the embrace of the very pain we seek to eliminate. In fact, theoretically, pain and suffering cannot truly cease and joy, knowledge, and understanding cannot permeate in everything we do until our desire to eliminate pain is extinguished, along with, finally, even our joyous desire for pain to show us the nature of ourselves.

Similar to phobias, taming our likes and dislikes involves some manner of desensitization technique, going against the grain, prodding our stubborn minds, until we realize our dislikes are also our own creations. People we dislike reflect things about ourselves we dislike. When we judge or insult or slander, we really judge, insult, and slander ourselves, and stain only our own character. Practically there exists much difficulty in how the mind processes an attempt down this path. For example, consider 'Dharma', an Hindi yogic term, which can be defined as a combination of individual fate, duty, and talents (and which will be subject of a future essay :)). We like what we are good at, are drawn to do our part in the world, and are naturally attracted to people who help us facilitate beneficial information exchange, ie aid us in accomplishing various physical and mental tasks. How one can walk this razors edge, this fine line, between discomforting the mind to awareness of its fallacious dislikes and the danger of straying from one's Dharma, really has no logical answer. Increased discernment and perceptions of the finer points in this balancing act will surely become clearer with judicious meditation and spiritual practice.

Some of those versed in western psychology and psychiatry have arrived at many of these conclusions independently of our friends to the east. For example, Dr Frattaroli in the previously reviewed 'Healing the Soul in the age of the Brain', describes depression as the body/subconscious telling the conscious mind something relevant and important. He describes cases where a change in job, relationship, or other major ( or even occasionally minor) life adjustment completely cured a patient's depressive state. In effect, listen to the pain, what is it telling you, where is it coming from? When the mind is calm, ideally after consistent meditation/prayer, or even purposeful sleep, the answers may be more perceptible.

Major depression and other more serious cases of mental illness are much more difficult. These cannot be cured simply by changing relatively superficial aspects of one's life. These states may indicate pathology of an entire worldview, emotional circuitry, and value system, notwithstanding possible biomedical components. Part of the mind has strayed so far from what leads to long term happiness and thus major depression, also described as self loathing, is the body's way of alerting the mind to these transgressions. Yet even this depression, horrible though it may be to experience, should be approached and appreciated in the same fashion as minor pain. It will be far more difficult to assess from whence and where the sufferings originate from and the mind will likely have to undergo major reprogramming over a long period of time before positive results are seen. Certainly anti-depressants along with major lifestyle changes can give one a temporary or permanent helpful crutch in these cases, especially if the cause is more organic, stemming from an underlying medical condition.

We often get caught up in futile intellectualization of the reasons for what we interpret as 'senseless pain': the death of a family member, a random car accident, a freak illness, the suffering of a young child. However, this line of reasoning starts with the premise that something is 'bad'. But is not this attempt at objectivity clouded by subconscious arrogance? How can we know every effect of a particular event which transpires? After all, even the most painful and horrendous events must have some benefits; perhaps hidden due to societal bias against analysis of human growths stemming from tragedy and suffering. Or, perhaps these gifts are selectively given to those who quietly view the event from the proper perspective.

If we are to travel down this path of skewed intellectualization, it may be best to instead start with the premise that the world and humanity are constantly evolving towards the positive. It is certainly true that humanity, as a collective, is spiraling towards ever greater and more positive economic, political, technological, social, and, most importantly, spiritual/religious development. Perhaps it is better to trust in this than dwell on the 'unfairness' of a particular event or causes behind our particular mental state or a mental shockwave ricocheting through a particular community.

Which brings us to a final point, our roll in this interacting network, this computing living biological matrix of humanity. When we face and learn from our pain, our discomfort, and our dislikes, we alleviate not only our own suffering, but also the sufferings of others. Consider, again, the case of 'gems', persons who we dislike, loathe, or are even treated badly by. If the higher mind is able to overcome the illusions of rising negative thoughts and emotions, we help not only ourselves but also our 'adversary'. By an 'unwarranted' gracious or generous act or manner the offending person is faced with a perfect mirror, and the nature of their own actions and thoughts suddenly loose camouflage and finally percolate into consciousness. In fact, circumstances permitting, great positive learning can transpire if one makes a special habit of forced interaction with people the mind perceives to dislike or disapprove of. A dark brooding person who lashes out at those around them is begging for this type of treatment from those more advanced souls floating around the network. Serving others in this way not only enlightens the self, it benefits the entire world. Aligning oneself with God's will in such a selfless manner will surely bring forth the greatest glory and happiness.

The United States government's involvement with technological innovation is long and convoluted. Throughout history, every successful military power has relied on innovation to defeat its enemies. Cell phones, video games, the internet, and nuclear power are just a few examples of current technologies that were originally developed and are still used by the United States government for militaristic purposes.

Innovation has not always required governmental sponsorship, however. Before the federal government grew into extraordinary size in the 20th century, our best and brightest were able to fund their own research and only needed the government to enforce patent laws. Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Nikola Tesla, and the Wright Brothers were all able to flourish in this open and free environment.

But as the government became bigger and its ambitions grew, it needed the aid of the smartest scientists to achieve its goals. The problem is that anyone smart enough to be at the forefront of innovation is also able to understand the implication of his work. More often than not, the government is investing the taxpayer's money in researching and developing methods for killing large amounts of people most efficiently. During WWII, Werner Von Broun was forced into working for Hitler to develop the V-2 rocket that pummeled the British landscape. He was against the war and was eventually extracted to the United States, where his work became integral in the development of our space program. Another immigrant inventor, Albert Einstein, provided the knowledge and foresight crucial to the success of the Manhattan Project, which provided the United States with the world's first nuclear weapon. Einstein would later rail against nuclear testing and the development of further bombs. In this cause he was joined by Bertrand Russell, Linus Pauling, and Albert Schweitzer. These men possessed the great minds that could see the big picture implications of the Unites State's government's short-sidedness. Unfortunately, they were ignored.

As the government cannot always attract the best and the brightest directly, they rely on other means. In recent years, DARPA and NASA have held open competitions pitting independent groups of engineers against each other to develop the next generation of autonomous vehicles and spacesuit equipment. Engineers do not want to responsible for creating technology that brings about the destruction of countries and their peoples, so the government finds creative ways to leech off of their work.

Today, our biggest concerns should focus on the relationship between the internet and our government. What was once only a small project under DARPA has now become an inextricable part of today's society. It is redefining almost every aspect of our working, social, and emotional lives. It also appears that the internet has finally caused a drastic change in the politics of our country.

The internet has re-defined what "grass-roots" means. It is a tool through which truly populist movements can take hold in a country that has been so long divided. People have been given a new medium for education and unbiased truth, which has allowed for more people to gain a more full understanding of the underlying politics of our country than ever before. People who have been enlightened through free and open sources are no longer able to accept the lies and misinformation promoted through our history books, mass media, and most of our presidential candidates. The internet has allowed people to spread these "radical" ideas through their social networks, both online and in the real world. This revived interest in our history and current state of affairs could result in a government much more responsive to the will of the people, as they are able to organize and gather much more freely than ever before. If the two-party system (an obvious misnomer) is unable to adapt, then its very existence is put in a precarious position.

Although the internet has provided us with great possibilities, there is also a darker side to it and the future it may provide for us is dim. Any corporation willing to do business in China is required to comply with the country's regulatory policies and ban any information that is deemed illegal. The government of China does not want its people to have access to certain ideas and historical events, because providing people with truth and the means of disseminating it across such a large populace would be very dangerous for the continued one-party rule. Watching the CNN/Youtube debates some months ago, one could see a very similar form of censorship under the guise of letting the "people" have a voice. (This is not very surprising, as Google, owner of Youtube, is actually a Federal government contractor.) If the government was to further regulate what information is to be considered legal, certainly all of our big corporations in the US would have to comply, probably without the people of the United States ever being aware of it.

The ambitions of certain technology companies become rather scary when viewed in conjunction with our government's actions and plans for the future. The technology industry was abuzz for a long time about the GPhone, but some months ago we learned that instead of actually releasing a handset like Apple did, Google would actually be releasing an operating system. Google worked with over 30 other companies to create an open and free mobile platform, Android, that can run on any handset. Additionally, Google is going to be bidding large amounts of money in the FCC's 700 MHz auction. Google engineers have also recently showed that they can accurately triangulate the position of any cell phone (even if it does not have GPS). All of this coupled with the fact that Google has bought a massive amount of "dark fiber" (unused fiber optic cable that was laid before the bursting of the tech bubble) means that telecommunications as we knew it might soon be coming to an end. Google will be able to provide incredibly fast, easy, reliable, and cheap service to anyone who is running Android on his or her phone. However, this would also provide one company with unprecedented amounts of personal information.

But we should not have anything to fear though, because Google's motto is "Don't be Evil" and seems so user-friendly, right? Well, even if Google maintains its integrity and never hands over private information to our government, the danger for abuse is still there. The government can piggy-back on the innovative work of Google engineers to serve its needs. The CIA and military use the internet to combat Al-Qaeda, which they created and which also uses networks for means of organization, planning, and recruitment. However, I fear more and more that our government will be turning its eyes inward in the name of national security. The implications of this are tremendous, especially when one considers that our government has a "torture first, charge later – if at all" policy. The idea of a pre-emptive strike against our enemies, which was used to invade Iraq, could quickly be applied to American citizens whose data indicates that they might be a threat against the government. Someone who has never committed a crime against this country, but stands in opposition to its policies, could secretly be interrogated and detained without trial. The groundwork for this action has already been laid by the notorious federal legislation that has destroyed our civil liberties and ripped apart our Constitution. Currently, the powers that be are seeking legislation that would give immunity to telecommunication businesses that have illegally complied with the government's spying on its own citizens. This would be just another instance of how the government hijacks technology that was created with the most benign of intentions and turns it to serve its own agenda.

Technological innovation could certainly prove a great ally in the spreading of truth and democracy. Unfortunately, it could also be the means by which fewer people are able to oppress and enslave ever more of the world's population. Let us all make sure it is used for the former. The world of George Orwell's imagination provides for interesting literature, but is most certainly not a desirable future.

People born outside the United States make up about 35 percent of California's adult population but account for about 17 percent of the adult prison population, the report by the Public Policy Institute of California showed.

According to the report's authors the findings suggest that long-standing fears of immigration as a threat to public safety are unjustified. The report also noted that U.S.-born adult men are incarcerated at a rate more than 2 1/2 times greater than that of foreign-born men.

"Our research indicates that limiting immigration, requiring higher educational levels to obtain visas, or spending more money to increase penalties against criminal immigrants will have little impact on public safety," said Kristin Butcher, co-author of the report and associate professor of economics at Wellesley College.

The study did not differentiate between documented immigrants and illegal immigrants.

English has spread not because of any innate linguistic superiority, but because of the relative economic freedom here in the United States. Chavez's attempt to control common culture is doomed to failure, as well as demonstrating his belief in the power of central planning. Also:

This story is interesting because it entertains the possibility of revolutionary advances in patient care. What a great way to empower patients: give them access to their own records instantaneously on the internet. It would certainly facilitate their ability to look up the latest treatments for their health issues and even such details as the interpretations of various lab values. Perhaps, with the proper motivation and study, medically savvy patients might even make diagnoses their healthcare provider(s) might miss. I can tell you from personal experience the constant frustrations and delays occurring as patients are unaware of what medications they take, as docs struggle to get that latest Xray or MRI report, or have the report and want to view the image. Patients, docs, and medical staff spend hours on the phone trying to access and receive this or that. If patients information was stored on the internet, this content would be easily accessible by tech savvy docs and patients.

However, this is not a new idea. There are current internet programs which seem similar to google's proposals, but just haven't caught on in sufficient popularity. There already exists a plethora of non internet based electronic medical record programs in use, especially in HMO's, one of their inherent advantages of scale. HMOs also have been utilizing programs like e scripts, electronic prescriptions.

But I mostly disagree with the 'concerns' of those expressed in this article. I think one of the fundamental rights of privacy must be the right to give up that privacy. For instance, I would willingly give up my privacy to attain personal advertisements on TV. I enjoy gmail, and have even, on occasion, clicked on some of the links (targeted advertisements) that appear on the sidebars of my emails. For example, I would love to see political candidate commercials, drug advertisements, and maybe some yoga and health food ads :) while watching TV, as opposed to the junk that normally spews forth. It's both more beneficial and efficient for me and the advertisers!

Much of the time technology is in place to deliver these 'privacy violations' to those who want them, but, as is their want, the do-gooders in congress put a stop to the attempts and innovations of these private companies with various privacy acts. The one I am most familiar with is HIPPA, the health privacy act, which was aptly described, "as about as effective as the post office in a snow storm", by a retired family practice doc of 20+ years at our school. We've heard the act denounced in many a doctor office.

IMO, privacy is an important concept; after all, the core of libertarian thought is self ownership. All our medical records, our mail records, and all our private activities belong to us. But it is also our right to sell, barter, or give away these rights as we choose with no strings attached. And it is our right to seek out programs that explicitly violate our privacy.

Where those concerned with the vast amounts of information being acquired and acquiesced by google and other private companies in the digital age have a valid point is regarding the constant danger of government coercion, corruption, and malevolent corroboration of these private companies and, even worse, independent government stockpiling and fishing for information.

A funny thing is it not? Those passing the laws limiting our right to give up our own privacy are themselves the biggest dangers and current thievers of our privacy, not withstanding the rest of our precious freedoms.

Asked how the ruling would affect Microsoft's dominance, she said she hoped Microsoft's 95% market share would decline -- conflating Microsoft's near-total share of operating systems on desktop PCs with its share of computer servers, which is what the case centered on and which is lower.

Asked what share she thought would be better, she suggested a major fall -- well more than "a couple of percentage points."

What business is it of government what percentage a private corporation holds in the market?

Kyle Hunt, guest author, and hopefully a future regular contributor has penned the following, exclusively for neoperspectives.com:

The recent months and years of my life have been spent in deep contemplation. I have studied as much as possible from as many different sources as are available. The reason for this is that it had become apparent to me that the most fascinating questions cannot be answered, let alone even asked, by specializing in one field alone. Attempting to synthesize broad amounts of data from thousands of years of histories and beliefs can be rather difficult, but the knowledge that can be gleamed is well worth the effort. This journey through the collected information of the world is leading me to some “non-traditional” views and beliefs.

This particular story starts some months ago with a renewed interest in politics. Since I first registered to vote some years back, I have been a Republican. I am a believer in minimal government, non-interventionism, and personal freedom. The problem was that no candidate proposing those things was ever offered to me, and as such, I had not been able to vote. I do not believe in choosing between two evils, as there is no “lesser” in my mind.

But then along came Ron Paul! I was fascinated with this man, his ideas, and most significantly the spirit that he was able to awaken in the hearts of people all around the world. In a fit of inspiration, I penned some predictions for the future and sent them to Lew Rockwell, the famous libertarian scholar. He omitted some of the more controversial and long-term predictions and posted the article on his website as The Political Earthquake.

Almost as soon as the article was published, emails started flooding my inbox. People from a wide range of locations, professions, and beliefs reached out to me. Some gave me suggestions for future articles, others told me stories, and a few thanked me for putting words to that which they felt deep down, but could not express. It was an overwhelming feeling to have been able to affect so many people.

I continued to write about my visions for the future and my analysis of the past, but nothing was able to affect as many people so intimately as my thoughts on Ron Paul. This became ever more evident a few weeks later when I searched the internet for the article I had written and saw that my words had made their way to the many corners of the information universe. But it was not because I am a good writer, prescient, or an astute political analyst. To quote the man himself, “It’s the message!”

So I attempted to explore the message and how it has appeared throughout the ages. The history of humanity is full of mystery, especially as we are only left with only a few relics and artifacts. The average human is left out all together in many instances, as they were slaves, and mostly an afterthought. For most of our time on the earth, the collected wisdom of the ages has been guarded from public view. Although the internet has started to swing the advantage in our favor, institutions like the Vatican keep a tight grip on the assuredly controversial texts in their possessions. When the Dead Sea Scrolls were unearthed in the last century and forced into the public sphere, our understanding of Christianity needed a complete rethinking.

In Kabbalah, the Torah is studied at many different levels to achieve incredibly deep and secret understandings of the nature of God. As the Jews had long been persecuted, they were forced to hide these teachings in coded texts, lest it be used in ways considered unfit (sound familiar?) Even though most of us speak English, have limited access to unadulterated religious texts, and lack the time and will to devote to pure study, we should still look at the stories and scripture we have with a more discerning eye as they are rife with meaning.

Thus began my own continual reanalysis of the world around me. I considered the nature of evil and what causes people to act against their human(e) natures. Patterns began emerging as I saw how easily corruptible man truly is under certain circumstances. Next, I looked at the literal, symbolic, phonetic and hidden significance of three letters: X, Y, and Z. As most will not have the chance to read all 4 pages of the study (if you do - the meat is at the end), one of the discoveries I made while considering this topic was that the pronunciation of “Xy” is a very important clue to understanding religion and existence. For example, “Xy Zeus” = Jesus, “Xy O la Xy” = Geology, “Xy Netics” = Genetics, and “Xy” = Z. Although these assertions might sound ludicrous to the amateur observer, they actually make more sense when we consider the very nature of the spoken word as compared to written language. There is much that is “lost in translation.”

What never occurred to me until later was to try putting “Xy” before my own name. When I did, I came up with “Xy Kyle” or “Z Ky L.” This name should sound familiar to anyone who has studied religion or seen Pulp Fiction. Interestingly, one of the emails I received after writing about Ron Paul had asked me to write about Ezekiel, but I had not yet done enough research. Ezekiel was a prophet who one day came across a pile of dead bodies. He stopped to ponder upon the bodies and God/Allah came upon Ezekiel and asked him if he would like to see the dead brought back to life. Ezekiel, of course, said yes and God/Allah told him that all he had to do is command the bones to rise and come back to life. Ezekiel did so and the bones rose up in unanimous praise of God/Allah. Most scholars do not consider this a literal story and offer it as metaphor or prophecy.

Prophecy is something that has been studied by the people in power throughout the many phases of humankind. Armageddon is often the most widely discussed topic, especially when the world is in peril. All prophets foresaw it. They all described it. And it sounds eerily a lot like right now. We can see what man has done to this Earth and her inhabitants and the future looks grim for many. But there are a variety of interpretations as to what to expect for the eventual outcome of all of this violence and hatred. (That’s why it is a good prophecy!)

As astrology is the source of much of the information used by prophets, I began to look more closely at stars. They have played an integral part of every person’s life since birth. Stars are all over the products we buy, the clothes we wear, the flags of our Fathers, our night’s sky, and of course our day’s sky. Needless to say, the cycles of those pretty lights shining in the sky correlate very strongly with the events that play out here on our beautiful planet. Never before one to “read my horoscope,” I had not considered how much being born under the sign of Scorpio had influenced my life. Nor had I understood the implications of being represented by Pluto in our solar system and the Hanged Man and Death in the Tarot.

With an eye on the stars and a mind on the future, I decided to look at a video on Youtube, Surviving 2012 and Planet X (link – not needed) The film explains how for many years scientists have been trying to find the body in our solar system that is disrupting the orbits of our planets and making. In this vein of research, Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto were all discovered. But the calculations were still off. In comes Planet X.

Conveniently, Pluto was recently demoted from being a planet, so Planet X will be the 10^th body of our solar system. But we already know about the return of X as it had caused the Great Floods and Deluges of the past. This is when the war of the gods takes place as lightning bolts are hurled from the sky, fires boil up from hell, and angels fall from heaven. This heavenly body might well be Shiva the Destroyer, Jesus (the son of the Sun), and even Lucifer the Fallen Angel (Star). The sun meeting with its shadow could be the greatest example of Gog and Magog.

Curiously, the film in question also seems to be overt government propaganda. It lets us know that the best and the brightest from among us will be taken by the government and brought to underground bunkers where they will be safe to later repopulate the world. But we should not worry because humankind will survive and we should wish our “lucky” loved ones well on their journeys. Of course the elite of the world would assume the right to use the slave’s (or taxpayer’s) money in an attempt to survive the coming Apocalypse. Even if Planet X is approaching, as it very well could be, I would prefer to watch our world collapse and eventually reborn rather than spend the rest of my time in these dimensions underground with the likes of the reptiles and trolls. Or maybe Planet X is just another false threat being offered to distract us from the real evil facing the world.

In any event, this interest in the more literal heavens is what inspired me to sit outside on the evening of February 13 (described here). The fantastic sight left me with more questions than answers, but I knew that I should take a sign from the sky seriously. Now I do not purport to be anyone of any particular significance, but I believe I can feel and “see” things many others cannot. As my acts of prophecy started with Ron Paul, so shall they continue:

The march on Washington, D.C., proposed by Ron Paul, shall be the most momentous event to take place in the history of the United States since its inception. It will be when the emperor truly realizes that he has no clothes. Not because Ron Paul is going to win the presidency; indeed, we know he will not. But remember, this is about so much more than this one man. This struggle transcends politics, race, and religion.

When the people of this country learn that there is going to be a march on Washington, they will join in. Many will want to witness the most significant event in American history in person, as it will likely not be televised. Many will feel the need to present their frustration with the leviathan, finally as a united front.

We are all sick of the lies, corruption, and death that have resulted from evil men pulling the strings of morally corrupt institutions. We have allowed them to reside in power, hidden in the darkness, for far too long.

The worst of times are still yet to come, but this event shall be of utmost importance for the world. It will be the largest count of the remnant to date!

But do not take my word on any this. Wait and see if I am right or explore these things for yourselves. We as humans are only able to glimpse a small portion of what is truly going on around us, but it does not mean that we should not grasp for as much truth as possible.

Whatever may befall us, I believe that peace is the only logical step forward in our evolution. The bones have risen and taken flesh. And now they march.

I see problems down the line
I know that I'm right.
There was a dirt upon your hands
doing the same mistake twice
making the same mistake twice
Come on over and be so caught up
its not about compromising.
I see problems down the line
I know that I'm right
I see darkness down the line
I know its hard to fight.
There was a dirt upon your hands
doing the same mistake twice
making the same mistake twice.
Don't let the darkness eat you up

No, politicians love to pander. They enjoy showboating in front of the TV cameras; they like to pretend to be concerned about an issue like steroids in baseball that isn’t really any of their business.

If Major League Baseball feels it has a problem with players taking steroids, let Major League Baseball handle it.

Waxman regrets Clemens-McNamee hearing

Nearly 79 years after it was sent, a postcard of Yellowstone National Park's Tower Falls arrived in a Boston mailbox recently with the one-word message, "Greetings."

A U.S. Postal Service spokesman says it's impossible to know what happened with the card. It somehow got into the mail and was sent with a one cent stamp from Seattle earlier this year.

One gun. That’s all it would have taken. But that campus, like all the others, is a “gun free zone”.

Mr Tagg, 88, suffers from "wet" macular degeneration, the main cause of sight loss in Britain, affecting a quarter of a million people. It can lead to blindness in as little as three months - but with prompt treatment it can be reversed.

Now he and his wife Gabrielle, 77, are selling their house to pay for an £11,000 course of injections.

Last week, Mr Tagg was told by a consultant at Torbay District General Hospital in Torquay that a course of injections of the Lucentis drug could save his sight.

But at £760 a shot, for a course of between three and 14 injections, he was told that under Government guidelines it was regarded as "too expensive" unless he was already blind in one eye.

Mr Tagg, who was a member of the RAF Balloon Command during the war and flew Wellington bombers, went for his first privately-funded injections on Friday.

Readers may recall, we've visited this drug before during our critique of the FDA's belated approval of it. Amazing how many layers of international government incompetence it takes for it to actually reach patients.

Two stories, similar in that 'public health' masquerades as a chance for established businesses to put down their competitors.:

Last May, she was sentenced to 45 days in county jail for repeatedly violating food codes. Once out, Palacios and her companeros on the streets of the Fashion District formed an advocacy group to protest what they call harassment on the part of police and inspectors, fully aware that they are fighting an uphill battle.

Not that Palacios would mind more enforcement against the unlicensed vendors who are her primary competition. You see, the typical bacon-wrapped hot-dog enthusiast, as Palacios points out, isn't likely to notice that there are two tiers in L.A.'s hot-dog-vendor community.

"If somebody comes in with no overhead and no bills and no sanitary counters and starts selling hot dogs," Smith says, "you certainly can't complete with any of that."

Due to technical difficulties Dobber was unable to blog during the past month, apologies to readers. Hopefully we can figure out the problem and he will continue to add his commentary.

For those interested, I was attending a Yoga retreat course in the Bahamas for the past month and was without email or phone contact. It was a wonderful experience and I have a lot to write about regarding this. This was my second month long yoga retreat, readers may recall some writings on the first one, I'll group those together and tiddy some things up here ASAP...

By the way, what happened to Ron Paul?! I leave for a month and the whole campaign goes to pots! :)

HAPPY NEW YEAR! Happy New Year from Neoperspectives. Travis will be spending some much deserved and needed rest and relaxation

in an undisclosed location for the next few weeks. In the meantime I will be guest blogging here at Neoperspectives. For those that don't know,

my name is Geoff Dobson, nicknamed Dobber. Travis and I met in July of 1999 while we were both spending our summer break lifeguarding at

Ocean City, MD. We spent a couple summers as roommates and have since discovered we share a similar political and philosophical ideology.

That is, we believe that limited government and free markets are the best systems of association mankind has ever come up with. So, thanks for

State officials said mass slaughters conducted any other way are unsanitary and threaten an outbreak of disease.
You see, mass slaughter is a delicate and complex activity that can only be done by experts with lobbyists, I mean, experts with expertise.

12/14/07 Reuters
Years of shoddy maintenance and mounting shortages of spare parts have left Venezuela's second-largest oil refinery barely capable of functioning, three sources at the refinery told Reuters.

State oil company PDVSA's 300,000 barrels per day Cardon refinery is currently operating at minimal rates because four of its six steam boilers are out of service, leaving the facility without enough steam to keep units functioning, the three sources said.

"They don't have the equipment. There are no spare parts, and they don't have them because they are not experienced enough to get them," said one of the refinery sources, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity.

This year alone there have been 12 major outages, almost half of which have been blamed on power failures. At least nine workers have been hurt in refinery accidents in 2007.

PDVSA has struggled with operational problems at its refineries since hundreds of refinery workers and engineers were fired after they joined an anti-government strike meant to force President Hugo Chavez from power in December 2002.

Chavez purged the company of his political opponents in 2003 and turned it into the financial engine of a social development campaign that has built up his political support.

Is this right out of Atlas Shrugged or what? This is the result of the state kicking out private companies and further politicizing the state owned companies.

In other news, Venezuelans voted to deny Chavez dictatorial rights a few weeks ago. Democracy is a flawed system, but it appears to safeguard certain rights, even while trampling on the rights of the individual and placing the minority under sway of the majority. Has the oil boom helped Venezuela? Their economy is tanking.

This title of this article stems from Brazilian president Lula da Silva invoking the almighty in thanks for the discovery of massive oil deposits off the coast of Brazil. But, if history is any guide, this discovery will surely prove to be a pox upon the people of Brazil. The feedback loops of freedom and capitalism and revenues to the voracious government will become unbalanced with this new influx of money and it is likely socialism and tyranny will expand and freedom retreat.

About 70 percent of Petrobras' oil production comes from deep-water wells, making it the world's biggest oil producer at such depths. But the Tupi deposit is deeper than Petrobras has ever drilled — under 7,000 feet of ocean water and more than 16,000 feet of rock, sand and salt, including a 1.2-mile-thick layer of rock-hard salt.

In 2005, U.S.-based Chevron and its partners drilled the deepest offshore oil and gas well in history at 34,189 feet below sea level in the Gulf of Mexico, according to Transocean, the world's largest offshore drilling contractor, which completed the well. The deepest onshore well, at 37,016 feet, was completed earlier this year on Sakhalin Island, off the Russian coast, for ExxonMobil.

Additionally, we see the same pattern with Brazil's state owned oil companies as Venezuela's. The article concludes:

"This discovery... proves that God is Brazilian," Mum's the word as far as God goes, but here on Earth it is apparent that Petrobras may struggle to meet their 2011 production target, let alone their goal for 2015.

Following Ron Paul's record $6 million day money bomb last Sunday, he gave this great interview with Glen Beck tonight. An amazing articulation of conservatism and libertarian principles, which I cannot believe we are lucky enough to find stemming from a major candidate for president of the United States. I find it hard to believe even people opposed to Ron Paul's candidacy could come away not respecting and admiring Paul's beliefs after seeing this interview.

On December 16th, 1773, American colonists dumped tea into the Boston Harbor to protest an oppressive tax. This December 16th, American citizens will dump millions of dollars into the Ron Paul presidential campaign to protest the oppressive and unconstitutional inflation tax - and the IRS, which sanctions government theft by proxy ownership on an individual's labor! (my addition) Please join us this December 16th 2007 for the largest one-day political donation event in history. Our goal is to bring together 100,000 people to donate $100 each, creating a one day donation total of $10,000,000.

So a Democratic, or even Republican Congress completes the appropriations process, and sends President Paul the funding bill for, say, the Commerce Department. Ron Paul doesn’t think we should have a Commerce Department, so he vetoes it.

Congress either overrides it, or maybe with enough folks to sustain veto. Suddenly the appropriators of both parties find themselves constantly bumping up against a president who forces them, for the first time in anyone's memory, to justify the existence of this federal department and its attending bureaucracy, much less the size of its budget. In the meantime, Paul may not appoint a Commerce Secretary, since he thinks we don’t need a department. Or any of the undersecretaries. Or Department of Agriculture, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development…. <.>

But if you think Washington is big and bloated and unresponsive and voracious in its appetite for ever-larger, ever-more intrusive government, Ron Paul is the guy who would throw a monkeywrench into the gears. Official Washington would grind to a halt; it’s hard to imagine any big expansion of government with a president who made Tom Coburn look like Robert Byrd. Four to eight years, of a broken record, “No, I’m vetoing it, it’s not in the Constitution… no, I’m vetoing that too, it’s not in the Constitution.”

You think about that scenario, suddenly every other guy in the race looks like the candidate of the status quo.

1) Paul wants the government out of health care, and opposes Medicare, Medicaid, and federally mandated children's health insurance.

2) “If we reduced federal spending to the levels of just a decade ago we could get rid of the income tax and replace it with nothing. There is only one candidate for president, Ron Paul who is committed to ending the income tax.”

Plus, regardless of what the unconstitutional FCC and campaign finance reform laws might say, the Ron Paul blimp is up!

This article was the first I had heard of a 'mirror neuron'. Here is the basic idea:

These neurons are active when the monkeys perform certain tasks, but they also fire when the monkeys watch or hear someone else perform the same specific task.

..when a person observes another person's action, their motor cortex becomes more excitable

The existence of these mirror neurons quantifies what we already know from our own experience and further illustrates the broad degree to which we are influences by our environments. Mirror neurons are likely very active in learning processes like infantile modeling,

But some form of 'mirror neurons' or their equivalents are present in our language, behavioral, and emotional centers, and will form an integral part of any cultural/societal theory.

For example, when a large audience sees an event on TV, like the superbowl, or a blockbuster movie, or listen to a presidential address, they all undergo similar subtle neurologic changes stemming from the same environmental input, which aggregately form the common ties that bind us as a people and influence our environmental output. Not a bad thing, if freely chosen.

We can quickly shift this into a political field. In communism, the attempt is through state control to influence culture and indoctrinate (called educate) the population in a controlled way, increasing the commonalities of culture, creating a uniformly good populace, and attaining the ideal culture and society. This, of course, presumes the state (and the those learned individuals who run it) know what is the best end result and the most feasible path to this enlightenment.

However, most societies today only do this partially; they have 'state owned media', and regulate the culture (like France and Venezuela who mandate a certain percentage of their media must be from in country). These actions send an energy wave (negative we assume), pardon the brief divergence to eastern terminology, through the populace and the mechanism is in part demonstrated by the pathophysiology of described mirror neurons.

It should also be of interest to examine the same phenomena on an individual level. When one sees a horror movie, fights with a friend or family member, or hears about or witnesses people acting unkindly, mirror neurons are firing and changing the brain in subconscious ways. When we see anger, whether in film or in real life, or even read about it, a tiny bit of this negative energy is incorporated into our psych via said neurologic mechanisms, with the result being 'suffering', ie a more negative and less happy conscious experience in life.

But, on a positive note, this also lends both credence and importance to the goals of living a good life and improving oneself. If one lives a life of goodness and honor, besides the aforementioned direct benefit to oneself in the form of increased happiness, one spreads positive energy, as others view your example and their mirror neurons fire to their subconscious and/or conscious. Additionally, this positive influence on the environment will indirectly provide self benefit in the future, fulfilling the karmic theory.

It can be argued that this post really doesn't say anything new, simply rehashes old theories in a new light, and I'll certainly accept that. A scientific mechanism based explanations for philosophy and spirituality is often sorely lacking or, worse, even discounted by the very proponents of such ideas. Different ways of saying the same thing should be pursued and elucidated; after all, all roads lead to Rome, but one can only travel one road to get there.

So, as we can see global warming has become the new 'fad' amongst reporters, blamed for everything, even oppositely occurring phenomena. Amongst researchers, it increasingly appears what they find is less important than what is to blame for their findings; academia and science is just as politicized, if not more so (due to state funding/control) than other sources. Science follows the (state) money, not the other way around.

If laws banning the use of force are relaxed when an intruder crawls in your window and you’re home, shouldn’t stringent F.D.A. regulations bend when you’re backed into a dark corner by a terminal illness? That was the gist of an argument made by the U.C.L.A. law professor Eugene Volokh in the May issue of The Harvard Law Review. Citing the concept of “medical self-defense,” Volokh contended that a dying American should have the right to buy any drug that has passed the F.D.A.’s preliminary safety tests. Currently, the F.D.A. insists that most terminally ill patients await, like everyone else, full proof of a drug’s safety and efficacy.

Michigan will impose a new six-percent sales tax on non-essential services starting Saturday, December 1st.

The move is catching many business owners by surprise.Some thought the tax had been repealed, in light of the headlines a repeal bill in the State Legislature has made lately.

Despite all the talk, the last time the repeal bill was considered was Wednesday, when it was defeated by the State Senate.

That means, in all likelihood, Michigan’s sales tax will officially go to the “dogs,” on Saturday.

“Honestly I think there's probably better areas to tax than dog grooming,” said Greta Dalrymple of Top Notch Grooming in Niles.

While dog groomers will be subject to the six-percent tax, people groomers will not. “I honestly think that human haircuts should be charged along with the four legged haircuts,” said Dalrymple. "It's both a service, so I think part of this is unfair the way they're singling out some industries versus others.”

“I’ve only been in the service industry now a couple of years, but what I see is most service businesses are one-man operations,” said Steve Rutherford of Care

And while manicures and pedicures will be subject to the new tax, haircuts won't.

Tanning is also on the list of taxable items. At Maui Tan in Niles, they worry about the impact the service tax could have, given “Maui’s” proximity to the Indiana border.

“They'll probably end up going where its cheaper,” said Amber Valentine, “they'll end up tanning somewhere else if they're paying more here.”

Michigan State Representative Neal Nitz today apologized for the way the tax has been handled.

“We had always been telling the public that we were going to repeal it,” he said, “it was a bad idea.”

“I really am quite ashamed of being a part of the process,” said Nitz. “it’s something I’m not proud of, or happy the way it’s running.”

The following is a list of items that will be subject to the six percent sales tax:

Bail bonding services
Tattoos and piercings
Carpet cleaning
Dating services
Financial investment counseling services
Gift wrapping services
Lawn care services
Locksmith services
Manicure and pedicure services
Private detective services
Skiing
Sun tanning

Chimney cleaning services
Chiropractor’s services
Dry cleaning services
Hair care (trimming, styling, shampooing, coloring, or waving)
Karate instruction services
Real estate services
Snow plowing services

As you can see all of these exemptions and nonexemptions are completely arbitrary. So why did it happen? So politicians could shake down industries, generate campaign contributions and lobbyists could tell their respective industry groups what a great job they did representing them. Everyone wins, well, except those who didn't make the exemption status. And it is not a conspiracy, most likely many of the politicians and lobbyists are unaware of how the system works and how things turn out the way they do. Or, even more likely, they recognize the system for its imperfections, but are unable to recognize their own subconscious failings and see the solution.

Hundreds of hospice providers across the country are facing the catastrophic financial consequence of what would otherwise seem a positive development: their patients are living longer than expected.

Over the last eight years, the refusal of patients to die according to actuarial schedules has led the federal government to demand that hospices exceeding reimbursement limits repay hundreds of millions of dollars to Medicare.

Just another example of the perverse incentives resultant of government control of healthcare. Here is another previously posted instance of this sort of thing occurring over in Britain.

For reasons that are not fully understood, problems with the cap have been most prevalent at small, for-profit hospices in Southern and Western states like Mississippi, Alabama and Oklahoma.

This may not be what is occurring in this case but, from an ideological point of view, it would be interesting to do a study comparing death rates of patients with similar conditions in for profit vs non profit vs state owned hospices. I wonder if patients live longer in the private for profit hospices simply on the basis of their private for-profit nature?

WHY do people — gay or straight — need the state’s permission to marry? For most of Western history, they didn’t, because marriage was a private contract between two families.

But governments began relying on marriage licenses for a new purpose: as a way of distributing resources to dependents.

Perhaps it’s time to revert to a much older marital tradition. Let churches decide which marriages they deem “licit.” But let couples — gay or straight — decide if they want the legal protections and obligations of a committed relationship.

Arkansaw Democrat Gazette
Nearly half of the babies delivered by Hispanic mothers in Benton County last year were born out of wedlock. That was double the rate for white, non-Hispanic mothers in the county. The statistics mirror national trends that have the attention of advocates of all persuasions. Immigration critics warn of looming consequences, from persistent poverty to welfare dependency. The Bush administration also makes the connection:

As demonstrated, teen and out of wedlock marriage, along with child poverty, has plummeted since welfare reform was enacted in the late 90s. This article demonstrates welfarism has not been reduced enough; that it is still prevalent enough to cause these sorts of scourges in the Hispanic communities. Not because they are 'Hispanic', but because the newly arriving immigrants are poorer. This article does not mention any of this.

Preventing out-of wedlock pregnancies is a key to its $100 million “healthy marriage” strategy for curbing welfare.

A $100 million dollar 'healthy marriage' strategy? LOL This is the first I've heard of this. Of course, this sort of social engineering propaganda can only be doomed to failure, probably just as effective as the governments attempt to influence 'drug use'.

An easier strategy to strengthen marriage would be to eliminate socialism in the United States, and further cut welfare. Incidentally, it might even lessen some of the immigration angst percolating out there.

The United States, despite our own pervasive healthcare socialism, is often accused of vast health disparities. What happens with fully socialized medicine? Won't everyone be more 'equal' in single payer systems? We've found that in Canada this is certainly not the case and Britain is no exception:

CANCER patients across Britain are facing a life-or-death postcode lottery which decides whether they get vital drugs and treatment.

EACH cancer sufferer in bottom-of-the-table Oxfordshire is allotted just £5,182 a year—while in top-ranking Nottingham the spending is TREBLE that at £17,028.

PATIENTS in high-spending areas such as Birmingham or Knowsley, Liverpool, have a 20 PER CENT better chance of surviving than those in low-spending Dorset or parts of Yorkshire.

EVEN neighbouring towns differ wildly, with Hounslow (£11,726) in the Home Counties spending almost DOUBLE Ealing's £6,650; and Solihull (£6,405) in the Midlands being OUTSTRIPPED by Wolverhampton (£10,797).

This was a very interesting book, although I'd agree with his editors, various parts were longish, somewhat irrelevant, and a bit out of scope. As the author himself says:

Every time I tried to rewrite a passage or section of the book that was overly academic, I discovered that the reason I had lapsed into academic jargon was that I really didn't know what I was talking about. I hadn't fully worked out the details and implications of whatever theory I was trying to explain, so I felt insecure about the explanation and tried to hide that security under a cloak of big words.

We can respect his honesty here, because there appears few ideas so complex that the basic tenants cannot be explained in simple concise terms over a reasonable amount of time.

Yet in certain areas he may be guilty of violating his own premise. The history of psychotherapy, the philosophy of consciousness and will, and the conflicts between the medical and psychoanalytic model, were three areas heavy on jargon and citations, yet with little substance. In stark contrast, his stories, examples, and analysis of current psychotherapy, how and why it works, and his interpretations of both his patients and himself were absolutely fascinating and the highlight of the book.

An interaction between two human beings has a number of components. First, both human beings are conscious of various feelings and thoughts, and they recognize their particular state is a result (chosen or otherwise) of the interaction with the other individual. Each person also has a particular 'personality' or 'pattern of life', which influences both the input (people's reaction to them) and output (their reaction to others). Of course, the terms are not mutually exclusive, someone who is angry towards others will often receive that anger back, possibly causing even further anger output. This leads to perpetuating cycles, patterns which can be seen throughout a persons life. Dr. Frattaroli really does an excellent job of explaining that there are very fundamental unique energies/emotions or reactions to a life experience which become ingrained deeply enough in our psych to effect nearly every aspect of our lives. Unfortunately, these patterns often repeat over and over without our conscious awareness, as they often require indirect reasoning, extrapolation, emotional courage, and the difficult ability to step outside oneself to judge more objectively.

Especially interesting is how widespread and pervasive these patterns become. Say, for instance, one has a conflict with a boss at work. Instead of blaming the boss, it is more instructive to look within oneself and view the conflict with the boss as only one of of many many symbols stemming from a deep underlying problem within oneself. The same issue likely manifests in relationships with friends, one's spouse and family, and every other aspect of life, even perhaps in relatively arcane subsets like eating, sleeping, and sexuality.

To view the fundamental of what actually is, rather than just what we see ourselves as, can be especially difficult because the subconscious may contain opposite emotions than how we view ourselves, may engage in internal power struggles, and attempt to fulfill unhelpful emotional or sexual desires. An important part of a therapists job is to act as a mirror, as a blank slate, from which the patient is forced to become aware that their negative emotions are coming from inside themselves, and do not originate from an external source. Readers may recall, this sort of idea was the premise of 'Personal Responsibility, Mental Responsibility', regarding the root of all thoughts and emotions. While Frattaroli doesn't go this far; he emphasizes the makeup of the therapist as key; if a therapist is consumed by the constant cauldron of desires, jealousies, and other negative emotions and animal cravings, the therapist and client relationship will soon degenerate into an emotional squabble with no favorable outcome for either party. A common criticism of psychoanalysis, from popular culture and scientific quarters, is its seemingly overemphasis on human sexual natures. While the constant Freudian references to parental and childhood sexual associations is likely very much overplayed, the general idea of unconscious sexual tension between two individuals is surely quite powerful. Sexual desires, attractions, and fantasy's make up such a fundamental portion of human psych (bear in mind it was Buddha who reportedly said, "If there were one more vice as strong as the vice of lust I should never have become enlightened") that it can offer great insight into the aforementioned life patterns and likely plays a huge role in the therapist/client relationship.

A great story Frattaroli tells is one of a young girl from a brothel who comes into a hospital with all kinds of various sicknesses, refusing to talk and refusing to take medication. The resident attempts to reason with her and politely tries to spoon feed her, but she slaps the medication into his face and he leaves irately, with her glaring at him as he leaves. The chief attending hears the report, assesses, and enters only to have the same thing occur, but this time when she slaps the medicine in his face he just wipes it off, smiles and refills the spoon and tries again. She looks at him in astonishment, and in a rage, slaps the medication even harder back in his face. He again smiles and repeats the action. Suddenly she breaks down in an intense emotional outburst of crying and sadness, but eventually she takes the medication and begins a remarkable recovery process. The key part of the story is when the chief attending did not feed into the cycle she had likely created as a protection from the horrors of the brothel. Through his actions, the chief attending forced her to recognize that he was not the problem, that the interaction between the two of them was negative entirely because of her. He was, in essence, the transparent window, allowing her to view herself objectively. He was only successful because he was able to stymie the intense negative counter reaction he had to her cursing him and splashing the medicine in his face.

Perhaps the best lesson found in this book is Frattaroli's assertion, 'the patient is always right'. In other words, the mind protects itself the best way it is able. There is a reason for peoples' behaviors. In the above example, the girl may have even gotten sick or refused to take her medicine because she didn't want to go back to the brothel; it is perfectly logical, provided one starts from the proper perspective. However, because of the power of the subconscious, the patient himself will often not be able to articulate the reasons for her actions, only a clear and undiluted mind of a therapists relatively free from personal conflict can attempt to piece together these reasonings. This view also allows the therapist to view the patient without judgment.

Another example of this is Frattaroli's postulation that the Schizophrenic brain separates the upper cognitive functions of the frontal cortex from the lower subthalmic emotional and survival neuronal firings. He states the mind undergoes this change as a protection, to shield the higher processes from disturbing emotional pulses, but the result being that a gulf widens between the two and neither function properly thereafter. It has often been stated, perhaps correctly, that psychoanalytic theory collapses when dealing with more serious biologic physiologic illnesses and this Schizophrenic theory is interesting as it puts this to the test. I would have liked to see more psychoanalytic explanations for a wider variety of psychiatric and physiopsychiatric conditions.

I thought his constant references to both his editors and his own personal life were a complimentary addition to his book. It is only fitting after all, that a psychoanalytic book, indeed any book, must be intertwined with the mental psych of the author. I can respect his intimate disclosures and honest attempt to 'bare all' to his audience. His mention of his past political railings did fit with his admittedly similar over passionate zest to crusade against the medical model.

In conclusion, I think neither the medical nor psychoanalytic model are mutually exclusive, a conclusion Frattaroli also appears to accept, at least in part. Patients may be best served with the ability to choose either one, both, or neither. My only hope is that one day market forces will return to healthcare to truly allow patients their choice of treatment and specialist, at an affordable price. As Frattaroli himself might opine, I think they will choose correctly. :).

Republican Presidential candidate Ron Paul rocked Las Vegas today drawing a raucous crowd of 1200-1500 people into UNLV's Ham Hall.

The days events began with a fundraising luncheon, attended by roughly 70 people. With a $1000 dollar recommended donation and $500 minimum donation the event likely raised in excess of $35,000 for Paul's campaign.

Dr Paul spoke at both the luncheon (15 minutes) and UNLV rally (45min-1hr) and signed autographs, posed for pictures, and mingled with the crowd at both events.

His speeches touched on liberty, freedom, and personal responsibility. Some highlights (paraphrasing):

"I don't pretend to know answers. I don't want to run the world, I don't want to run the economy, and I don't want to run your lives."

"The good thing about these speeches is that I don't say things to different groups depending on where I go like some other candidates, I never have to think about where I am or who the audience is."

However, he did tailor one specific for Nevada. At UNLV he brought up his vote on Yucca mountain, one of only 3 congressmen (the other two from NV) he said, to vote against the nuclear waste being stored here because (paraphrasing), "I don't feel people in other states should be able to vote problems onto other states. People in a given state should decide what they want in their state".

He also mentioned the money bombs, both past (Nov 5th) and future (Dec 16th), and how the press the Nov 5th bomb generated was worth millions.

Paul got his biggest cheers, standing ovations, plus plenty of hooting and hollering for his "the government should have no claim on your life, liberty, or property, which includes your income," "abolish the IRS", statement, as well as his "I'd just like to get the US out of the UN" quip.

We had 3 out of 4 major Las Vegas news media channels attend the rally, you can see their live coverage of the events here:

http://ktnv.com/ estimated approximately 2,000 attendees
http://kvbc.com/ estimated approximately 1,300 attendees

My estimate of 1300-1500 was arrived at by the fact that Artemus Hamm Hall seats approximately 1800, and is divided into a top and bottom section. The top section was not opened for our event, but only holds 1/4th to 1/5th the total number in the bottom segment, which was almost entirely filled.

In their coverage, the media also mentioned the many signs around town and his plan to eliminate the 'tax on tips' (radio ads now playing in NV emphasize the Paul 'no tax on tips' plan).

In contrast, Romney drew approximately 200 attendees to his event when he was here on Saturday. Today was a Monday with the rally at 3pm and also despite the Ron Paul campaign's unintentional lesson on the merits of central economic planning via the printing of two full page ads in the Las Vegas Review Journal with the wrong times for the rallies.

Also of note, Hans Gullickson, hired by the Republican party of NV to run the primary Republican caucuses gave a seminar to Ron Paul supporters the previous day (Sun 11/17), which was attended by over 100 people. This was more than who showed for the entire Republican party seminar weeks earlier.

Although Ron Paul is only currently polling at 8% in Nevada (up from 1% just a few months ago), the Ron Paul supporters here in Las Vegas are enthusiastic, growing, motivated, and determined to win NV. I think we will.

Paul is headed to Pahrump tonight and to Reno tomorrow for more fundraisers, rallies, and interviews.

My personnel highlight of the day was meeting Ron Paul (for the second time). I only had a second to say, "Abolish the FDA!" and he replied, "There ya go." I'll take that as an affirmative. :)

"There's one clear argument for sales," Dr. Matas told a gathering of surgeons earlier this year. The practice, currently illegal in the U.S., "would increase the supply of kidneys, save lives and improve the quality of life for those with end-stage renal disease."

Here is the basic plan, notice it is still not a completely 'free market' plan, but nonetheless moves in the right direction:

A set price, he says, could be established by the government and paid by the recipient's insurance, typically Medicare. The kidney would go to whoever is at the top of the waiting list, rich or poor. Potential sellers would be medically and psychologically screened to make sure they are suitable donors. Afterwards, they would be tracked by the government to see what impact the kidney sale had on their life and overall health.

Interestingly, the government would even save money by embracing the freemarket:

In February 2004, he and a colleague published a paper calculating that the government could spend $95,000 to evaluate and compensate a donor and still break even. The reason: Medicare pays for dialysis for all Americans who need it. Transplant recipients no longer need the costly procedure, which translates to huge savings.

"Every time I hear this talk, it makes me think a little bit more about it and question why I had such a gut-wrenching reaction against it," she told him after his presentation.

The 37-year-old father-of-two has for months scrambled to find basic products like cooking oil, beef and milk, despite leftist President Hugo Chavez's social program that promises to provide low-cost groceries to the majority poor.

"It takes a miracle to find milk," said Arteaga, who spent two hours in line outside a store in the poor Caracas neighborhood of Eucaliptus. <.>

Businesses say price controls on staple foods are so low they discourage investment and force stores to sell at a loss.

..the U.S. gives Musharraf’s government about $200 million annually and his military $100 million monthly in the form of direct cash transfers. Once that money leaves the U.S. Treasury, Musharraf can do with it whatever he wants. He needs only promise in a secret annual meeting that he’ll use it to invest in the Pakistani people.

This is to a country which is currently under martial law due to 'terrorism', pretty ironic considering Pakistan's past support for terrorism in India and Afghanistan. A country which is run by a socialist military dictatorship with Al Qaeda hiding around its territory for a number of years.

Granted, we are 'allies' and the criminal Musharraf is said to be doing his 'best' to 'counter terrorism' and, besides, since Musharraf is apparently an enemy of Al Qaeda (as evidenced by their multiple assassination attempts), shouldn't he be a friend of ours? This is like saying Stalin was a 'friend of ours' (uncle Joe) during WWII and that Osama was on our side against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

Better, IMO, call a spade a spade, and stop wasting American tax money, alienating the citizens of Pakistan, spreading socialism, and working against American's foreign policy interests.

How is US aid to Pakistan helping spread socialism? Well, since Pakistan is a poor country, we might expect it to be highly socialized, and therefore corrupt, with heavy government interference and ownership of industries. Indeed, this is the case, with the military (the same entity which receives cash US aid) owning large sectors of the economy:

So if you go to Pakistan, the best neighborhoods are the military neighborhoods. They're called defense housing estates. Nowhere else in the world does the military get involved in large-scale business as the Pakistani military has.

In fact, the only Pakistani-made cereal is made by a company that is run by a foundation that is under the military. It's supposed to benefit army veterans. But the fact remains that they manage that by not allowing competition in the cereal sector. They're in the cinnamon sector, they manufacture sugar, they have a bank, they have insurance companies. Because the military is running the government, these business institutions can have privileged conditions. And so they are not open to free-market forces and competition, which undermines the growth of Pakistan's economy as a free-market economy.

A top intelligence official says it is time people in the United States changed their definition of privacy.

Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguards people's private communications and financial information.

Kerr's comments come as Congress is taking a second look at the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act.

Privacy doesn't mean you have privacy, is what he appears he saying, minus the newspeak.

Mark Klein, a retired AT&T technician, helped connect a device in 2003 that he says diverted and copied onto a government supercomputer every call, e-mail, and Internet site access on AT&T lines.

I think this illustrates further the growing divide in the Republican party, not just on spending, not just on nationbuilding and foreign policy interventionism, but also on personal liberty. The current so-called GOP 'front runner', Rudy Giuliani doesn't appear to be deviating much from Bush's line, as the following quotes illustrate:

"I don't remember a constitutional amendment that gives you the right not to be identified."

"What we don't see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do."

Great Ron Paul interview with Tucker Carlson on the record $4.3 million dollars raised in 24 hours by some 37,000 individuals with an average donation of $103. His present total this quarter (each quarter is 3 months) of almost $7.5 million raised likely puts him in the lead of all Republicans candidates for this quarter.

Also, on November 5th over 15,000 people have signed up to contribute $100 to Ron Paul's presidential campaign in a massive 'money bomb'. Others have not officially 'signed up' but have said they will contribute on that day. It will be interesting to rock the political world and see what news coverage we get from this event, not to mention a massive cash infusion to the campaign.

The reason November 5th was chosen varies depending on who you ask, but is most likely related to the V for Vendetta movie (whom I can thank Dobber for recommending), which is set in a 'big brother' like society, with an all intrusive, powerful, and (of course) corrupt government. Characters with Ayn Rand type personalities outfox and outflank the tyranny, and ordinary citizens come together wearing Guy Fawkes masks on November 5th, Guy Fawkes day in England, to restore their liberty.

One can see why such rich symbolism would appeal to the Ron Paul campaign, pardon me, I mean the individuals supporting Ron Paul, the official 'Ron Paul campaign' does not, after all, control the campaign, a fact most Paul supporters wear as a badge of honor.

Another example of government incompetence in research. IMO, funding research is not a proper role of government. The money is better off spent in the hands of people like Mr Ventor and his financial backers.

The Iowa Department of Revenue, often accused of trying to squeeze blood out of turnips, is now searching for pennies in pumpkins.

Next Tuesday, Utah voters go to the polls to decide if their state will become the first in the nation to offer school vouchers statewide. Referendum 1 would make all public-school kids eligible for vouchers worth from $500 to $3,000 a year, depending on family income. Parents could then use the vouchers to send their children to private schools. <.>

But wait. Arrayed against the vouchers are the usual opponents. They call themselves Utahns for Public Schools. They include, predictably, the Utah Education Association (the teachers union), Utah School Boards Association, Utah School Employees Union, Utah School Superintendents Association, the elementary and secondary school principals associations, and the PTA. No to vouchers! they protest. Trust us. We know what's best for your kids.

Wow, a detailed and fair summation of Ron Paul's record in Congress. The Club For Growth nails another one!

When it comes to limited government, there are few champions as steadfast and principled as Representative Ron Paul. In the House of Representatives, he plays a very useful role constantly challenging the status quo and reminding his colleagues, despite their frequent indifference, that our Constitution was meant to limit the power of government. On taxes, regulation, and political free speech his record is outstanding.

This article is great because it illustrates why Paul may not have exemplary ratings from various 'conservative' organizations that people use as benchmarks. He votes against 'conservative' bills because they don't go far enough, or believes that fixing unconstitutional measures with lesser unconstitutional measures doesn't address the root problems.

Paul may, upon occasion, vote with Democrats, but this is mere coincidence; he arrives at his conclusions from the opposite side of the ideological spectrum.

There are no boundaries to what a single person or group can do without filling out a single government form.

This past Saturday, some of us put in an 18 hour day to finish 'er up! It's a three story sign clearly visible on the I15 between Vegas and LA. 7 million cars a month pass through here:

On a similar note, a video came out of the Las Vegas Ron Paul meetup vegas strip run!

But the Senate's farm bill, spanning some 1,300 pages, also reflects competition between its agricultural and its social welfare priorities. The bill's nutrition and rural development sections total 275 pages. The crop subsidy section totals 278 pages.

And what a congress of stinks!- Roots ripe as old bait, Pulpy stems, rank, silo-rich, Leaf mold, manure, lime, piled against slippery planks, Nothing would give up life: Even the dirt kept breathing a small breath.

I visited public schools that were scenes of barely controlled chaos. I walked halls that teemed with students 15 minutes after the bell had sounded for the start of class. I choked on the smell of marijuana in the stairwells. Little had changed when I visited a District high school last year.

I've listened to teachers and principals talk about students with barely disguised contempt, heard teachers gossip about students' sexual activity and had others refuse services or accommodations that they were legally obligated to provide.

When some neighbors considering the school called to schedule a visit, however, the receptionist was genuinely puzzled.

My neighbors and I kept calling. Two or three weeks later, school staff members agreed to let us in. I found the building clean and well-maintained. The classes were quiet and students attentive.

The next step was meeting with the principal. That took more letters and calls; so many, in fact, that Fenty -- then our Ward 4 council member -- offered to call on our behalf. I thanked him but said no. It shouldn't take a council member's intervention to get a principal to meet with parents.

We thought we were going to be able to when our son won a lottery spot in a bilingual Montessori charter school that was just starting. For three years, from preschool through kindergarten, we watched him thrive with the same teacher, who truly valued him. Early in his first-grade year, however, it became clear that while energy and passion were important in starting a school, they were poor substitutes for teaching and administrative experience.

The problems began when the school finally moved into a building of its own. Pepco and Verizon wouldn't start services because a clerk in the District's notoriously inefficient Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs hadn't completed the paperwork for the certificate of occupancy.

Staff members worked to correct this, but it took parents' writing the utilities (I asked Verizon's president how it would look if something happened to a child because no one could call 911) to get the lights turned on and the phones working.

The drug Mr Hill needs is called Tarceva. It is available for free in Scotland but not in England, as the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence found it was not "an effective use of NHS resources".

It has been welcomed by cancer specialists around the world and is used extensively in Europe and the US.

The £4,000 Chantelle has raised will pay for only two months of treatment, but she is determined to keep going and raise more, Mrs Hill said.

You may never have heard of Harvey Mudd College but a higher percentage of its graduates go on to get Ph.D.s than do the graduates of Harvard, Yale, Stanford or M.I.T. So do the graduates of Grinnell, Reed, and various other small colleges.

Of the chief executive officers of the 50 largest American corporations surveyed in 2006, only four had Ivy League degrees. Some -- including Michael Dell of Dell computers and Bill Gates of Microsoft -- had no degree at all.

Apparently getting into Prestige U. is not the life or death thing that some students or their parents think it is.

My only clarification would be that having a 'Ph.D' is not necessarily reflective of 'education' either. :)

Both of the above stories share the commonalities of having their problems stem from statist control over important commodities, socialized electricity and water respectively. The results are no different than the Soviet breads lines, bare shelves in Zimbabwe, healthcare in Canada and Britain, or even 'traffic' here in the US.

The head of the Federal Communications Commission has circulated an ambitious plan to relax the decades-old media ownership rules, including repealing a rule that forbids a company to own both a newspaper and a television or radio station in the same city.

This would be great news for media freedom, diversity of opinion, and improving the quality and quantity of news. A good first step that would ideally end in the abolition of the FCC itself. :)

Currently, a company can own two television stations in the larger markets only if at least one is not among the four largest stations and if there are at least eight local stations. The rules also limit the number of radio stations that a company can own to no more than eight in each of the largest markets.

But deregulation in the media is difficult politically, because many Republican and Democratic lawmakers are concerned about news outlets in their districts being too tightly controlled by too few companies.

But on the day of the birth, she was twice turned away from the hospital because it was full - forcing her partner to deliver the baby himself at their home.

A spokesman for the hospital said: "The maternity unit from time to time experiences peaks in demand and during the last 12 months we have seen an increase in births at the Princess of Wales Hospital.

"We can confirm that it was necessary for this unit to close recently for a short time to new maternity admissions due to the unit reaching full capacity."

I wonder if this couple will be reinbursed their tax money taken from them to finance care they did not receive. Because people are not paying for a service there is no accountability.

A great articulation of conservative/libertarian philosophy as it deals with the environment. Property rights (and Federalism, which Paul doesn't mention, but perhaps should have) is a simple and common sense approach to dealing with these issues.

The only possible weakness I can see in this general theory, is that if someone was to pollute your property, say water supply, but then went bankrupt, you’d be stuck with the damages.

I think this is reflective of the need to tighten bankruptcy laws so that people are accountable for their credit and the damage they do to others. Actually ‘tightened’ is a misnomer, the current laws should be repealed to allow contracts to be drawn up between individuals, creditor and lender. Also, people could buy insurance, both the possible polluter and the individual, sort of like uninsured collision insurance for the individual and ‘disaster’ insurance for the possible polluter.

On a different note, here is a great Ron Paul clip from NBC and Joe Scarborough.

A guest author, 'Maelstrom', has agreed to allow neoperspectives.com to publish an excellent, if strongly worded, piece on the nature of conspiracy theories and their theorists. Conspiracies are a somewhat natural consequence of libertarian type thought, they stem from a distrust of government taken to such an extreme that the distrust and cynicism become so ingrained in the worldview as to become the most prominent part of it, and are in turn liberally, pardon the pun, applied to many extraneous facets of life and often expanded to include nongovernmental parties and private institutions and individuals. Alex Jones, a radio personality, is one individual, who, although offering unique points of view in some perspectives, frequently errors in this fashion.

For an extreme example, the 'ultimate conspiracy', if you will, lol, and this one is a hoot, especially if you have a background in what this guy is spouting about:

Q We hear every day on TV about vast right-wing conspiracies and neoconservative cabals and all the various strings the administration is pulling. And so the question that keeps coming up to me is, if you guys are so powerful, why in the heck didn't you plant the weapons of mass destruction? (Laughter.) (Applause.)

SEC. RUMSFELD: (Laughs.) Oh, my. (Laughter.) It's kind of nice to be out of Washington. (Laughter.)

9/11: Debunking The Myths / PM examines the evidence and consults the experts to refute the most persistent conspiracy theories of September 11

Mr. Jones is one artful conspiracy loon. He is at least an equal opportunity one who is at least consistent in that he thinks everyone Republicans and Democrats are out to get him.

Honestly that is the only reasonable stance for someone who chooses to accept the conspiracy nonsense. The whole of the government at some level right and left would have had to worked together to pull off something of the magnitude of a 9-11. True conspiracies require so many co-conspirators that they soon collapse under their own weight of incredulity.

Conspiracies to succeed require an Al Qaeda style commitment. Politicians are by their very nature not good candidates because they are not very good at keeping their traps shut and are very self preserving and vainglorious.

They are also quick to back stab each other and exercise leverage against one another which usually ends up being their downfall. Such type also have a bad habit of writing down their escapades in diaries and spilling their guts to pretty call girls.

Mr. Jones and his like are right not to trust the government but they are wrong to believe it capable of genius and cunning that is not evident anyplace within it.

The little kings are too busy wasting money and taking smoke breaks to conspire to do anything but sneak out early when the tax payer isn’t watching. The great deceptions are those they make in plain sight. Promising free Health Care, promising to make us safer, leading us to believe learning requires billions of dollars and teachers paid and trained on a gold standard, telling us cutting taxes is spending, and that our soldiers are no better than shock troopers.

I could go on and on at the myths and lies and phony crud that is offered up on the plate of American politics by the very horrible chefs in Washington. Most are educated lawyers and that should trouble us only because it should make us truly skeptical of what it means to be educated. Believing one has special knowledge and attributing a grandness to the buffoons in Washington that they do not deserve is to confuse a man who is driving drunk with a man who is trying sincerely to run you down. Those in Washington are drunk with tax payer money and too busy looking at themselves on TV to conspire to do anything but fall prey to their own weaknesses and power hungry nature. That it leads to a socialist mommy state is not because great thought has went into it only that babies are prone to seek what makes them feel safe and those in power wish to make sure citizens need them to feel safe. They hunger for attention just as their supporters hunger to be fed and told they really aren’t perverts, baby killers, weak cowards, and lazy dumb asses.

The children of ignorance feed on the comforting breast dripping with pleasant illusions and snarl and snap at any hand that would take that breast away.

78 percent of private patients said they were there because they could not find a National Health Service (NHS) dentist, and only 15 percent because of better treatment.

Overall, six percent of patients had resorted to self-treatment, according to the survey of 5,000 patients in England, which found that one in five had decided against dental work because of the cost.

Almost half of all dentists -- 45 percent -- said they no longer take NHS patients, while 41 percent said they had an "excessive" workload. Twenty-nine percent said their clinic had problems recruiting or retaining dentists.

"These findings indicate that the NHS dental system is letting many patients down very badly," said Grant.

Readers may recall previously posted stories on British Dental service see, 1, 2, 3, 4...

The Ron Paul Las Vegas Meetup group held two strip drives this weekend, with about 10 cars/trucks and a massive RV as the kingmaker. Blaring horns, big crowds, flag and sign waving, we were a sight to behold!:

Interesting coincidence, we ran across this guy, or he stumbled across us somewhat in his drink, who had never heard of Ron Paul! The one running for president that is... :)

In other news, check out what these folks did over the past weekend. Regardless of one's political persuasion, you gotta give 'em credit, their effort and diligence is truly a sight to behold.

A G.M. spokeswoman, Michelle Bunker, said the company had not specifically called for a single-payer health care plan, in which a government program would be created to offer health care benefits.

Corporate welfare at its worse, GM, owing some $52 billion in health care liabilities to its union members will soon try to force socialized medicine upon the citizens of the United States.

The biggest news to come out of the Ron Paul campaign (www.ronpaul2008.com) last week was that the campaign raised $5.08 million during the third quarter of this year. <.>

Ron Paul may be the candidate who breaks through. Whatever happens, his campaign has turned into the most significant pro-freedom mass movement in modern American history, perhaps in all of our history.

However, things aren't all peachy, Ron Paul has admitted to some serious vices, which may make him unfit for higher office. :)

Also, Andrew Roth, over at the Club For Growth has told me (and given permission to announce here) that they are working on a piece, 'Ron Paul's Record on Economics Issues', due out in a few weeks time, joining those already in existence on Thompson, Romney, Giuliani, McCain, Huckbee, and Brownback. These reports offer excellent in depth analysis from, IMO, the most credible freemarket source in existence.

However, it will be interesting to see how they rate Paul, as he is often difficult to pin down by traditional methods. How many Congressmen vote against CAFTA and NAFTA because it is 'government managed trade', not free trade. In other words, if you vote against a 'free trade' bill because it's not free enough are you counted as having an 'anti free trade' record?

We shall see, but I very much look forward to seeing their report. I suspect many of their members would be quite thrilled with a Paul Presidency and are, perhaps, unaware of his exemplary record in Congress. I mean, forget abolishing the 'death tax', a laudable high priority for the Club For Growth, let's abolish the entire IRS! :)

This past weekend, SOMA (Student Osteopathic Medical Organization), representing over 14,000* Medical Students, 15%* of the total medical students in the United States, passed the following resolution (only the final 'RESOLVED' statement was officially passed, the 'WHEREAS' parts are included here only for completeness):

Resolution:

References

This resolution will be passed onto the pertinent committee(s) at the AOA (American Osteopathic Association), which represents 52,000 DOs, 5% of the country's physicians, for their review.

Ron Paul raised $1.2 million in the last week of this quarter, his campaign will release his total fundraising numbers soon, and those of the other candidates will roll in shortly. However, there's no question he's on a roll.

This is an interesting article, as it purports, from a purely political perspective, how Ron Paul's stance on the war and immigration make him the best choice to beat Hillary.

When I first saw this article, I'll have to admit I saw it as an interesting but sort of an unlikely possibility, worthy of nothing more than a abstract intellectual political argument; but now I think present developments merit it more serious consideration.

The GOP also has to consider how the +50,000 passionate Ron Paul meetup members, probably numbering some 75-100k by election day would aid the campaign, plus the piggyback effect on other Republican incumbents. These volunteers will not be there, at least not in these numbers, for a Fred Thompson or a Mitt Romney.

Three years after the federal government stopped subsidizing it, the leafy crop is gaining new popularity among U.S. farmers. Cheaper U.S. tobacco has become competitive as an export, and China, Russia and Mexico, where cigarette sales continue to grow, are eager to buy. Since 2005, U.S. tobacco acreage has risen 20 percent. Fields are now filled with it in places like southern Illinois, which hasn't grown any substantial amounts since the end of World War I.

What an interesting story, isn't it? Government, even when it tries to help, even when it steals money from taxpayers, ends up hurting those who ostensibly reap dividends from its help. The free market helps even the beneficiaries of government largeness, which makes it all the more puzzling that special interests receive vast sums from their respective membership to spend lobbying government for funds and 'friendly' regulations, when in the end it ultimately comes back to bite them. True prosperity will come when individuals reject the claims of their representative lobbyists and trust in freedom.

Readers may recall in 'Amnesty from Government', it was discussed how baring 'illegals' from government funds will likely actually be a boon to the illegals and a continued harm on the regular Americans that receive them. Again, in a sense, the reasoning and logic is opposite of the truth.

I wonder what the 'Republican' Senators of North and South Carolina, big tobacco growing states that were adamantly against eliminating the government subsidy, think of this development? Or are they already onto the next pork project?
(Added to 'Farm Subsidies')

When we hear that more and more jobs “require” a college degree, that isn’t because most of them are so technically demanding that an intelligent high school graduate couldn’t learn to do the work. Rather, what it means is that more employers are using educational credentials as a screening mechanism. As James Engell and Anthony Dangerfield write in their book Saving Higher Education in the Age of Money, “the United States has become the most rigidly credentialized society in the world. A B.A. is required for jobs that by no stretch of imagination need two years of full-time training, let alone four.”
<.>

Sadly, college education is now generally sold as a stepping stone to good employment rather than as an intellectually broadening experience. Sometimes it manages to do both, but often it does neither.

An interesting take on the effect of Public compulsory education on family cohesion and values.

The only book by Laura Ingalls Wilder I've read is Farmer Boy, her biography of the life of her husband, Almanzo Wilder, when he was ten years old and growing up on a farm. I was surprised by his life, which wasn't all that long ago--in the 1860's.

Almanzo had a place and a purpose in the family, and an important one. The functioning of the farm was very much dependent on him, and Almanzo didn't mind at all. He enjoyed it a great deal. How many teenagers today can say the same? How many today just live with their families, but don't truly feel part of them? As for school--ugh.

There was something very interesting about Almanzo's life. He hated school passionately and apparently only attended a few months at the most in his entire life. Yet he grew up intelligent and well-read.

So, school, too, is a major part of the problem with teenagers today. Many have little purpose or meaning in their families, and even less in school. Unfortunately, to borrow a phrase from John Taylor Gatto, the purpose of government factory schools is indoctrination. That's why it puzzled me at first why family and school didn't mean that much to me. I especially had no place, or meaning, or purpose, in school. Indoctrination is not education, and it's always boring and never has any meaning.

Almanzo had an important place in the family, but no place in school. That's why he hated it. School meant nothing to him, and it bored him. It isn't any different today. <.>

I've come to the conclusion there is no hope for the public schools. They bore kids, they destroy their imaginations, they give them no meaning or purpose. I'd shut them down on the spot if I could. How many kids like school? Almost none. Doesn't that tell people something? <.>

As for families, I do know one thing; the State is the cause of most of their problems. Interference by public schools, interference in the economy, destruction of neighborhoods and communities...all of these things are created and exacerbated by the State. Interference by the State takes away the meaning and purpose of people's lives, and tries to replace it with its meaning, which is generally bureaucracy, militarization, war and empire.

The State does a lot of bad things to people. Taking away a true meaning to their lives and replacing it with false one is one of the worst.

"Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible."

A 20-year government effort to restore the population of an endangered native trout in Colorado has made little progress because biologists have been stocking some of the waterways with the wrong fish, a new study says.

Whoops! Readers may recall, this is somewhat similar to when the government was protecting species like the 'tiny owl' and 'jumping mouse', which didn't exist.

In 1998, officials projected it would cost $634,000 to bring the greenback to recovery, with the money coming from a variety of sources. It wasn't clear how much of that has been spent. Figures for the recovery project before 1998 weren't available.

Other federal agencies, including the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service, have helped with the recovery program. An overall cost estimate wasn't available.

In sum, not a great track record of success or even marginal competence in this project.

University of Colorado professor Andrew Martin, the study's principal investigator, said while the findings might give the recovery program "black eye," the hope is that biologists and agencies will move ahead on recovering the species before it goes extinct.
"The more the plans fail, the more the planners plan."

Nearly 100 drunken-driving suspects in this southern Ohio town avoided convictions or jail time last year after making voluntary $1,000 donations to the police department, county records show.

In third world countries they call it 'corruption' and 'bribery', in the US we call it a 'donation'. :)

"I want to warn other smokers. We have paid our National Insurance stamps all our lives and now we are being shut out of the NHS."

Liberal MP Belinda Stronach, who is battling breast cancer, travelled to California last June for an operation that was recommended as part of her treatment, says a report.

Instead, MacEachern said the decision was made because the U.S. hospital was the best place to have it done due to the type of surgery required.

While it is rare for MPs to seek treatment outside Canada, MacEachern said Stronach was not lacking confidence in the system.

Stronach, who announced last April she would be leaving politics before the next election, paid for the surgery in the U.S., reports the Star.

"In fact, Belinda thinks very highly of the Canadian health-care system, and uses it when needed for herself and her children, as do all Canadians. As well, her family has clearly demonstrated that support," MacEachern told the Star.

1) healthcare (along with clothing, housing, jobs etc..) is not a 'right' as to attain these 'rights' you need to violate the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of another

4) explaining how freedom is good for alternative medicine. Actually, this past weekend Ron Paul had an event in Utah:

Saturday evening, he will join a small group of supporters for a $2,000-a-plate dinner where he will address his Health Freedom initiative, which focuses on expanded access to alternative and homeopathic medicine and to information on dietary supplements.

5) illustrating how insurance isn't really insurance, that the Kaiser Foundation's premises about the unaffordability of insurance are skewed because they don't separate the most common 'social planning' type of insurance from true 'medical disaster' insurance.

6) promotion of health savings accounts, decreasing the influence of of 3rd party payers, and the gradual weaning of Americans off the dependency of government programs. Here is a previous article by Dr. Paul on health savings accounts.

Additionally, the above site is a high tech construction marvel, has 'Ron Paul TV' of highlighted Ron Paul videos that play continuously. Here was a funny one I ran across.

The local Las Vegas Ron Paul meetup group generates some pretty good press coverage for Ron Paul, even if parts of the article are a bit bizarre... :)

From this article is appears that a shutdown and recall was issued after 5 children became ill from a type of bacteria that this particular farm routinely tests all its milk for. Additionally, it was never proven the five children were ill due to the milk and even so, the milk in question came from a different farm. Still, the state came in, tested for different bacteria and found 'subclinical' levels and shut the place down. The article ends with this quote:

“We are in a place that is politically incorrect…I am in the business of producing good bacteria…But every opportunity they (government regulators) have they will stick a knife in our back.”

He also speaks to recent issues grabbing headlines in the United States, referring to "the reeling of many of you under the burden of interest-related debts, insane taxes and real estate mortgages; global warming and its woes..."

"To conclude," bin Laden says, "I invite you to embrace Islam." He goes on to say: "There are no taxes in Islam, but rather there is a limited Zakaat [alms] totaling 2.5 percent."

Lol, a 2.5% tax rate sounds pretty appealing. But no such caliph of paradise ever existed in practice; I recall reading that Mullah Omar sat on a sort of throne and dolled out cash to impoverished supporters for various projects from treasure chests. And what up with the 'not taxes, but 'fees''? Sounds like Mitt Romney's Massachusetts record... :)

An MRI in May 2005 revealed a tumour in her brain. Her family doctor couldn't expedite appointments booked with specialists for July 19 and Sept. 19, 2005. As the tumour pressed on her optic nerves, her vision deteriorated. Afraid to wait any longer, she went to the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Ariz. <.>

Worried the tumour might be cancerous, McCreith and his family wanted an MRI. He was given an appointment date four months later. McCreith went to the U.S. and paid $494.67 (U.S.) for an MRI. Armed with the scan, he saw his Ontario family doctor, who referred McCreith to a neurologist. He was examined on Feb. 8, 2006. He was referred to a neurosurgeon but would have to wait three months.Unhappy with this, he returned to Buffalo. In early March, during a biopsy, the tumour was found to be malignant and surgically removed.

There are 5-6 of these segments with various Ron Paul supporters, pretty interesting and passionate group!

He built a fence, a retaining wall, a patio and a few cement columns to decorate his driveway and now Francisco Linares is going to jail for it.

A man built a baseball field for his 11-year-old son and his son's Little League team, but this is not some fairy tale where the ghost of Shoeless Joe Jackson emerges from a cornfield to join the game. This is Danville, not Iowa. Someone did arrive to check out the Field of Dreams, but it was a city building inspector.

DAY ONE: The federal income tax is abolished and April 15th is declared a national holiday. The 40% reduction in federal revenues is matched by a 40% cut in spending. The budget is still almost twice as big as Jimmy Carter's.

DAY TWO: All other federal taxes are abolished, including the corporate income tax, the capital gains tax, the gasoline tax, "sin" taxes, excise taxes, etc. Businesses boom, and the few legitimate federal functions are funded with an inexpensive head tax. People who choose not to vote need not pay it. (Note: this was a mainstream view in the 19th century.)

DAY THREE: The federal government sells all its land, freeing up tens of millions of acres for development, mining, farming, forestry, oil drilling, private parks, etc. The government uses the revenue to pay off the national debt and other liabilities.

DAY FOUR: The minimum wage is reduced to zero, creating jobs for ex-federal bureaucrats at their market wage. All pro-union laws and regulations are scrapped. The jobless rate falls dramatically.

DAY FIVE: The Bureau of Labor Statistics, like the rest of the Labor Department, is sent to that big hiring hall in the sky. Without detailed economic statistics, future economic planners will be blind and deaf.

DAY SIX: The Department of Commerce is abolished. Big business has to make its own way in the world, without subsidies and privileges at the expense of its competitors and customers.

DAY SEVEN: The plug is pulled on the Department of Energy. Oil and gas prices plummet.

DAY EIGHT: All regulatory agencies, from the Interstate Commerce Commission to the Federal Trade Commission, are deep-sixed. Competition is legalized.

DAY NINE: HUD is squashed like a bug. There's a building boom in cheap, private, apartments.

DAY TEN: The interstate highways reopen as private businesses. Road entrepreneurs price travel according to consumer demand. Using modern technology, drivers get bills once a month. Credit risks – and drunks and dangerous drivers – aren't allowed on the road. Non-drivers no longer subsidize car owners.

DAY ELEVEN: Government welfare is wiped out. Bums work or starve. The deserving poor find a cornucopia of private services designed to make them independent. Private charity explodes, as the American people, already the most generous in the world, find their incomes almost doubled, thanks to the tax cuts.

DAY TWELVE: The Federal Reserve closes its open-market operations and stops protecting the banking industry from competition. But banks can now engage in all the non-bank financial activities previously forbidden to them. The business cycle, which is caused by monetary expansion through the credit markets, is liquidated.

DAY THIRTEEN: Federal deposit insurance is scrapped. All insured deposits are redeemed from federal assets, which include the personal assets of high-level government employees. The threat of bank runs forces banks to keep 100% reserves for their demand deposits, and prudent reserves on all other accounts. There are no more inherently bankrupt banks propped up by the government, at taxpayer expense, and no more bail-outs.

DAY FOURTEEN: The shaky fiat dollar is defined in terms of gold, with the ratio determined by dividing the government's gold stock by all existing dollars on that day.

DAY FIFTEEN: The federal government sells National and Dulles airports to the highest bidder, and stops all subsidies to other socialist airports around the country. All constraints on airline prices and service cease. It costs more to fly during peak hours than off-peak, but overall, air travel drops in price.

DAY SIXTEEN: All government regulations that create and sustain cartels are abolished, including those for the post office, telephones, television, radio, and cable TV. Prices plummet, and a host of new and unforeseen services becomes available.

DAY SEVENTEEN: Centrally planned agriculture, as imposed by Hoover and Roosevelt, is repealed: there are no more subsidies, payments-in-kind, marketing orders, low-interest loans, etc. Farm prices drop. Entrepreneurial farmers get rich. Welfare farmers go into another line of work. The poor eat like kings.

DAY EIGHTEEN: The Justice Department shutters its anti-trust division. Companies, big and small, are free to merge – up, down, or sideways. Stockholders can buy any other company, or sell their stock to anyone else. Marginal producers can no longer battle their competitors with bureaucratic weapons.

DAY NINETEEN: The Department of Education flunks the constitutionality test, and is kicked out. Private charities set up remedial reading and writing programs for the former bureaucrats. Federally subsidized sex education and other anti-family programs go out of business. Local school districts become responsive to parents or close, pressured by a fast-growing private school sector (which many more parents can now afford).

DAY TWENTY: All federal monuments are sold, in some cases to non-profit groups based on the Mt. Vernon Ladies Association, which owns and runs George Washington's home. The VFW buys the Vietnam memorial. There is much bidding for the Jefferson and Washington monuments. Nobody wants FDR's, so it's torn down and the land sold to a farmer. (With the federal government cut back to its constitutional size, much of Washington reverts to productive uses like agriculture, as in late 18th century.)

DAY TWENTY-ONE: The computerized financial and political dossier maintained by the government on every American is erased. The public wanders through the federal offices to make sure, in a reprise of the East Berliners' visits to Stasi headquarters.

DAY TWENTY-TWO: Equal rights are granted to all Americans, even members of non-victim groups. There is no affirmative action, no quotas, no set-asides, no public accommodations laws. Private property and freedom of association are fully restored.

DAY TWENTY-THREE: The EPA is cleaned out, with all "clean air" and similar big-government laws repealed. Ten thousand lawyers leap from their balconies. Private property is established in air and water. Americans harmed by pollution are free to sue the polluters, who are no longer protected by the federal government.

DAY TWENTY-FOUR: Americans are given complete freedom of contract, restoring rationality to malpractice and product liability law.

DAY TWENTY-FIVE: Government scrambles for more assets to sell (i.e., the National Zoo, also known as Washington, D.C.) to pay off the liabilities of the privatized Social Security system.

DAY TWENTY-SIX: Porno artists have to earn their own livings, as the National Endowment for the Arts tries to raise its budget through sidewalk painting sales.

DAY TWENTY-SEVEN: Foreign aid is outlawed as unconstitutional, unjust, and un-economic. Foreign politicians have to steal their own money. The World Bank, IMF, and United Nations close their super-luxurious doors.

DAY TWENTY-EIGHT: The American people are given the unrestricted right to keep and bear arms.

DAY TWENTY-NINE: The Defense Department is reoriented towards defense. American troops come home from all around the world. We adopt a policy of armed neutrality, remembering the Founding Fathers' teaching that we could not have an empire abroad and a constitutional republic at home.

DAY THIRTY: All tariffs, quotas, and trade agreements are put through the shredder. Americans can trade with anyone in the world, without barriers or subsidies. Japanese car prices drop an immediate 25%.

In just 30 exhilarating days, we have established the outlines of free market. Radical? Maybe so. Me, I can't wait until Month Two.

This is an outrage. The entire GDP of the state of Louisiana is only $141 billion, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. So the cash spent there nearly matches the entire state gross GDP. That's simply unbelievable. And to make matters worse, by all accounts New Orleans ain't even fixed!

Meanwhile, according to an article by Nicole Gelinas at the Manhattan Institute, New Orleans has earned the distinct honor of becoming the murder capital of the world. The murder rate is 40 percent higher than before Katrina, and twice as high as other dangerous cities like Detroit, Newark, N.J., and Washington, D.C.

Think of this: The idea of using federal money to rebuild cities is the quintessential liberal vision. And given the dreadful results in New Orleans, we can say that the government's $127 billion check represents the quintessential failure of that liberal vision.

I suppose the current Bush administration would like to label this "compassionate conservatism." But guess what? That failed, too.

In 1964, just before the New Hampshire primary, an average Joe named Paul Grindle didn’t particularly care for the choice of candidates running for the Republican nomination for President.

With the help of a few friends and using the most sophisticated marketing techniques at the time, Grindle created a boomlet for Henry Cabot Lodge, former Massachusetts U.S. Senator, 1960 GOP Vice-Presidential candidate and then the U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam. Lodge wasn’t running for anything, his name wasn’t even on the New Hampshire ballot. Grindle and his friends mailed out postcards to New Hampshire Republicans to find out if there was support for Lodge which they found out there was. Then they mailed out fliers for Lodge, letters for Lodge and pamphlets demonstrating how to write Lodge’s name on the ballot. They even opened a headquarters for him in Concord.

All that postage spent for eventually paid off. Lodge won the New Hampshire Primary with a write-in vote, beating out that year’s eventual GOP nominee Barry Goldwater and former Vice-President Nelson Rockefeller despite all their money, all their TV ads and vast campaign apparatuses deployed in the Granite State.

Of course it helped Grindle that so many New Hampshire Republicans wanted someone other than Rockefeller and Goldwater, he just simply provided another candidate. But Grindle’s effort also goes to show that politics does not have to be “game” played only by a few professionals, or the hacks or even the wealthy. Sometimes, even the “average Joe” can play too if they have the knowledge, the gumption and a little luck.

It’s that same “do-it-yourself” spirit that Grindle showed 43 years ago that’s a part of Congressman Ron Paul’s run for the White House today.

Forget the all internet activity, You Tube videos, or Facebook pages for a moment and focus on meat-and-potatoes politicking. Out of all the candidates running for President in 2008, who among them has supporters willing to hang signs on freeway overpasses, to stand with signs outside events whatever the weather, who will volunteer their time to make phone calls or write letters to voters or do lit drops as well? Who among the candidates has supporters willing to pay for advertising in newspapers and radio out of their own pocket or are willing to write scripts for cable TV ads? Who among the candidates has supporters so dedicated that they attend his rallies thousands of miles from home?

The Ron Paul campaign isn’t spending a lot of money right now because they don’t have to. The spending time, money and talent coming from Ron Paul supporters across the country is cash one cannot measure but has become important to the credibility of the campaign. You cannot write off Ron Paul because he has thousands of supporters in all 50 states willing to do things on their own initiative while other campaigns simply spend money on TV ads or give handouts to voters like free bus trips, straw poll tickets and meals. Indeed, former Massachusetts Governor Willard Romney’s campaign has become a literal welfare agency in order to win votes.

Ron Paul supporters don’t need handouts to vote for him at local straw poll. They don’t need orders from the central campaign office either. Much of what is done for Ron Paul by his supporters is done upon their own ideas and their own initiative. For example, two weeks before the Iowa Straw Poll, Ron Paul supporters set up an account through Pay Pal.com to pool their money to buy advertising on Iowa radio stations and newspapers. One person made the ads buys, a few enterprising fellows came up with the idea for the ads (including a beautiful mosaic ad of Ron Paul’s head made up of pictures from thousands of supporters across the country with the Constitution itself as a backdrop.) and before the official campaign came up with their own radio and TV ads, Ron Paul’s message was being heard on the airwaves and in the pages. Plans are afoot to do the same in New Hampshire and Iowa again and to expand to television as well. All on their own they did this. That’s how devoted they are. As Ron Paul himself said. “I didn’t start a campaign, I joined a campaign.” Like the Minutemen of Lexington and Concord of old, Ron Paul supporters do not need “orders” to shoot the Redcoats. All they needed were their rifles.

Candidates for President aren’t elected in vacuums. Powerful cultural forces pull them towards the White House. If Ron Paul wins the GOP nomination, goes on to win the Presidency itself, it will be because American voters begin to admire the plucky resolve and selfless determination of Ron Paul supporters, who created a campaign virtually from scratch of their own time, effort and resources and want to capture that spirit for themselves and recapture it for the nation.

Since 9-11, a whole nation wanted to do something, anything to help with the war efforts. A whole nation wanted some sense of pulling together and working together to help a country in distress. They wanted time to go back to World War II, where food was rationed, gas was rationed, rubber drives organized, scrap drives organized, where people joined the Red Cross or the USO, or civil defense organizations, all of this done to help with the war effort in any way possible. To be a slacker back then - if you weren’t fighting or doing something to help our “boys” overseas – was as bad a form of treason as “loose lips sink ships.” And yet did we go back after 9-11? No. Care packages, yellow ribbons pen pal letters to troops and greeters at the airport are important and nice gestures, but one doesn’t get the sense a whole nation has been mobilized to do so. No, instead, after 9-11, President Bush II told Americans they ought go out and buy more stuff. No calls for sacrifice were made. War wasn’t declared in Congress; just a resolution calling for military action was passed. They also pass resolutions on Capitol Hill to the declare National Pickle Day as well. That’s how much importance they gave to this cause. No draft of any kind was issued, so the many millions who could fight instead stayed at home to watch the war on TV while those who did volunteer fought the war in their stead. Or when things weren’t going well, they could ignore what was happening overseas completely and go back to whatever it was they were doing on Sept. 10, 2001 as if time simply skipped over that day.

People wanted to help. They waited for orders to come from on high and yet such orders never came. Instead all they saw was a war turning sour because of the incompetence of the people in charge. Then they saw a great city destroyed by a natural disaster and saw that same government bumble the aftermath and reconstruction. That made it hard to help those who needed it and only wasted the energy of those who gave of their time and effort to help with the clean-up. So where does all that energy go when its not be used? When it’s being left to dissipate on the sidelines and all that’s left is anger and bitterness at the authorities for their incompetence and their mismanagement? Well some have decided they aren’t going to wait for “orders” anymore. Some have decided on their own that they are going try and elect a man they believe is going to change things for the better. And whether or not Ron Paul could make such changes if he was elected President or get them through Congress really doesn’t matter when you think about it. Just getting to that point will show that the nation has recaptured the do-it-yourself spirit that helped to found the country in the first place.

Many books have been written about how alienated the average voter is from politics with detailed explanations as to why. Yet all of them miss this essential point: People feel alienated to something when they believe that nothing they do concerning it matters because they are removed and remote to it. As politics has become a “game” played by rich people and slick hustlers and where the game board is a television screen, voters just watch it all from a distance. They’re no longer a part of the process, just stage props for photos ops. Once upon a time an “average Joe” could be a precinct captain. He could stuff mailers or put up signs in his neighborhood working for the political machine or his wife could host a coffee klatch or baby-sit at campaign headquarters. Now people are paid to do things like this. Politicians all like to talk about grassroots support but very few campaigns use volunteer labor like they once did. Once upon a time the presidential campaigns of Barry Goldwater and George McGovern and Ronald Reagan were made possible by such grassroots support but in this day and age, only the late U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone really had an “army” of average people volunteering their time for him with their undying loyalty. If more campaigns were as volunteer orientated as Ron Paul’s, perhaps voters would feel that connection with politics again and would use that untapped energy for a cause they believed in and one they didn’t need to be “directed” at. And if all that happened in the future, then Ron Paul’s campaign will be a success well past 2008.

In the above videos, 15-30 meetup members worked to cover their respective towns in Ron Paul signs and both got good local news coverage for it.

These volunteers are growing exponentially at a rate far surpassing the other campaigns:

England is on a par with Poland despite the NHS spending three times more on health care. Cancer experts blamed late diagnosis and long waiting lists.

LIKE many other British cancer sufferers before him, Rob Ellert travelled to one of America’s leading hospitals to give himself a better chance of survival.

Anni Matthews, 53, who is fighting breast cancer, was told by British doctors in February 2003 that she would be lucky to live until the Christmas of that year. Matthews, a former property company director, increased her chances of survival by travelling to the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, Massachu-setts, where her treatment was helped by new “wonder drugs”.

These two stories give us some things to be hopeful about. Despite the fact that the US system suffers from intensive government interference and regulation, we still have enough of a free market component to give advantage in certain aspects of medical care.

It also illustrates a misfixiation on certain statistics, such as the number of US 'uninsured' as many of these European countries have so-called 'free/universal healthcare'.

Heh heh... pretty funny and interesting compilation by the daily show. Is government really as incompetent at foreign policy as it is with other matters? Should we be following the words of George Washington who warned against entangling alliances and adventurism with the European powers? Could this be applied today towards the Middle East?:

The nation which indulges toward another an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur.

So, likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others, which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill will, and a disposition to retaliate in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld; and it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation) facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country without odium, sometimes even with popularity, gilding with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation....

Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. But that jealousy, to be useful, must be impartial, else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people to surrender their interests.

The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible.

Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.

Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people, under an efficient government, the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.

Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice?

Harmony, liberal intercourse with all nations are recommended by policy, humanity, and interest. But even our commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand, neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of commerce, but forcing nothing; establishing with powers so disposed, in order to give trade a stable course, to define the rights of our merchants, and to enable the Government to support them, conventional rules of intercourse, the best that present circumstances and mutual opinion will permit, but temporary and liable to be from time to time abandoned or varied as experience and circumstances shall dictate; constantly keeping in view that it is folly in one nation to look for disinterested favors from another; that it must pay with a portion of its independence for whatever it may accept under that character; that by such acceptance it may place itself in the condition of having given equivalents for nominal favors, and yet of being reproached with ingratitude for not giving more. There can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favors from nation to nation. It is an illusion which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard....

The key point of this article is not that Rove's actions were 'unprecedented', a claim I find highly unlikely, but the sheer power of the Federal Government and how those excessive powers were and will be used to hurt, not help the American people.

Two major airlines were fined $300 million apiece Thursday after admitting they conspired to fix prices on international flights and agreeing to help prosecutors investigate other airlines. British Airways PLC, Britain's largest airline, and Korean Air Co., South Korea's national carrier, pleaded guilty to antitrust conspiracy charges. They acknowledged colluding with rivals over cargo rates and fuel surcharges, which were added to fares in response to rising oil prices. That meant higher costs for international shippers and passengers. As part of their plea deals, the airlines acknowledged they colluded with other unidentified companies from 2000 to 2006.

Another anti-trust, monopoly story. By raising the price of tickets these companies are only hurting their own business in the long term because it decreases the number of passengers and opens opportunity for other carriers to break into the market for a cheaper deal. The market itself could easily sort out this so-called 'monopoly' without government coerscion, which only serves to stifle competition and will, in the long term, raise, not lower, the very ticket prices they seek to lower.

The largest antitrust fine, $500 million, was against vitamin giant F. Hoffman-La Roche in 1999 in a price-fixing case.

U.S. District Court Judge Paul Friedman's 93-page opinion rejected the government's argument that the deal would be anti-competitive in two dozen markets and hurt consumers.

The Consumer Federation of America also filed documents with the court saying that the merger would lead to higher prices and fewer choices for buyers of organic products.

Whole Foods contends that it competes against larger supermarket chains such as Safeway Inc and not just small, premium stores such as Wild Oats.

Austin, Texas-based Whole Foods operates nearly 200 stores in the United States and Britain, while Wild Oats of Boulder, Colorado, runs about 110.

Well, this is some good news for Whole Foods and US consumers; despite what our government may feel is good for us.

The judge also ignored Whole Foods CEO John Mackey's e-mails expressing a desire to crush the smaller company.

He ran into his fellow Republican Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, the then powerful chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and chief Senate sponsor of the Alaska Bridge to Nowhere. "He strolled up to me and said: 'Well, Tom, I hope you're satisfied for helping us lose the election.'"

evens was evidently still infuriated by Coburn's nationally publicized crusade against runaway pork-barrel spending over the past two years. To that, Coburn, never the shrinking violet, replied: "No, Ted, you lost us the election."
What a gall!

The standard, schoolbook history of alcohol prohibition in the United States goes like this:

Americans in 1920 embarked on a noble experiment to force everyone to give up drinking. Alas, despite its nobility, this experiment was too naive to work. It soon became clear that people weren't giving up drinking. Worse, it also became clear that Prohibition fueled mobsters who grew rich supplying illegal booze. So, recognizing the futility of Prohibition, Americans repealed it in 1934.

Despite pleas throughout the 1920s by journalist H.L. Mencken and a tiny handful of other sensible people to end Prohibition, Congress gave no hint that it would repeal this folly. Prohibition appeared to be here to stay — until income-tax revenues nose-dived in the early 1930s.

In 1932 they fell another 37 percent; 1932 income-tax revenues were 46 percent lower than just two years earlier. And by 1933 they were fully 60 percent lower than in 1930.

With no end of the Depression in sight, Washington got anxious for a substitute source of revenue. That source was liquor sales.

An interesting opinion stating that government greed, not sympathy to liberty by politicians or changing opinion of the citizenry finally felled prohibition. Will the WOD (War on Drugs) meet a similar fate?

I didn't realize the government was so intricately involved in the lending process until reading about all of Hillary's proposals to 'tinker' and expand current government rules, regulations, policies etc...

Underscoring the need to make the rules clear and level the playing field for homebuyers, Senator Clinton outlined a plan to break down barriers to owning a home and build up protections against unfair and unscrupulous lending practices.

This is an interesting statement considering it is the lenders that are going belly up, filling for bankruptcy etc... How can the lenders be 'predatory' when they are the ones bankrupt?

1) Reinstating the inalienable right to contract will allow the market to set conditions that will best benefit the 'subprime' borrower and lender.

2) It is likely the current government interference played a significant or leading role in the current subprime trouble.

The proposed guidance issued by the Federal Reserve and the other four federal agencies that regulate banks, thrifts and credit unions, comes in increasingly troubled market for subprime mortgage loans. <.>

In addition to the Fed, the agencies issuing the proposed guidance are the FDIC, the National Credit Union Administration, and the Treasury Department's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Office of Thrift Supervision.

Mr Chavez, 54, plans to overturn the decree of his 1999 constitution which laid out a maximum of two six-year terms for any president. The new constitution calls for seven-year terms with indefinite re-election.

The new constitution will fix the working week at no more than 36 hours. The Central Bank will also lose any vestige of independence, simply becoming the presidential piggy bank.

People can expect to wait about three weeks for expedited service, and the government indicated Thursday they should get used to it. A regular application now takes 10 weeks to 12 weeks.

It will cost nearly $1 billion over three years to handle the surge in applications created by post-Sept. 11 security rules for travel.

The company also billed and was paid $455,009 to ship three machine screws costing $1.31 each to Marines in Habbaniyah, Iraq, and $293,451 to ship an 89-cent split washer to Patrick Air Force Base in Cape Canaveral, Florida, Pentagon records show.

The New Privatization
States and cities are selling their roads, bridges, and airports for eye-popping sums.

A 2002 government study in the United Kingdom, where public-private transactions are more common, found that 70 percent of public construction undertaken by the government ran late and that 73 percent of it finished over budget. But when government contracted projects to private firms, just 24 percent of them were late and only 20 percent were over budget.

In a study that Daniels commissioned after taking office, Indiana found that it spent 34 cents to collect every 15-cent toll. “We would be better off using the honor system,” Daniels quipped.

Within three months of closing the deal, they had installed an electronic toll-collection system to help zoom traffic along and assigned additional collectors during rush hour to gather cash more quickly. The result: reduced wait times, boosted Skyway use—and more money coming in. Chicago didn’t bother with any of these reforms when it managed the road, a Macquarie managing director testified before Congress last year. Unlike the city, he said, Macquarie was “heavily incentivized” to run the road efficiently.

...employs about 2,000 people, including 500 administrators, to operate the 537-mile road. “The turnpike commission has traditionally been a patronage cesspool,” says Matthew Brouillette, president of the Commonwealth Foundation, a Harrisburg-based think tank that supports the lease.

Porter's Score on the RePORK Card

8/14/07 Club For Growth Press Release

Porter’s Score on RePORK Card Speaks for Itself—And it’s Not Pretty

Washington – Yesterday, Republican Rep. Jon Porter (NV-3) defended his record of fiscal responsibility despite scoring a pathetic 10% on the Club for Growth’s 2007 RePORK Card. Fiscal responsibility, my foot.

“Porter’s staff claimed the RePORK Card is ‘misleading,’ but the Club for Growth’s RePORK Card speaks for itself,” said Club for Growth President Pat Toomey. “Either you stand for American taxpayers by voting against pork projects, or you stand for parochial special interests. With a score of 10% on the 2007 RePORK Card, Jon Porter backed up the special interests 90% of the time. Porter also scored a humiliating 26% last year, voting for only 5 of Jeff Flake’s 19 anti-pork amendments. If anything, Jon Porter is sinking further into the pit of fiscal recklessness with each passing year.”

The RePORK Card documents all fifty anti-pork votes during the 2007 appropriations process. Over the course of this process, Jon Porter voted to keep such outrageous pork projects as:

$34,000,000 for the Alaska Native Education Equity program and other programs (RC #654, 07/18/07)
$300,000 for the On Location Entertainment Industry Craft and Technician Training project at West Los Angeles College in Culver City, CA (RC #667, 07/18/07)
$150,000 for the American Ballet Theatre in New York City for educational activities (RC #668, 07/18/07)
$150,000 for the South Carolina Aquarium in Charleston, S.C. (RC #669, 07/18/07)
$100,000 for the Kansas Regional Prisons Museum in Lansing, Kansan (RC #670, 07/18/07)
Bars funding of $2,000,000 for the Charles B. Rangel Center for Public Service at the City College of New York in New York City (RC #678, 07/19/07).
$50,000 for the National Mule and Packers Museum in Woodlake, CA (RC #700, 07/24/07)

Thanks Congressmen Porter for spending Nevada tax dollars on the above projects and much much more...

A woman who had complained to her GP of severe headaches for almost a year collapsed and died of an undiagnosed brain tumour.

Jennifer Bell, 22, had been told she was suffering from stress but after months of illness had finally been referred to a neurologist.

She then faced a 13-week wait before a 'relatively urgent' MRI scan could be carried out. Three days before the longawaited appointment she collapsed at home and died later in hospital.

Yesterday at an inquest in Norwich, Coroner William Armstrong agreed that an early scan would have led to much faster intervention.

As far as I know, there is no such thing as a '13 week wait' for an MRI anywhere in the United States. Would this patient have survived if she had been in the United States? We don't know the answer; but it is likely she would have been diagnosed earlier... even if she didn't have insurance.

My Rep, Rep John Porter (R, NV), doesn't get high marks at all on his porkbarreling record (compiled by the Club For Growth).. No surprise to us!

In a move with wide-ranging implications, a North Mississippi judge Thursday banned outdoor school activities in DeSoto and five other counties in his district because of the searing heat.

"It is our duty to protect the minors from harm when at all possible," Lundy said in his two-page order banning outdoor activities between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m. "We protect them from others as well as from themselves."

"I think the judge needs to stay out of the school business," said Sammy Higdon, superintendent of the Water Valley School District in Yalobusha County.

"Without looking it up, I couldn't guarantee that it's unprecedented," Rychlak said, "but it certainly sounds unusual. Judges are supposed to handle cases and controversies, but not legislate.

The 8-to-2 decision by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit came in a closely watched and emotional case that pitted desperate patients willing to try unproven, even risky, therapies against those arguing that drugs should be proved safe and effective before they are made available.

The decision preserves the current regulatory system. If it had gone the other way “it would have undermined the entire drug approval process,” said William B. Schultz, a former deputy commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, who wrote an amicus brief arguing against the early access to drugs.

In a dissent, Judge Judith W. Rogers wrote that it was “startling” that the “right to try to save one’s life is left out in the cold,” not protected by the due process clause of the Constitution, “despite its textual anchor in the right to life.”

Remember that even in the 'land of the free' you are not allowed to try to save your own life, even when terminally ill. It's simply too dangerous.

Islamic extremists embedded in the United States — posing as Hispanic nationals — are partnering with violent Mexican drug gangs to finance terror networks in the Middle East, according to a Drug Enforcement Administration report.

But instead of implementing the charter amendment, Kauai officials sued each other to invalidate it, with the county attorney representing both sides of the case. The officials claimed they alone had power to decide property tax issues, and hired private attorneys with over $250,000 of public funds to litigate the lawsuit.

I don't know what happened here, but it seems beyond bizarre and deserves explanation.

    Fourteen-day supplies of the seven drugs will be available at all 684 of the chain's pharmacies in five Southern states.
    "It can't be any more affordable than free," Crist said.
    With health care costs one of the biggest challenges facing many Americans, Crist said that the private sector's involvement in the solution was "a great trend."

Wal-Mart last year started offering hundreds of prescription drugs of all different kinds, ranging from diabetes medication to high blood pressure drugs, for $4.

Kmart, a unit of Sears Holding Corp., began last month offering a 90-day supply of generic drugs for $15. Now, more than 300 drugs are included in that program.

An example of private industry, the market economy, lowering prescription prices for consumers. The lower prices and resulting increase in access occurs without government expansion, regulation, or taxes. This sort of cost cutting would occur in other areas of healthcare except for the stifling conditions imposed by government.

Yet, the intentions of the Publix company are rooted in the profit motive, while government attempts to better healthcare are, ostensibly, rooted in what is considered relative purity. It is important to differentiate between intention and result. Ideally, the two can be matched, once the realization occurs that the profit motive, the market economy, and freedom can provide the best healthcare to the poorest of the poor. Once those without financial interest advocate for such policies, when those advocating positive agendas are not just those with direct business interests, only then will 'compassionate conservative' be correctly defined.

The government defended the new law saying it was necessary to protect the country from international terrorism and espionage.

Of course, the true 'terrorists' in Zimbabwe can be found in the government of Zimbabwe; the very ones who passed the law! Having destroyed and looted the country, they apparently find themselves needing protection from a restless, rebellious, and increasingly desperate population.

The lessons here can be extrapolated to a lesser degree here in the US; whether it is 'terrorism', 'poverty', 'drugs', or 'drug safety', political aims and power expansion cannot be concocted without a reason.

Upon occasion, the actions and 'fears' of those in power are in response to legitimate concern, or perhaps even they believe in the cause they are are legislating in favor of. Yet far too often the result of misplaced perspective is a more powerful and expansive government which either fails to solve the original problem, makes it worse, or creates new more critical quandaries from their actions. Only strong action, education, involvement, and discernment by citizens keeps relative freedom intact.

The statistics are noteworthy in the United States, 245,00 road deaths since 9/11. Unfortunately the author digresses into promoting more rules and regulations of our already burdensome transportation system. However, of great interest are some global trends described:

Traffic deaths are the fastest-rising cause of death in the world. Yet you've heard far more about H5N1 avian influenza, which has killed 192 people worldwide since being detected five years ago, than about the 6 million people who have died in traffic accidents in the same period. Last year alone, 1.2 million people were killed on the world's roads, versus about 100,000 dead as a result of combat. The last decade is believed to be the first time in history that roads posed a greater danger to human beings than fighting (which is partly a reflection of the decline of war).
Global prosperity is rising fast, which means that global car ownership is rising fast, and both of those things are good -- but they also mean that global traffic deaths are rising as well.

Global prosperity is rising, war is receding, and bird flu is a phony baloney myth. The only thing that can stop this unfettered optimism, this continual exponential expansion of human goodness and happiness are those who would swing sledgehammers at cracks, and throw stones in glass cages, seemingly ignorant of the shimmering, spiraling, sparkling structures growing around them.

Some Ron Paul pictures to be added to 'Ron Paul 2008'. Some of these are real hoots:

So, I thought for this piece I'd mix the personal and the political and write about my trip last week to Chicago. Retrospective apologies, I started out intending to touch mostly on medical/health policy, but soon gave into the tempting digression of wading into the cesspool of Chicago politics.

Upon landing, literally the first thing I saw, and a rather fitting greeting at that, was:

'Daley' is the notoriously corrupt mayor of Chicago, who runs a tight political machine, using 'big government' as a tool to maintain power and, like all big city liberal mayors, as a side effect of such policies and those of his precessors, is hemorrhaging citizens. In fact, Chicago has lost 1/3rd of its citizens, nearly a million people, since the 1950s.

Now, we've always maintained that shortages are generally caused by government policies; even traffic, for example, is little more than a shortage of roads. The situation is no different here. Readers may recall a recently posted story describing the government policies in New York and how a taxi cab 'license', aka a 'medallion', is now worth $500,000. Upon inquiry, a Chicago medallion is 'only' worth $80-90k, still prohibitive enough to discourage any upstart taxi entrepreneurs.

Even more interesting were the responses I received upon discussing this with my fellow waiting citizens. One lady, while somewhat sympathetic to my views, said she thought getting rid of all oversight without any regulations was, "sort of extreme and would lead to chaos." I pondered the meaning of this response as I stood in the disorganized hour long line, with shouting government workers herding us here and there, blaring horns, irate cab drivers, and exhausted and exasperated pedestrians.

When I finally got a cab the first thing I noticed was that those responsible for the disaster at the airport were taking responsibility, by laying out some of the regulations they were burdening the taxi industry with and attaching their names in bold letters.

But, on second thought, maybe this wasn't the intention. Perhaps mayor Daley and some government commissioner were plastering their names all over the cabs in an act of political nepotism, simply to garner importance and name recognition. Of course, the latter is what was actually occurring and such acts are rather common and, IMO, one of the worst abuses of power a government official can engage in.

For a recent example, we need look no farther than the chair of the powerful house 'ways and means committee' Charlie Rangel (D, NY). Last week Rep Rangel inserted an earmark for $2 million dollars to create:

...the CHARLES B RANGEL Center for Public Service. That's right, this left wing Democrat who has probably never voted against a tax increase in his life wants to appropriate millions in federal tax dollars to go towards a building named after... HIMSELF!

But wait, there's more.

According to the marketing materials provided by Rangel himself to his colleagues, this center includes a library to house the Congressman's future papers, a "well furnished office" for him, and an endowment. There is even mention of a librarian to work on the organizing of his papers. Apparently this last part is worded thusly in the paperwork: "The Rangel archivist librarian will organize, index and preserve for posterity all documents, photographs and memorabilia relating to Congressman Rangel's career."'

In any event, the main reason for my arrival in Chicago was the AOA (American Osteopathic Association) Convention and SOMA (Student Osteopathic Medical Association) Convention.

I can say it was quite a sight to behold; hundreds of physicians filling a vast hall and voting on issues effecting the entire profession, the medical field, and patient care. I was happy to see many, many issues affecting DOs were decided by a private entity, the AOA, rather than the Federal Government. Unfortunately, the Federal and State governments often usurp or negate the powers of national and state professional associations, and equally disturbing, in many cases artificially enhance what powers professional organizations do possess by granting said organizations monopolies over sectors of the service economy.

At one meeting we viewed a video describing the AOAs involvement in Chinese health policy, training, and advice. It described how the Chinese government was 'retraining' thousands of specialists as 'primary care docs', relocating physicians, and pursuing various other what I would characterize as 'top down big government policies'. I was disappointed to see this; one would hope that the AOA would seize such an opportunity to advise the Chinese away from such statist approaches and promote a more American market economy approach to medicine. Then again, perhaps the video was misleading, or I was inferring something that was not implied.

There were also some good discussions regarding residencies and the rapid growth of the Osteopathic profession. It is projected that the percentage of physicians who are osteopathic physicians (DOs) will rise from the current 6% to over 20%. It is interesting to note there is not a shortage of residencies in the lower paying specialties; in fact, in some areas there is a glut. One speaker even, wisely in my opinion, asked whether certain struggling DO residencies should be opened to MDs (the reverse is true). It is probably the case that scare residencies are competitive in large part because they are 'high paying'. But why are they high paying? Is it because the 'public interest and safety' necessitate the attraction of impeccably 'qualified' applicants, or because the policies/regulations intrinsic to those subspecialty societies make the residencies scarce, thus raising the salaries of those in the field? In my mind, the latter possibility is most likely and certainly worthy of investigation, as the negative repercussions reverberate through the entire profession and indirectly harm patient care by increasing the cost of healthcare, thereby decreasing access. Doctors and residents in those subspecialties have little incentive, if we consider the unconscious permeating feedback loops, to change the present system; in fact, it is medical students who gain the most from advocating a fix; therefore it seems this issue is one meriting student led discussion and investigation.

This trip also solidified, in my mind, the usefulness of continued political involvement, even in organizations which may not share many of your own ideals and values. I was happy to discover there are many likeminded freedom valuing individuals within the AOA and the various student groups. I often wondered why people like Rod Paige and other conservative blacks remained members of the NAACP, or why anyone with conservative/libertarian values would stay a member of certain unions, especially teacher's unions. Now I understand why. By leaving various groups you are, in effect, conceding the ideology of those organizations to beliefs in conflict with your own. Every group is, to some effect, a product of the opinions of its members, even if those at the top give into the temptation to abuse or hijack their derived power. Individuals can make differences and the infusion of the ideals of freedom into organizations by active individuals more than offsets any financial or personal reluctance implied by membership support.

To end, a pic with myself and the newly elected AOA president, Peter B. Ajluni, DO. He seems like a great guy!

"The prerogative asserted by the FDA...impinges upon an individual liberty deeply rooted in our Nation's history and tradition of self-preservation."

    The frontrunner in the primary voting in north Georgia's 10th district, former state Sen. Jim Whitehead, was the consensus choice of the Republican establishment. Whitehead essentially promised to be a rubberstamp for the Bush White House and Republican leaders in Congress.
    As evidence of his independence, Broun emphasized a Ron Paul-like committed to "work to restore government according to the Constitution as our Founders intended." While the Georgia appears to be a more cautious constitutionalist than the maverick Texas congressman who is making a longshot bid for the party's presidential nomination in 2008, Broun borrowed one of the most popular of Paul's principles, promising that if elected he would assess any new legislation by first asking: "Is it constitutional and a proper function of government?"
    No one was going to confuse Broun with a liberal, but he did display a Paul-like libertarian streak, suggesting that the federal government ought to stay away away from issues gay marriage and legalizing marijuana -- matters that the candidate suggested are best handled at the state level.
    Even better:

...his past positions (which have included supporting the eradication of "unconstitutional" programs like Social Security and Medicare)...

The pro-free market Club for Growth, which helped knock off at least one pro-spending GOP House incumbent in a 2006 primary, should feel encouraged by Dr. Broun's victory.

Mammography centers in New York City are closing at an "alarming" rate, causing a 171 percent increase in wait times for the cancer-detecting procedure, according to a study by Rep. Anthony Weiner.

Since 1999, 67 mammography sites, more than a quarter of the city's supply, have closed, the Brooklyn Democrat found.

The problem is that Medicare pays only $83 for a procedure that costs $125 to provide, said Weiner, who will introduce legislation to increase payments.

"Increasing access to mammograms clearly saves lives," said Weiner. "Raising the reimbursement rate will ensure that women have increased options to protect their most important asset: their health."

Most women wait at least five weeks for a routine mammography appointment, the survey found, with waits in Brooklyn and The Bronx averaging two months.

Another illustration of the dangers stemming from top down statist control over medicine. Notice the root solution, removing government from setting the prices in the first place, is not considered or mentioned in this story. What is the new reimbursement rate Rep Weiner will choose and how will he choose it? Probably no different than how our friends on the left set the 'minimum wage', arbitrarily and capriciously.

Better to let market forces set the price; not only is the 'right value' reached, but wait times will be reduced and access to care increased.

Most sweeping changes since Great Depression Proposal will give the Federal Reserve new regulatory power MSNBC ^ | March. 28, 2008 | AP writer

Waxman regrets Clemens-McNamee hearing

Resolution:

References

Most sweeping changes since Great Depression Proposal will give the Federal Reserve new regulatory power
MSNBC ^ | March. 28, 2008 | AP writer