I love Jan Brewer

Courtesey of Phoenix new times

As promised in a previous entry, I have continued to research the Lawsuit filed by (most) of the states and am now prepared to begin a several part review of the suit's merits. The suit is a short and simple 23 pages of litigation, which compared to the massive 2400+ page Health care monstrosity we have all been striving to grasp is a breeze. there are a lot of complicated legal questions being addressed, however, and it may take a while to work out all of the questions and standings. But it is coming, I promise. (hopefully before I leave at the end of June, though.)
BUT FIRST
Granted, this is old news, but it is so good it has to be said. 

I have to give a shout out to my governor. Jan Brewer has been dealing with a democratic attorney general who, apparently is not too fond of coming out against the party establishment in a lot of things, and Jan has done a terrific job at holding his feet to the fire in AZ.
Jan came out this week, having already taken control of the lawsuit the federal government raised against the state's immigration bill (summary here), Jan Took the time to launch a petition, which I signed on June 22, and personally join in the denunciation of this health care bill. Now THAT is going to the mattresses. I think my governor deserves a round of applause. She has certainly earned my vote.

 Tough cookie image from www.sixthman.net
horses from the BBC

 

Our History--And it's Changes

 History is such an easy thing to shred, change, or disfigure.
In Animal Farm--an Orwellian fantasy of disturbing predictive accuracy, a farm "rebellion" leaves a group of pigs in charge of an animal led government. The pig's power is to be guarded by a set of  rules, written on the barn. Because the animals are ignorant, and because they do not remember the past, the pigs are able to slowly alter the rules to take more and more power, eventually placing themselves as the ultimate dictators of the farm animals, and removing the freedom of other animals. It it interesting to note Oswell's argument--that freedoms are lost not in one brutal blow to mankind, but in a slow poisoning of our values and history.
I follow with some interest the caretaking of our national memorials and historical sites for a similar reason. It seems to me that those who would destroy freedom would be hard pressed to do so if all around us are the reminders of the prices we have paid to stay free. That is why I was surprised to find read this article in the Wall Street Journal.
It seems that our history is being changed.
(A note here. The memorial is run by private donors, as was pointed out by Riley.The president is not directly responsible for it, and it is not, thankfully, administered by the government.As such, I have removed wording that would have directly blamed the current Administration for the incident.)
Now, I am not entirely convinced that our world is  bent on the destruction of the American system, but it does make me wonder what exactly he is up to when Stalin makes it onto the D-Day memorial. A few reasons that this never should have happened:
1) Stalin atrociously killed millions more than Hitler in a brutal campaign to bring communism, which is dynamically opposed to democracy, to Russia  
2) The Russians had nothing to do with D-Day. In fact, Russian troops never even touched the beaches of  Normandy--ever--much less in 1944.                                    

3) This is a monument to Honor the people who fought and died to protect the freedom of America. Stalin spent the years of his life following WWII trying to destroy that freedom here and abroad.
4) He's not American, and he was only an Ally because of convenience.
Yet despite this and other glaring reasons this should not have even been considered, there it is, a statue of Stalin, standing in the middle of the D-Day memorial next to some of the greatest and most heroic leaders of that era. To me, this is a warning sign.
Liberals, including the Obama Administration has always shown an odd contempt for the great leaders of that war. not long after Obama's entrance into the White House, Winston Churchill quietly slid from his place of honor there and into a storage compartment on Dover Street, but the addition of Stalin to the D-Day memorial is a tacit rewriting of the History of D-Day. It worries me that we could loose our history so subtly. It worries me more that the man we have elected to the greatest seat of power in the free world is erecting tributes to one of the greatest oppressors of that same world. My only hope is that there is still some of old Benjamin and Clover among us, and that they will speak up in time to protect this land I love so deeply.
P.S. I've found that this blog is is also a great post on this idea. 
Stalin bust Photo Courtesy of Jill Nance/the News Advance
All Animal Farm Photos Courtesy of http://hrsbstaff.ednet.ns.ca

On Liberty

Image courtesy of "Friends of the American Revolution"

I am reading John Stewart Mill this week, It's an interesting read to be sure. Mill has several beliefs that I have a hard time reconciling (like the idea that only "elite" nations can provide the necessary credentials for a non-despotic government) but there are definitely things that I like in his writings as well. LIke, for example, his perfect construction of a libertarian Government. Says Mill:
"the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number is self-protection"
 to make that a little more approachable; John says, "if it's not going to hurt you, or the country, let people do what they please--it is none of the government's concern." Wow, suddenly I love mr. Mill's perception of the world. I think that we all to often loose our way in trying to legislate our morality upon other people. We forget that the foundation of this country is to let all me do as they please--I espouse this in my religion, which teaches us to  "let [others] worship how, who or what they may"(number 11) and in my daily life, by working as a conservative to decrease the size of government, yet sometimes my habits are outside of the beliefs that I profess when I call for government intervention in the public sector for things that harm no one but the people who made bad choices.
Whatever the case, I think it is important to remember that government is a necessary evil. we choose to live under governments because of the protections they offer, but their power must be carefully limited. We would do well to carefully consider the effects of all legislation we support, remembering that when we give government power to assert our will over a minority, when our day as a minority comes, we will be unable to defend ourselves from the powers a new majority chooses to assert over us through those governmental powers.
This is a lesson that Conservatives are facing in all it's splendor, let's hope we have the good sense to fix our mistakes and return to a limited governance when, or if, we are able to return to governing.
Image courtesy of wimpactlab.com

Healthcare: A Battle Plan

So after a nice little bit in California, I am back, but I have to tell you, I am not really hopeful about the health care cases that are now coming before the supreme court. Reason? I am not too hopeful that Obamacare is unconstitutional in any significant way. This is bad for a whole lot of reasons, not the least of which is that the bill may actually stand long enough to be a significant pain in my...life. Before I begin, though, let me remind you that I am still spitting mad about the passage of this bill and I think it is underhanded in every way. As I lay out these points, realize that they come to you from a "let's find a better way to kill it" perspective rather than a "better just learn to deal with it" kind of perspective.
Anyway, after a long and drawn out discussion, and from a (hopefully) more even headed perspective than has previously been accounted, here are my conclusions on the bill:
1) Authority: The argument has been made that the government has never mandated that an entire entity buy a given product. This is true, It has been said that there has never been such an incursion into the private sector as this bill--also probably true (though less so, I really think the new deal did a lot more damage than this bill could ever do.) but the problem here is that the Constitution does not ever really mention any of these things. It gives Congress authority do do "provide for the [...] general welfare of the United States (Article I Section 8 Clause 1). Now I realize that there are a whole host of people saying that this has mention to something other than the Individual nations of the United States, but our government is inherently seen as "by the people, for the people and of the people. (Gettysburg Address) This in mind, it's going to be outrageously hard to convince any supreme court justice that "the United States" constitutes anything other than that nation's people. The sad conclusion that we must come to, then, is that no matter how much we resist it, Congress does have the authority to regulate the general welfare of the people, and that certainly includes health care.
2) Arguments based off of the tenth amendment fail when we recognize congressional authority over the general welfare of the populace, because Congress has the right to pass bills specifically mentioned in the constitution, which would of course make this bill "mentioned" by section eight of the Constitution. While the reserved clause of the constitution would be great to fall back on, I am just not seeing a lot of ammunition here if we cannot prove that the general welfare is anything other than our physical well being, which this bill obviously regulates.
3) I have heard a lot of arguments (and I believe this is what the state lawsuits are about) concerning overburdening the states. While there is a real and significant problem with crushing state governments under repressive mandates, the problem is that the Constitution never even considered that the Federal government would get so big that it's mandates would threaten bankrupting the states, and as such there is really no discussion on the matter in the annals of the Constitution. While I believe that the states could really have good Legal standing in taking on the federal government, it would certainly not be because what Congress did was unconstitutional.
Enough with the depressing fail stories. I still believe that this monstrosity of a bill can be taken down, and here are a few options that I have heard of.
Option 1: Repeal and Replace: I have heard a lot of discussion about this option, and while I realize that the president is likely to veto this bill, congress can tie his hands, or at least tie up legislation bad enough to force the president to the bargaining table--which would be a huge step for this administration. I think that it is politically feasible that we could have the votes to do this as well. I have heard rumors that the Democratic base if fractioned--badly, even in strongholds such as Hawaii, there seem to be holes in democratic armor, which republican challengers are taking advantage of. I am planning to work a lot of campaigns between now and November, whenever possible, and I think we just might be able to pull off some serious wins here in the midterm elections. IF we are strong and can prove to the American public that we have gotten religion. That is the hard sell.
Option 2: the Sweethearts: There is hope in the fact that states can both opt out of the plan, and that certain states have special "sweetheart programs" that helped persuade them to accept this bill. Thee disproportional benefits could arguably be a violation of the requirement that "no preference [...] be given by any regulation or commerce or revenue" (Article 1 section 9 clause 6)
While there are a great many more arguments to be made for and against this bill, I am going to limit my comments here until I have read the District Court briefs in full.

Reforming our views of "Reform"

I think that, like in many other things, in health care our arguments have lost the forest for the trees--we have forgotten the core arguments of our country in trying to address a smaller section of ourselves.
I have heard several arguments for health care that i think are interesting. Many apply to my last post. but I will respond here to some my friends have made that may not.
1) People who do not buy insurance are a burden to society, and therefore a government responsibility. First of all, the idea that these people are going to get cancer treatments paid by the taxpayers is incredibly unlikely. Actually, the only thing that could even possibly be paid for by the government when someone without insurance becomes ill is going to be their emergency room visits, unless you choose to donate to their particular "save _______" fund, but it is not a social cost. In hospitals now, if you do not have the money for a treatment, for the most part, you go without it, or you go into debt. If you go into debt, and you go bankrupt, your cost will be absorbed by banks and creditors, who assume this will happen from time to time, before it is absorbed by the populace as a whole, so the chances of this hitting your average joe are slim at best.
2) Premiums are out of control. We have to do something or all is lost. This is a question of where the government's control is. To be honest, I don't think that the government should have anything to do with health care. My support of tort reform stems from a desire to get it out of the judicial as well as the legislative process. The American government was not meant to be a social institution. It was meant to be a control of peace so that people could solve their own problems. With passage of social bills like health care, we look to government to do something that it was never meant to do--solve our personal insolvencies. If government be expected to do this, government is expected to fundamentally restrict the way you and i live, and it destroys the aims of our constitutional government
3) Shortly I will reply to the idea of coverage under private plans: The current system is set up so that people are grouped into certain risk pools. This is, to my knowledge, one of the only ways that one can make insuring against a universally occurring problem (sickness) economically viable. If, as will soon be the case, a healthy person is charged the same amount as one on his deathbed, or one who takes huge risks in his personal life, the cost will go up and at some point insurers will have to charge more than a policy is worth to anyone to cover their overheads. What we do by forcing companies to accept pre-existing conditions seems like a charitable venture on face, and that is why it has so much support, but by the very nature of economics, this is the death knell for the whole idea of insurance, which is based on you paying a fee for something that may or may not happen to you. tow results will occur. A) people are not going to buy insurance until they are sick. While this is supposedly covered by the mandate for health insurance, such a mandate will have to be pretty steep if it is to entice people to not pay premiums that will rise yearly with the increase in risk. I do not think that the current excise, while it is shocking, would be such an incentive. B) private companies are going to be forced out of the picture. thus limiting competition and further increasing costs to you. this is because the companies, as stated before, no longer have a statistical advantage to working insurance. their bet now has to be that they can get enough people to drive their costs lower than competition. Problem here is that the federal system has a larger pool inherently and is subsidized to the tune of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars and Insurance companies get more taxes than they used to so they get undercut by the government and go out of business. Result: A exponentially growing, single payer system, and soon.

Accountable to the Spirit of Freedom

Congress continues to debate it's healthcare 'resolution' if one could ever call it such. The vote is meant to be completed by the end of this week--on Sunday, probably, because the house cannot garner the votes that it needs to pass any of the various kinds of legislation it has been fighting over.
The fact that the "final" (though i doubt very much it will be 'final' until it passes) deadline is just before the easter recess of congress makes me a bit nervous. being a, if only amateur, student of the constitution, I am again making my way through the federalist papers. This morning, i read from federalist 57 where James Madison argues that the House of Representatives will be fully accountable to the people. he makes three distinctive arguments 1) that the House has to face reelection often and thus is unlikely to do anything flagrantly against the will of those who gave them power. 2) That the people we elect to office aught to be, as often as possible, enlightened statesmen who would seek the liberty of all people. and 3) Those laws they create must apply equally to themselves as much as others. It is here that Madison makes a chilling point. He admits that at some point congress may seek to create laws from which it is exempt and here demands that the people be not tolerant of this unjust action. To Madison, the very tolerance of any such law would be contrary to the "vigilant and manly spirit which actuates the people of America"
says Madison:
"If this spirit shall ever be so far debased as to tolerate a law not obligatory on the Legislature as well as on the people, the people will be prepared to tolerate anything but liberty."
A chilling statement indeed. Now, It is of comfort to note that the America people have thus far shown little tolerance for the actions of a congress bent on toying with some of the worst of kickbacks (think cornhuskers) and threats against representatives and abuse of power. But it is interesting to note that Congress is seeking to insulate itself from the public by having an up or down vote on this bill before the people can have their way with their representatives during town hall meetings. if you'll remember, the last one's were not so pleasant for democratic congressmen.
Whether congress succeeds or not, I'll bet that easter recess is not pretty for them. I will be keeping my eyes out for the people's response--it's time we show that we will not tolerate a Congress of follies.

Deficits-Moral and Monetary

Like most people, I have been taking a lot of interest in the budgets of the worlds nations over the last few months. This week Greece nearly went bankrupt, and seems to still be in a world of financial trouble--even talking about asking the IMF to help it solve it's debt problems, and the Congressional Budget Office stated that by 2020 the United States national debt will breach 20 trillion (with a "T") dollars. As if these problems weren't enough, the EU faces even more countries with impending debt crises. Besides the fact it seems oddly like our world leaders are in desperate need in lessons in economics and budgeting, there is another, deeper problem that i think our impending debt crisis shows.
As a people, we have gotten used to living beyond our means. it amazes me that in greece, where the country was on track to go completely bankrupt by the end of this year, people could be protesting because the government was cutting programs, not because the government failed to create a viable budget in the past ten years--the former was a necessity following  the latter, which was a case of really bad stewarding by the federal government.
The chants of the people basically asking the ailing governments to "save our programs" have been repeated in the United States as well. What surprises me about this is not that students are angry about more fees, or that greek workers are angry about going without pay--I understand that these are terrible things to inflict upon any constituency--but that the people do not seem to believe that the crisis comes from the proverbial ocean of programs that the people have asked the government to initiate. We have come to think of the government like a community college student living in his parent's basement at 30 thinks of his mom--as an unending source of unlimited income and sustenance, which should always do more to help us do less. The problem is that the government is based upon our productivity: the taxes we pay run the programs we ask for, and so to create new programs, taxes must rise. But as the government removes more and more of our responsibility from us, we do less, and therefore are less capable of paying taxes and thus paying the debt that our government is taking on for us. The government earns less money in exchange for more expensive labor saving programs for its people, thus creating an economic sink hole of sorts, where there is never enough money to pay the bills that everyone puts on the tab of a government they don't care to see.
In short, the solution to our budget problems is inherently a difficultly conservative one: we need to cut ourselves from the umbilical cord we have tied to the Federal government and become a self-sustaining people. This is hard because the prospect of cheap insurance, housing subsidies, and even tax credits for having children look so good on face, but in the long run, they deteriorate our ability to live independent of governmental oversight, and worse, set a government that was never build to deal with such massive spending on a collision course with unsustainable projects.
 This is one reason why I support a very limited role for the federal government: i believe that a people should be relatively independent of their mother government. After all, John Locke and Rousseau, two philosophers who really gave birth to the idea of our governing system, saw mankind as independent, relying on government only in the resolution of conflict. it was fro this framework that mankind was said to have the inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The ironic threat we now face is that the programs meant to create happiness for all people are destroying our inalienable right to liberty in the people they serve.

Bookstores and Booked Bills

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." --the tenth amendment

When I was young, I used to love going to the book store. I would wade through the aisles of Barnes and Noble making piles of books--novels and comics and picture books--that I wanted to have for a persona library that existed somewhere in my dreams. Each and every time the pile would exceed anything that I could ever read on my busy schedule, and yet each and every time, I would bring the growing pile to my dad and ask him to buy it. There was always a limit. I could bring home one history book, and one book of classical literature. It was always less than what I wanted to take home.

I do not know what reasons my father had for not buying hundreds of dollars of books each time we went to the store, (now that I am older, my wallet offers one explanation) but I think that the idea of constraint and adherence to rules--even in opposition to seemingly good ideas--is a good thing to remember as we work where we will.

I've been watching the health care debate on CNN and the New York Times (i have to use both because my internet is cutting out sporadically) and i keep thinking: "what are we arguing about this for?" We can make arguments about deficit spending and budgets and whether or not a given health care proposal goes too far, or not far enough. But this should not be the source of our debate. Vice President Joseph Biden made a surprisingly compelling argument today when he said: "We don't have a philosophic disagreement. If you agree that you can't be dropped, there has to be dependent coverage, if there's no annual lifetime cap, then in fact you've acknowledged that it is the government's role. The question is how far to go." This idea is not right. Asking how much we should spend is the wrong question. . We have to discuss the actual differences here--and deficits are not the issue.

running up deficits are bad, but the core reason that they exist is that the federal government is doing much more than they should do. Said senator Kyl: "We do not agree about the fundamental question about the fundamental question. Who should be mostly in charge and you identified this question a central [...]do you trust the states or do you trust washington" that is the real issue here today. If republicans want to tout small government health care reform, they do not need to argue about bringing down the cost of such a measure because it is fundamentally a state decision; if they have broken with that philosophy, then I for one believe that they have lost their path.

The federal government today seems like my childhood self child in a book store--there are so many books to choose from that it is finding it hard to stay within it's prescribed bounds. Health care reform is a good policy, but it is not the job of the federal government to be involved in it. We need a government that is willing to admit that and leave these things to state governments by facilitating, not mandating, and by delegating to the states what is rightfully theirs to decide. The federal government cannot do every good thing for its citizens; it must allow for freedom of actions, it must allow for a separation of powers, it must allow for prudence of spending. I fear, though, that we have gotten so many "good" things from the federal government the federal government has gone beyond what it was designed to do. And if the government has stepped beyond it's bounds, it will certainly be to the detriment of those people who reside under it. However, i am not a doomsayer. I believe that we can back out of this. I have been impressed by the growing number of leaders in state and national government positions who have spoken out for a more limited federal government. I think this is the right strategy. I think that we as citizens ought to support leaders who remember the proper scope of our government.

Our Underpinings

"A little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical…It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government."--Thomas Jefferson

The opening one’s mouth is an interesting thing: for some, it can rarely be stopped, for others, it is the embodiment of courage to act in the forum of sociality. But for a select few, it is the duty--available to all, but utilized by a select few, to stand and speak to the tenets of their belief. I hope to be one of the latter of these men, but only time will tell if the values i try to express here--the liberty i speak to defend--flows from a solemn duty, or a bleeding mouth. But in light of recent events, it seems that i cannot remain silent.

i have been startled by the events i see in our nation. As have watched congress operate for months on end under Closed rule, the president of our nation instate near gag rules on his opposition, and that opposition respond in an unclear unbecoming manner, i have wondered about the strength of our underpinnings. Our Constitutional Democracy is a organization that i believe to be very durable--it bends, molds and conforms to almost any political circumstance. but, just like anything, from time to time i agree with Jefferson, who said the from time to time the “tree of liberty must be refreshed.” I do not believe that that refreshing must--nor should it be--by blood, but i believe that we as a people must respond to the actions of our government from time to time. It is the duty of the citizens of a republic to remind Government of its proper confines within the constitution. It is our duty as citizens to remind the government, which can be desensitized by astroturf politics and assumed “moral mandates” that it still must be responsive to the people that it represents and that those people are actually watching and listening to their actions--despite what the convenient polls may say.

I agree with the philosophy of Jefferson that rebellion--through editorials, peaceful and legal public demonstrations blogs such as this one, and most importantly campaigning and voting in local elections can open the eyes of a growing federal government and remind them that their constituency is both watching and judging their actions. after all, said Jefferson; "A little rebellion, now and then, is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical…It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government."