Colorado Senate Majority Leader John Morse Goes All Shakespearian on Amazon.com

by T.L. James | 8:57 pm, March 9, 2010

Master Thespian John Morse, Colorado Senate Majority Leader, goes off on a rant over Amazon.com’s small act of defiance against his tax increase and privacy invasion. This is so laughable it has to be seen to be believed/appreciated:

For those who don’t know, the Democrat-controlled Colorado legislature two weeks ago passed what have come to be [...]

Say Thank You To Democrats, Gov. Ritter For Reducing Coloradans’ Income During Recession

by elpresidente | 1:57 am, March 8, 2010

The Democrats in Colorado’s legislature, endorsed by Gov. Bill Ritter signature, has forced Amazon.com to drop its Colorado-based affiliates, just as predicted:
Dear Colorado-based Amazon Associate:
We are writing from the Amazon Associates Program to inform you that the Colorado government recently enacted a law to impose sales tax regulations on online retailers. The regulations are burdensome [...]

Starbucks Employees Get Free Gun Training

by wesley | 8:03 am, March 7, 2010

Okay class, who remembers Starbucks Appreciation Day? Gun owners across America thanked Starbucks for not giving into the demands by the The Brady Campaign to Prevent Lawful Self Defense. The anti-gun Brady Campaign demanded Starbucks cease allowing law-abiding citizens from carrying firearms for self defense in their coffee shops.
Let’s check [...]

PPC Covers Leadership Program of the Rockies Retreat: Twittering Liberty

by elpresidente | 2:09 pm, February 26, 2010

Twitterty?
Join PPC on Twitter for coverage: twitter.com/peoplespress
Photos to follow . . .

Steve Moore, Fox News

Stimuluspalooza: One Year Later

by elpresidente | 12:44 pm, February 17, 2010

Michelle Malkin took a look back at the very start–before the first Tea Parties–when bloggers in cities like Seattle and Denver helped launch the organized protests that preceded but foreshadowed the Tea Party movement (and refute the ignorant or disingenuous claim that these protests were astroturf campaigns). Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds collected a great roundup [...]

Starbucks Appreciation Day – Sunday Feb 21

by wesley | 6:32 am, February 17, 2010

The Brady Campaign to Prevent Lawful Self Defense, an organization vocally opposing your right to private firearm ownership, has been losing their battles to disarm law-abiding citizens in federal, state, and local elections. They lose with their ballot initiatives on election days. They lose with their cases in the court system. They [...]

Top 10 Reasons Why Both Parties Are in Tea Party Hot Water – #5

by GrizzlyGrannyLu | 7:30 am, February 16, 2010

This is Day 6 of a 10-part installment.
5. Both Parties Have Strayed from American Economic Principles
Whatever else you can say about the Tea Party, it is a uniquely American movement. WE ARE AMERICANS! Tea Partiers do want to be labelled Democrats, Republicans, North Americans, Progressives, Europeans, Socialists, South Americans, Communists, Asians, Africans or hyphenated anything – and especially [...]

Economics Applied To Colorado’s Dirty Dozen Tax Increases–Guest Post

by Julian Dunraven | 4:43 pm, February 1, 2010

Guest Post by Actuary Rich Bratten
www.governmentunderground.com
In the Denver Post on Sunday, January 31, Op-Ed columnist Ed Quillen paints a picture of an imaginary town called Galena. I found his story interesting, but it stopped well short of telling the whole story.
As Mr. Quillen’s story goes, the town of Galena has 1,000 households but only [...]

The Haitian Catastrophe

by Ari | 12:33 pm, January 14, 2010

Right now, the most important thing we can do as average Americans is to donate to charitable relief organizations, budgets permitting. (Jennifer and I chose the Red Cross.) And we can offer our gratitude and support for Americans going to Haiti to help. The magnitude of destruction is overwhelming.

We must also denounce the lunacy of people like Pat Robertson, who said the earthquake was a result of a Haitian “pact to the devil.” (Mercifully, Rick Warren said on his Twitter feed, “Labeling any natural disaster as God’s judgment is nonsense.”)

Then, as the dust settles, the majority of us not directly involved in relief efforts should contemplate how to mitigate the harm of such disasters in the future.

The first obvious thing to note about Haiti is that its government is corrupt and its people oppressed. The Heritage Foundation ranks Haiti as “mostly unfree,” ranking 147 out of 179, behind Russia.

A second point to note is that the Haitian government knew the earthquake was coming and did little to prepare for it. As Cassie Rodenberg reports for Popular Mechanics:

Back in 2008, Eric Calais and Paul Mann, geophysicists who study fault lines in the Caribbean, predicted that Haiti would soon face such a devastating quake. …

Calais says that because Haiti poses safety concerns and a difficult work environment with a poor road access system, it’s been neglected by seismologists. …

But his research didn’t translate well enough to elicit safety precautions before the quake. Though Calais notes that earthquakes can’t be prevented, he says there was enough advance warning for the Haitian government to make preparations, and, in fact, his team alerted the government four to five years beforehand.

“We’ve told the Haitian government that the Enriquillo fault is a major player,” Calais says. “We’ve told them exactly where the fault is. We’ve told them how fast it was building up elastic energy, and we’ve told them that right now, if it was to go, it could produce a 7.2 in magnitude or larger event.”

The government has worked with the team and listened to its foreboding reports, Calais says, but for the most part, Haiti has failed to implement emergency plans and restructure crucial buildings.

Economic liberty and a government constrained by the rule of just law is necessary for human life. Statism kills. Corrupt governments kill. Stifling economic development kills.

Michelle Malkin points to a post by Jim Roberts: “Long-term reforms for Haitian democracy and its economy are also badly overdue.” (I profoundly disagree with Roberts’s calls to violate economic liberty at home through forced wealth transfers in order to promote economic reform in Haiti.)

John Stossel refers to the excellent summary of the matter by economist Don Boudreaux:

The ultimate tragedy in Haiti isn’t the earthquake; it’s that country’s lack of economic freedom. The earthquake simply but catastrophically revealed the inhuman consequences of this fact.

Registering 7.0 on the Richter scale, the Haitian earthquake killed tens of thousands of people. But the quake that hit California’s Bay Area in 1989 was also of magnitude 7.0. It, though, killed only 63 people.

This difference is due chiefly to Americans’ greater wealth. With one of the freest economies in the world, Americans build stronger homes and buildings, and have better health-care and better search and rescue equipment. In contrast, burdened by one of the world’s least-free economies, Haitians cannot afford to build sturdy structures. Nor can they afford the health-care and emergency equipment that we take for granted here in the U.S.

These stark facts should be a lesson for those who insist that human habitats are made more dangerous, and human lives put in greater peril, by freedom of commerce and industry.

If you want to live, if you want to promote human life, you must advocate capitalism.

America’s First Thanksgiving almost didn’t happen – “thanks” to “spreading the wealth”

by The Peripatetic Pundit | 9:12 am, November 26, 2009

As we gather together with our families and friends on this long holiday weekend, it’s worth remembering not only that we, as Americans, have much for which to be thankful – but also why.
It is no accident that prosperity and freedom blossomed in this country like no other – before or since.
Even before the founding [...]

Child Safety Standards And The Idiocy of ABC

by Julian Dunraven | 9:30 am, November 25, 2009

By Julian Dunraven, J.D., M.P.A.

Honorable Friends:

I know better. I really do. In truth, I was simply trying to be polite. Nonetheless, I opened the email from my honorable friend, clicked on the link, and suffered through a clip of ABC’s World News with Charles Gibson, a man who somehow manages to look grave while pronouncing utter rubbish.

The clip in question, “Lagging Safety Standards for Baby Products,” was not news, but rather an inexcusably fear mongering advocacy piece calling for greater government regulation in response to the recent crib recall. My honorable friend sent it along to me in the hope that I could explain why the federal government does not already set strict safety standards for baby products.

Contrary to ABC’s histrionics over what it sees as a complete lack of regulation, the federal government does indeed impose rather exacting safety standards upon manufacturers and retailers of child products. The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008 (CPSIA) stands as just one example of such regulation. This is nothing to celebrate, however. The CPSIA serves only to impose crippling costs on business, and actually undermines the safety of the children it purports to protect. All it successfully does is increase the size, scope, and power of government. Only Mr. Gibson could breathe a solemn sigh of relief over that. Sensible people should be alarmed.

The Economic Costs of Regulation

The economic costs of the CPSIA are fairly obvious. The CPSIA requires that any product intended for the use of children under age 12 must be tested by a third party and certified for safety under standards promulgated by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (the Commission). Other than prohibiting excessive levels of dangerous substances such as lead or phthalates, the CPSIA leaves it to the Commission to define and set safety standards. Once certified, a manufacturer must affix a proper label to each of its products. Even without knowing what additional testing standards the Commission will impose, this third party testing, certification, and labeling requirement imposes enormous expense.

For a large toy manufacturer such as Hasbro, these additional expenses, though irksome, are manageable. The company will simply pass the costs along to consumers, and young parents, struggling to pay bills, will marvel at the outrageous prices of baby products while no doubt cursing the “greedy” corporate executives they mistakenly blame for the cost. The consumer suffers, but the large company may survive with less profit. A small business, however, will suffer even more.

A stay at home mother who designs and creates baby bibs for her own children, then has them manufactured for public sale, will suddenly find her business faced with expensive new testing requirements for every fabric she uses, for every fastening device and material she attaches, and for any pacifier or toy she may include with the sale of such a creation. It makes no difference that she thoroughly researched the safest types of products and materials for use in her designs. She must meet the requirements of the regulations, though the cost of doing so is greater than all the revenue of her small start-up company. The time commitment alone is more than she has as a new mother. So she closes her business. Others like her are prevented from entering the market at all. Government has just set a high wealth barrier to market entry.

Regulation’s Cost to Safety

Perhaps even more worrying than the financial costs of the CPSIA, though, is the damage it does to the cause of child safety. This may seem counterintuitive given that CPSIA is intended to do the exact opposite. Make no mistake, though, the existence of the CPSIA ensures that baby products will be less safe than they would be without the CPSIA.

If the CPSIA and its like did not exist, children would not be in any imminent danger. Rather, the safety of products would be determined by the courts. If a child were injured by any given product, and the parents brought suit against the manufacturer, a judge would look to see whether the manufacturer knew, or should have known, that the product could be expected to cause injury. A judge would hold a manufacture responsible for knowing the best practices of his or her industry. Thus, even if a particular manufacturer was ignorant of a product defect or risk which others in the industry had discovered and corrected, he or she would still be held responsible in tort (and sometimes under criminal law) for failing to maintain best practices. The beauty of this system is that the safety standard is always rising as the industry gains new information. Manufacturers have great incentive to keep up with or exceed best practices as punitive damages can put them out of business and the safest products have great marketing appeal.

The CPSIA changes all that. Under the CPSIA, the Commission sets industry standards by law. That then becomes the minimum safety level, and as long as a manufacturer meets the legal standards for its products, it cannot be held liable for the injuries its products may cause. The industry may, in fact, develop best practices far in excess of the safety standard set by law. However, as these standards are more costly and the law does not require them, many manufacturers will not use them in the production of their goods. While the Commission will attempt to issue regulations modified for industry development, it cannot possibly keep pace. It is but one underfunded government agency charged with setting standards for millions of baby products in the industry. Inevitably, its regulations will lag by many years. That is the sole point ABC correctly reported. The government, acting through the Commission, cannot possibly set safety standards as exacting or as efficiently as the industry itself through the proper operation of our court system and the market.

ABC and Mr. Gibson seem to think government must involve itself in everything we do for our own good—especially to protect the children. As I hope you see here, though, further government regulation of child safety standards actually leaves our children more vulnerable while imposing crippling costs on our small businesses. Just ask yourself: do you want the products your child uses to be subject to the highest standards the market and toy industry can offer? Or do you really want to leave your child’s safety at the bottom of a federal bureaucrat’s inbox?

Independence Institute: Founder’s Night with P.J. O’Rourke

by elpresidente | 12:23 pm, November 13, 2009

Dear Friends of Freedom,
The Independence Institute is founded on the eternal truths of the Declaration of Independence. On November 19 at our 25th annual Founders Night, we proudly celebrate a quarter-century of defending and promoting these truths. This event is going to be a huge celebration of liberty! Book your seats now for this celebration [...]

Colorado Senate Candidate Forum Video

by T.L. James | 9:44 pm, November 12, 2009

It’s finally done processing, so here it is for your edification. Note that Jane Norton’s introduction is not included, due to a glitch with my camera.

Regulatory changes necessary to lower prescription drug costs

by Seng Center | 7:00 pm, November 8, 2009

Part Two of the Capitalist Manifesto for Healthcare Reform: Lowering prescription drug costs. Adapted from a piece originally published by Jimmy Sengenberger in the Regis University Highlander newspaper.

Ronald Reagan once said, “Individual freedom and ingenuity are at the very core of everything we’ve accomplished.”

Indeed, everything that has made America great has come from empowering the people, including and especially when it comes to the market. Capitalism has been the engine of prosperity for this country going back to its founding. As such, I am now proposing that Congress and the President consider the “Capitalist Manifesto for Healthcare Reform,” several specific, free-market fixes for the healthcare problem.

In the first article of this series, I examined the importance of breaking down two critical barriers to competition: the third-party based system that sets consumers apart from paying and decision-making and state laws prohibiting insurance purchases across state lines. Cost and affordability, not quality of care, are the key issues with our healthcare system. So let’s look at another way in which we can directly empower the individual beyond increased choice and expand affordability—by adjusting policies surrounding the importation of cheaper prescription drugs.

High Costs: Prescription drug costs often contribute greatly to higher healthcare costs. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the number of prescriptions purchased in the U.S. between 1994 and 2004 was a whopping 68 percent, with prices averaging increases of 8.3 percent yearly during that period. “Although still only a modest part of total health care spending in the U.S (11 percent),” they note, “with so many people relying on prescriptions, the cost implications loom large for the American public, health insurers, and government payers.” The problems lie in Research and Development spending—specifically, patents and FDA regulations—and the fact that importing prescription drugs is illegal under current U.S. law.

Patents: Both patents and FDA regulations are significant contributors to $800 million in costs to launch a single new pharmaceutical product—costs which result in higher prices for consumers. First, patents are designed to give a company temporary monopoly on the product so that they can recover their R&D spending. A patent lasts 20 years, yet as the CATO Institute’s Roger Pilon points out, “the effective life for drug patents is about nine years.” Logically, the shorter the time, the higher companies must charge per unit during that time to make up for the costs. This process must be changed to permit the same amount of patent time that other products have.

FDA Regulations: Then there are regulations. Today, according to PHRMA, the process of discovery to FDA approval takes an average of 12 to 15 years. As such, many people who would accept the risks involved suffer during this time. As economist Milton Friedman suggested, “[T]he one big development you could make would be to go back [to the situation where you have] the FDA certify safety…but not efficacy, and let the market itself work in determining efficacy.”

Indeed, the FDA should test only for safety and allow doctors and consumers to judge efficacy, which would decrease costs substantially and thus allow for cheaper medications. By altering the regulatory process, more innovation and development will result in addition to lower prices.

Prescription Drug Importation: Finally, current law makes it illegal for prescription drugs to come to the U.S. from anyone other than the American producer. As of now, they must be approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for importation. Consequently, competition between prescription drug providers is stifled, as U.S. manufacturers lack the incentive to cut prices to beat out lower-priced contenders. But individuals, states and cities are already beginning to avoid these laws and import drugs from other countries. This should be made official: by permitting the importation of lower-cost prescription drugs from countries like Canada, consumers will have a larger list of affordable, cheaper medications to choose from.

Of course, we do have a right to know if what we’re buying hasn’t been FDA, so what’s to say that the government can’t mandate that imported prescription drugs say “NOT APPROVED BY FDA” in big, bold letters and be placed in sections stating “NOT APPROVED BY FDA” in the pharmacy? Leave it up to me and my doctor, not big brother Sam, to decide whether or not I want to buy a cheaper drug from Canada, approved by their version of the FDA, instead of the more expensive product from Georgia.

There are other concerns as well. The Heritage Foundation’s Nina Owcharenko, for instance, makes a good point: prescription drugs in other, Westernized countries are fixed in accordance with price controls, which would distort the international market and advantage foreign manufacturers.

However, we must recognize that the vast majority of R&D costs are being paid for by the Americans, with other countries essentially getting a free pass. The U.S. is the only nation where market dynamics of supply and demand play out in pharmaceuticals—and with good reason. Price controls in other countries, as Owcharenko points out, reduce R&D spending (not costs) for new drugs by as much as $5 to $8 billion each year and trials for new medical compounds by as much as 50-60 percent.

But as long as the ban on importation is in effect, American drug manufacturers are going to recoup their R&D costs here instead of pushing supply and demand principles on other countries—meaning higher prices for us. Essentially, prices are set differently in the U.S. from other countries, meaning the U.S. shoulders the cost burden.

By eliminating the importation ban, other countries will have no choice but to react to supply and demand principles, as American manufacturers will find it necessary to cut prices at home and raise them abroad. Thus, other countries will have to share in R&D costs, which is long overdue.

As Roger Pilon notes, pharmaceuticals can use contractual agreements (to do such things as restrict drug resale), limits on supply, and export pressures, among other things, to help ensure that foreign countries are not undercutting the company. In effect, American manufacturers will be encouraged to do whatever they can to discourage importation in order to maintain their market share, which can be done by lowering prices here and raising prices elsewhere.

Should the U.S. government repair the patent process, refocus FDA regulations and permit the importation of prescription drugs, Americans of all stripes will surely benefit from a noticeable reduction of healthcare expenses.

Principles are Universal, not Convenient

by AnCap | 11:31 am, October 28, 2009

Last night I attended a DMYR general meeting. Brett Moore, the night’s MC, asked me to attend so that I could plug my awesome website Complete Colorado. (if you pay attention to the Drudge Report check us out, we are the state based Colorado Drudge, but only better). Needless to say, my presence at [...]

I support President Obama

by spark4freedom | 8:33 am, October 26, 2009

I support President Obama! Yep! You read that correctly. I am the most conservative person you will ever meet and I support Obama. In his first 10 months, he has done more to unite our own Republican party than anything we have done over the last two years. What has he done to deserve my [...]

Competition is key to real healthcare reform

by Seng Center | 5:00 pm, October 20, 2009

Part One of the Capitalist Manifesto for Healthcare Reform: Boosting competition. Adapted from a piece originally published by Jimmy Sengenberger in the Regis University Highlander newspaper.

President Obama is right. When it comes to healthcare, the status quo is unacceptable. Too many people are without access to affordable health coverage, and millions of people are uninsured through no fault of their own. We need change. But President Obama’s government answer is not the way to go.

Capitalism has been the engine of prosperity for this country going back to its founding. As such, I am now proposing that Congress and the President consider the “Capitalist Manifesto for Healthcare Reform,” several specific, free-market fixes for the healthcare problem. The most critical aspect of reform, and the starting point, must be increased competition—something else President Obama claims to favor.

Putting You in Control: There’s a basic principle in economics that isn’t talked about all that much, but it stands true thanks to human nature: If someone else—a middleman—is putting up most of the cash for something people really want—or need—they’re going to get it more. You’re not worried about the cost—someone else is paying. This is exactly what happens with healthcare.

Government regulation and policies have essentially mandated a third party-based system that forces the consumer to work through health insurance companies, HMO’s, employers and other middlemen that pay the supplier. 84% of all personal healthcare spending is made through private health insurance, the government or other private expenditures that are not directly from the patient.

Encouraging the third-party system are tax exemptions for employer-provided health insurance that the millions of self-employed and small business owners and workers who pay on their own do not receive. Own a big business? Congrats—you get a nice little tax exemption for healthcare! Run that mom-and-pop shop down the street, or your own home-based business? Tough. As Seinfeld’s Soup Nazi would put it, “No tax exclusion for you!”

These government incentives, policies and regulations put in place, in large part by the federal tax code, do nothing more than exacerbate the problem. Because of the third-party-payer system, health providers aren’t competing for individual consumers—they’re contending for large corporations like Target and Cisco. The problem here is that individuals are separated from the cost, driving up prices (premiums), and thus taking away decision-making authority of the patient.

Not a day goes by where we don’t see commercials for Geico, AllState and other car insurance companies competing over who provides the best service at the lowest price—competition absent from healthcare because of the third-party system. To fix this, the government must equalize the healthcare tax exemption across the board so that everyone, not just middlemen and big business, will benefit from it. That means small businesses as well as individuals, all of whom will then be far more equipped to go out and find an affordable health insurance plan for themselves, their families, and their employees—plans that are right for them.

We should also examine the other policies and regulations that encourage the third-party system. As a result of both of these decisive actions, costs will go down. Making these adjustments to the current system would open up the market to increased competition by allowing consumers to shop around on their own, decreasing costs substantially while maintaining high quality.

Expand the Sphere of Competition: In his recent speech to Congress on healthcare, President Obama acknowledged the extensive concentration of business in the health insurance industry. As he pointed out, “75 percent of the insurance market is controlled by five or fewer companies. In Alabama, almost 90 percent is controlled by just one company.” While there are some issues with the calculation of these numbers, he is generally correct—the market is highly centralized and void of real competition. Another fundamental reason for this problem is again government-created: the inability to purchase health insurance plans across state lines.

Thanks to the 1945 McCarran-Ferguson Act, which granted states the ability to use licensing laws to prevent trade with insurers in other states, John in Colorado cannot purchase a plan from a company licensed in Arizona; instead, he must buy a plan from a firm in his state. Health insurance is largely regulated by the states, which require that any plan an individual insurance purchaser wishes to buy must comply with all of that state’s regulations. This advantages both insurers and regulators in maintaining psuedo-monopolies in their respective states, in turn hurting consumers, who have few lower-cost options available to them.

Congress should do what it is granted by the Constitution and mandate that every state recognize insurance licenses of other states. According to the CATO Institute, “Letting individuals and employers purchase health insurance from out of state could reduce the number of uninsured Americans by as many as 17 million, or one-third of the most-cited estimate of the number of uninsured.” An individual state’s regulations, as CATO points out, need not be changed and can be enforced in the other states.

But what about states’ rights, you say? If ever there were an area where the feds can play a legitimate role, it’s this. The Commerce Clause in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution explicitly grants Congress authority to regulate interstate commerce. What was one of the big reasons they did this? Because each state had its own tariffs between states under the Articles of Confederation—basically the same thing as these obstructionist regulations.

By asserting its rightful authority to break down barriers to insurance purchasing across state lines via repealing McCarran-Ferguson, Congress and the President will strike a considerable blow to insurance market concentration, truly boosting the “choice and competition” that Obama likes to talk up. If done alongside dismantling the third-party system, we will see costs begin to lower for everyone—all without a massive, trillion dollar government overhaul.

The evils of capitalism.

by David K. Williams, Jr. | 10:27 am, October 17, 2009

The evil free market, along with the even more evil Wal-mart, are responsible for cheaper books.

PPC/R Block Party/DMYR Fundraiser – Tax Day Tea Party Commemorative Poster

by T.L. James | 10:20 pm, October 1, 2009

After the April 15th Tax Day Tea Party, we had so many requests for copies of this great picture of the crowd of 5000-7000 gathered on the Capitol steps that we decided to team with R Block Party and Denver Metro Young Republicans to use it as a fundraiser to help offset some of the costs of running our [...]

Save Our Constitution Rally

by T.L. James | 12:49 am, September 20, 2009

The Council for Wise Public Policy held a rally today on the Capitol steps in Denver:
The rally is a nonpartisan chance for Colorado Americans to gather together behind our two founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and stand up for our First Amendment and Second Amendment rights, as well as against out-of-control spending [...]

Introducing Barack Obama Monopoly!

by TJ Wihera | 7:44 pm, September 14, 2009

With thanks to signgenerator.org, as I used their Monopoly Card Generator.

Denver 9-12 Rally Report

by T.L. James | 5:48 pm, September 12, 2009

Some quick impressions from today’s 9-12 Rally on the capitol steps in Denver:

Crowd size: I’m not an expert, but based on past experience I would guess there was maybe a bit shy of a thousand people there. Judge for yourself from the crowd photos below (keeping in mind that the width and shallowness of the venue makes [...]

A Million-Plus Marchers at Washington, DC 9-12 Tea Party?

by T.L. James | 3:33 pm, September 12, 2009

Stephen Green of Pajamas Media has live reports from throughout the day on today’s big Tea Party rally in DC.
And check out this picture of the rally taken by Mary Katherine Ham [via Instapundit].
Who knew it would be so big?
Just back now from Denver’s 9-12 rally – pictures to follow shortly. My guess at attendance [...]

“How American Health Care Killed My Father”

by CapitalistBitch | 11:57 am, August 28, 2009

Writing for The Atlantic, Dave Goldhill uncovers the source of the flaws inherent in our current health care system.
After the needless death of his father, the author, a business executive, began a personal exploration of a health-care industry that for years has delivered poor service and irregular quality at astonishingly high cost. It is a [...]

Three Town Hall Conversations on Health Reform

by T.L. James | 11:30 pm, August 10, 2009

Pretty typical of the discussions at Ed Perlmutter’s health reform town hall in Brighton on Saturday.

“Healthcare Is a Right, Not a Privilege”: A Bit Unclear on the Concept

by T.L. James | 9:53 am, August 9, 2009

I guess Ari’s example is rubbing off on me – I saw this young woman’s sign, and I just had to interview her.

Sadly, this was typical of the level of understanding of first principles I heard all afternoon from the collectivists promoting Obamacare. There was much discussion about “social justice” [sic] and emotion-based “arguments” from [...]

“First, Do No Harm”

by T.L. James | 11:58 am, August 1, 2009

If these factoids are any indication of how badly “broken” healthcare in the U.S. is, I don’t want it fixed. Or certainly not replaced with a “system” that wipes out these positive attributes while inflicting on us all the worst aspects of those “systems” our betters think we ought to emulate.
If you want real healthcare [...]

Will You Fight?

by CapitalistBitch | 1:37 pm, July 21, 2009

There’s a lot of folks out there right now who are awfully unhappy with the state of things. The entire Tea Party phenomenon, if taken in its historical context, indicates a populace issuing a warning against their government. A populace on the brink of revolution. Props to Jason Talley for tweeting this.
Violent revolution.
Now, I used [...]

Broken Window Fallacies

by TJ Wihera | 1:36 pm, July 21, 2009

Parts of the Metro Area got rocked last night by a wicked hail storm. When I arrived at the office in Lakewood, I found broken windows, broken windshields, and destroyed trees.

Certainly, the next few days will be very good days for those who sell glass and dispose of tree limbs. But as Bastiat pointed out [...]

Free Rifle with Every Truck Purchase

by zombiehunter | 12:07 pm, July 17, 2009

***UPDATE***
Anyone who doubts the ignorance of the Main Stream Media “journalists” should take a look at the AP “news” article. Here’s your homework: read the “news” article and if you can find the 3 blatant errors, you get a gold star.
_____
Earlier this morning, a CNN Anchor Babe interviewed Mark Muller, owner of Max [...]

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