Showing posts with label socialism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label socialism. Show all posts

Thursday, May 04, 2017

Republicans Celebrate Saving Obamacare

I was interviewed today by a CNBC reporter about repealing Obamacare and replacing it with the American Healthcare Act, a.k.a. Trumpcare. Since few people had time to actually read the bill before the vote and there was no real debate in the House, and the only debates on the news occurred after the fact, I thought it worth sharing these points from our conversation:

Members of Congress are still exempt so that says a lot about how great this plan is going to be for the American people.

There seem to be a number of items in the bill funneling federal tax money to the states so the states can decide how to use the money. If ever there was an inefficient system that can only promote waste and abuse, this is it. Instead of the federal government taking our money and giving some to the states to make our healthcare decisions for us, how about we just keep our money and use it to to pay our doctors?

The new bill does not repeal Obamacare. It does not remove the individual mandate that forces us to pay for healthcare whether we want it or not. The president and the republican party have proven they are entirely without principles. The republicans like to talk about free markets during the election but they never follow through once in office. The republicans have caved in and accepted the basic premise of Obamacare that the government can force us to buy anything they want us to buy.

We don't have a two-party system, we have a one party system and everyone's invited - except the American people who pay for the party.





Monday, June 17, 2013

Four Lessons Americans Ignore from Russian Survivors

We humans have a strange capacity to believe only what we see right before our own eyes, and only if it fits our belief systems. This may be the only way to explain why so many Americans ignore, dismiss and/or refuse to listen to the lessons learned from Russians who survived life under the oppressive Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Having lived under the socialist police state before escaping or fleeing to America or to other Western countries, they can see America descending into the same type of totalitarian police state with far more clarity than most Americans can. They understand how quickly and easily the freedom we take for granted may disappear. The First, Second, Fourth, Fifth and Tenth Amendments to the Constitution, for example, have been gradually marginalized, not to mention key tenets of the Constitution itself. Given this context, here are four lessons from Russian survivors that I've found noteworthy:

Lesson One: The people have strength in numbers. Resistance is not futile per this excerpt from Nobel Prize winner Aleksandr L Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago, 1973:

"During an arrest, you think since you are not guilty, how can they arrest you? Why should you run away? And how can you resist right then? After all, you’ll only make your situation worse; you will make it more difficult for them to sort out the mistake.

"They won't believe it until they feel a military boot on their necks." Yuri Bezmenov
And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say goodbye to his family?

Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?

The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! We did not love freedom enough. Every man always has handy a dozen glib little reasons why he is right not to sacrifice himself."

Get the book here, if you dare.

Lesson Two: Turn off the TV. Don't be a useful idiot per Yuri Bezmenov, high-ranking KGB propaganda agent, in this excerpt from video interview, 1985:

"...[KGB goal is] to change the perception of reality of every American to such an extent that despite the abundance of information no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves, their community and their country. It's a great brainwashing process...exposure to true, factual information does not matter anymore...When the Marxist-Leninists come to power, these professors, civil rights activists and other leftists will become disillusioned [at the harsh implementation] and will become dissidents. They will be lined up against a wall and shot. They will not believe it until they feel a military boot on their necks."

See complete interview here at RPU since Google has just removed it after millions of views.

Lesson Three: Most of human history has been lived under rule by brute force. The USA was intended to be different but has gradually become more and more brutish. Don't sit idly by while our freedoms are whittled away, per this quote by Ayn Rand from We the Living, 1936:
"We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force."

Get the book here
 
Lesson Four: Our natural right to self-defense was included in the Bill of Rights primarily for the purpose of defense against a tyrannical government. (They disarm you with a smile.) Mass murder by the millions has happened all over the world for centuries and there's no reason it cannot happen in America. Consider that David Rockefeller idolizes Chairman Mao for murdering millions upon millions of people - he simply thought it a necessary task to implement the Communist plan. Obama mentor Bill Ayres expects to kill 25 million Americans if they resist the Communist takeover of the country. In this excerpt from the Russian newspaper Pravda, Stanislav Mishin warns, "Americans never give up your guns":

"One of the first things they (Reds) did was to disarm the population. From that point, mass repression, mass arrests, mass deportations, mass murder, mass starvation were all a safe game for the powers that were...Do not be fooled by a belief that progressives, leftists hate guns. Oh, no, they do not. What they hate is guns in the hands of those who are not marching in lock step of their ideology. They hate guns in the hands of those who think for themselves and do not obey without question."

See complete editorial here

When we're getting warned, scolded and reminded about the value of freedom from the Russian state newspaper Pravda then it's clear we've left the likes of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine far behind and begun the descent into the very police state America was founded to banish forever. As Yuri Bezmenov stated, if the United States becomes just another socialist, totalitarian state then there won't be any place left for anyone to flee.




Wednesday, December 28, 2011

This Practical Plan Solves Income Inequality

A Dec. 26th Associated Press story in the Providence Journal stated that President Obama and Mitt Romney both want to fix income inequality but by using different methods. The story didn’t ask whether income inequality is a problem or whether any president has the legal right to “fix” it. It is written as if income inequality is universally accepted as a problem that must be fixed. The occupiers and a variety of have-nots agree, demanding “We must close the wealth gap!”

Pretend with me for a minute that our country has no rule of law, no Constitution and the government forces everybody to put every cent of wealth into a big pot. Then it’s divided evenly by the number of people in the country and we all start tomorrow with the exact same amount of money. “Hooray! We’ve eliminated the wealth gap!” The politicians cheer, patting themselves on their backs.

Then what?
Then Senator Obama tries to convince Joe the Plumber that spreading wealth around by stealing it from some people and giving to others is "good for everybody." Americans largely ignore that this is illegal, unconstitutional, immoral and against any code of conduct an elected official would be expected to honor.

Some will go to Las Vegas and lose their “fair share” in the casino within minutes. Others will also go to Las Vegas and earn money working at a trade show. Some may start companies while others smoke crack in a back alley. Some will lend their money to a bank and instantly earn a miniscule amount of interest. Within minutes, we will once again be faced with gross income inequality and a widening wealth gap.

Then what?

Well, the only way to fix this is for the government to force everybody to put every cent of wealth into a big pot. Then it’s divided evenly by the number of people in the country and we all start over with the exact same amount of money. Some will go to Las Vegas and lose their “fair share” in the casino within minutes. Others will go to Las Vegas and earn money working at a trade show…etcetera, etcetera. You get the idea. Then once again faced with rising income inequality and a widening wealth gap, we’ll have no choice but to demand the government fix it by collecting our wealth in a big pot and handing it back.

As anyone can see, this very concept of income inequality is as ridiculous as the theft by force of government pushed as the solution. The very idea that everyone is supposed to earn the exact same amount of money regardless of his/her production or contribution to society cannot be more absurd. Does anyone in Green Bay truly believe that Aaron Rodgers and backup Matt Flynn should earn the same salary? Even the NFL Players Association union wouldn’t try to argue that case. If even unions agree the idea of income inequality is wrong for sports business then isn’t it wrong for every business?

Much is written promoting income inequality as a great evil but I haven’t found a compelling case for the virtues of its reverse: income equality. If one exists, please let me know. “When you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody,” as then Senator Obama said to Joe the Plumber, is not so compelling a case that it justifies stealing from one person to give it to someone else.  

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

We Needed the Berlin Wall

The Berlin Wall provided an omnipresent reminder that life on the eastern side was different from life on the western side. The wall was a tangible symbol that millions of innocent people were being held under oppressive, socialist rule on one side while we on the other side enjoyed life as free (relatively) capitalists. This stark contrast demonstrated the obvious advantages of political and economic freedom every day for the world to see. If only the wall would be torn down then the whole world would rush to freedom!...Right?

In our arrogance, Americans believed that tearing down the Berlin Wall would unleash the capitalist spirit and yearning for freedom upon the crumbling socialist countries of eastern Europe and the USSR. It didn’t occur to us that the evils of socialism, totalitarianism and the desire to be controlled by the government would spread westward even more quickly.

The Berlin Wall represented all that was evil in the “evil empire” and by contrast all that was good in the West. Americans don't shoot innocent civilians in the back as they race to freedom. Now it’s gone and it’s getting harder to see the distinction between East and West, good and evil. It seems America may have needed this cold war relic to continue appearing "good" even as it strengthens government control over its people, strips away fundamental freedoms and marches towards socialism.
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