Town Hall Gunman gets a D in fashion

All over the internet I’m hearing “Gun-toting Man Draws Scrutiny Outside Obama Town Hall.”

Many are pointing to the shirt, which read "It Is Time To Water The Tree Of Liberty" as an obvious threat to take the head of the President, but what I’ve gotten from it is that he just doesn’t know how to pick quotes.

If the shirt had used the Jefferson quote, “When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.” If he had said that then he would have been displaying a great message.

Maybe this was not the message he meant to send, but it is what America should get from his actions. Of course the Democrats will make sure that the message they send it, “Those crazy conservatives are willing to kill for Rush Limbaugh.”

Sending my blog to Washington

This post is just to announce that I'm going to write a few more article on health care, and then I'm going to send it to flag@whitehouse.gov and see if they respond to my message. This, of course, is about the administration asking people to send in websites that are critical of health care reform.

If they do I will try to have a conversation about health care with them, and I will post it here. Of course I am only a armchair politician, but I will do some research and see what questions I have. Maybe the administration can win me over... but I doubt it.

This is similar to when I use to just blog on Myspace. I had a couple articles where I said "terrorist" a lot (as well as other probably flagged terms) in hopes of getting more readers to my blog.

Note to Washington: Look at England

This is the first time I have used my blog as a response to a news article, but the article seems to foreshadow what America may be going through in five years.

Apparently England is five years ahead of us in trying to make an online centralized Health Care system. This sounds very similar to one part of the Health Care reform trying to be passed in Washington.

The Conservatives have said they would create huge cost savings for the NHS by scrapping plans for a central database of patient records.

Every patient would have a username and password and IT firms such as Google or Microsoft could host the information.

England has tried what we are about to do, and it is failing. They have found private businesses that will do the work for them, so why not take it? It would create more jobs by extending the online Health sector of the economy and achieve exactly what Obama is hoping to achieve with the use of taxpayer money (or more realistically, money on loan from China).

The system they are scrapping has cost over 12 billion pounds, so I hope the government learns from their mistake and doesn't throw billions more out the window in an already failed idea.

Health Care Reform: Passing the burden from businesses to government

Health Care is the biggest issue being talked about right now, and it seems like the citizens aren't for the reform that is being planned. That may change as time goes on, but right now the people of the nation seem to be wary of more spending because of how large the deficit has grown to.

What really bugs me about the issue is the fact that it shows exactly where my views with Obama differ. Both of us see that the insurance companies are the problem, but our methods to fix it are completely different.

I see insurance companies as a hindrence to the free market. With insurance companies paying the cost doctors and patiants are in the dark about the actual cost of what they are recieving. The insurance companies make the decisions instead of the patient.

Right now Obama is trying to fix it by taking away the insurance companies and adding the government. What bothers me about this is that it takes the patients choice to choose away even further, and now the government is who you go to for Health Care.

If it continuos to be an option that is fine, but if it is an option that is underwritten by the government every year than it won't be good because it would drive private insurers out of the sector. The more people to be under the government model the more it would have to be subsidized, which would just keep costing the government more and more money.

Obama is saying that that fixing health care is how we fix our economy. Right now it is hurting businesses because they have to pay for employees insurance. So, instead of strangling businesses we are going to strangle the government? That just seems bad.

Why not make it the individuals who have to save money for procedures and doctors visits? I'm sure hospitals would compete for yearly plans and stuff for normal services. It would save money because people could shop around for the best price, people could rate doctors online, and everything could be dealt with in the free market.

Right now the free market doesn't exist in health care, because the patients and the doctors don't know the prices of anything anymore it would seem. The government is trying to compound the problem, not fix it.

Penn and Teller Bullshit: Taxes

This is just a suggestion to watch the new Penn and Teller: Bullshit that came out today (August 6, 2009). It is the 7th episode in episode 7 and the subject taxes. I think most of America (me included) could use a Bullshit free explaination of taxes, because we are being taxed more than ever before. The Republicans have Tea Parties and the Democratics are trying to tax us out of Capitalism, so it will be great to see the side opposing both of them.

Over the years Bullshit has been a show about debunking the myths in society today. They take no prisoners, whether they talk about Chiropracting, Bottled Water, Lie Detectors, or Illegal drugs.

I haven't been able to catch this show yet because I don't have Showtime, but as soon as it is available on Amazon (or I visit a friend who recorded it) I will watch it and maybe write a review on it if I feel like it is a good episode.

If anyone has seen it and would like to comment that would be great, but really this is just a suggestion to tune in if you don't usually watch the show.

Cash for Clunks. Success?

The first advice my economic teacher gave my High School class was that a new car is basically the worst investment someone could make. They always go down in price, in fact they go down substantially in price as soon as they leave the lot.

Apparently the US government hasn’t taken any classes in economics. We are using billions of dollars to help Americans buy new cars, many of which will have to take out loans and get more into debt in order to pay for the car.

The money being given out isn’t enough to bankrupt the country or anything of the sort, but it really makes no sense to call it a success.

This is what happens when the government gives money directly to the US people. Of course people are going to take advantage of a free $4,500.

If nothing else, this “success” shows the governments failings in the past. This upped sales in a section of the economy that billions of dollars directly to the company couldn’t help.

Americans having more money to spend is a good thing, but not in just one sector. We’ve spend hundreds of billions of dollars to help companies get off the ground, instead we should have given the money back to the tax payers.

They could spend it on the companies that offer the best services, which in turn would allow those companies to grow and the old failing companies would not even be missed.

Volunteering for the Libertarian party

I am just posting here to say that I have officially sent in an application to volunteer for the California Libertarian party.

I am very interested to see how the political process looks close up, and I feel like this will make or break whether I will run for office or stay only in the private sector after my collegiate career.

Here is the website if you are interested in helping the Libertarian party.