Thinking for a Change

The State of the Union According to Me

2011-01-25T21:11:00.000-07:00

So today was the big day -- the 2011 State of the Union address we've all been waiting for. I thought President Obama's speech had some good moments. I agree with some of his proposals, such as bagging "No Child Left Behind" and cutting some of the red tape for small businesses. I question others -- should we really be spending money on a high-speed rail and super high-speed internet for the masses? Is that really the job of the Federal government?

In any case, as I listened to Obama talk I began to wonder -- what would I do if I were President? In the spirit of the Republic where the voice of each citizen counts for something, here is the State of the Union, 2011. According to me --

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Morality --

In spite of the fact that there are a lot of good people in our nation, we are seeing a continued moral decay in pop culture and in the media. Children in our schools are exposed to ever more filth. Pornography is a scourge that has not loosened its hold upon the people. It is embraced in many circles.

The good news -- People have the freedom to turn off the TV and radio, and avoid other media that promotes immorality. Many, in fact, do.

Economy --

The recession isn't over. We are just prolonging a serious collapse as long as we can. The only reason we have stayed afloat this long is because the dollar is the world's reserve currency. There are signs that this could change. Foreign nations could dump the dollar and choose another reserve currency. If/when this happens, we are all in for the ride of our life.

The good news -- There is no good news if we don't drastically change our ways ASAP.

I propose -- The banks and financial institutions responsible for the policies that got us in trouble as a nation and who received bailout money should be required to give that money back to the government. Let them fail. The money should go toward the deficit.

Bring the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan. Cut spending to almost everything. The Federal government's job is to protect our borders from foreign invasion and ensure the inaliable rights of all Americans -- the freedom of speech, of religion, of press, the right to bear arms, the right to be free from unwarranted search and seizure, the right to a fair and speedy trial if detained, etc...

The Federal government has no business subsidizing the lives of its populace. What about welfare? Food stamps? Social security? Medicare and Medicaid? Unemployment benefits? The truth is, we can't afford what we've been spending. These programs are bankrupting us. Funding to these programs can gradually be cut to all but the most needy and incapacitated.

Local churches and agencies funded by private individuals and businesses should teach self-reliance, help people plant gardens, raise rabbits, live beneath their means, use barter, learn useful skills that the market actually needs.

We need to buy our country back from China. If it's not too late.

Education --

"No Child Left Behind" is a failure. America's children appear to be getting collectively dumber. All the focus on standardized tests hasn't paid off. College has been promoted as the end-all be-all. Today, a college degree costs more than ever and doesn't go nearly far enough in providing a real education.

The good news -- More and more people are homeschooling their children. There are some committed educators in the school systems. There are people with good ideas on how to improve education.

I Propose -- We need to get the Federal government out of education, and leave it to the states and local communities to decide how to best administer education. The money the Federal government currently spends on education could be divided up amongst the states, and gradually weaned down over a period of years.

College should not be promoted as "the answer" to a secure future. Because it clearly isn't.

Jobs --

We have sent many of our blue-collar and some of our white-collar jobs overseas with NAFTA and GATT. The health care bill will send more jobs overseas as it is implemented. Those Americans without high skill sets may eventually find themselves competing with illegal immigrants for low-skill jobs. And what about college graduates? So sorry for those of you who went to college, are saddled with student loans, and can't find a decent job! You can join the ranks of the college grads who move back home with their parents.

The good news -- Technology allows more and more people to work from home or start small businesses with minimal cost. Those who are willing to brave the learning curve and learn from people who have done what they want to do, can find a way to make a living on their own.

I propose -- The government should not be in the business of creating jobs, but of getting out of the way of entrepreneurs, getting rid of some of the red tape. I applaud Obama's idea of getting rid of the provision in the health care bill that calls for excessive tax forms and bookkeeping for businesses.

Crony capitalism, where big business receives preferential treatment, needs to go. It's not right for Wal-Mart to be exempt from giving health insurance to its employees, but if my business grows to more than 50 employees, I have to cough up the money for health insurance or else face steep fines.

Free market principles need to be embraced. The minimum wage should be disbanded. Employers should be free to pay their employees what they are worth to them in terms of production. People with higher skill sets will be worth more money to their employers. Entry-level and low-skill workers can improve upon their skills in order to receive a higher wage.

Illegal Immigration --

All kinds of people have come to America illegally -- from people seeking a better life to people engaged in drug rings. The crime caused by some illegal immigrants as well as the costs of education and medical care to others have put a strain on our nation.

I propose -- We need to have a secure border, and enforce it strongly. We need to follow the laws regarding immigration, and enforce the law. In the process, we need to treat all people with respect. Those who are already here illegally and found committing crimes should should be sent back home. Otherwise, those not committing any serious crimes other than being here illegally should at least be paying taxes. Those businesses who are found paying illegal immigrants under the table should be given steep fines. Illegal immigrants should not be allowed to vote under any circumstance.

Health Care --

America's populace is not healthy. We are scourged with diabetes, heart disease, autoimmune illness, cancer, autism, learning disabilities and attention deficits, and death by Western medicine. We have a lot of sick people and not enough money to pay for their often ineffective drugs and surgeries.

The good news -- Today there is an amazing amount of information on the internet on nutrition, a healthy lifestyle, holistic healing, and alternative medicine. There are more and more holistic practitioners in every corner of the nation. Such measures are low-cost and often yield fabulous results in conjunction with lifestyle changes, especially for chronic conditions.

I propose -- We need to immediately repeal the "Affordable Health Care Act". In its place, we should make high deductible policies with health savings accounts readily available to individuals and families. This will give Americans MORE choice over how to use their health care monies, not less. Alternative medicine, including supplements, could be purchased with the tax-free health savings accounts. People who make bad lifestyle choices and get ill as a result will pay for their poor choices. Also, when people are using their own money to pay for health care, this drives costs down. If people want health insurance with all the bells and whistles, they should pay for it themselves.

Doctors and nurses should be encouraged to donate some of their time -- maybe 5-10 hours/month -- to provide free health care for the needy. These hours should give them tax credits or credits that could go toward paying off their student loans.

Genetically-modified foods should be immediately banned. There should be information campaigns on the dangers of aspartame, corn syrup, and the Standard American Diet (SAD) that have sickened Americans for decades.

Threats to Our Freedom--

Here at home behind the scenes of the warring Democrats and Republicans, the pointing fingers and caustic remarks, is a group of elitists who are really running the show. They aren't Democrat vs. Republican. They are Democrat and Republican. And they are in the shadows for a reason -- they are seeking to increase their power by tearing down every institution that stands in their way. A strong, free America is a threat to their schemes. They are influencing almost every major policy, and many a major politician. They are not our friends. They are more dangerous than the Taliban, al-Qaeda, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad combined.

Here is a full-length film exposing what some believe to be the plots of these elitists --

Warning -- do not watch this with small children.

You may not believe everything you see in this film. You shouldn't. You should research the claims it makes and come to a conclusion for yourself if any or all of this is a bunch of bunk, or if we really are headed over a cliff unless we stand up now for freedom. As for me, I would rather err on the side of defending freedom!

Long Live America!

Why I am Bothered By Obama's Speech in Tuscon

2011-01-13T18:02:00.001-07:00

Did you listen to President Obama's speech in Tucson to commemorate the deaths of those killed by that crazed gunman, Jared Lee Loughner? What did you think?

Did you agree with the mostly glittering reviews in the news that this was one of Obama's finer moments as president, or did it leave you with some questions?

I don't hate President Obama -- I've never met him. And I don't care much for the patriotic Republican flag-waving that George W. Bush was so famous for. All partisan politics aside, here are the problems I personally had with the speech --

5. Obama's overly-intimate gushing over those killed --

Did Obama personally know the individuals affected by the shooting? I don't think it's the President's job to comfort the "hole torn in [the nation's] heart" to this extent. I find it disturbing, actually, to see the Commander-in-Chief waxing poetic with feel-good anecdotes about the individuals who were killed as if he knew each of them individually.

Don't get me wrong -- I think it is totally appropriate for these individuals to be remembered, and for there to be an amount of collective grief. But I would prefer for my president to focus on defending the Constitution and protecting our borders from foreign entities, rather than making the post of the president "cool" as Obama once confessed was his "job", or into our nation's "comforter-in-chief".

4. Freaky pep-rally crowd --

I am frankly embarrassed by many in attendance at the Tucson Rally, ahem, Memorial. I found their over-enthusiasm to be in the presence of Obama, who used his "cult of personality" standing well, to be disconcerting.

Just take a look at the fervor of the crowd at the Tucson Memorial and their response to Obama --

Now compare it with the adoration of Hitler in yesteryear. No, I am not saying Obama wants to gas the Jews or take over the world. I am not even so much asking that you compare Obama to Hitler, who is clearly more fanatical in both the content of his speech as well as its delivery. Just take a look at the adoring masses --

Scores of citizens adoring and practically swooning over their leader as a rock-star, sports-star, or any kind of star at all has no place in a society that wants to remain free. We can show respect, even a measure of admiration for our leaders. No need to deify them as is usually done in most modern totalitarian regimes.

3. Obama quoting from the Bible --

In the course of his speech, President Obama quoted from the Book of Job. He quoted from Psalms. How convenient to quote from scripture at a time like this.

But how different was Obama's flowery Biblical rhetoric earlier today from a speech of his in 2006 before a crowd less-friendly toward religion, where Obama got giggles and grins from the audience as he blatantly mocked the Bible --

2. Pep-rally t-shirts to go with the pep-rally crowd --

Obama's 2012 Campaign Committee, I mean his staff, had 14,000 t-shirts draped across the seats in the auditorium for the attendees. The very quickly-produced t-shirts were printed with what is apparently Obama's new slogan -- "Together We Thrive".

T-shirts with your logo or slogan? It's a great marketing tool, that's for sure! But I'm not sure what that has to do with the 6 people who died and are now in their coffins waiting for burial.

1. Ah, the propaganda . . .

During the course of his 30-minute speech, President Obama called upon two tried-and-true gimmicks:

"Right after we went to visit her . . . Gabby opened her eyes for the first time (cheers of hysteria) . . .

Gabby opened her eyes for the first time (intense clapping and cheering, camera pans to a verklempt Michelle Obama wiping tears from her eyes, hands clasped with that of Gifford's husband) . . .

Gabby opened her eyes, so I can tell you that she knows we are here. . . ."

Gimmick #1 -- Appeal to your audience's emotions through stories.
Gimmick #2 -- Repetition of a key phrase over and over.

Reminiscent of the famous ad nauseum "Yes we can" speech, Obama knows that tactics like this can be really appealing to an audience. Just like those commercials that tell a story of how someone uses their American Express card on their dream vacation to Tahiti. And the repetition reminds me of car insurance commercials where the phone number is annoyingly repeated over and over.

The story evokes an emotional response, while repetition cements the message into the mind. Repetition of an emotional phrase serves to drive that emotion deep into the listener's core. It can put flutters in the heart and mist in the eyes of even the most cynical of critics. And it is one of Obama's specialties.

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Obama is not the first U.S. president to capitalize on a national tragedy for political gain, and he probably won't be the last. But as of yet, he certainly has been one to pull out all the stops. Is he a Master Communicator, Master Marketer, or a Master Propagandist?

It's obvious what I think. You decide for yourself.

Mao's Great Leap Forward 'killed 45 million in four years'

2010-09-20T12:38:00.000-06:00

Hi, my friends! I haven't disappeared from the face of the earth, but I am taking a break from blogging. I am working on a book and my goal is to finish it as soon as possible.

But in the meantime, here is an article on Chinese Communism. This isn't meant to give you nightmares, but to be honest about the fruits of Communism.

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Arifa Akbar
September 17, 2010
The Independent

Mao Zedong, founder of the People's Republic of China, qualifies as the greatest mass murderer in world history, an expert who had unprecedented access to official Communist Party archives said yesterday.

Speaking at The Independent Woodstock Literary Festival, Frank Dikötter, a Hong Kong-based historian, said he found that during the time that Mao was enforcing the Great Leap Forward in 1958, in an effort to catch up with the economy of the Western world, he was responsible for overseeing "one of the worst catastrophes the world has ever known".

Mr Dikötter, who has been studying Chinese rural history from 1958 to 1962, when the nation was facing a famine, compared the systematic torture, brutality, starvation and killing of Chinese peasants to the Second World War in its magnitude. At least 45 million people were worked, starved or beaten to death in China over these four years; the worldwide death toll of the Second World War was 55 million.

Mr Dikötter is the only author to have delved into the Chinese archives since they were reopened four years ago. He argued that this devastating period of history – which has until now remained hidden – has international resonance. "It ranks alongside the gulags and the Holocaust as one of the three greatest events of the 20th century.... It was like [the Cambodian communist dictator] Pol Pot's genocide multiplied 20 times over," he said.

Between 1958 and 1962, a war raged between the peasants and the state; it was a period when a third of all homes in China were destroyed to produce fertiliser and when the nation descended into famine and starvation, Mr Dikötter said.

His book, Mao's Great Famine; The Story of China's Most Devastating Catastrophe, reveals that while this is a part of history that has been "quite forgotten" in the official memory of the People's Republic of China, there was a "staggering degree of violence" that was, remarkably, carefully catalogued in Public Security Bureau reports, which featured among the provincial archives he studied. In them, he found that the members of the rural farming communities were seen by the Party merely as "digits", or a faceless workforce. For those who committed any acts of disobedience, however minor, the punishments were huge.

State retribution for tiny thefts, such as stealing a potato, even by a child, would include being tied up and thrown into a pond; parents were forced to bury their children alive or were doused in excrement and urine, others were set alight, or had a nose or ear cut off. One record shows how a man was branded with hot metal. People were forced to work naked in the middle of winter; 80 per cent of all the villagers in one region of a quarter of a million Chinese were banned from the official canteen because they were too old or ill to be effective workers, so were deliberately starved to death.

Mr Dikötter said that he was once again examining the Party's archives for his next book, The Tragedy of Liberation, which will deal with the bloody advent of Communism in China from 1944 to 1957.

He said the archives were already illuminating the extent of the atrocities of the period; one piece of evidence revealed that 13,000 opponents of the new regime were killed in one region alone, in just three weeks. "We know the outline of what went on but I will be looking into precisely what happened in this period, how it happened, and the human experiences behind the history," he said.

Mr Dikötter, who teaches at the University of Hong Kong, said while it was difficult for any historian in China to write books that are critical of Mao, he felt he could not collude with the "conspiracy of silence" in what the Chinese rural community had suffered in recent history.

Signpost 14 -- It's Good to Be King??

2010-07-16T12:22:00.003-06:00

"There can be no liberty where the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or body of magistrates." (Baron de Montesquieu)

So we are finally down to the 14th and final Signpost to Slavery. It's been a long road, and an enlightening one if only for me personally! So here it is, Signpost 14:

14. Any attempt to make a new major law by executive decree.

Pro's and Con's of Executive Rule

The annoying thing about the separation of powers called for in the U.S. Constitution (whereby the legislative branch presents legislation, the judicial branch judges it against the measuring stick of the Constitution and rule of law, and the executive branch makes the final decision) is all that red tape. Partisan politics can lead to filibusters and any one person or group's agenda -- whether potentially beneficial to society or not -- can come to a grinding halt. This is not always ideal for getting things done in Washington.

With executive rule it's a lot easier for a President to get his agenda passed, because he doesn't actually have to get it passed! He invents a law and signs it, and unless Congress refuses to fund it, quickly enacts legislation that specifically conflicts with it (which the President can veto, in turn), or 2/3 of Congress votes against the president's veto of their legislation opposing the executive decree, it magically becomes law! These executive orders can be discarded by subsequent presidents, but history shows that they rarely are.

And in reality, Congress rarely disputes executive orders:

"It has been argued that a Congressional override of an executive order is a nearly impossible event due to the supermajority vote required and the fact that such a vote leaves individual lawmakers very vulnerable to political criticism." (1)

Executive Rule -- An Essential Ingredient in Dictatorship

What could Hitler, Stalin, Lenin, or Mao have accomplished without the ability to invent laws and regulations, judge them as sound, and enact them without having to bother with checks and balances?

And how many of the laws passed unilaterally by certified tyrants throughout history have been done under the guise of helping, caring for, or protecting the masses? I would wager a guess that most if not all tyrannical decrees have promised some sort of public benefit.

The notorious Great Purges -- in which an estimated 20-30 million Soviet citizens were murdered by Soviet fire squads or perished in the brutal Gulag prison and labor camps from 1930-1953 -- came about due to an executive rule by Comrade Stalin against "terrorist organizations and terrorist acts".

Executive Orders in America

Executive orders have been used sporadically by presidents throughout America's history, primarily for mundane directives to different governmental agencies. Some executive orders have had more of a sweeping influence on America's history, for better or worse.

Lincoln's famed Emancipation Proclamation was an exercise in executive power. Eisenhower desegregated public schools and Truman integrated the armed forces through Executive Order, bypassing racial separatists in Congress.

Some hotly-criticized orders, however, include Executive Order 10340 from President Truman, which sought to put all American steel mills under federal domain, FDR's Executive Order 9066 that rounded up German - and Japanese-Americans and led to Japanese-Americans being placed in internment camps during WWII.

King William Jefferson Clinton

Rule by presidential executive order became more commonplace during the presidency of Bill Clinton, along with presidential directives (executive measures passed in conjunction with the National Security Council, sometimes secretively). Clinton was responsible for 347 executive orders and among them, "80 classified Presidential Decision Directives (PDDs) mandating secret, unilateral executive actions that impact[ed] on the freedom of Americans." (2)

Through executive power, Clinton waged a war with Kosovo without Congress declaring war, designated that U.S. troops serve under foreign UN command, and exempted UN personnel from being prosecuted for violation of America's civil or criminal law while on American soil. In another directive, Clinton granted the FBI power to conduct surveillance on groups opposed to the UN and promoting gun rights, as well as "extremist" Fundamentalist Christian groups. Clinton designated millions of acres of land across America as Federal Reserves or National Monuments, including 1.7 million acres in Southern Utah. And the disturbing trend of allowing government agencies to spy on the online activities of U.S. citizens, usually attributed to George W. Bush, was actually initiated under President Clinton through PDD-63.

"Stroke of the pen. Law of the Land. Kinda cool."

(Paul Begala, former Clinton advisor, The New York Times, July 5, 1998)

King George "W"

In the year 2001 King George W. came onto the scene of the presidency with promises of smaller government and less involvement in foreign affairs. Due to a suspiciously convenient disaster, he was able to do a switcharoo on the American populace and take America's War Machine to a new level with preemptive strikes. He succeeded in getting the PATRIOT Act passed, purportedly to safeguard America from terrorists. He also signed his own set of 291 Executive Orders during his 8-year stint as president.

Some of W's most infamous Executive Orders include the following:

"- Executive Order 13440 - allowed the use of "special" interrogation techniques blocked by the Geneva convention (aka torture).

- Executive Order 13292 - gave the Vice President full power to classify any documents he deemed appropriate.
- Executive Order 13303 - gave blanket legal protection to U.S. companies dealing in Iraqi oil.
- Executive Order 13438 - allowed the administration to seize property from groups who pose a threat to stability in Iraq, even if said threat has not been proven. The language of the order is so broad that even a domestic critic of the war could be considered a 'threat to stability.' This violates the Fifth Amendment right to due process." (3)

Bush also passed a special directive --NSPD 51-- which essentially gave the president dictatorial powers in the event of catastrophe or emergency. Suspiciously, most of the details of this directive are classified, and not even Congress has been allowed to see the documents associated with this directive!

(Full list of Bush executive orders here.)

Liberals blasted Bush for his show of excessive executive power and for eroding the freedoms of Americans, and rightly so! Conservatives largely accepted Bush's actions as good and necessary, though many of them had been more than willing to criticize Clinton for his over-reaching executive authority. And today, conservatives unite to bemoan the accendance of the latest king in town . . .

King Barry Soetoro, aka Barack Houssein Obama

Faster than his Republican forebear.
More powerful than Washington insiders.
Able to enact CHANGE in a single term.

Look! Up in the sky!
It's a bird. It's a plane. It's the Obamessiah!

Within King Obama's first week in office, he was hailed for signing executive orders to close Gitmo by January 22, 2010 and do away with torture once and for all. (We'll just overlook the fact that Gitmo is still open as of July 2010, and the anti-torture loopholes only shut down CIA torture centers, with no mention of prohibiting torture if carried out by the FBI, NSA, or corporate contractors such as Blackwater/Xe, and doesn't condemn the torture of individuals detained in counter-terrorism . . .)

This was just the beginning of the CHANGE in Washington --

Corporate Bailout -- CHECK
Takeover of GM -- CHECK
Extended Benefits to the Unemployed -- CHECK
Cash for Clunkers -- CHECK
Healthcare Reform -- CHECK
Cap CEO pay -- CHECK
Sue the state of Arizona for enforcing immigration law -- CHECK

(No matter that this was not the type of change desired by a large percentage of Americans . . .)

No one can doubt that President Obama has been one busy man. He has appeared to make significant efforts to make good on his many, many campaign promises (though he has yet to reverse many of Bush's most draconian policies). During the presidential campaign, Obama criticized Bush's prolific use of "signing statements" to pass law without Congress's approval. As of May 2010, Obama had signed a total of 55 executive orders, including an order entitled "Federal Leadership on Reducing Text Messaging while Driving" and the famous order reemphasizing a limit on Federal funds to be used for abortions, allowing the healthcare bill to pass.

Time will tell whether Obama resorts to using his executive powers more extensively to push his agenda through before he is likely kicked to the curb after one presidential term. Evidence is mounting that things are headed in that direction:

"With much of his legislative agenda stalled in Congress, President Obama and his team are preparing an array of actions using his executive power to advance energy, environmental, fiscal and other domestic policy priorities." (4)

It is further rumored that Obama may grant amnesty to illegal aliens through an executive order if he is unable to garner enough support in Congress.

In Conclusion

I will sum up my opinion of executive rule in just one sentence: rule through executive decree is dangerous to a free society, side-stepping the checks and balances laid out in the Constitution. Executive orders should be extremely limited in their use, and never ever be used to pass major laws, wage wars, or pass any sweeping changes in our nation.

The fact that Obama shows signs of doing the very thing he criticized Bush for should come as no surprise.

Neither should conservative Americans be shocked if the Republican they elect to replace Obama in 2012 (if we make it that far) follows in the footsteps of previous American quasi-kings -- exercising improper executive power while ignoring the Constitution. It appears that this destructive trend will continue either until enough Americans wise up and absolutely refuse to allow it, or our nation is totally destroyed.

14. Any attempt to make a new major law by executive decree. -- BIG FAT CHECK

May we turn back to the Constitution with a division of powers as our guide for proper government, and may we as citizens participate in whatever way we possibly can to make this possible!!

Sources --

(1) http://www.thisnation.com/question/040.html

(2) http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/1/29/104302.shtml
(3) http://media.www.vanderbiltorbis.com/media/storage/paper983/news/2009/01/21/Opinion/Bushs.Nine.Worst.Executive.Orders-3588937.shtml
(4) http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/us/politics/13obama.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/13/us/politics/13obama.html

Signpost 11 -- Minimum Wage . . . Yee Hah!

2010-07-06T23:36:00.003-06:00

I have been slammed with a variety of things over the past month and have neglected my blog. My apologies! So now we are down to just two more Signposts to Slavery. Today's post will cover Signpost 11 --

11. Wage and price controls, especially in a non-wartime situation.

Let me start by being completely up front with you -- I am no economics expert. But I do have a basic understanding of the concepts of supply and demand. Also, it is abundantly clear to me that many who profess to be true experts in this arena and hold positions of authority seem to know even less than I do! So I will try my hand at touching on the in's and out's of wage and price controls.

First off, let me state that I don't think in our world, filled with imperfect, less-than-altruistic individuals, that there is any economic system without its faults. In a capitalist society, someone always finds a way to make a whole lot more money than everyone else (and so long as they aren't doing anything illegal, what's wrong with that?!). Someone is always in need either due to illness, incapacitation, lack of opportunity, lack of motivation, or some combination thereof. Wages and prices are determined by supply and demand. Certain freedoms are valued, even if it means that some in the society will not fare as well as others.

In a socialist society, the state assumes the responsibility of meeting many of the needs of the people. No-one is homeless, for instance. Nobody goes without basic health care. In many instances, jobs are created by the government. Wages and prices can be fixed by the state. Certain freedoms are sacrificed in order for the government to provide services and in some cases sustenance to the people.

Of course, America today is some mixture between capitalist and socialist. Most wages and prices are still determined by the market, but by no means are 100% of wages and prices left alone by the government. We have our minimum wage. More recently, President Obama has placed caps on how much CEO's of corporations receiving bailout money are allowed to make.

Doesn't that sound good? Power to the people, right? Blast those filthy rich CEO's anyways!

But I have to wonder -- wouldn't it just have been easier (and far less costly to the American populace) to just forego the corporate bailouts altogether? The market would have determined which CEO's were worth millions and which should receive pay cut, based on which businesses had products and services still in enough demand during a recession.

As for the minimum wage, it was instituted in 1938 at 25 cents per hour. Those who argue for a minimum wage say that there are no negative effects of raising the minimum wage (these are probably the same people who see no negative effect from pumping trillions of freshly printed dollars into the economy to prop up failing corporations and banks.)

Those not in favor of a mandated minimum wage argue that it causes inflation, leads to fewer jobs for those with few skills, causes a greater rates of outsourcing of jobs oversees where wages are cheaper, and feeds the market for illegals to work for dirt-cheap wages under the table.

As I stated at the beginning of this article, I am no expert in the field of economics. But I have enough brains to know that if companies have a limited number of jobs with a limited amount of money to pay to employees, any law mandating a minimum wage will affect how many people they can hire and could certainly cause them to look for ways to hire people oversees or illegally for less.

I can't say for sure if the minimum wage leads to inflation, but it certainly seems possible!

Why would our government be "for" a minimum wage, and vote to increase it from time to time? Certainly some in government have good intentions -- they don't want the poorest of Americans to suffer so much. But isn't it interesting that an increase in the minimum wage is a nice handy way to levy a tax increase by stealth as an increase in the minimum wage increases all wages, and therefore increases government tax revenues?!

As far as price controls go, except in a few exceptional cases primarily during wartime, they disrupt the normal levels of supply and demand naturally determined by the market, and lead to shortages, rationing, long lines, as well as inflation.

To quote an expert (emphasis added):

"The reason most economists are skeptical about price controls is that they distort the allocation of resources. To paraphrase a remark by Milton Friedman, economists may not know much, but they do know how to produce a shortage or surplus. Price ceilings, which prevent prices from exceeding a certain maximum, cause shortages. Price floors, which prohibit prices below a certain minimum, cause surpluses, at least for a time. Suppose that the supply and demand for wheat flour are balanced at the current price, and that the government then fixes a lower maximum price. The supply of flour will decrease, but the demand for it will increase. The result will be excess demand and empty shelves. Although some consumers will be lucky enough to purchase flour at the lower price, others will be forced to do without." (1)

Richard Nixon's failed price controls in 1971 led to run-away inflation, and further gas price controls later in the 70's led to gas shortages and even more inflation.

A type of price control taking place today is the subsidization of corn production in the U.S. For some reason, our government feels it important to pay farmers to grow corn. Corn is sold for less than it costs to produce, making it a cheap commodity that is being used to produce high-fructose corn syrup, feed for animals (fattening them up faster and causing all kinds of problems in the process), and is being exported all over the world taking out farmers in Mexico and other nations because they can't compete with America's super-cheap corn.

The U.S. government also heavily subsidizes the meat and dairy industry. Perhaps that is why it is cheaper to buy a Big Mac and Coke (sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup, of course) than a salad.

So here we have it -- put the government in charge of wage and price controls, and what you get is bailed-out CEO's with a capped income higher than their income would be if the market had been left to deal with them, and more low-skill jobs going to hire Samrat's in India or Pablo's from Mexico but illegally living in Colorado, than Billy-Joe-Bob's in Arkansas because foreign or illegal labor is cheaper. And it's cheaper to buy a bag of Dorito's and soda than food that is actually really food.

11. Wage and price controls, especially in a non-wartime situation -- CHECK

(1) http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/PriceControls.html

Signposts 9, 10, 12, & 13 -- Big Brother Gone Wild!!!

2010-06-10T16:21:00.004-06:00

It is a beautiful day in Salt Lake City, and I am feeling especially grateful for many things in my life! Among the things I am thankful for is the fact that I am self-employed -- I can work the hours I choose to work, I am free to try new things, and I answer to no-one except God, my clients, and those to whom I pay my bills!

I am free to succeed, and free to fail. Though it hasn't been without its challenges, I have found working for myself to be worth it. 100%.

I was not trained up to be an entrepreneur. Like most of you, I attended public schools where I had a few excellent teachers and several mediocre ones. I spent my early adolescent years awkwardly searching for my own identity and path amongst such things as MTV, sit-coms, fast food, and pegged jeans -- things I participated in not because I liked them so much as because it was what everybody else was doing!

I've had a lot of growing experiences through the years and the blessing to come across a number of people who have influenced my life for good, helping me find a path that is much more true to me.

I am saddened that our nation seems to be on an entirely opposite sort of path. We have gone from being a nation of immigrants determined to carve out their dream in the rugged landscape of a free country in spite of any obstacle, to collectively being fat, lazy, and weak-minded in our prosperity.

We have created a Big Brother and don't seem to mind that we now pay him upwards of 1/3 of our annual income, we look the other way as he kills and tortures people in various locations around the world, and we don't even blink that he now requests to see beneath our clothing with scanning devices pumping out radiation just a tad less toxic than microwaves, in order to make sure we aren't hiding bombs in any crevices or folds before boarding an airplane!

What will Big Brother think of next?! Watch this real commercial that aired in the state of Pennsylvania earlier this year --

Before you jump to say "Well, Tom deserves to have the government harass him -- he has broken the law", think again. The government knows where you live too, as well as where you work, how your finances are, what your spending habits are, and what you are posting on your Facebook status updates.

Big Brothers just like ours throughout history have a track record of turning against the very people they promise to protect -- law-abiding citizens who naively relinquish their liberties in the name of protecting society.

In the remainder of this post, I will share a few more of the 14 Signposts to Slavery that deal with such things as our ability to travel, assemble in each others' homes, and work and live unfettered from undue government intervention.

9. Laws limiting the number of people allowed to meet in a private home.

The right to assemble with whomever we choose for whatever reason we choose both publicly and in our own homes is an essential liberty (as long as we aren't infringing on the rights of others). Thankfully, this is one liberty that is still mostly honored in our nation. There are some notable exceptions. Recently seven individuals in Gilbert, AZ were prohibited from meeting together in private homes for Bible study. Some homeschooling families have reportedly suffered from similar over-reaching local homeowner's associations.

Let us be diligent to support the rights of everyone in our nation, even if we find their beliefs abhorrent, to assemble freely!

10. Any significant change in passport regulations to make passports more difficult to obtain or use.

In August 2007, U.S. passport agencies began exclusively issuing "e-passports" that contain a microchip, making it much easier to track an individual's travels (and also making it possible to disable an individual's passport with a simple keystroke). Further, face-recognition technology is now in use at all checkpoints tightening government control over individual travel. Can you imagine what the Nazi's could have accomplished with this type of technology in terms of cutting people off from travel?

This is yet another example of policy changes that have been made in the name of The War Against Terrorism. Too bad our intelligence and passport regulations have proven impotent against terrorists (ie. the "Underwear Bomber"). Instead, we have innocent 5-year-old children on the "No Fly" list who could potentially have their passports disabled for no reason because they are mistaken for a terrorist.

12. Any kind of compulsory registration with the government of where individuals work.

Besides the fact that the U.S. government is the largest employer in the nation (and those numbers will only rise with the implementation of the new health care bill), and the government is surely aware where each of its several million employees work, the government also knows where every tax-paying American lives and works.

Companies report their salaries given to their employees through W-2 or 1099 forms. Unless you are living a fugitive lifestyle off the grid, the government knows perfectly well where you work.

Further, the government now has GPS coordinates of the front door of each and every American home thanks to census employees who were sent out last year with hand-held devices to gather this extremely specific information. I guess that's how the state of Pennsylvania really does know exactly where "Tom" lives (in the commercial above)!

13. Any attempt to restrict freedom of movement within the United States.

If it's not bad enough that the government can now prevent anyone it chooses from traveling internationally with e-passports and face recognition technology at airports, recently US Representative Earl Blumenauer (D-Oregon) proposed the Vehicle Miles Traveled fee that would allow the government to install GPS tracking devices into each and every private vehicle of every American. Not only would this allow the government to tax us for each mile we drive, but it would allow the government to know where our vehicles are at every moment of every day.

Let us thank the heavens that Obama threw this draconian legislation out, and let us make sure nothing like this is ever implemented in the United States of America!

__________________________________________________________

A wise man once said that he who would trade his liberty for security deserves neither. It is so easy to justify many of the types of laws that have passed, particularly since 9/11, that appear important and necessary for our longevity as a nation.

But let us be diligent against potential tyranny from within lest we someday find ourselves hostage to the Big Brother we empowered to protect us from threats from without!

__________________________________________________________

In summary --

9. Laws limiting the number of people allowed to meet in a private home. -- WE HAVE SEEN A LITTLE OF THIS

10. Any significant change in passport regulations to make passports more difficult to obtain or use. -- CHECK

12. Any kind of compulsory registration with the government of where individuals work. -- CHECK

13. Any attempt to restrict freedom of movement within the United States. -- NOT YET

Signpost 8 -- Know Your Place, Shut Your Face!

2010-06-04T12:37:00.000-06:00

After a few weeks' hiatus, I am back on the scene of the Fourteen Signposts to Slavery. Before I get into the details for this week's red flag of impending tyranny, I wanted to make just a few comments about myself and how it is that a blog that I originally started a year ago to share my story of recovery from chronic fatigue syndrome, has now been turned into an outlet for sharing my views on politics.

And how did I go from where I was a few years ago, blindly and dumbly voting Republican, getting my information from the nightly news, and trusting that those in charge had my best interest in mind, to where I am now?!? Some people who know me are baffled at the views I now broadcast, as they seem contrary to what some may consider "normal".

I don't know for sure, all I know is that in 2007 some things began to click in my mind. The years I spent in grad school studying Soviet history and the Soviet government's cruel tactics of control and manipulation for the "good" of the masses, and an awakening to the awful situation of medicine and the sick care industry through my own experiences with cfs -- all of this led me to espouse the belief that if I want to know about any given trend, event, or even health concern, I must do my own research. I must push past the veils of marketing tactics and propaganda schemes to see what really lies behind the green curtain, if only to catch a glimpse!

I still know next to nothing. But what I have found has caused me to want to research further and share my findings, meager though they may be, with anyone who cares to take a look.

With that, here is the 8th Signpost to Slavery --

8. An official declaration that anti-Communist organizations are subversive and subsequent legal action taken to suppress them.

Today we live in a world where threats of modern-day Communism, Socialism, and Fascism are poo-pooed by the general media as ridiculous, hyperbolic claims. Those who warn of encroaching tyranny are labeled as kooks at best, and at worst -- potential domestic terrorists. It's even gotten so bad that those who oppose President Obama's bailouts and health care bills, considering them to be an assault to our liberties, are dubbed "racist". The same thing goes, of course, for those who are against illegal immigration.

But do we see the government and the media denouncing anti-Communist organizations? Well, are there really any big anti-Communist organizations left to speak of after they were so denigrated in earlier years?

Certainly The John Birch Society comes to mind as one of the most vocal anti-Communist (and anti-Big Government) organizations in America, but it hardly retained much national influence after the barrage of assault against it in the 60's. Interestingly, the initial blows to the John Birch Society came from Communist organizations with ties to Moscow. After a time, the American mass media joined the bandwagon. How disturbing to see a collusion between foreign Communist agencies and our own mass media!

Even more frightening is that fact that in 1963 upon his failed bid for President, New York State Governor Nelson Rockefeller, a member of the most prominent elitist family in America, gave a speech before the Republican National Convention denouncing members of the John Birch Society and equating them with the Klan:

"These extremists feed on fear, hate and terror, [they have] no program for America and the Republican Party... [they] operate from dark shadows of secrecy. It is essential that this convention repudiate here and now any doctrinaire, militant minority whether Communist, Ku Klux Klan or Birchers." (1)

The tactic of associating a group or person you wish to discredit with other groups and persons known to be of ill repute is a common one in political smear campaigns, and Nelson Rockefeller used that tactic quite proficiently in this instance. Because of Rockefeller's speech and other negative pieces in the mass media, the John Birch Society was effectively black-balled from mainstream America. No direct government involvement was needed to shut them up.

___________________________________________________

Gone are the days of old-school Red Communism, bomb shelters, and rampant McCarthyism. If you want to know my opinion, Communism as it was during the Cold War is never to be again. The Soviet Communist experiment came to an end in the early 1990's for a reason -- the command economy of the Soviet state was unsustainable. And some of the Soviet state's tactics of secluding its people from the rest of the world were failing.

Today, China is the shining star of Communism, and it looks a little different from its Soviet cousin -- at least on the surface. China's market economy emphasis and PR with the West to portray it as hip and savvy have done wonders for the nation's economic growth as well as its standing in the world (never mind that political prisoners still languish away in China's vast Gulag and the average farmer or worker struggles just for basic subsistence).

Never again will we see a Communist state emerge that totally resembles the USSR, though there are still a few struggling nations, such as North Korea, who appear to be hanging on to old-school Communism for dear life.

Today we have a different kind of tyranny that has been spreading like a super-virulent swine flu virus to practically all of the nations of the earth. Unlike the swine flu, however, no government agency exists to hedge its progress, and no National Emergency has been declared to warn the populaces.

The type of tyranny I am referring to has been quietly bankrupting 3rd world countries for decades, and since then has set its desires on bankrupting the rest of the world including the coveted U.S.A.

This type of tyranny might be referred to as Corporate Fascism, or the New World Order in which a few, self-appointed elite gain control of all big business and set up a global government with themselves at the helm. This New World Order has many faces, only one of which is Communism, and it can shape-shift to please and appease the minds of the unsuspecting masses in any nation.

Just as the John Birch Society was a "voice in the wilderness" against Communism and Communist infiltration in earlier years, today there are those who actively speak out against our current breeds of tyranny. Ron Paul, Rand Paul, Alex Jones of Infowars.com, Chuck Baldwin, and others are vocal critics of world government run by a tiny elite -- the "new Anti-Communists". And they are also at the brunt of attacks by the media and politicians alike, and accused of the very same crimes with which Nelson Rockefeller accused the "Bircher's" -- hate, racism, gross ignorance, and militism.

In February of 2009, the Missouri State Police issued the MIAC report instructing policemen to consider people driving vehicles displaying militia symbols, including the famous "Don't Tread on Me" flag, as potentially dangerous.

The report went on to specify that individuals who support candidates such as Ron Paul, Chuck Baldwin (of the Constitution Party), Bob Barr (of the Libertarian Party), and anyone who was against such things as gun control, illegal immigration, and abortion on demand should be considered a possible threat.

Recently, the Southern Poverty Law Center issued a list of individuals it considers as threats to America. The list of course, includes most of the individuals I have already named, and comes complete with their bio, mugshot, and fake criminal alias (one man is dubbed the "Apostle of Disunion", another "The Repentant Taxman".) One by one, each of these activists for small, Constitutional government is mocked and discredited.

On June 16 of this year, MSNBC will air a new documentary characterizing the Tea Party movement, Constitutionalists, and those who expose tyranny in our nation as dangerous extremists.

Rand Paul's recent win in Kentucky caused him to be the focus of media attack for supposed racism because he happens to espouse Libertarian philosophies in regards to business and private organizations and who they associate with.

Lastly, in my mind the most unsettling move of all to discredit and silence those who speak out against our new breed of tyranny is the law proposed by White House Information Tsar Cass Sunstein that would curtail the freedom of speech of bloggers, reporters, and independent media organizations. Cass Sunstein is the author of a book entitled "Democracy and the Problem of Free Speech", and is a proponent of the "Fairness Doctrine" that would criminalize "hate speech" and conspiracy theorizing.

Under Sunstein's watch, nobody would be allowed to voice an opinion that discredits the government or goes against mainstream media's talking points without first proving to a government agency that their points are moral and correct. Because, of course, government agencies are the ultimate authority on that which is moral and correct. . .

Such a law would effectively silence small fry bloggers like myself and would severely limit the ability of anti-establishment media outlets to operate freely, while big media would continue to spout its rhetoric untouched.

How similar this is to the state monopoly over media in Communist nations! The Soviets worked feverishly to silence the dissidents in their nation, China will throw you in the slammer if you go against the grain, and now the U.S.A. is considering muting the voices of certain non-mainstream views?!

Whether you consider yourselves Conservative or Liberal, if you are an American this should appall you! Our nation was founded on principles of free speech for majorities and minorities alike!

I hate to say it but --

Signpost 8 -- CHECK

(1) http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/rockefellers/peopleevents/e_1964.html

20 Signs That The United States Is Rapidly Becoming A Totalitarian Big Brother Police State

2010-05-14T14:20:00.001-06:00

The End Of The World
May 10, 2010

Once upon a time, the United States was a land of unparalleled freedom. The rest of the world envied the freedom that ordinary Americans had to think, say and do what they wanted. But all of that has changed. Now Americans have to fear that they will be tackled by a squad of security goons and dragged off to a detention facility somewhere if they spill a Pepsi on a flight attendant or take a few too many pictures of a public building. The United States used to be the polar opposite of totalitarian regimes like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, but now America is rapidly becoming very much like them. Due to the fear of a boogeyman living in a cave somewhere or some guy with explosive powder in his underwear we are all being forced to give up our freedoms and learn to live in a Big Brother police state.

But have things really changed so much that we have to give up all of the cherished freedoms that our fathers and grandfathers fought and died for? Haven’t there always been fanatics and crazies and criminals out there? Why do we suddenly have to become so afraid of them?

In the past, Americans would not let anyone make them live in fear. If some unbalanced individual did something bad, it wasn’t the end of the world, was it? No, in the past Americans dusted themselves off and continued to live as free men and women. You see, when we live in fear and radically alter our way of life just to feel a little more secure, we lose. We have let someone else steal our freedom and our dignity.

But now in the name of “security” all kinds of bizarre proposals have been implemented on the local, state and national levels. Somehow we think that if everything that we do is watched, monitored and analyzed we will all be safer somehow.

Maybe we are safer and maybe we aren’t, but we are certainly a whole lot less free.
The following are 20 signs that the United States is rapidly becoming a totalitarian ”Big Brother” police state….

#1) A new bill being pushed by Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman would allow the U.S. military to round up large numbers of Americans and detain them indefinitely without a trial if they “pose a threat” or if they have “potential intelligence value” or for any other reason the President of the United States “considers appropriate”.

#2) Lawmakers in Washington D.C. working to create a new immigration bill have decided on a way to prevent employers from hiring illegal immigrants: a national biometric identification card all American workers would be required to obtain.

#3) Barack Obama is backing a plan to create a national database to store the DNA of people who have been arrested but not necessarily convicted of a crime.

#4) Just to get on an airplane, Americans will now have to go through new full-body scanners that reveal every detail of our exposed bodies to airport security officials.

#5) If that wasn’t bad enough, the Transportation Security Administration has announced that airport screeners will begin roving through airports randomly taking chemical swabs from passengers and their bags to check for explosives.

#6) Starting this upcoming December, some passengers on Canadian airlines flying to, from or even over the United States without ever landing there, will only be allowed to board their flights once the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has determined they are not terrorists.

#7) Organic milk is such a threat that the FDA has been conducting military style raids on Amish farmers in Pennsylvania.

#8) An NYPD officer has broken his silence and has confessed that innocent citizens are being set up and falsely arrested and ticketed in order to meet quotas.

#9) A growing number of police departments across the U.S. are turning to mobile camera systems in order to fight motor vehicle theft and identify unregistered cars.

#10) For decades, Arizona has been known as “the sunset state”, but lately many frustrated residents have started calling it “the surveillance state”.

#11) Judges and police in Florida have been caught using “secret codes” on tickets in the state of Florida.

#12) An extensive investigation has revealed that between 2003 and 2007, that state of Texas quietly gave hundreds of newborn baby blood samples to a U.S. Armed Forces laboratory for use in a forensics database.

#13) A 6-year-old girl was recently handcuffed and sent to a mental facility after throwing temper tantrums at her elementary school.

#14) One 12-year-old girl in New York was recently arrested and marched out of her school in handcuffs just because she doodled on her desk.

#15) In Florida, students have been arrested by police for things as simple as bringing a plastic butter knife to school, throwing an eraser, and drawing a picture of a gun.

#16) When a mother on a flight to Denver spanked both of her children and cussed out a flight attendant who tried to intervene, she suddenly found herself handcuffed and headed for prison. Why? She was charged with being a domestic terrorist under the Patriot Act.

#17) A new global treaty may force U.S. Internet service providers to spy on what you do online.

#18) A leaked Obama administration memo has revealed plans for the federal government to seize more than 10 million acres of land from Montana to New Mexico.

#19) 56 percent of Americans questioned in a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll said that the U.S. government has become so large and powerful that it poses an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens.

#20) But one other recent poll found that 51 percent of Americans agree with this statement: ”It is necessary to give up some civil liberties in order to make the country safe from terrorism.”

_______________________________________________________________

Thanks to one of my readers for showing me this article. I hope you found it as disturbing as I did. In the next couple of weeks I will finish the series on the 14 Signposts to Slavery.

Signpost 7 -- Tell Me About Your Mother . . .

2010-05-06T15:12:00.001-06:00

Forgive me for skipping a week on my 14 Signposts to Slavery series. Without further ado, let me address Signpost number 7 out of 14 that could indicate a nation is headed toward tyranny --

7. Compulsory psychological treatment for non-government workers or public school children.

Provide free mental health care for the masses -- isn't that the compassionate thing to do? Not when you can be deemed mentally insane, forcibly interred in a psychiatric institution, and administered psychotropic drugs against your will for such mental illnesses as "religious delirium" or "sluggishly progressing schizophrenia" (with symptoms including a paranoid struggle for truth and justice).

If that sounds impossible to you, it was taking place on a widespread basis in the Soviet Union just a few decades ago. Psychiatric hospitals, called "psikhushkas", were instituted during the times of Stalin and "were often used by the authorities as prisons in order to isolate political prisoners from the rest of society, discredit their ideas, and break them physically and mentally; as such they are considered a form of torture."

Soviet political activist Vladimir Bukovsky spent 12 years rotting in prisons, labor camps, and psikhushkas for organizing poetry readings and defending human rights in the Soviet Union.

Reports of these types of control tactics in use today in Russia surface from time to time. (1)

Punitive psychiatry is also still utilized in China's tool-bag of repression against its own people. In 2007 Chinese human rights blogger He Weihua was confined to a psychiatric institution in the province of Hunan by Chinese authorities after complaining about rising pork prices and criticizing the Chinese government. He's family reported that he was in fine mental health at the time of his arrest and psychiatric incarceration (2).

It's disturbing enough to learn of such horrifying assaults against human freedom and dignity taking place on the other side of the world in a Communist or former Communist nation. Even worse is the realization that much of the groundwork for punitive psychiatry has been laid in today's America.

The recently-passed health care bill contains provisions that seem innocuous on the surface, but could potentially be used to prescribe evermore mind-altering drugs to American children and workers, as well as label politically-active individuals or parents as mentally ill and unfit for a job or raising children.

Do I sound paranoid? Am I overreacting? Perhaps. But I'm not the only one --

Before you read further, let me share one more thing with you. I spent last week with my sister and her family, during which time my sister received word about someone she had known years ago. This individual was a bit on the eccentric side and had an unconventional hairdo. He was also a supporter of the Constitution. My sister found out last week that he had been arrested by the FBI and forcibly interred in a psychiatric hospital IN AMERICA THIS YEAR with no right to communication with family and no right to a trial after he sent them some sort of letter of complaint.

I hope my sister misconstrued what happened with this individual. And I hope nothing resembling this ever happens in our nation. . . .

The Health Care Bill's Sops to the Mental-Health Industry

By Beverly K. Eaton, November 5, 2009, The New American

(emphasis added)

Most people (including Members of Congress and the press) won’t read the nearly 2,000-page healthcare bill (“Affordable Health Care for America Act”: H.R. 3962). Consequently, like most Americans, they are oblivious to the elephant in the living room that’s about to transform the nation. While legislators shadow-box over public-versus-private options, trillion-dollar debts, and socialized medicine, tucked away in the bill under warm and fuzzy labels are numerous sops to the mental-health industry.

If enacted, these will serve to prop up an already misrepresented collection of disorders and channel ever-more-billions into the psycho-pharmaceutical industry that could be better directed toward research for cancer, heart disease, multiple sclerosis, and a host of other known, physical ailments that cost families a fortune and send their victims to gruesome, painful deaths.

Worse, however, is what this bill will do to America as a constitutional republic — and indeed what is left of the entire free world, since no doubt it will follow the United States’ lead. With legal legitimacy for unprovable mental disorders will come, inevitably, an excuse to marginalize individuals on the basis of conscience, outspokenness, and politics. Thus far, the United States has been among the few countries to dodge that particular bullet — even though we have been moving ever-closer for 40 years to that outcome via draconian measures aimed at instituting political correctness. But this bill will send the issue over the edge and discourage anyone from honest exchanges of ideas.

Most Members of Congress, unfortunately, rely on youngish aides to provide synopses of a bill’s provisions. Elected politicians, most of whom know little about medicine anyway, can hardly be expected to read and analyze a document that exceeds the size of War and Peace in the space of a few days, complete with technical and legal jargon. Their aides, unfortunately, are mostly products of a failed and politicized education system that has spent some four decades skipping over the particulars of our Constitution and the related debates of its Framers. So, to expect such individuals to catch mistakes that might compromise the health of the republic, not to mention the physical health of the populace, is wishful thinking.

Let us examine, then, some of the key components of this House bill that serve to sustain and support an already out-of-control mental-health, quasi-political industry.

The Mothers Act (Section 2529, Page 1418 of the bill.)

Ah, mom and apple pie — how American is that?

Turns out, not very…

The bill’s language seeks, for example, to “expand treatment for postpartum conditions” and calls for the development of “improved screening and diagnostic techniques.” No provisions, however, are made to ensure that the entities doing the screening and treatment are free of conflicts of interest vis-à-vis pharmaceutical investments.

Let’s take the company Screening for Mental Health, Inc., and its sub-organization, “Signs of Suicide.” Both promote and conduct mental-health screening. The umbrella organization received $4,985,925 from pharmaceutical companies prior to 2008, and 10 of its psychiatric researchers have been exposed in just the past year for failing to disclose millions of dollars in pharmaceutical payments. Yet, this bill contains no requirements of “full disclosure” for entities in receipt of federal grants to perform research or create “promos” (promotional campaigns).

An example of a “promo” would be the provision calling for a nationwide public-relations campaign using TV, radio, and public service announcements (PSAs) to urge that all women be screened and seek treatment for the questionable “disorder” called postpartum depression. Many physicians say this is not an “illness,” but a cultural phenomenon, in which a new mother feels overwhelmed with her duties — all-night jags with crying babies, endless diaper changes, and an onslaught of laundry and feedings. Mothers of yesteryear knew this sort of thing “came with the territory,” but modern moms, who tend to simultaneously try to hold down careers, and who are under constant pressure in the media to look sexy and “have it all,” are suffering accordingly.

The Mothers Act also calls for “clinical research” in developing new treatments (read: drugs) for this questionable ailment, but again, no guidelines exist to ensure that researchers and research firms are free from conflicts of interest. In fact, it would be unusual if they were not awash in such conflicts because in order to obtain a medical research grant or contract, the successful competitor is expected to have experience with pharmaceuticals.

Mental-health Parity (Section 214, Page 100)

This idea has been floated before. It guarantees equal insurance coverage for mental disorders and physical diseases, whether under regular health insurance or via new coverage, such as the Health Insurance Exchange. It is interesting to note that typically, psychiatric patients are “cured” as soon as insurance benefits run out, lending a credibility gap to the entire notion.

In this bill, of course, the benefits never run out. Considering there are no medical tests to verify the existence of any psychiatric disorder (blood work, urinalysis, X-ray, etc.), meaning that government has nothing other than a psychiatrist’s opinion that the person is “cured,” parity becomes a taxpayer-funded cash-cow. No doubt billions can be channeled into the psycho-pharmaceutical industry to continue drugging Americans, as the provision could easily encompass all 374 disorders listed in psychiatry’s diagnostic manual — everything from Phase of Life Problem to Arithmetic Disorder.

Home Visitations for Families with Young Children and Expectant Parents (Section 1904, Page 1177 of the bill)

This section creates a home-visitation program for families with young children, for families that are expecting children, and even for families with certain “risk factors.” This is one of the more dangerous sections that already have a counterpart on the political scene. Since the 1970s, parents wishing to adopt a child, for example, have been scrutinized for their disciplinary beliefs (such as spanking). Spanking is one of the few ways to get the attention of toddlers who are below the age of reason. For example, it is useless to explain to a toddler why it is dangerous to go out in the street without looking to the left and right for vehicles; yet, any toddler who wanders off and is injured or killed as a result brings down the entire force of Child Protective Services upon the parents, mandatory “parenting” classes (by psychology “experts,” of course) and charges of negligence.

This section also provides assessments regarding matters of “age-appropriate behaviors” for children, prevention of family violence, and referral to outside services. Never mind that government-mandated graphic sex education for kindergartners is wholly age-inappropriate. With an inconsistency that blatant, it is no stretch to imagine that parents could be held “accountable” for holding politically incorrect viewpoints (whatever those may be in, say, five years), with the threat of removal of a child from the home in the offing.

Already, parents adhering to firm religious beliefs (regardless of faith) are characterized as “inflexible,” “dogmatic,” and “intolerant,” as exemplified by the North Carolina judge who, on March 11, 2009, took issue with the mother’s religious faith and even ordered a mental evaluation on no basis other than the mother's “conservative Christian beliefs,” then ordered her child to public school so that the student could be properly socialized.

The American Civil Liberties Union has long taken the position, as have other anti-religion organizations, that a parent’s rights “stop at the schoolhouse door.” This argument generated a wave of public outrage in a 2007 case before the U.S. District Court in Massachusetts. But the roots of this sort of logic can be found in old writings from Sigmund Freud as well as in Erich Fromm’s 1947 psychoanalytic scale of “authoritarian characteristics,” which was used to “eliminate” political opponents in his homeland of Germany. Fromm had already hypothesized that the family “predisposes men to blind submission,” his seminal work from 1941 being entitled (tellingly) Escape From Freedom.

Max Horkheimer’s and Theodor Adorno’s Cross-Studies on Child Training and Personality (1947) contributed further to the notion that parents were too inflexible to raise children. Dr. Brock Chisholm’s speech to the World Federation of Mental Health in 1946 provided, perhaps, the most scathing indictment of parental authority. But as recently as 2003, a joint study by the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Science Foundation (at a public cost of $1.2 million) postulated that adherents to conventional moral principles and limited government are actually mentally disturbed. The study correlated morality and individualism with “dogmatism” and “uncertainty avoidance,” leading to “lowered self-esteem, fear, anger, pessimism, disgust, and contempt” (Jost, J. T., J. Glaser, et al. (2003), “Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition,” Psychological Bulletin 129(3): 339-375 and at http://www.apa.org/journals/bul/503ab.html).

Thus should Americans be concerned about any suggestion of home visitations by government as “routine.”

School-based Health Clinics (Section 2511, Page 1352)

School-Based Health Clinics include subjective psychiatric mental-health screening for children (a.k.a. “assessments” since the 1980s). These already have invaded classrooms under a guise of academics. The bill’s referral to “a continuum of services including emergency psychiatric care, community support programs, inpatient care, and outpatient programs” as part of “comprehensive primary health services” launches a project to mix primary healthcare with psychological services on a permanent basis. This would clear the way for psycho-pharmaceutical products to be channeled directly or indirectly into schools.

As explained previously, psychiatric screening and counseling extends to assessing worldviews and political issues that, no matter what faction does it, conflicts gravely with the U.S. Constitution.

Wellness Program Grants for Small Employers (Section 112, Page 67)

Grants for “wellness” serve as incentives for employers to include mental-health evaluations for contractors, grantees, and even non-governmental businesses. The most objectionable part of the program entails a “Behavioral Change Component” that encourages “healthy living through counseling” for programs relating to “tobacco use, obesity, stress management, depression and mental health.” The problem with this? Anything labeled “behavioral change” in psychology means “worldview change” and “attitude/perception adjustment.”

Can re-education camps be far behind?

Re-education is part and parcel of dictatorial regimes. It was used by the Nazis, the Soviets, the Stasi, the North Koreans, and South Africa under apartheid. So this bill subtly moves psychiatric counseling from voluntary to mandatory.

Also, the term behavioral is misleading; it doesn’t mean conduct, as in good manners. It means changing the belief system. That is a far cry from habits like eating junk food and smoking. It moves into the realm of political attitudes — the very thing the Framers of our Constitution worked to avoid in splitting from European models of government.

Federally Qualified Behavioral Health Centers (Section 2513, Page 1367)

These proposed centers take the “Behavioral Change Component” of Wellness Program grants, described above, to a new level. To obtain a grant, an organization or individual must compete and/or “qualify.”

“Qualifying” is the kicker. In order for community mental-health centers to qualify, they have to provide, among other things, “mental health screening, assessment and diagnosis,” as well as “outpatient clinic mental health services, including screening, assessment, diagnosis, psychotherapy and medication,” plus “crisis mental health services, including 24-hour mobile crisis teams,” which means a person can be carted off to a psychiatric facility (prison?) if government deems it necessary.

This is psychology on steroids! If you thought the old Soviet Union or North Korean or East German psychiatric “hospitals” were alone in incarcerating and drugging out-of-favor individuals, think again, because America is playing with fire in this healthcare provision. All drugs, of course, come with side effects, some relatively mild to full-blown intolerances and allergic reactions. But psychiatric drugs are particularly lacking a track record and are highly risky.

Retired pediatric neurologist, Dr. Fred Baughman, has repeatedly testified and written concerning this. In a November 4, 2009, letter to the Wall Street Journal following an article on the troubling number of apparent suicides in the military by soldiers prescribed psychiatric drugs, Dr. Baughman stated: “Although antipsychotics (Ray, et al, 2009), antidepressants (Whang, et al, 2009) and psychostimulants/amphetamines (Gould, et al, 2009) have been proved to increase the risk of sudden cardiac death, they are routinely prescribed together, as if no such risk was known.” Just “not waking up” one morning is not a catch-all for suicide, yet it is happening with increasing frequency in connection with psychiatric drugs. Some instances seem to mimic heart failure, seizures and strokes, but not quite — especially when there is no history or other factor indicating such a problem.

Moreover, we are speeding down a road that will be difficult to reverse once instituted — all in the name of easing the financial strain on individuals and families caused by rising health costs.

Yes, health costs are bankrupting financially responsible people. But at least three reasons have little to do with government: (1) new technologies, which are often effective, but very cutting-edge; (2) health insurance companies, which at first rushed to fill the void, but quickly morphed into multibillion-dollar enterprises whose investors are unconcerned with patient comfort or even recovery, resulting in non-stop questions concerning every drug and procedure; and (3) a dearth of qualified physicians under a medical-school system that works to keep its numbers down, thereby artificially creating shortages of physicians and keeping salaries high.
Meanwhile, government’s interest in healthcare is related solely to cost-cutting, not quality of service or patient recovery. The exceptions are programs for Members of Congress, whose procedures and medications are never questioned under their unique program.

Moreover, some 110 new boards, bureaucracies, commissions, and programs fill the pages of this so-called “Affordable Health Care for America Act,” which reveals a Pandora’s Box of covert psychological/mental-health programs like those described above. Others include such items as a mental-health technician training program (Section 3101, p. 1898) and an Indian youth tele-mental health demonstration project (Section 3101, p. 1909).

Real advancements in medicine, of course, are a realistic goal, and Americans can agree on a reasonable expectation of caring alternatives to the status quo. These dual objectives scream for some new thinking from “outside the box.”

What healthcare doesn’t need is a hidden, politicized agenda that institutionalizes thought control and re-education centers.

In regard to reader commentary on this article, I would like to add that I have noticed that any objection to over-reaches by the mental-health industry, regardless of the context, tends to be met with allegations of “having an agenda.” There’s an agenda, all right; I could see that “agenda” on the wall when I was a classroom teacher, way back in the early 1970s. And it wasn’t coming from me. It was coming from a host of behavioral-science advocates and organizations that were asked to come speak at our teacher-inservice workshops. Educators took the advice of these behavioral scientists, as did parents, and now we have out-of-control schools where nearly half the kids are either diagnosed with a disorder, on a psychiatric drug of some kind (or, more accurately, a cocktail of such drugs, to mitigate the side-effects), in Special Education, or all of the above. Nothing like any of this was happening in the 1950s.

As to my not having any facts to support my position: I spent the entire article giving facts that anybody could look up, including page numbers in the Bill itself, and expert testimony by a noted neurologist. Oh, as for “no experience” on my part: I do have a background in the topic, not just through course work but through my 1999 award-winning bestseller, which I spent three years researching: Cloning of the American Mind: Eradicating Morality Through Education. See Part III, in particular, of that book for a detailed analysis and history of the problems I allude to in the article.

My question is: Where are the “facts” on the psychology side? As I wrote, there is no X-ray, blood work, urinalysis, or chemical finding yet to be located relative to any of the trendy disorders listed in the bible of the psychiatric profession, the DSM-IV.

Of course, some people do erroneously include things like “narcolepsy” among these mental disorders (I’ve even heard it in legislative testimony by people who should know better), and that is a pity because narcolepsy is a physical disease with visible mental outcomes. But it doesn’t change the fact that psychiatric drugs for purely emotional phenomena, or even “stress,” have no track record of success. Many, in fact (esp. antidepressants and antipsychotics), are now suspect (even by Congress) of being culpable in violent, out-of-character aggression.

Moreover, a look at this morning’s newspaper about the professional psychiatrist who just yesterday killed and wounded dozens of soldiers at Ft. Hood, Texas, and who probably knew more about psych meds than I do, having dealt with them himself, allows me to rest my case….”

Beverly K. Eakman is a former educator and retired federal employee who served as speechwriter for the heads of three government agencies and as editor-in-chief of NASA’s newspaper at the Johnson Space Center. Today, she is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance writer, the author of five books, and a frequent keynote speaker. Her most recent book is Walking Targets: How Our Psychologized Classrooms Are Producing a Nation of Sitting Ducks (Midnight Whistler Publishers).

Original Article can be viewed here.

___________________________________________________________

7. Compulsory psychological treatment for non-government workers or public school children.

Not yet -- not quite

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punitive_psychiatry_in_the_Soviet_Union

(2) http://phastidio.net/2007/08/25/punitive-psychiatry-in-china-weekend-open-trackback/

Signposts 5 & 6 -- Teach the Children Well

2010-04-23T14:51:00.004-06:00

It's a beautiful, rainy Spring day in Salt Lake City. Not only that -- it's Friday, and I'm headed to California tomorrow! Granted, I won't exactly be lounging at the beach or sipping a virgin strawberry daiquiri by the side of a pool. But I'm in a relatively festive mood none-the-less. =)

I'm actually going to be helping my sister with her 4-year-old, 23-month-old, and 4-week-old all next week. My sister definitely has her hands full! Even though she is a smart, creative, and well-educated woman with aspirations of her own, she is blessed to have a husband who provides for her and the family and so she has chosen to stay at home at this time in her life and raise her kids.

Though not everyone has that luxury, I think it's great when people with small children make the sacrifice to raise their children themselves. And I can see that it definitely is a sacrifice!

On to a more somber but related topic, in today's article I will be looking at the next two "Signposts" in our Fourteen Signposts to Slavery series. They both have to do with children and young people and public, government-run systems.

Looking back at some of the infamous totalitarian regimes of the 20th century (and even some that have survived through until today), we can observe that these governments sought for regimented, top-down, state-designed programs to influence the minds of the young people.

After all, every marketer knows that if you can hook someone on your product at an earlier age, they are easier to teach, more willing to buy into the marketing, and will have a much greater chance of remaining loyal to that product throughout their life. This is true for governmental systems just as much as it is for soda, cigarettes, or pornography (all of which are incessantly peddled to the children and young people of the world).

These are just two "red flags" of fourteen that indicate a society might be descending into tyranny --

5. Use of compulsory education laws to forbid attendance at presently existing private schools.

I am not an educator and I don't have any children, so if the truth be told, I have not paid as much attention to the state of education in our nation as I would under different circumstances. But I remember when George W. Bush came out with his "No Child Left Behind" legislation. It certainly sounded like a good idea to many of us. But I have to admit, these days it sounds totally Soviet to me. Really -- all the children of America need to be kept together in one big herd?

I know I would have hated that as a kid! I was reading at the 3rd-grade level when I was in kindergarten. And when I was in 3rd-grade, I had the athletic finesse of a klutzy kindergartner! I was above average in most academic subjects, and LOVED it when our teachers separated us into groups based on our aptitude and gave us special projects. Just as I got frustrated having to participate in reading groups with kids who could barely read, I avoided playing kick-ball with the sporty kids who could run me over in a few seconds flat!

My impression on "No Child Left Behind" has been solidified by friends in public education who bemoan the fact that they no longer have any control over the curriculum in their classroom and are limited in catering to the needs of the varying levels of student aptitude.

Now it seems that education in America has gone from state and locally-run, to a standardized-test-obsessed behemoth that offers the same curriculum, the same tests, the same almost everything to all of the diverse corners of our nation.

It seems to actually make the kids stupider. And it gives an enormous amount of power to the publishers of textbooks and makers of tests. Who are these people who now have the minds of America's youth in the palms of their hands?

In regards to Signpost 5, Americans still have some rights concerning the education of their children. I am not aware of any laws that prevent parents from enrolling their children in private schools (although the economic difficulties we are experiencing certainly have caused some to put their kids back in public schools in order to save money).

But besides the centralizing of power in Education, we have seen some disturbing signs that both state and federal government look upon homeschooling with less than admiration.

In 2003, the federal government proposed HR 2732 -- the "Homeschool Non-Discrimination Act", which would have increased federal oversight and regulation of homeschooling. It doesn't appear that this bill passed. (1)

In 2008 a California court ruled that a homeschooling family in their state has no right to home school their children unless they are certified tutors. (2)

Recent news report depicting a homeschooling family in Massachusetts who don't actually teach their children anything, but let them stay up all night or watch TV all day if they want to. The parents of this family, unrepresentative of the majority of homeschoolers in the the U.S., calmly state on camera that they believe it's best to let their children do whatever they want, if they want to learn something they will do it on their own. (3)

Whether it was designed to or not, this news piece clearly would have the effect of giving the public a bad opinion of homeschooling.

One homeschooling father had this to say about potential future government encroachment on the practice --

"Look for the first few leaks of damning stories about home schooling. They will start by demonizing the movement. Then they will move rapidly to tax it, and outlaw it in practice if not in law. Before the next election home schoolers will see a world on the horizon where school boards and local school administration have to certify their credentials. Homes will be subject to inspection and regulation by OSHA and the EPA." (4)

Since I hope to have kids someday, and there is no way I would consider putting my children in most public schools, this definitely concerns me.

Whether or not it is of concern to you or me, Americans should have the right to have their children educated in the way they see fit without having the government constantly hassling them.

Signpost 5 -- Not yet

6. Compulsory non-military service.

While we don't yet have laws requiring compulsory service to the state, President Obama and his Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, are both on the record for promoting a period of required non-military service of individuals between the ages of 18-25.

Take a look --

Here's a commercial that has been actually aired on television depicting Obama's proposed youth corps --

Is this a harmless program that will help young people contribute to the well-being of their nation? After all, who wouldn't want their teenage children involved in serving their community and working towards a high ideal?

The problem is not teenagers involved with community service, but rather a government reaching its hands into an arena better served by the family or church.

A youth corps is a common feature of fascist and communist regimes. It is their tactic designed to mold the minds and opinions of the rising generation to cause them to conform to a state agenda. From Hitler's Youth Brigade, the Young Pioneers of the Soviet Union, or the Communist Youth League of China, we would be following in the footsteps of some seriously questionable regimes if Obama gets his youth corps.

Signpost 6 -- In the works

Lastly, I want to point out that in the case of the Communist nations, not only did the state want control over the young people, but it wanted to do away with all competition. The destruction of the family and the church are two of Communism's stated goals.

In my mind, anything that weakens the autonomy of family and church and subjugates their influence to that of the state is potentially dangerous to a free society.

What do you think?

References:

(1) http://homeschooling-wpa.org/issues/2005-federal/wpa78.html

(2) http://pheofca.org/long080307.html

(3) http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Parenting/unschooling-homeschooling-book-tests-classes/story?id=10410867

(4) http://bradmorrison.wordpress.com/2010/02/13/the-coming-war-against-home-schooling/

Signpost 4 -- Every Breath You Take, Every Move You Make

2010-04-15T17:18:00.236-06:00

Today is another Friday, and it's time to address yet another of the Fourteen Signposts to Slavery I outlined in a previous post. So far, two of the three signposts we've examined are currently in effect here in the good old USA (Signposts 1 and 3). Signpost 2 -- the abolition of the right to gun ownership -- is not in effect, and we should be vigilant to make sure that gun rights are never, ever rescinded.

Moving on . . .

Signpost 4 -- Requirements that private financial transactions be keyed to social security numbers or other government identification so that government records of these transactions can be kept and fed into a computer.

What would this enormous red flag of government intrusion potentially bring to the American people? Well, if you know what everyone is spending their money on and where, there is an awful lot you can learn about a person. If you not only have the ability to compile data on individuals' financial transactions but to also decide whether or not it's O.K. for them to engage in certain transactions, you've essentially enslaved the populace.

Today in the United States, all payments we make through credit cards, debit cards, or even by check are, in fact, connected to our social security numbers -- a social security number is almost always required to set up a bank account, apply for a credit card, or to apply for a loan of almost any type. Using cash in our transactions is really the only way to avoid any given transaction being linked to our social security number.

Of course you and I can go down to our local coffee shop, grocery store, or gas station and make a purchase in cash. But how many of us find it more convenient to whip out a debit or credit card, even for small transactions? How many of us pay our bills or make purchases online? Even if we use checks, each check is now scanned and saved electronically by our bank or credit union in most cases, and this information is stored in a database. I have an ecommerce business, and like most online businesses, all the financial transactions are electronic.

Just last year, Senator Chris Dodd sought to sneak a provision into his Hope for Homeowners bill that would require online merchant companies such as PayPal, Amazon, Ebay, and others to compile information on their customers and all their transactions. According to FreedomWorks Chairman Dick Armey, such a provision "reduces privacy across America's payment processing systems and treats every American small business or eBay power seller like a criminal on parole by requiring an unprecedented level of reporting to the federal government." (1) In my research, it appears that this particular proposal didn't pass, but it was very difficult to tell (and I didn't want to spend all day trying to sort through the monumental opacity of government websites).

Further, President Bush's proposed 2009 Budget called for all credit card companies to report the transactions of all their merchants (businesses who receive payments for products and services by credit card) to the IRS, with the transactions tied to the Taxpayer Identification Number of the merchant. This information would be collected, shared, and stored on a database all without any evidence that any of the merchants were in violation of any law. (2) The 2009 Budget also called for greater "enforcement initiatives" to make sure small businesses and the self-employed are paying the right amount of taxes, and the sharing of "financial intelligence" through American and world intelligence bodies. (3)

Of course, it is claimed that such provisions would be used to prevent terrorists from engaging in money laundering.

Here are a few more facts --

Electronic financial transactions are on the rise in America,
Any deposit or withdrawal over $3,000 must be reported to the government,
Any cash transaction over $10,000 must be reported to the government,
As we learned in Signpost 1, the financial transactions of Americans while abroad or through foreign bank accounts are now strictly regulated,
There have been instances where individuals have been ordered by the court to open a bank account,
Many Americans are required by their employer to have a bank account for direct deposit of their paychecks,
Europe is on the fast-track to moving to a cashless society, with the VP of Visa in Europe making comments about how expensive cash is, and advocating the abandonment of paper money and checks in favor of debit and credit cards. Of course, he would personally stand to benefit from such a shift! (4)
The amount of information on individual Americans, both financial and otherwise that is available to the government has exploded in recent years, and so has government control. If you, I, or your Uncle Bob somehow end up on a bad list or dubbed as a domestic terrorist, we could be cut off from all electronic financial means instantly (that is, if we're not detained by Homeland Security and thrown into a jail without a concrete accusation and without the right to a trial)!

Here's the landscape of financial transactions in our day -- the majority of all commerce of significance is now made electronically and is linked to our social security number, cash payments are going out of style, and large purchases in cash have to be reported to the government.

This is all fine and good if you have a benevolent and trust-worthy power structure safeguarding this information with their life, and with no intent to exploit.

In my opinion, however, those who defend the current system as necessary are either those who blindly trust the power structure, or who work for it.

Just as we've seen 5-year-old children show up as terrorists on the "No Fly" list and American veterans who are alive and well but the VA has determined that they are officially deceased, we would be naive not to expect negative ramifications from Uncle Sam compiling and perusing our financial history. It's bad enough how much financial information and power held by the big financial entities in our nation!

Just ask Leann Weaver of Phoenix, AZ who defaulted on a credit card, and one day at the grocery store attempted to pay for some groceries with her debit card and was declined for insufficient funds. Her credit card company found a way to garnish her wages, and did so even without her knowledge! (5)

Not that I think that those who don't pay their bills are in the right, but I don't like where this could be headed.

Signpost 4 -- Not quite, but way too close for comfort

References:

(1) http://www.freedomworks.org/press-releases/senate-housing-bill-requires-ebay-amazon-google-an
(2) http://www.cdt.org/policy/treasury-proposes-forcing-credit-card-companies-act-irs-agents
(3) http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/rewrite/budget/fy2009/treasury.html
(4) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/6968143/Is-a-cashless-society-on-the-cards.html
(5) http://www.cnbc.com/id/36149434/More_Debtors_Find_Their_Pay_Being_Garnished_by_Creditors

Signpost 3 -- Enemy Combatants and Unprivileged Enemy Belligerents

2010-04-09T13:25:00.000-06:00

It's another Friday, and time to show what I could come up with on the next item in my "Fourteen Signposts to Slavery" series. Here's a quick re-cap so far --

Signpost 1 -- Restrictions on taking money out of the country and on the establishment or retention of a foreign bank account by an American citizen. -- CHECK

Signpost 2 -- Abolition of private ownership of hand guns. -- NOPE (though many publicly-opposed efforts have been made to restrict gun ownership)

Now, on to today's item of interest --

Signpost 3 --Detention of individuals without judicial process.

Habeas corpus, or the right to petition against unlawful imprisonment, has been a part of American law since its very inception. The Founding Fathers understood that unless individuals who were imprisoned had the ability to protest that their detention was wrongful, a government could potentially destroy the liberty of the people and enslave whomever it wanted. Clearly, this was the exact type of thing the authors of the Constitution sought to avoid.

"The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it."

(Article 1, Section 9, U.S. Constitution)

Further, Amendment 5 of the Bill of Rights specifies that "No person shall be . . . deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. . ."

With these safeguards in place, a government would be more likely to remain in its proper place as a servant to the people, not vice versa.

With the law on habeas corpus, a stipulation was made that during extenuating circumstances of rebellion and invasion, individuals taken prisoner might temporarily be stripped of this right if the government was too strapped to handle due process at that time.

Indeed, during the Civil War President Lincoln suspended habeas corpus for a period because of insurrection in Maryland and the mid-West. Once the war was over, prisoners were dealt with and the privilege of habeas corpus was again extended to the citizenry at large.

Habeas corpus was suspended for some Ku Klux Klan members in the 1870's in some part of South Carolina apparently due to their interference in Reconstruction efforts. It was also suspended in Hawaii from 1942-44 in the aftermath of WWII, though not without opposition from some Americans.

Fast forward a few years and you'll find that President Clinton signed a law into effect, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, part of Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America", in which prisoners were given a 1-year statute of limitation in which to petition any wrongful imprisonment and federal judges were given limitations on granting relief to petitioners. This new legislation was proposed after the Oklahoma City bombing, and was subsequently criticized as not only ineffective against preventing terrorism, but eroding rights granted in the Constitution.

In fact, Congress had rejected some of the proposals that were eventually passed in 1996 as part of this Act when they had been put on the table by Reagan and Bush Sr. in earlier years. Specifically, Congress had opposed laws enacting "guilt by association, association as grounds for exclusion or deportation, the ban on supporting lawful activities of groups labeled terrorist, the use of secret evidence, and the empowerment of the Secretary of State to designate groups as terrorist organizations, without judicial or congressional review." (1)

After the Oklahoma City bombing, Congress was much more willing to comply.

Skipping ahead to 2001, we have another tragic event blamed on terrorism that leads to an even greater restriction of the rights of individuals taken prisoner and presumed to be terrorists. On September 18, 2001, Congress enacted the War Powers Resolution, which stated:

"That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons."

Further, "using the authorization granted to him by Congress, on 13 November 2001, President Bush issued a Presidential Military Order: 'Detention, Treatment, and Trial of Certain Non-Citizens in the War Against Terrorism^' which allowed 'individuals ... to be detained, and, when tried, to be tried for violations of the laws of war and other applicable laws by military tribunals', where such individuals are a member of the organization known as al Qa'ida; or has conspired or committed acts of international terrorism, or have as their aim to cause, injury to or adverse effects on the United States, its citizens, national security, foreign policy, or economy. The order also specifies that the detainees are to be treated humanely.

The length of time for which a detention of such individuals can continue before being tried by a military tribunal is not specified in the military order. The military order uses the term 'detainees' to describe the individuals detained under the military order. The U.S. administration chooses to describe the detainees held under the military order as 'illegal enemy combatants'." (2)

After the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, the individuals it detained were held under this military order, going against the Geneva Convention's guidelines on the treatment of prisoners of war.

Thousands were rounded up and shipped off to Guantanamo Bay without recourse for an indefinite period, where some of them were subject to treatment that sounds pretty cruel and unusual to me!

Further, under the USA PATRIOT Act, a non-citizen charged with an immigration violation became subject to mandatory detention and was "ineligible for release until he [was] removed, or until the Attorney General determines that he should no longer be certified as a terrorist." (3)

Many left-wing politicians and citizens quickly became disgusted with the U.S. policies of detention and torture, while right-wingers claimed it was all necessary and for our good.

President Obama to the Rescue?

In 2008, Obama campaigned for president with the promise that he would close the Guantanamo Bay prison within his first year of office. Once elected, he made efforts to do so and came across some road blocks.

The most recent development with the closing of Gitmo is the proposition that prisoners be transferred to a prison Thomson, IL. Obama himself admitted that some prisoners would probably still be detained indefinitely without trial. Chris Anders of the ACLU argues that "There is a right way and a wrong way to close Guantanamo, and the current Thomson plan is the wrong way. Indefinite detention without charge or trial and military commission-related detention shouldn’t simply be moved from Guantanamo to Illinois.Opening Thomson without prohibiting the worst of Guantanamo policies from being transported there would be an enormous step backwards." (4)

Lastly, to fill out the landscape of indefinite detention without trial in America or enacted by the American government, let’s turn out attention to the new McCain-Lieberman bill introduced this March. Apparently designed to prevent any future underwear bombers from harrassing the American populace, this bill would allow the government to detain anyone suspected of terrorism without charge, without trial, and without any Miranda Rights.

McCain defended the bill claiming that "deliberate mass attacks that intentionally target hundreds of innocent civilians are an act of war and should not be dealt with in the same manner as a robbery. We must recognize the difference." (5)

_____________________________________________________

WHEW.

Here are my thoughts. The only way our government could get away with trampling on the right to protest wrongful imprisonment and have due process of law if imprisoned, would be to package it in some attractive way. Both Democrat and Republican leaders have participated (sure glad I voted for neither Obama nor McCain).

The claim that these measures will protect America from terrorist attacks has proven a sufficient justification for many in government and amongst the populace.

I am not convinced that the risk of terrorist attacks outweighs the risk of growing governmental tyranny.

Signpost 3 --Detention of individuals without judicial process. CHECK

What do you think?

References:
(1) http://www.ratical.com/ratville/CAH/PAplndbefore.html
(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unlawful_combatant#2001_Presidential_military_order
(3) http://www.ratical.com/ratville/CAH/USAPAanalyze.html#IIC2
(4) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/21/AR2009052104045.html
(5) http://mccain.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressOffice.FloorStatements&ContentRecord_id=2AF60F3A-05DC-CDF6-7DC9-6501A995C17C

Signpost 2 -- "From My Cold, Dead Hands"

2010-04-02T13:25:00.003-06:00

Today's post is a continuation of my commentary on each of the Fourteen Signposts to Slavery outlined in a previous article.

Signpost 2 -- Abolition of private ownership of hand guns.

We all know that Americans still enjoy the right to bear arms, so this is at least one signpost (thank goodness!) that is not currently in affect!

In fact, millions of Americans would echo the sentiments of the late Charlton Heston, and would relinquish their right to own a gun only if pried "from [their] cold, dead hands."

Others argue that gun ownership should be strictly controlled in order to prevent gun accidents, crimes, and murders.

Personally, I kind of hate guns. But I am an absolute supporter of the right to own a gun. Why? Because it is a guaranteed Constitutional right, and I support the right of Americans to do as they choose as long as it does not infringe upon the life and liberty of others. Owning a gun does not equal mis-using it in crimes and murders.

It would be ridiculous for me to think I could provide a detailed and comprehensive presentation of the pro's and con's of gun rights and gun control on this post today. This is not a topic I have studied extensively in the past, and there are probably millions of people out there more qualified to write about this topic than I am.

So instead of attempting to broach this topic myself, I would like to know my readers' opinions.

What do you think about gun control and the right to bear arms?

Signpost 1 -- Restrictions on Taking Money out of the U.S. and on Foreign Bank Accounts

2010-03-26T14:15:00.001-06:00

Last week I introduced the topic for my next several blog posts -- 14 Signposts to Slavery, or signs that any given society might be slipping towards tyranny.

Where does the United States stand with these 14 issues?

In this post, I will examine Signpost 1. I am not an expert on financial and travel law, but I am a concerned citizen doing my best to gain a more complete understanding of the landscape of liberty vs. tyranny in our nation. I welcome comments from anyone reading this who has expertise in this area.

Signpost 1 -- Restrictions on taking money out of the country and on the establishment or retention of a foreign bank account by an American citizen.

Part A of Signpost 1 -- Restrictions on taking money out of the country.

What I Found -- Though I wasn't able to find any specific law (not even on the custom's website), I found several references online to a $10,000 limit on the amount of money one can take with them without having to declare it to customs. Apparently this restriction was imposed by Nixon in the early 1970's. I was unable to find a reference to what the punishment is for infringing upon this rule.

Part B of Signpost 1 -- Restrictions on the establishment or retention of a foreign bank account by an American citizen.

Fact --

Here is what Wikipedia says about the U.S. PATRIOT Act restricting foreign bank account holdings (done in the name of preventing money laundering -- emphasis added) --

"Restrictions were placed on accounts and foreign banks. It prohibited shell banks that are not an affiliate of a bank that has a physical presence in the U.S. or that are not subject to supervision by a banking authority in a non-U.S. country. It also prohibits or restricts the use of certain accounts held at financial institutions.^[70] Financial institutions must now undertake steps to identify the owners of any privately owned bank outside the U.S. who have a correspondent account with them, along with the interests of each of the owners in the bank. It is expected that additional scrutiny will be applied by the U.S. institution to such banks to make sure they are not engaging in money laundering. Banks must identify all the nominal and beneficial owners of any private bank account opened and maintained in the U.S. by non-U.S. citizens. There is also an expectation that they must undertake enhanced scrutiny of the account if it is owned by, or is being maintained on behalf of, any senior political figure where there is reasonable suspicion of corruption.^[71] Any deposits made from within the U.S. into foreign banks are now deemed to have been deposited into any interbank account the foreign bank may have in the U.S. Thus any restraining order, seizure warrant or arrest warrant may be made against the funds in the interbank account held at a U.S. financial institution, up to the amount deposited in the account at the foreign bank.^[72] Restrictions were placed on the use of internal bank concentration accounts because such accounts do not provide an effective audit trail for transactions, and this may be used to facilitate money laundering. Financial institutions are prohibited from allowing clients to specifically direct them to move funds into, out of, or through a concentration account, and they are also prohibited from informing their clients about the existence of such accounts. Financial institutions are not allowed to provide any information to clients that may identify such internal accounts.^[73] Financial institutions are required to document and follow methods of identifying where the funds are for each customer in a concentration account that co-mingles funds belonging to one or more customers." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_PATRIOT_Act

Here is a link to the IRS website regarding foreign bank accounts -- http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=148849,00.html

In other words, the U.S. government must be privy to all financial transactions of U.S. citizens via foreign banks, as well as be aware if anyone is taking over $10,000 in cash out of the country.

The restrictions imposed on financial transactions abroad may seem reasonable in light of threats of terrorism, and drug and arms trafficking. But remember the saying -- The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Lastly, I would have a lot easier time swallowing these restrictions and the requirement of transparency in American citizens' finances if the government (and Federal Reserve) were required to be equally transparent in their expenditures and investments.

Signpost 1 -- CHECK

1 Signpost down, 13 more to go . . .

Fourteen Signposts to Slavery -- An Introduction

2010-03-19T13:02:00.008-06:00

Today is a sunny, but chilly day here in Salt Lake City. It's already mid-March, and my poor Floridian self is dying to go to the beach -- ANY beach! I want to soak in that relaxed and peaceful vibe that comes with the sound of ocean waves and seagulls, and the feeling of the sun and sand on my skin!

For now, I'll have to settle for a Northern Utah Spring (which feels a lot like winter in Florida).

I went for a walk in my neighborhood the other day (it was in the 60's!), and I must admit I love a lot about where I live. I enjoy seeing people at the park with their dogs, 20-something guys with their stunt bikes, and cute little kids stoked that they get to walk around outside without their coats on for the first time in forever!

Life goes on day by day and there is much to appreciate. I am always glad when I stop to enjoy the little things.

Sometimes I realize that some of the "little" things I enjoy really aren't that small. What a complete privilege it is to live in a time and a place where personal liberties are enjoyed to an extent unheard of by so very many! If I wanted to get in my car and drive to California this weekend just to get a taste of the beach, I would be completely free to do so. If I want to study a particular subject, no-one will stop me. If I want to pursue a certain path, my biggest obstacle is only myself.

Living like we do in our society with all of our freedoms, it can be easy to forget how very precious they really are.

Like some of you, I have studied history and read horrifying accounts of nations and societies where freedoms are trampled and the people suffer atrocities. In particular, I spent four years pursuing two Master's Degrees in Russian Language & Literature and Russian & East European Studies (for some reason, one Master's Degree wasn't enough for me). I received a fairly in-depth education on Russian and Soviet history and literature during my studies. Honestly, it was pretty traumatizing at times.

I remember reading Kolyma Stories by Varlaam Shalamov -- a collection of semi-autobiographical short stories about life in the Soviet Gulag. Outrageous, heart-rending, and horribly depressing. Just read one of them and you'll be messed up for the rest of the day.

I read Journey Into the Whirlwind by Evgenia Ginzburg -- an autobiographical account of an 18-year stint in the Gulag and some of the events leading up to it. A rank-and-file, card-carrying Communist Party member, Ms. Ginzburg had the misfortune of getting sledgehammered by Stalin's cannibalistic Purges in the 1930's in which well over a million loyal Communists were arrested in the night and accused of being enemies of the USSR.

Innumerable individuals*** were shot, imprisoned, and interred in slave labor camps in Siberia where their hair would freeze to the barrack walls in the winter nights and come out in clumps the next morning, where inmates would practically be eaten alive in the summer months by mosquitoes while building a railroad to nowhere in the Siberian steppe, and where hunger, abuse, and tortured death was a common, daily ocurrance.

I lived in Russia in the late 90's, and saw first-hand the beauty and resilience of a people who can live through just about anything and know it. I also observed the collective unhealed trauma of a nation determined to move forward, but dogged by unresolved pain from the past.

I gained so very much by my study of Russia, it's people, and it's history. I came away with a greater appreciation for those who labor for freedom, sometimes at great cost to themselves and their families.

Last Spring I read an eye-opening book called None Dare Call It Conspiracy by Gary Allen, and was particularly impressed with a short section on the fourteen signposts to totalitarianism by a historian Dr. Warren Carroll and a refugee from Yugoslavian Communism, Mike Djordjevich.

Carroll and Djordjevich compiled this list sometime in the 1950's or 60's, and warned that the implementation of any of these fourteen policies is a step in the direction of totalitarianism, and "once a significant number of them -- perhaps five -- had been imposed, we can rationally conclude that the remainder would not be far behind . . ."

Where do we stand right at this moment in our nation, while so many assure us that everything is fine while others warn of impending gloom and doom?

I decided that over the next while, I will address each of these fourteen red flags to take a good, objective look. Here are the red flags themselves --

____________________________________________________

Fourteen Signposts to Slavery

1. Restrictions on taking money out of the country and on the establishment or retention of a foreign bank account by an American citizen.

2. Abolition of private ownership of hand guns.

3. Detention of individuals without judicial process.

4. Requirements that private financial transactions be keyed to social security numbers or other government identification so that government records of these transactions can be kept and fed into a computer.

5. Use of compulsory education laws to forbid attendance at presently existing private schools.

6. Compulsory non-military service.

7. Compulsory psychological treatment for non-government workers or public school children.

8. An official declaration that anti-Communist organizations are subversive and subsequent legal action taken to suppress them.

9. Laws limiting the number of people allowed to meet in a private home.

10. Any significant change in passport regulations to make passports more difficult to obtain or use.

11. Wage and price controls, especially in a non-wartime situation.

12. Any kind of compulsory registration with the government of where individuals work.

13. Any attempt to restrict freedom of movement within the United States.

14. Any attempt to make a new major law by executive decree.

____________________________________________________

This is a pretty big undertaking for me, requiring hours of research for each point. I would like to ask any of my readers who have studied some of these issues to comment on this article or email me with resources and leads. I would like for this to be a collaborative effort at understanding the true state of our nation.

I am looking forward to it . . .

____________________________________________________

***"According to the declassified Soviet archives, during 1937 and 1938, the NKVD detained 1,548,367 victims, of whom 681,692 were shot - an average of 1,000 executions a day (in comparison, from 1825 to 1910 the Tsarists executed 3.932 persons for political crimes).^[55] Historian Michael Ellman claims the best estimate of deaths brought about by Soviet repression during these two years is the range 950,000 to 1.2 million, which includes deaths in detention and those who died shortly after being released from the Gulag as a result of their treatment in it. He also states that this is the estimate which should be used by historians and teachers of Russian history.^[56]

According to Memorial society,^[44] on the cases investigated by the State Security Department of NKVD (GUGB NKVD):

At least 1,710,000 people were arrested
At least 1,440,000 people were sentenced
At least 724,000 were executed. Among them:
- At least 436,000 people were sentenced to death by NKVD troikas as part of the Kulak operation (see also figure of 376,202^[37])
- At least 247,000 people were sentenced to death by NKVD Dvoikas' and the Local Special Troykas as part of the Ethnic Operation
- At least 41,000 people were sentenced to death by Military Courts
Among other cases in October 1936-November 1938:
- At least 400,000 were sentenced to labor camps by Police Troikas as Socially Harmful Elements (социально-вредный элемент, СВЭ)
- At least 200,000 were exiled or deported by Administrative procedures
- At least 2 million were sentenced by courts for common crimes, among them 800,000 were sentenced to Gulag camps.

Some experts believe the evidence released from the Soviet archives is understated, incomplete or unreliable.^[55]^[57]^[58]^[59] For example, Robert Conquest suggests that the probable figure for executions during the years of the Great Purge is not 681,692, but some two and a half times as high. He believes that the KGB was covering its tracks by falsifying the dates and causes of death of rehabilitated victims.^[60]"
^{-- Wikipedia "Great Purge" -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge}

On Nutritional Supplements, FDA Regulation, and Pharmaceuticals' Free Pass

2010-03-13T01:37:00.005-07:00

In February Senator John McCain sponsored a bill to regulate nutritional supplements and the companies who manufacture them (The Dietary Supplement Safety Act of 2010, S3002), purporting that greater FDA oversight of the manufacture of supplements was necessary in order to prevent the injury and death of American citizens. In particular, McCain is on the record stating that his goal with this bill was to protect athletes from tainted supplements, especially those laced with anabolic steroids.

This bill is now dead in the water as McCain withdrew his support when Senator Orrin Hatch expressed his concern that the bill would negatively impact the nutritional supplement industry.

Even though this bill now won’t be pushed through the legislative process, it appears that we can expect a continuing dialogue over nutritional supplement safety and regulation among members of Congress.

Along with millions of other Americans, I am relieved that the McCain bill is no longer a threat but am concerned about future developments in this arena. The thought of the FDA having any more oversight than it already does over natural products makes my stomach turn for a number of reasons.

Here are a couple --

First, there is a track record of overreaction to the dangers of nutritional supplements (supposed or real) in the media and among policy-makers.

Let’s take the example of ephedra. Ephedra is an herbal stimulant and thermogenic agent (increases body temperature) that people used for weight loss, sometimes with or without caffeine, and it was banned in 2004 because of a number of reported side effects, including hypertension, irritability, nervousness, hyperthermia, heart palpitations, seizures, and even a handful of deaths (1).

I am not defending ephedra as a supplement that is safe for all people under every condition, and I definitely believe it’s possible that it has caused problems for some people, fatalities including. After all, if an herb or nutritional supplement has any sort of biological impact on the body at all, there are bound to be people who will have a negative reaction to it!

But let’s look at the media frenzy that surrounded the deaths of 3 athletes in the last decade, purportedly due to their use of ephedra.

In 2001, Korey Stringer participated in a Minnesota Vikings training camp and died of heat stroke. Even though his autopsy showed no traces of ephedra in his system at the time of death, the herb was widely blamed for killing the young athlete (2).

Professional baseball player Steve Bechler died on the field due to heat stroke in 2003. Ephedra was blamed for causing his death, and indeed the toxicology report showed ephedra derivatives in his blood. He also had a history of heat stroke, was overweight, was on some sort of liquid diet, and was at a practice in South Florida with brutal heat and humidity, which he was unaccustomed to, when he collapsed on the field and tragically passed away (3).

The third high-profile death blamed on ephedra was that of college football player Rashidi Wheeler, who in 2001 collapsed during training exercises designed to push the athletes to the edge and died of exercise-induced bronchial asthma, which he had had problems with in the past. Even though the coroner found ephedra in his system, it was deemed not to be a causative factor in his death (4).

The death of anyone, particularly someone as young as each of these three men were, truly is a tragedy. I don’t have enough information to judge if ephedra caused any of their deaths, though ephedra’s role in killing two of them appears dubious. Either way, the both the media and the FDA jumped on the anti-ephedra bandwagon and today it is considered an illegal substance.

A handful of possible death implications and a few thousand complaints of negative reactions -- that is reason for concern, to be sure! Which is why the media and FDA's handling of a group of substances that kill between 100,000-200,000 people each year in our nation, and cause complications for far more, is puzzling.

Why is ephedra demonized and banned and herbs/nutritional supplements viewed as such a threat while young (and old) people all around us on prescription or over-the-counter drugs seem to be dropping like flies? All the while, the very agencies and organizations crying foul on supplements are silent by comparison on the pharmaceutical issue!

Why have pharmaceuticals, including many of the pain killers, antidepressants, and anti-anxiety meds found in the bloodstream of young, dead actors (and many others who were less famous), been given a free pass?

The Emperor is naked, and few seem to care . . .

28-year-old Heath Ledger was found dead in his apartment in January 2008, and his death was found to have been caused by “an accidental overdose of prescription medications including painkillers, anti-anxiety drugs and sleeping pills . . . ‘Mr. Heath Ledger died as the result of acute intoxication by the combined effects of oxycodone, hydrocodone, diazepam, temazepam, alprazolam, and doxylamine,’" (5)

Another young actor, Brittany Murphy, shocked the Hollywood scene when she suffered cardiac arrest and passed away in her home in December 2009. Her toxicology report states the following: “Multiple medications were present in the blood, with elevated levels of hydrocodone, acetaminophen [Tylenol], and chlorpheniramine. L-methamphetamine was also present. It should be noted that the pattern of use of these medications suggest treatment of symptoms of a cold or other respiratory infection. Acetaminophen and hydrocodone are components of Vicodin. Chlorpheniramine is the active ingredient in some over-the-counter medications. L-methamphetamine is a component of some inhalers.” (6)

Most recently, of course, is the tragic death of 80’s teen actor Corey Haim at age 38. Haim collapsed and passed away at his mother’s home just a few days ago. While no toxicology report will be available for a few weeks, bottles of prescription drugs (and no illegal drugs) were found in his home, making it at least possible that he just became the next high-profile death by prescription medication.(7)

When compared with the public cry against ephedra and any other herbal or nutritional supplement accused of injuring people, I have to wonder -- where is the outrage against these pharmaceuticals?? These few examples of famous people dying in their homes on legal drugs are just the high-profile, proverbial tip of an enormous iceburg.

When taking pharmaceutical drugs as prescribed is attributed to at least 106,000 death per year in America alone (and possibly as many as 200,000) (8) and the total number of deaths attributed to nutritional supplements since 1989 is 230 (9), why would anyone in their right mind want to waste our government’s time and resources on regulating nutritional supplements when the pharmaceutical industry is clearly in much, much worse shape?

Let me repeat -- there are a minimum of 106,000 deaths per year in America due to prescription drugs, and there have been 230 deaths due to nutritional supplements since 1989. 1989 was 21 years ago (we won't count 2010 in these figures since the year just began). That means in the past 20 years there have been approximately 2.1 million deaths because of prescription drugs, and only 230 because of nutritional supplements, or 9,217 times more deaths due to drugs. But there is not 9,217 times more outrage. Somehow, much of the public has allowed its outrage to be focused on the 230 deaths instead of the 2.1 million!

Clearly, something isn't right here.

Even supposing there truly is a need for oversight and regulation in the nutritional supplement industry, why would we hand such a job over to the FDA when they’ve done such a poor job regulating drugs, allowing 2.1 million Americans in the last 20 years to die because of them?

Lastly, I am absolutely in support of companies who manufacture drugs, supplements, vaccines, and even food additives being required to be up front about injuries that they have been purported or proved to have caused (such as aspartame, or NutraSweet, which has over 10,000 complaints against it – more than complaints of all other substances combined) (10). That aside, I have to wonder where the government derives the authority to tell us which substances we can and cannot take into our bodies.

What it comes down to for me is this -- Washington, please leave me alone and let me take my herbs and supplements that healed me of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in 2005, kidney stones in 2008, swine flu and a mumps-like illness in 2009, chronic problems with headaches and skin, too many cold and flu-like illnesses to name just in the few years alone. I don't want to worry about limited access or increasing prices that would be sure to come with greater regulation.

And in return, let those who desire substances that are associated with well over 100,000 deaths per year in America have their pills.

(As a side note -- I am not implying that all pharmaceuticals carry the same level of risk. I am of the opinion that in some circumstances a drug may be the most appropriate solution. Even when it is not the solution I would choose for myself, I support peoples' freedom to choose how to take care of their own health. But as with anything you put in your mouth -- a food, a supplement, or a drug -- it is always a good idea to do your research first and use wisdom.)

Final comment -- allow me to briefly share my own personal experience with anti-anxiety and sleep medications. When I was ill with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/fibromyalgia, I didn't sleep deeply for an entire year. My doctor prescribed small doses of 3 drugs that seemed to do the trick for me (clonazepam, Neurontin, and Elavil/doxepin elixir) . The problem was, I kept needing more (a common problem). If I forgot to take the drugs with me on a trip, I would lie in bed all night with my heart racing, aware of every passing minute. After being on these drugs for a few years, I actually began reading about them. I discovered that 2 of the drugs had created a lot of problems for people, were highly addictive (in fact there are clinics to help people try to get off of clonazepam and other benzodiazapenes), and if I ever wanted to have kids I would have to go off of them first. When I got married in 2004 I decided it was time to get off the drugs. I planned on taking 3-4 months to wean off of them. What I experienced during these 3-4 months (the first few months of my marriage -- happy happy joy joy) was withdrawal symptoms including altered perception as if I was tripping on drugs, mood swings and crying spells, and a returned inability to sleep. When the prescription for these medications was handed to me 5 years earlier, I had NO IDEA what I was getting myself into! And because they seemed to work, I just went with it.

Thankfully, after my months of drug trips and emotional roller-coasters in 2005, I began to seek out natural solutions and found a nutritional supplement that INSTANTLY took away the bad withdrawal symptoms, but I still wasn't able to get off all of the drugs. Months later, I came across some therapeutic-quality essential oils that healed my severe insomnia (meaning, after a period of time, I stopped needing ANYTHING for sleep), and I haven't had any problems since. So you can see why I'm such a huge proponent of seeking out natural solutions instead of blindly trusting a doctor, even if he/she is well-intentioned.

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ephedra
(2) http://www.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/al/orioles/2003-02-17-bechler-questions_x.htm
(3) http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20030313&content_id=219098&vkey=news_mlb&fext=.jsp&c_id=null
(4) http://www.usatoday.com/sports/college/football/bigten/2003-03-11-wheeler-supplements_x.htm
(5) http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/Movies/02/06/heath.ledger/index.html
(6) http://backseatcuddler.com/2010/02/26/brittany-murphy-toxicology-report-full-list-of-drugs-autopsy-photos/

(7) http://laist.com/2010/03/10/haim_died_of_prescription_drug_od_s.php

(8) http://www.naturalnews.com/024765_drugs_DEA_prescription_drugs.html
(9) http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/16/health/16diet.html
(10) http://www.321recipes.com/aspartame.html

Political Correctness -- Musings of an Anglo-Germanic-American

2010-03-05T15:43:00.006-07:00

***Warning -- You are leaving the Politically Correct Zone. Proceed at your own risk!!!***

A prominent politician is branded a racist when it is discovered he once said that Barack Obama stood a chance of being elected president because he was “light-skinned” and didn’t use a “Negro dialect.”

Another prominent political figure is up in arms when the White House Chief of Staff calls those who oppose Democratic policies “(expletive) retarded”, and demands that he retract his words so as not to offend the mentally-handicapped and those who care for them.

Obama is blasted by the major of Las Vegas for making the comment that during an economic crisis, it’s probably not a good idea to run to Vegas and gamble away your college funds!

---------------------------------------------------------------------

I’m not in to name-calling, foul language, labeling, racism, sexism, and a lot of other “isms”. I think being kind to our fellow man, whether we agree with him or not, is pretty much the way to go. But I find the epidemic of political correctness in our society absolutely maddening!

Can anybody say what they mean anymore without being labeled as a heartless scumbag who should immediately retract their words and issue a statement of apology, step down from any position of authority, or be taken to court?

I hate to compare everything that irritates me with the Soviet Union, but it’s a nasty habit I gained after engrossing myself in Soviet literature, history, and culture during my graduate studies, and seeing some of the same bizarre trends right here at home.

For those who aren’t familiar, the Soviet State was responsible for coining a prolific number of euphemisms to take the “edge” off of draconian policies and institutions.

The system of forced labor camps in Siberia where starvation, privation, disease, squalor, and abuse of inmates was the norm and where millions of Soviet citizens rotted and perished was called the “Gulag”. Translation – Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps. Sounds a bit more innocuous than it really was, doesn’t it?

(Kinda makes me think of the “Patriot” Act, Operation “Iraqi Freedom” recently re-worded by Obama to Operation “New Dawn”, but let’s not digress . . .)

Those camps designed to house dangerous political dissidents (including Baptist choir masters and human rights advocates) were designated “Extraordinary Regime Camps”.

Extraordinary indeed were the measures used to control public thought and opinion of disgusting and even cruel practices and policies through strategic, euphemistic wording.

I believe the dangers of political correctness in our society are real. Check out this incredibly informative video on the origins of political correctness (hint -- it originated with 20th century Marxist philosophers) --

The History of Political Correctness

In the USSR, calling things what they really were (or, how you perceived them to really be if your opinion differed from the state-sanctioned position) was risky business. Authors, artists, scholars, and everyday people who challenged the politically correct Soviet position risked imprisonment and death.

Thankfully, in America we don’t necessarily see anti-Obama, anti-Bush, or guns rights activists routinely carted off to prison. But in order to ensure this never, EVER takes place, let’s allow people to say what they mean – even if we find it offensive, even if we disagree!

I remember back in my grad school days at FSU, some friends of mine approached the door of a frat house right off campus and saw a sticker in the window saying “No Fat Chicks.”

I wonder if that sticker is still up in the window, or if some plus-sized FSU co-ed sued the fraternity for psychological trauma . . .

I Want to Live in a Free America, Not an America Where Everything is Free

2010-02-27T12:54:00.001-07:00

“Democracy in its turn is abolished and changes into a rule of force and violence” as people grow more “accustomed to feed at the expense of others and to depend for their livelihood on the property of others.”

– Polybius, Greek historian

Today our world experienced another cataclysmic event – an earthquake of an 8.8 magnitude struck in Chile, prompting evacuations in nations with coasts on the Pacific Ocean. Thankfully, the casualties in Chile are no where near what we saw in Haiti, though it is certain that countless numbers were negatively impacted by this quake.

It is right and good that people come to the aid of those who were injured, left homeless, and suffering loss – something that most of us, no matter our political persuasion, can agree on!

Back in the homeland, a consensus on all policies and plans are not so easy to come by as Democrats and Republicans are fighting tooth and nail over how to reform America’s healthcare system.

How can we in America allow people to suffer with sickness and not help? How can we let an old, toothless woman in Buffalo, New York be compelled to wear the dentures of her dead sister? In America?? While the people of France and Canada, Japan and Sweden take care of their people, how can any compassionate American citizen be against the healthcare reforms proposed by President Obama and Democrats in Congress?

Compelling indeed are the many arguments for government to take over the healthcare industry in America.

But I am amazed at not how many people oppose the takeover, but how many people support it!

“By supporting an endless number of ‘good’ causes, free society gradually becomes collectivist and tyrannical.” (1)

Yesterday I was engaged in a study that would behoove all of us as American citizens to participate in – I was reading the Constitution.

This is the document upon which our entire nation was built. Though our society is not without its inequities and our history not without some serious bumps in the road, we can credit the U.S. Constitution with giving us 200+ years of freedom and prosperity of unparalleled scope.

How did it do this? It was designed that way! The U.S. Constitution was designed to protect the most basic freedoms of the people, to empower them in the pursuit of life and liberty, and to keep them far from tyranny’s grasp.

Freedom of speech, of press, of religion, of assembly, the right to petition the Government for redress of grievances, the right to a speedy, public trial by jury if accused of a crime, the right to bear arms, the right to one’s own property, the right of protection from unwarranted search and seizure, the right to not be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, the right to vote regardless of gender or race. These are the rights granted by our Constitution. If you don’t believe me, please read it for yourself!

Ironically, we hear politicians and citizens crying out to meet the peoples’ rights to all kinds of things not outlined in the Constitution.

“Today, politicians promise the right to high quality education, the right to free or affordable health care and housing, and many more so-called rights. These are not genuine rights. They are benefits at the expense of others.” (2)

At the very same time, many of these same politicians and citizens trample on some of the rights guaranteed in the Constitution!! What is going on here?

When a newly-elected president is sworn in, he is required by Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution to swear to defend the Constitution.

I don’t have the time or space to research and list every infraction against the Constitution by every past and present American President. But besides the atrocious proposed Federal government takeover of healthcare, which would go against Amendment 10 of the Constitution (“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.”), a few notable Constitutional violations come to mind --

How about a whole slew of measures passed by President George W. Bush in the Patriot Act? No trial and potentially indefinite detention for those accused of terrorism. Really?? Are we going to follow in the Soviet Union’s footsteps and imprison all "enemies of the state"?

Did you know that search and seizure of Americans and businesses of America is becoming more common? And spying on the medical records, financial records, web-surfing habits, library records, and blogs and Facebook status updates of ordinary American citizens is now commonplace?

If you believe you have nothing to hide because you aren’t doing anything wrong and you trust your government won’t abuse these powers, I invite you to take a look at history to see that there is a long and prestigious track record of governments abusing the powers granted them.

How about all the measures proposed over the years for monitoring and curtailing the citizens’ rights to firearms? This is blatantly un-Constitutional.

And our tax regulations make it a habit to seize an increasingly sizeable chunk of American citizens’ hard-earned money and redistribute it to the poor through programs.

Yes, all of these measures can be made to sound like good ideas, but the truth is that each of them is chipping away at the very foundation America was built on and making us more vulnerable to tyranny.

The more the people depend on their government to provide for them, the more vulnerable they are to tyranny. And as the saying goes, when the people fear the government, tyranny reigns. When the government fears the people, there is liberty!

I want to live in a free America. I understand that there are risks and responsibilities associated with freedom, but I embrace these hazards because I believe that freedom is worth it!

I like the Constitution, and I like that it set up a system that made tyranny difficult or next-to-impossible.

Please read the Constitution and vote out all politicians whose actions prove they don’t uphold this document. Only vote for those with a track record of adherence to this history-making document that makes a society of liberty and true power to the people most likely to persist. Make those in power fear their accountability to the people!

And for goodness' sake, please use your brain when reading or watching the news! But that is a topic for a whole other day . . .

(1) The Path to Tyranny: A History of Free Society’s Descent Into Tyranny, Michael Newton, p. 6
(2) The Path to Tyranny: A History of Free Society’s Descent Into Tyranny, Michael Newton, p. 8

The Anatomy of a Victim

2010-02-19T17:43:00.004-07:00

After my last blog post in which I made a call to action for Christians to step up and do more to care for their fellow man, and laid out my views concerning the incompatibility of Christianity and Socialism, I have done a lot of thinking.

I was not at all surprised that quite a few people didn’t agree with what I had to say. I was, however, a bit taken aback at the few who felt the need to not only disagree, but attack and insult me.

So I mulled some things over – would there be a way for me to express my views in a way that wouldn’t rub some people the wrong way? How could I reach out to all readers, how could I ensure that everyone who reads my blog would walk away happy? Should I be more politically correct – is that the answer for me?

I pondered how I might write this next post so that nobody could possibly take offense. But I have come to the conclusion that broaching the subject matter at hand in a politically correct way would so whittle away at the heart of my message that there would essentially be nothing of value left for me to say.

So if you are easily offended and have a tendency to lash out at people you disagree with, I would ask that you either read no further, or keep your vitriolic comments to yourself. Perhaps you might start your own blog where you can express your opinions, as I do here on mine.

Comments from thoughtful, well-intentioned individuals, whether in agreement with me or not, are completely welcome.

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With that out of the way, I wanted to discuss another relatively touchy matter – one that might tick some people off, but one that must be addressed within the topic of Socialism and government assistance to the poor and disadvantaged.

If you happen to be an enthusiastic backer of government assistance, please don’t jump to conclusions about me and where I am coming from. Yesterday I saw a video clip on an online newspaper showing a Conservative, anti-government healthcare rally. I saw a man with a picket sign who was screaming – “No free healthcare. Get a job!” I was disheartened at what appeared to be disdain for the unemployed.

I don’t disdain the poor and needy. Neither do I feel the need to brag about myself and my own charitable endeavors. My viewpoints on helping the poor should be clear enough from my last post – we the people have a responsibility to care for those less fortunate than ourselves! I practice what I preach. I believe that a lot of people doing something can really make a difference.

Someone made the comment on my last post that my arguments “demonstrate[] the odd and unquestioning adherence . . . to the American myth that assumes the poor exist because of poor choices, and the rich because of wise choices (when in fact, it's usually the other way around . . .)”.

Yes, as a matter of fact, many of my arguments against Socialism do rest on the principle that there is something that poor people are doing that is causing them to be poor, and there is something that the rich understand that is causing them to be rich.

People who are happy are doing something that is causing them to be happy. People who aren’t happy are doing something that is making them unhappy. Sometimes crappy things happen. But don’t we see examples of people who find a way to be happy in spite of horrific circumstances? These are the people who inspire authors, filmmakers, and everyday people like most of us!

To me, it’s just about as preposterous to believe that people who are poor got there because of wise choices and rich people became rich through poor choices (as my commenter argued), and that the poor people deserve the wealth of the rich, as it would be to assume that chronically unhappy and crotchety people are really the ones who deserve to be happy in life – let’s steal the happiness from the happy and give it to those who are miserable!

I certainly don’t believe that blaming depressed, economically-disadvantaged people for their circumstances is the answer either. This life can be challenging, to say the least! A whole lot of people have been through a whole lot of hell!

On December 31, 2005 I stayed up late with some friends to see in the New Year. This New Year’s had a special significance for me – I had no sadness or nostalgia in watching 2005 slip away in the night. 2005 was my year of personal hell, and watching it die to make way for 2006 gave me pure delight!

Though others have certainly been through worse, 2005 was the culmination of a string of several really bad years for me. It was the pinnacle of suckiness to which my life reached; it was a year that tried me like no other.

I was an overachiever, and in 1999 I suddenly found myself laid up with a mystery illness that claimed my enthusiasm, my energy, my personality – my ability to function effectively as a contributing member of society. By 2004, it had seemed my life had taken a turn for the better with a few positive developments including marriage, which I had long awaited (I was 29).

But in 2005 it all came crashing down. The wretchedness of that year was profound to me. Ongoing physical disability, the pain and humiliation of separation and divorce, losing my health insurance, debt, underemployment, having no real address for almost the entire year, and more . . . In short, 2005 sucked in a broad, all-encompassing, multi-faceted kind of way. I even had two freak car accidents in which my car was hit and banged up by other people under somewhat bizarre circumstances! I was just waiting for the next bad thing to happen . . .

At age 30, I was forced to rely on the mercy of my parents and friends. Age 30! I had not envisioned spending the better part of my 20’s as a financial and emotional leach, and could never have guessed that by age 30 and with my two Master’s degrees, I would be so reliant on the help of others and only able to make $600-$800 per month cleaning a wealthy lady’s house and care-giving for a 90-year-old (this job was great – I got paid to take naps when she did!).

Though my life never sunk to levels faced by Auschwitz detainees or child prostitutes (thank the heavens!!!), I would never wish my 2005 on my worst enemy.

But 2005 was also a blessed year. It was the year I learned something that has changed the course of my life forever, and led to many of the good things I now enjoy in my life! Without this realization, I am quite certain I would still be sick and completely broke, and I am beyond sure that I would still be deeply unhappy.

I was reading a book that a friend gave to me, and I read this quote –

“If you want to know what your deeper beliefs are, look at your life and it will tell you. Life is a mirror reflecting back at us what we believe about ourselves.” (Remembering Wholeness, p. 24)

Ouch.

But what a blessed awakening!

I can’t adequately describe how empowering it was for me to realize that I was not a victim of my ex-husband’s choices, chronic fatigue syndrome, or anything or anyone else! I was not a victim!

I chose out of victimhood. I forgave those who had hurt me (I believe this is the KEY to moving from victimhood to empowerment). It was a miracle! And it was the beginning of a total revolution in my life! I was able to start taking responsibility for the things that were showing up in my life, and then things started showing up that I really wanted.

In September of 2005, I got about 95% of my health back in one week after 6 years of having the stamina of a sick 80-year-old. I got a full-time job a few months later. I bought a house. I started a business, and eventually another two.

I have had my ups and downs since 2005, and do to this day because I am a human being living on planet earth. I still have rough days like anyone else -- and still have junk in my trunk.

I don’t feel sorry for people any more. But I do feel empathy. My old tendencies of wanting to rescue people (as well as wanting to be rescued myself) are dying. Good riddance!

I don't see the poor as victims, but as people who need to be taught principles that govern wealth and given the opportunity to operate in these principles. Sick people aren't victims either -- they stand in need of learning the principles that govern health, and then need to put them to use.

Though someone standing on a ledge of a 20-story building needs someone right then to talk them out of jumping, someone starving to death needs food immediately, and a person in cardiac arrest needs CPR and medical attention now more than anything else, most of us on any given day are in no danger of dying if we’re not rescued from our problems. In fact, in some cases the rescuing can do more damage than not!

People with a track record of failed relationships don’t need the perfect person to come along and rescue them from their sad and lonely state as much as they need to learn the principles that govern happy relationships and practice those principles right where they’re at!

People up to their ears in debt don’t need a bailout from their debt as much as they need to learn the principles that govern sound finances, and put them into practice now.

People with health problems don’t need free health care with prescription drug benefits as much as they need to honestly assess what they can do to change so that they can heal, and then take action!

People living in squalor, poverty, and illiteracy don’t need someone to hand them the keys to a brand new house with a well-stocked refrigerator as much as they need someone to teach them how to read, how to work, and how to manage their life, and then to be given the chance to rise up.

Tragedy seems to beget tragedy. I have personally experienced to a certain extent the downward spiral that can take place when one tragedy or difficulty leads to another, which leads to another. People need help to get out of the hole.

And I was helped tremendously by family and friends -- I owe them my eternal gratitude! But if I hadn’t taken it upon myself to learn principles of healing, of forgiving, of debt-reduction, of success in business then I could very well still be in the hole I was in 5 years ago. No government program could have taught these things to me. When I, the student, was ready and humbled to the dirt, then the teachers appeared. .

Getting out of a hole appears to come as a result of some combination of personal desire, resolve, and action, the assistance of others, and Divine Grace. Any assistance that negates the personal responsibility of the individual to do his/her part, or the role of Divine Grace in lifting people up out of a pit is not only inadequate, but totally misleading as well.

Some people reading this may not be in to this whole “Divine Grace” thing. If that is you, then you probably have your reasons for feeling that way and you are more than welcome to disagree with me. But I doubt there are many people who would argue that personal responsibility to move past dysfunction and tragedy isn’t absolutely essential in rising out of an ash heap no matter who is willing to assist, and how much!

From my perspective, in societies where Socialism is practiced, there is an underlying assumption that people are victims and must be rescued. The masses must be cared for and nurtured through government programs in order to achieve happiness and security in life.

Instead of making people into victims as we attempt to provide help, let’s give immediate help to those in immediate danger, and take action to teach everyone else the principles that will help them rise up themselves.

To be continued . . .

Why I Believe Christianity & Socialism are Wholly Incompatible

2010-02-07T20:34:00.003-07:00

Today there are an estimated 6.8 billion people inhabiting this world -- a world with the technology to go to the moon and back, a world where individuals on completely different continents routinely communicate with one another via phone and internet, and a world with some serious issues yet to be solved.

Of the 6.8 billion people walking this planet, a little over 1 billion of them don't have enough to eat.

With all of the conveniences and marvels of our modern world, large-scale preventable human misery still has not gone the way of the dinosaur.

Who is to blame? What is to be done??

Of those who care to seriously address this issue, why is it that not everyone can agree on the solution? Should people be left to their own devices and let "survival of the fittest" determine who wins and loses in this life? Should governments step in and come to the rescue of those in need? What role can or should you and I play in meeting the needs of the poor and afflicted?

In this article I will share my personal convictions regarding the care of the poor and needy. I will draw upon my own experience with being partially-disabled for 6 years in my young adulthood, and being one who would qualify as poor and needy. I will also draw upon my experiences living in Russia in the late 90's and my extensive graduate-level research on the Soviet Union, as well as my understanding of the Bible and Christian philosophy.

Whether or not you agree with the arguments I lay out here, I hope that you will at the very least take them as coming from one who knows what it is to rely on someone else for my daily bread, and who has studied and seen some of the dangers inherent in philosophies popular in our world over the past century plus, including the prominent philosophy of Socialism.

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In this article, I will specifically address my comments to people of the Christian faith living the United States of America who applaud our nation's incremental Socialist agenda, who seek to enliven and expand government programs to care for the poor and needy.

I first must commend you for your active desire to see the downtrodden cared for. You show more dedication to the poor than many in your faith, "laissez faire" Christians who bemoan government involvement with welfare programs but who themselves do little to alleviate the suffering of anyone. These Christians are waiting to make it big before giving to the poor. They are waiting to have all their needs met before looking around them to perceive the pressing needs of others in their vicinity.

Next, I must tell you why I believe Socialism and Christianity to be two incompatible philosophies.

Many well-meaning Christians look upon a Socialist government and get warm fuzzies in their stomach thinking of all the people that are cared for.

But Socialism is wholly incompatible with the Christian principles of free will and personal responsibility to care for the widow, the orphan, the sick, and the poor.

What reward is there in heaven for the Christian who merely pays their taxes in a welfare state, but does nothing of their own initiative to succor the needy?

“We shall prove to them that they are nothing but weak, pathetic children, but that a child’s happiness is the sweetest of all. They will grow timid and cling to us in fear, like chicks to a hen.”

Christian philosophy asserts that, though fallen, man was created in the image of God and any man or woman is capable of inheriting salvation and all their fondest hopes and dreams from God through the mediation of the Savior, and through making the personal choice to submit to the conditions required for these blessings.

Socialist philosophy assumes that the masses as dumb as children, and they don’t need a god to reach their fondest dreams, but a government to hand out the goodies.

In Christian philosophy, individuals are responsible to care for the needs of the poor, the sick, the widow, and the orphan, but not compelled. Those who rise to the challenge will find themselves on the right hand of God because of their CHOICES, and those who don’t will not receive the blessings reserved for those who do.

In Socialist philosophy, all are compelled to care for the needy whether they want to or not (through taxation), and this care comes through the administration of a notoriously inefficient bureaucracy.

Christian philosophy causes men and women to rise up, work for their sustenance depending oftentimes on faith that help will come if and when it is needed. It is hard, it is risky, but the rewards of making the proper use of God-given free will are great. The consequences of poor choices can be brutal.

Socialist philosophy seeks to soften the blows of consequences to natural laws, both positive consequences – financial abundance for the thrifty, wise, hard-worker -- and negative consequences – poverty to those who break the natural laws that govern abundance.

A life of high stakes -- which this life is whether we want it to be or not -- engenders faith in God for those with a desire to prevail. It is the very difficulties of existence in this realm that allow men and women to develop the faith in God necessary for them to walk back into his presence.

Socialism falsely informs men and women there is another way to reach their ultimate dreams besides faith in any god.

"And men rejoice at being led like cattle again, with the terrible gift of freedom that brought them so much suffering removed from them.”

Christianity allows men and women the opportunity to make great sacrifices for those in need and reap the blessings as a results, or not makes those sacrifices and miss out on certain blessings.

Socialism steals the show and takes the credit for the care of the poor and needy, ironically leaving fewer people with the means to do great good in this world, as well as with less incentive.

Christianity says there is freedom in trusting in God.

Socialism says there is freedom in trusting in the government.

Christian philosophy depicts a utopian society, a millennium of peace after the Second Coming of Jesus, in which the meek will inherit the earth and the poor in spirit will inherit the kingdom of God, in which kings and queens (the wealthy) will willingly carry the downtrodden on their shoulders and lift them higher than themselves.

Socialist philosophy depicts a utopian society which is a worker’s paradise, a dream for the common man which comes as a result of loyalty to the state and the kings and queens being forced to cough up their wealth to subsidize the poor.

“So, in the end, they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us: ‘Enslave us, but feed us!’ And they will finally understand that freedom and the assurance of daily bread for everyone are two incompatible notions that could never coexist!”

Instead of food stamps and welfare checks given year after year to the same individuals, I would like to see the poor and needy taught to find a need in society they can fill in order to put food on their own tables.

Those who refuse to work should not eat the bread and wear the clothes of the laborer. Those who cannot work due to disability should preferably be cared for by family and friends.

Instead of people clamoring for “universal health care”, I would like to see more doctors, nurses, and healers of all persuasions donate their skills in the care of the sick who can’t afford care.

What about people who fall in between the cracks? Don’t we need a government program in place to take care of all of them?? What about Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security – don’t we need these and other programs?

I honestly don’t know about that. All I do know is that continuing our march deeper into the heart of Socialism will only lead to a weaker populace – weaker because of a dependence on government. Weaker because the most productive elements of society lose their incentive and their ability for productivity. Weaker because faith in God becomes less important as faith in a system of government, an entity that completely lacks the power to bring salvation and our fondest dreams, begins to take precedence.

Faith in any system other than the system of God is sure to ultimately bring disappointment to those who possess it. Freedom and personal accountability for how we use our freedom is risky, but there truly is no other way to salvation other than their proper use.

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I believe Socialism to be the great counterfeit for God's higher law of choosing to consecrate our means and possessions to the poor.

Socialism diminishes the incentive for excellence, is enabling to those it purports to serve, and causes people to trust in government more than they trust in God.

Look at Europe -- faith in God that was such a part of European society in past times has been replaced with widespread secularism! The great cultures of Europe are dying out due to negative population growth. Some have postulated that there is a connection between Socialism and Europe's low birth rate. I don't know about that. But I do know that in the past as well as today, Socialism has led to Communism (indeed, Karl Marx himself saw Socialism as merely a transitional philosophy that naturally would lead to Communism). If you aren't aware of the atrocities that Communist governments have enacted upon their own people, read here.

But some of you may be thinking -- we gave the Christians their chance to feed the hungry. They had a couple thousand years to do away with hunger, and they didn't do it!

You are completely correct. As a whole (with some notable exceptions, however), we have not done our job sufficiently! While there are some who admirably devote a great deal of effort and financial means to care for the poor, there are many more of us who sit back, pay our taxes, pay some tithing and offerings here and there, but are so wrapped up in our own lives that we do little to heed Jesus Christ's admonition to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and visit the sick.

Fellow Christians and all other good people of the earth, let's take action TODAY. Let's take action now to help someone in need, even if we ourselves are struggling to make ends meet. Let's do so much good that those who promote government programs to care for the poor will be shocked and inspired!

What can you do now? I urge you to sit down and prayerfully consider where you can give of your time and means to bless those in need.

If you can't come up with anything that feels significant, check out this wonderful video made by some friends of mine who are mobilizing a lot of people to each do a little bit!

The degree to which taking care of the poor and the needy is instituted and administered by government is the degree to which freedom is abdicated.

When individuals, families, and privately-run organizations take it upon themselves to care for the poor, and when this care is given in the name of Jesus Christ, it leads both the giver and receiver back to heaven!

If you are Christian and have read this article, you have been called to action. Choose now to answer the call!

Quotes in italics are taken from the monumental novel The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Is President Obama Socialist, and Is That a Bad Thing?

2010-02-06T16:35:00.010-07:00

Yesterday I was faced with a choice -- to sleep in and enjoy another hour or two of blissful slumber, cozying up in my flannel sheets and favorite down pillow, or to get up early and clean my apartment in preparation for a busy day.

One choice would give me instant gratification -- more sleep, even as the rest of the world is busy driving to work, grabbing a cup of coffee anywhere possible so as to shake off their fatigue and participate in the daily grind.

The other choice would give me the satisfaction that I had conquered the flesh, if only for a morning, and I would have a sparkling clean apartment to show for it!

We live in a world where each of us is constantly making similar choices -- choices between what we want now and what we ultimately want, between the pain of regret or the pain of discipline.

Should I go for a run today, or stay in and watch T.V.? Shall I have a shake with that burger and fries, or would I be better off going home and making an organic smoothie?

Day to day, moment to moment, the truth is -- we cannot have it all! If I have a low metabolism, I can't consistently choose that chocolate shake and expect to enjoy my optimal weight. I can't both sleep in and have the clean apartment on any given morning, unless I find another solution such as cleaning my apartment the night before!

Similarly, governments and societies grapple with the fundamental battle of freedom vs. rights. Just as it is impossible for any individual to enjoy boundless success in any area of their life while concurrently practicing a limitless lack of restraint and discipline, the more that a government emphasizes rights for its populace, the more the peoples' freedom is curtailed.

In other words, there is a limit to the rights that can be guaranteed to individuals if they wish to enjoy wide-ranging freedom.

On the other hand, it may be wise to limit some freedoms in the name of guaranteed rights in order for any given society to be successful. For instance, I may decide that I want to exercise my freedom of choice to murder someone.

Thankfully, the Founding Fathers of the United States crafted a document -- the Constitution -- that limits certain freedoms to allow a set of rights to American citizens. The accused murderer, though provided with the right to an attorney and a trial by jury, will suffer for his crime if found guilty. He does not have the right to infringe on the life of another and get off scott-free.

American society was built on the ideals of providing all citizens with protection of a few, but precious inaliable rights and at the same time, providing an environment of freedom in which individuals could choose for themselves how to live their lives. Some would likely choose to make great sacrifices to be successful in business. Others might choose to push their physical limits to become an elite athlete. Some may choose to live a life of abject laziness, financial irresponsibility, or moral debauchery. And as statistics go, the majority would likely fall somewhere in between these two extremes.

But whatever an individual's successes or failures, in such a society as our nation was intended to be, more so than in any other type of societal framework that I am aware of, individuals are held accountable for the choices they make by the types of results they get in return. The natural law of "you reap what you sow" reigns superior.

I have recently come across a number of articles discussing President Obama -- is he a Socialist? Is he a Communist? And does it even matter??

There is no one definition for Socialism, but it is safe to say that Socialism favors rights more than Libertarianism, Conservatism, and even Liberalism does. Socialism leans toward the guarantee of rights such as the following -- the right to have food to eat, the right to having a job, the right to affordable health care, the right to being provided for when you are retired, the right to have a roof over your head . . .

In the pursuit of providing rights to the people in its care, however, Socialism by its very nature must rob freedom. Socialism says -- "I will guarantee you many or most of the things you need to live your life and be happy." Understandably, this sounds like a great idea to many! But what Socialism fails to be clear about is the downside -- "I have to create laws, regulations, and taxes that will limit your freedom in some ways in order to deliver what is promised."

Whether you like the idea of the government caring and providing for the people, or are disgusted by its implications, there is no getting around the fact that President Obama is clearly one of the most Socialist-leaning presidents this nation has ever seen.

Those who favor the government caring for the masses should view President Obama being labeled a Socialist as a compliment!

I should also mention that Obama would find good company in the presence of FDR, JFK, and virtually every modern U.S. President. Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, welfare, food stamps, and countless other government programs are clearly more of a Socialist persuasion (even such things as public education and our modern tax system are Socialist-leaning).

Whether you like the idea of every man, woman, and child guaranteed all things for a reasonably comfortable existence, or you prefer that natural law determine who has the comforts of life; whether you are the type to get up early to clean your house or you are happier slurping on your chocolate shake, just remember that everything has a cost.

What does that have to do with my previous post about Vanity Fair's incessant publishing of pictures featuring skinny chics? The implication that Vanity Fair should be compelled to publish photos that don't cater to its demographic just to make other people feel good about themselves, makes me raise my eyebrows about as much as guaranteeing every human being a right to an MRI.

Stay tuned for my next article -- Why I Believe Socialism and Christianity Are Wholly Incompatible . . .

Prologue: Is President Obama Socialist, and Is That a Bad Thing?

2010-02-03T02:40:00.001-07:00

Yesterday evening I was browsing the news on my Yahoo home page when I came across an article condemning Vanity Fair magazine for their too-frequent featuring of young, skinny white chicks on their cover.

The article suggested that in the name of fairness, Vanity Fair might instead choose to feature more diverse individuals – those of different races, body types, and ages.

Don’t get me wrong – I am all for diversity! Living in Utah, which seems to me sometimes to be overrun by skinny blondes, I miss being around my brothers and sisters of soul. Particularly at events where dancing is involved. No – what I just implicated was not politically correct, but it’s true – trust me!! Last Halloween I was at a large, awkward function involving about 500 white singles in their 30’s and 40’s, with about 2 black people in attendance. When Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” was played, it was not pretty!

But should one person’s (or group’s) desire to see something portrayed a certain way impact the marketing strategy of a business entity? What if Vanity Fair’s constituency is young, skinny white chicks and people who like them, as I suspect it is? Don’t they have the right to market their magazine to that group unimpeded?

What if the trashy magazines were required to feature models from the Dove “Beauty Campaign” on their cover just so most of us regular-looking women didn’t feel left out?

I hate porn magazines almost with a passion, and I hate how modern media has contributed to the poor self-esteem of millions of girls and women the world over through the constant parading of air-brushed and digitally-tweaked images of impossibly beautiful females.

But in spite of the damage perpetrated by Playboy, Seventeen Magazine, or even Vanity Fair, I will support their right to portray whatever they want.

Yesterday, I came across another article on my Yahoo home page that addressed the question of whether or not President Obama is Socialist, and whether or not that was a good thing.

What does the stink about Vanity Fair have to do with Obama and Socialism? Stay tuned until my next post . . .

H1N1 swine flu hoax falls apart at the seams

2010-01-19T23:57:00.000-07:00

(Published Wednesday, January 20, 2010, by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, editor of NaturalNews)

The great swine flu hoax of 2009 is now falling apart at the seams as one country after another unloads hundreds of millions of doses of unused swine flu vaccines. No informed person wants the injection anymore, and the entire fear-based campaign to promote the vaccines has now been exposed as outright quackery and propaganda.

Even doctors are now calling the pandemic a complete hoax. As reported on FoxNews, Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg, a leading health authority in Europe, says that drug companies "organized a 'campaign of panic' to put pressure on the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare a pandemic. He believes it is 'one of the greatest medicine scandals of the century,' and he has called for an inquiry." (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933...)

H1N1 swine flu was never dangerous, and it never should have been escalated to a level-six pandemic in the first place. It was all a big marketing scam whose purpose was to simply sell vaccines. (And the CDC and WHO were in on it...)

And it worked! Big Pharma made out with billions of dollars in profits for a useless vaccine that's now being dumped by the truck load. These vaccines were, of course, paid for with taxpayer dollars, making the Great Swine Flu Hoax of 2009 nothing more than an elaborate financial scam whose goal was to transfer wealth from the People to the shareholders of Big Pharma.

In just the fourth quarter of 2009, GlaxoSmithKline shipped $1.4 billion worth of vaccines. (http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS...)

That's $1.4 billion worth of taxpayer dollars, by the way. Dollars that could have been spent on nutrition or real health education. $1.4 billion worth of free vitamin D supplements would have done far more to protect public health than vaccines could ever hope to accomplish.

A bailout for Big Pharma

Wall Street hucksters have nothing on Big Pharma, the CDC and the WHO, all of which conspired to mislead the public and generate irrational fear in order to make money selling people vaccine shots they never needed in the first place.

The drug companies raked in billions of dollars in revenues while providing a product that offered absolutely no net reduction in mortality. In fact, as the long-term side effects of the vaccines remain unknown, it could turn out that the vaccines actually result in a net increase in mortality.

Meanwhile, countless people were harmed by the swine flu vaccine frenzy (it's "countless" because nobody's counting). In addition to those who were nearly paralyzed after receiving the vaccine shots, grade school students in Massachusetts who lined up to receive swine flu vaccine shots were instead injected with insulin. (Insulin injections can put you into a coma.) (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...)

The school sent a letter home to students blaming the mishap on the school nurse. But if they weren't injecting these kids with a useless vaccine for a non-pandemic, none of this would have happened in the first place.

Total swine flu deaths for 2009 were far lower than the number of deaths from regular seasonal flu. And yet it turns out that thousands of Americans who died from the swine flu had been previously injected with the vaccines (http://www.naturalnews.com/027956_H...). In fact, according to calculations derived from official CDC estimates, thousands of vaccinated Americans died from swine flu anyway. The vaccines, it seems, don't really work after all. You're just as safe doing nothing.

Actually, getting the vaccine may harm your health. Outspoken Dr. Wodarg even says that the full extent of the damage from the insufficiently-tested vaccines may not be known for years. "The vaccine developed by Novartis was produced in a bioreactor from cancerous cells, a technique that had never been used until now," he says.

Just what we need, huh? Cancer cells being injected into the population as part of a vaccine campaign.

Cancelling vaccine orders

The Swine Flu hoax has fizzled out, and countries like Greece, France and the UK have cancelled orders for vaccines that they now realize won't be needed (http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS...) (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8...). But even the fizzling of this hoax doesn't mean it was a failure from the point of view of Big Pharma.

The swine flu hoax was a huge success not only for drug company profits, but also for certain influential individuals including Dr Julie Gerberding, former head of the CDC who has now accepted a high-paying job
as the president of Merck's global vaccine operations. (http://www.naturalnews.com/027789_D...)

One minute you're running the CDC, warning the country about a pandemic while urging everybody to get vaccinated, and the next minute you're running the for-profit vaccine division of the world's largest drug company. Amazing how that works, huh?

We called it right

I called much of this months ago in my popular hip-hop song, "Don't Inject Me" which you can listen to here:
http://www.naturalnews.com/Dont_Inj...

Or watch on YouTube here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiXm...

As I stated in the song lyrics, which were written in early August, 2009:

The truth is outrageous
Don't you know the drug companies made this flu
Don't you know the swine flu is made by man
Pharmaceutical scam
It's all part of the Big Brother population plan
They don't want you to see the remedies
you can stop influenza with vitamin D for free
Herbal medicine is all that you need
But they can't charge a fifty dollar fee
Unless
They inject you
The big drug companies are makin' a killing
Collectin' the billions and gettin' away like a James Bond villain
Cuz' they're willin' to do almost anything
Just to make money with the flu vaccine

Many clueless critics thought this song was some sort of outrageous conspiracy rant at the time. Turns out it was a spot-on prediction of the truth behind The Great Swine Flu hoax of 2009.

Sources for this story include:
Fox News
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933...

Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...

Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS...
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS...

Swine Flu Vaccine -- WHO do you Believe? Part 4

2010-01-13T17:00:00.001-07:00

Modern medicine has been credited with saving many a life over the past couple hundred years, with the development of medications, diagnostics, and surgical procedures making life possible for innumerable individuals who simply would have great difficulties surviving in earlier eras.

Yet with many blessings there often comes a curse.

He who wields the scalpel and the prescription pad is capable of doing as much damage as he is good. Men (and women) are fallible creatures, and the same goes for our human friends in the medical field.

Deaths due to medical negligence occur frequently throughout the world, and the United States is certainly no exception. And even in modern medicine's relatively short history, we have already seen how a few individuals in power can use the technology of modern society and medicine to cause harm to unsuspecting innocents, sometimes even intentionally.

With all the hoopla surrounding the swine flu and its vaccine, I wanted to take a look at the controversy of its preported safety as well as the trustworthiness of those who assure us it is "safe and secure." (1)

Do the benefits of the swine flu vaccine outweigh the risks for you personally? Should you trust the WHO and CDC when they assure us that this vaccine is totally safe? Is it really ever a good idea to blindly trust another person (however good their intentions and however impressive their credentials) when it comes to your body? After all, you only get one body in this life, and the man who completely abdicates the responsibility to care for his own body to another is a fool!

In Part 1 of this series, I gave 10 reasons I would not be getting the swine flu vaccine. In Part 2, I outlined 4 criteria that, if met, would justify our government's reaction to the swine flu and its vaccine and expound on the first. Criteria #1 -- we would need to see massive amounts of suffering and death from the swine flu (more than the seasonal flu, more than most other communicable illnesses). In Part 3, I expound on Criteria #2 -- there must be a vaccine available that will prevent illness and death in those who would otherwise suffer tremendously and/or die.

So far, we are 0 for 2.

Before I outline some of the potential risks associated with the swine flu vaccine, I just want to address my comments to anyone reading this who has never considered the possibility that their doctor might not be right about everything.

Some of the most common comments I hear any time I challenge the status quo in medicine and health are these -- "But my doctor is a good person and would never tell me to do something that would harm me." "If such-and-such wasn't good for us, then why do doctors everywhere recommend it? I can't believe that they are all in a conspiracy together to hurt us."

I have to agree -- most doctors are good people, and it is preposterous to imagine that each day when the patients are gone, doctors all over the nation get together on the internet late at night to think up ways to damage peoples' health.

But the thing is, it's not your doctor who develops policy for the country or the world. Your family doctor is also part of a system -- one that they have been trained to dutifully follow.

History proves time and time again that it only takes one or two nut jobs (or incompetents) in power to cause tremendous harm -- whether the nut job is a leader of a nation, in charge of developing policy for the military, or conducting a clinical trial on a drug or vaccine. Most of the rest of us are underlings, either too busy or distracted to take the time to research things. Or even if we take that time and discover something amiss, we may have limited power in enacting any sort of change to the status quo.

Here are just a few disturbing examples of government or medical policies in recent years that have hurt countless people --

The Tuskegee "bad blood" syphilis experiment of 1932-1972, in which almost 400 poor sharecropping African-American males in Alabama with syphilis were purposely denied proper medical treatment for the illness in order to see what would happen if the disease progressed unchecked. Unfortunately, the main outcome was misery and death for these unsuspecting men, and infection of their partners and children was common. (2)

During WWII, some U.S. Air Force pilots had the unlucky job of flying into mushroom clouds of detonated atom bombs to test radiation levels in the air. Though "no-one keeled over" immediately and everything seemed fine at the time, radiation poisoning and a lifetime of health problems resulted for many of these young men. (3)

Agent orange in Vietnam. Need I say more?

An astounding 1 in 4 veterans of the first Gulf War in the 90's developed a serious, debilitating mystery autoimmune illness called Gulf War Syndrome. Veterans had been given numerous vaccines, and researchers found that anthrax vaccine with the chemical adjuvant squalene, which has been shown to cause autoimmune symptoms in lab animals, was the likely culprit -- 100% of soldiers with Gulf War Syndrome who had received the anthrax vaccine from a particular lot of the vaccine had antibodies to squalene. (4) (5)

Tetanus shots contaminated with hGC, the pregnancy hormone, were given to millions of women and girls in the Philippines, Mexico, Nicaragua, Tanzania, and Nigeria throughout the 90's. The problem is that this causes the body to launch an immune response against the hormone, and spontaneous abortion is the result. Oops -- sorry, guys! Hope you weren't planning on ever having kids! (6)

Millions of polio vaccine doses were recently given out in Nigeria, paralyzing 124 children. Interestingly enough, I began researching for this article over a month and a half ago. The MSNBC link to this news article has since been removed. (7)

Alright -- so here are some of the clear, potential risks from the H1N1 vaccine based on its past track record as well as the ingredient lists of:

thimerosal (in multi-dose units),
squalene (in some of the European variants),
formaldehyde (a known carcinogen),
MSG (a neurotoxin),
antibiotics,
ethylene glycol (anti-freeze), and
other mystery substances including fragments of random viruses, cancer cells, and cells from various animals . . . (8)

POTENTIAL SERIOUS RISKS --

Guillain-Barre syndrome --
seizures,
other neurological problems,
miscarriages,
death
an unknown number of possible long-term ill effects difficult to trace back to vaccines . . .

An organization called "Judicial Watch" found 1,112 reported adverse reactions to the H1N1 vaccine between October 1 - November 4, 2009, including 38 serious reactions, 12 life-threatening reactions, and 6 deaths. Here are some of the more serious cases (all 100% documented) --

A 77-year-old male contracted severe back and chest pain within 30 hours of receiving the H1N1 vaccine and died of an aneurysm that very day.
A 9-year-old female with Down’s Syndrome went into cardiac arrest 6 days after receiving the H1N1 vaccine and was found dead in her home.
A 24-year-old female with cerebral palsy and epilepsy received the vaccine and went into cardiac arrest the next day due to a flu-like illness and died.
An overweight 46-year-old female took the H1N1 vaccine and called her doctor the next day complaining of feeling light-headed. She was dead the next day.
A 55-year-old male turned blue and went into respiratory distress with an elevated heart rate immediately upon receiving the H1N1 vaccine. He was taken to the hospital by ambulance. This man survived. (9)

It looks like the swine flu vaccine wasn't so "safe and secure" for these individuals.

Further, a previously healthy and athletic 14-year-old boy, Jordan McFarland, was hospitalized the day after receiving the H1N1 and seasonal flu vaccines, and now he suffers from excruciating pain and paralysis due to Guillain-Barre syndrome that developed immediately after his vaccination. (10)

(Hundreds of individuals developed this rare and debilitating neurological in 1976 after receiving the swine flu vaccination.)

Scores of women have come forward to report that they miscarried their baby within a few days of receiving the H1N1 vaccine. (11)

The moral of the the story is this -- doing your own research (even if you just take 10 minutes to browse the topic online) is essential to making sure you are aware of the risks and benefits of any particular treatment or vaccine, as well as any safer alternatives. Don't count exclusively on your doctor, public officials, and the mainstream media to inform you of all possible risks and to make a proper decision about what is best for you and your family.

Interestingly enough, did you know that the Director general of the WHO, Dr. Margaret Chan "didn't get around" to getting the H1N1 vaccine, which she unabashedly promoted worldwide as the best and safest way to protect oneself from the pandemic, until December 30, 2009 after she was openly accused of hypocrisy? (12)

Interesting food for thought . . .

(1) http://apnews.myway.com/article/20091007/D9B67SCG0.html
(2) http://www.infoplease.com/spot/bhmtuskegee1.html
(3) http://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/Into-the-Mushroom-Cloud.html?c=y&page=1

(4) http://anthraxvaccine.blogspot.com/2007_07_01_archive.html#6806076506901379532
(5) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12127050

(6) http://www.rense.com/general79/vaxcc.htm
(7) http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32418446/ns/health-infectious_diseases

(8) http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/11/05/Swine-Flu-Vaccine-Ingredients.aspx
(9) http://www.judicialwatch.org/foiablog/2009/nov/over-1000-adverse-reactions-h1n1-vaccine-october
(10) http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/11/20/earlyshow/health/main5723397.shtml

(11) http://preventdisease.com/news/09/110709_H1N1_vaccine_miscarriage_reports.shtml
(12) http://www.fleshandstone.net/healthandsciencenews/1735.html

Swine Flu Vaccine -- WHO do you Believe? Part 3

2009-11-28T20:35:00.002-07:00

Most of us are sick of hearing about it, but it's time for me to resume beating the dead horse of discussing the U.S. government's handling of the swine flu "pandemic" and the promotion of the swine flu vaccine as the only way to prevent the deaths of thousands and the misery of tiny babies, helpless children, adolescents, and young adults the nation wide.

To date (November 28, 2009), Wikipedia reports that there are 2,353 swine flu deaths confirmed in the U.S. (1), still far below the average yearly number of deaths attributed to the seasonal flu -- 36,000. The swine flu national emergency declared by President Obama in October, however, is still in full force.

In Part 1 of this series, I outlined ten reasons I would not personally partake of the swine flu vaccine. In Part 2, I gave four criteria that would have to be met in order to justify our government's handling of the swine flu and swine flu vaccine. I focused on the first point -- namely that we would need to see suffering and death on a massive scale -- superceding the misery caused by seasonal flu and any number of other diseases and conditions that afflict mankind.

Even looking at the swine flu stats on the high end, it is obvious that this point has (thankfully) not been met.
Whether we "got lucky" as a people and dodged a bullet, or CDC and WHO officials are guilty of hyping the up the risks of a supposed deadly global pandemic, over 4 1/2 times more people in the United States die by falling each year (14,900 to be more precise) than have died from the swine flu in 2009. Where's the national "falling down" emergency?

In this portion of the ongoing discussion on the swine flu, I will discuss point 2.

2) Is there a vaccine available that will prevent illness and death in people who would otherwise suffer tremendously or die?

This is an interesting question to answer. The swine flu vaccine was rushed through development and production this spring and summer, with minimal testing. Swine flu vaccine testing took place to determine that 1) people wouldn't immediately keel over after receiving the shot, 2) people wouldn't keel over after receiving both the swine flu and seasonal flu vaccines together, and 3) people actually launched an immune response to the vaccine (3).

The studies carried out by the National Institutes of Health discovered the following:

"Healthy adults who received a single 15-microgram dose of 2009 H1N1 vaccine had robust immune responses 8 to 10 days following the first dose of vaccine.

Healthy children older than 9 years had a robust immune response following a single 15-microgram dose of 2009 H1N1 vaccine. Children younger than 9 are likely to need two doses of vaccine to be protected.

In healthy adults, co-administration of the seasonal and 2009 H1N1 flu vaccines did not impair the immune response to either one.

Early results from a trial in healthy pregnant women showed that one dose of 2009 H1N1 vaccine elicits a strong immune response." (emphasis added) (3)

On first glance, it may appear that the testing shows that the swine flu vaccine would save lives and days missed from school and work. But the next question is this -- does the production of a robust or strong immune response to a vaccine in healthy individuals mean that the vaccine will be effective for those who would actually be at risk of suffering complications or death from the swine flu? Do healthy people even need the vaccine to begin with, or is it the ones with underlying health problems who are most at risk of experiencing extreme symptoms and/or dying from something like the swine flu?

This is an important question to answer, as early data on swine flu hospitalizations and deaths showed that the majority of casualties were individuals with underlying health conditions, such as obesity, asthma, heart disease, and immune dysfunction. In fact, data from late summer showed that 75% of those who died from the swine flu in Canada had some pre-existing condition (4).

The National Institutes of Health is running trials on the swine flu vaccine with individuals with asthma and HIV. These trials are ongoing, and no preliminary results are posted on their website. The results of these trials will be interesting to see when they become available.

We have very minimal data to look at to determine the real effectiveness of the swine flu vaccine. Perhaps we might take a look at the seasonal flu vaccine through the years to get an idea of how effective the swine flu vaccine may or may not be.

This is where things start to get a bit tricky. If you are among the millions of Americans who have believed the official line that "the single best way to protect against the flu is to get vaccinated every year," (5) then I invite you to open your mind to consider the possibility that the actual science on the flu vaccine may not support such a blanket statement.

The public is accustomed to so-called conspiracy theorists casting doubt on the effectiveness of flu vaccines, and even accusing vaccine makers and government officials of harming the masses by promoting vaccines that contain dangerous ingredients. It is understandable that the average citizen wouldn't jump on the anti-vaccine bandwagon when their trusted family doctor, national and international health bodies, and the mainstream news media tout their effectiveness, and aren't subtle in their urgings to go ahead -- get the flu jab and be a "flu fighter"!

But how did the majority of Americans feel about a military invasion of Iraq after 9/11/2001? Most of the populace (myself included) backed our government's actions at the time, only to realize later that the connection between Al Qaeda terrorists accused of downing the twin towers and Saddam Houssein's admittedly brutal regime were practically non-existent. A crisis had been used to sell the American population on taking an extraordinarily costly action that, in fact, would do little to nothing in preventing future terrorist threats from Al Qaeda.

Similarly, it appears that we as a population have been had, once again, concerning the flu vaccine. Recently, renowned vaccine researchers Lisa Jackson, MD and Tom Jefferson, MD have found that previous research on the flu vaccine used blatantly flawed methodology in finding any evidence that the flu shot reduces mortality due to the flu.

Past flu vaccine research has boasted that the elderly who get the flu shot in the fall are 50% less likely to die that winter. But flu only accounts for 10% of winter deaths of the elderly. Tom Jefferson, MD remarked: “For a vaccine to reduce mortality by 50 percent and up to 90 percent in some studies means it has to prevent deaths not just from influenza, but also from falls, fires, heart disease, strokes, and car accidents. That’s not a vaccine, that’s a miracle.”

Further, the data shows that between half to over 2/3 of flu-like illnesses each year are NOT due to influenza, but to any number of other types of viruses. A flu vaccine would do nothing to mitigate illness and death from 2/3 of all flu-like infections!!

There is so much more in this article entitled "Does the Vaccine Matter? The History of Flu Vaccination", that I recommend that all individuals who want to gain a better understanding of flu vaccines read it themselves.

But here are a few more note-worthy highlights:

- Past flu studies have determined that the flu vaccine reduces mortality by cohort studies -- comparing death rates of those who got the flu shot vs. those who didn't. Again, at first glance this may seem an appropriate way to determine the effectiveness of the vaccine. But Jackson and Jefferson show quite convincingly that this difference in mortality may be the result of the "healthy-user effect". In other words, those individuals who get the flu shot are also more likely to take vitamin C, get their exercise, and eat their veggies.

- The very individuals who are most at risk at dying of the flu (the very young, the very old, and the sickly) have a much weaker immune response to the flu vaccine, that is, the vaccine doesn't work as well for them. Those who are healthy and therefore may not be at a high risk of dying of the flu are the ones for whom the vaccine produces a strong immune response. So the ones who need an effective flu vaccine the most aren't getting nearly the protection from the flu as the ones who need it the least!

- A double-blind placebo study on the flu vaccine would provide more clues as to whether or not the flu vaccine actually reduces the rates of illness and death due to the flu. Strangely, CDC and other health officials refuse to subject the flu vaccine to such scrutiny, claiming instead that a double-blind placebo study would be "immoral". This is incomprehensible to me -- sign me up to be part of the placebo group!!!

- Flu vaccines are made based on "best guesses" of which flu strains will circulate the following year. If the flu vaccine really prevented deaths, one would expect spikes in flu deaths in years when those guesses were wrong, such as in 1968 and 1997. Hard data shows that this is not the case -- no more people died of the flu in those years when the flu vaccine was a mis-match to the strains that ended up in wide circulation.

Whether you are open to considering the possibility that our government's response to the swine flu is out of line with reality or not, stay tuned for the final two installments of "Swine Flu Vaccine -- WHO do you Believe?"

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic_in_the_United_States
(2) http://www.soyouwanna.com/site/toptens/accidents/accidentsfull.html
(3) http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/news/QA/vteuH1N1qa.htm
(4) http://markcrispinmiller.com/2009/08/no-underlying-medical-condition-in-40-of-swine-flu-hospitalizations/

(5) http://www.cdc.gov/Flu/protect/keyfacts.htm

(6) http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200911/brownlee-h1n1

Swine Flu Vaccine – WHO do you Believe, Part 2

2009-11-09T17:43:00.009-07:00

Thousands dead, millions sick, school cancelled for children nationwide – a national emergency ensues as swine flu holds the U.S. hostage in its death grip.

Whether this scenario is actual or an overblown fantasy perpetuated by a convenient marriage between the CDC, the pharmaceutical companies, and the media, no-one can deny that the swine flu and its hastily-conjured vaccine have provided ample material for debate amongst reporters, scientists, and inquisitive citizens.

Earlier, I shared ten reasons I would not be lining up for the swine flu jab. In my opinion, there are four questions that need to all be answered in the affirmative in order to justify the response we’ve seen to the swine flu from our government and governmental agencies.

Are there significant levels of suffering and death due to the swine flu?
Is there a vaccine available that will prevent illness and death in people who would otherwise suffer tremendously or die?
Does this vaccine come with little risk of significant side effects?
Are there no other viable options to prevent suffering and death from the swine flu?

I will address the first question in this article, and others in subsequent posts:

1) Are there significant levels of suffering and death due to the swine flu?

Obviously, this question raises two more basic questions – First, how many people have actually sickened and died due to the swine flu; and second, how many people would need to be sick and die before it could be considered significant?

Americans were told that 1,000 Americans had died of the swine flu as of late October (1). But that very day The Christian Science Monitor revealed that this statistic was inflated – less than half of these deaths were confirmed to be correlated with the swine flu – just 411 (2).

On the other hand, as of this date (November 9), Wikipedia reports 1,702 swine flu deaths in America (3).

Verifying any of these statistics has proven time-consuming and nearly impossible, so I gave up.

A recent CBS investigative report, however, revealed that in some states (Georgia and Alaska, for instance), the CDC found that only 1-2% of flu-like illness could actually be attributed to the swine flu. In other states the rate was higher, but still a minority of flu-like illness was verified to be caused by H1N1 (4).

The CDC discontinued testing in July, and ignoring the data showing that H1N1 was not as prevalent as thought, continued feeding the H1N1 pandemic scare and prepared for a massive vaccination campaign while the mainstream U.S. media continuously reports on the deaths supposedly due to H1N1 without specifying that no-one really knows how many of those who died were actually confirmed to have swine flu because they haven’t been tested.

State reports as of July 2009 reveal enormous over-diagnosis of H1N1 – as many as 83-99% of suspected H1N1 cases were found to either be the seasonal flu, or altogether not even influenza. Could there have been a lot of false negatives in this testing? It’s possible, but it seems dishonest to me that this data has been hidden from the populace.

To illustrate how senseless this is, can you imagine if every case of fatigue with fever, joint pain, and swollen glands (all symptoms of HIV infection) were assumed to be HIV without any testing, and reported to the public as new HIV cases?!?

If the CDC claims the higher ground with their Western scientific methods, then ought they not actually USE those methods?

Regardless, let's consider that there have been 411-1,702 deaths due to the swine flu in the U.S. Is this grounds for treating the disease as a pandemic? According to the CDC, “more than 200,000 people are hospitalized from seasonal flu-related complications, and; about 36,000 people die from seasonal flu-related causes” each year (5).

Hmm – 36,000 deaths annually due to the seasonal flu (estimated) vs. 411-1,702 deaths due to swine flu in the U.S. Even supposing that the 36,000 seasonal flu deaths stat is inflated (as I am inclined to believe), and that 1,702 people really have died of the swine flu, H1N1 is clearly no match for the seasonal flu in terms of deadliness!

For comparison's sake, let's look at the top 15 causes of death in America, and the number of people who die each year because of them (6):

Heart disease: 631,636
Cancer: 559,888
Stroke (cerebrovascular diseases): 137,119
Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 124,583
Accidents (unintentional injuries): 121,599
Diabetes: 72,449
Alzheimer's disease: 72,432
Influenza and Pneumonia: 56,326
Nephritis, nephrotic syndrome, and nephrosis: 45,344
Septicemia: 34,234

Whether 411 or 1,702 people have died from the swine flu so far this year in our nation, it doesn't make a hill of beans of a difference for those who died or lost loved ones. But so far, I am completely unconvinced that the relatively low mortality rate of the swine flu justifies a massive vaccination campaign with an untested and fast-tracked vaccine, and the declaration of a national emergency.

More to come . . .

(1) http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory?id=8905230

(2) http://features.csmonitor.com/politics/2009/10/24/america-in-the-midst-of-two-major-national-emergencies/

(3) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_flu_pandemic_by_country

(4) http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=5405872n&tag=api

(5) http://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/qa/disease.htm

(6) http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/FASTATS/lcod.htm H

An Economy in Need of Holistic Medicine

2009-10-29T23:46:00.002-06:00

New York Times Article, October 23, 2009, By Anand Giridharadas

CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS — The American economy is having what doctors call an acute episode.

Employment won’t throb. The circulation of capital remains weak. Industry is breathing, but barely. And if we can agree on anything one year into this mess, it is that there is little we can do when the patient arrives already this bad.

That is why the talk now is so often of prevention. Prevent the next crisis through health insurance and a green-energy sector, the American president says. Prevent it by cutting spending and nurturing personal responsibility, American conservatives retort.

But the truth is that politicians, and not just in the United States, are rarely willing to invest in a problem that hasn’t occurred. Consensus and action are easier to come by after a 9/11 or a Lehman Brothers than before. Problems in the embryonic, soluble phase don’t interest us; and those that do interest us are often too big to solve.

Which is where acupuncture comes in.

Western medical practices have attracted similar criticisms in recent years, for an emphasis on intervening in disease rather than preventing it beforehand and promoting quotidian well-being. But in health, unlike politics, an alternative approach called wellness has emerged, focused on investing in health before it breaks down.

What can wellness tell us about our present economic malady? As it moves from fringe to mainstream — with wellness programs in the health care reform proposals now in Congress, wellness manifestos on the best-seller lists and a U.S. Army wellness program that asks soldiers to introspect and meditate — I asked experts about the approach’s core tenets and how they might be applied to the body politic.

Nip it in the bud. Wellness argues for cultivating health a little every day, not just restoring it during calamities. We increasingly accept that it is better to monitor a diabetic’s blood sugar with regular clinic visits than to amputate her limbs. We accept that businesses can avoid costly cancer treatments by encouraging workers to stop smoking. But in our political life, we prefer to wait until things reach the emergency room.

We barely regulate financial markets for years, thinking regulation oppressive, until we are compelled to nationalize private firms. We avoid expensive investments and controversial new methods in public education, then pay the price in lower social mobility and vast prison populations. We neglect building roads and bridges and Internet highways, fearing the cost, and then reap the much greater costs of whole regions falling off the economic grid.

“With a lot of social problems, we’re not sure how to prevent it, and therefore we don’t spend money on it, because we always have a lot of other priorities,” said David Cutler, a Harvard economist who has advised both the Clinton and Obama White Houses on health care.

Go to the roots. Western medicine tends to fight symptoms, whether suppressing coughs or flooding the brains of the depressed with serotonin. Wellness is interested in underlying causes. It is inclined to see an infertile woman, for example, as a stressed woman rather than a woman with defunct ovaries, and may suggest that she eat and work differently rather than take ovary-manipulating pills.

In public policy, a symptom bias rules. A housing crisis? Enact a tax credit! Bank failures? Bail them out!

There is nothing wrong with such steps — except for what they leave out, as most economists will tell you.

Even amid all this action, we have virtually ignored the complex weave of issues beneath the issues: meager savings, a debt addiction, a congenitally spendthrift political system, an almost pathological craving for stuff. And, with our topical cures, we should not be surprised to see new symptoms of the old maladies appearing: insurance again being packaged into derivatives, bonuses again soaring on Wall Street.

“We treat symptoms, and we do not look at the causes of the symptoms,” Deepak Chopra, the famed alternative-medicine and wellness guru, said when asked to extend the wellness metaphor to the economy. “We are totally at this moment looking at it in a reductionist manner. The reductionist manner is a bailout. And somehow that’s supposed to solve the problem, whereas the problem occurred because we were thinking reductively.”

Look within. Wellness sees the causes of and remedies for ailments as lying within us. Avoid infection by building immunity. Defeat disease by eating foods that help the body heal itself.

With the economy, we look everywhere but within. It’s the fault of greedy Wall Street bankers. It’s Washington’s fault. Bush’s fault. Obama’s fault. Greenspan’s fault. Somebody fix it!

But what about us? Why can’t we acknowledge that it was us who bought all those unaffordable houses, us who listened to that zero-gravity financial “advice,” us who bought and bought and never kept a rainy-day fund? And why, in solving the problem, do we expect the state to create substitute dynamism instead of renewing the culture of decentralized dynamism that made the U.S. economy so vital to begin with?

“Conventional medicine is very unbalanced in placing all its emphasis on external interventions rather than looking to advance that internal capacity to maintain healing,” said Andrew Weil, founder of the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine and the author of several books on wellness. Likewise with the economy, he said: “Instead of simply identifying external threats and developing weapons and strategies against them, we should instead identify and strengthen immunity and resistance.”

A politics of wellness would transcend party. It would emphasize the up-front investments that Democrats like in order to achieve the long-run fiscal solvency on which Republicans insist. It would fulfill the liberal belief in a positive role for government in maintaining well-being but would honor the conservative conviction that government’s chief role is to help the social organism heal itself. It would acknowledge, with the left, the complex lattice of cultural and institutional influences that govern a society’s well-being, while emphasizing, with the right, the limits of what any external healer can do.

Think wellness in these hard times. The most urgent problems, after all, may be the ones we haven’t had yet.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/24/world/americas/24iht-currents.html?_r=1

Producing a Healthy, Long-Lived Populace on a Budget – Who in the World is Getting the Job Done? Part 3

2009-10-28T11:46:00.008-06:00

In Part 1 of this article, I expressed the desire to take an objective view at the health care systems of different nations to see if I could find a good example of a country who was pulling off a healthy population, a high life expectancy, and a quality health care system without breaking the bank.

In Part 2, I discussed the shining example of Singapore in doing just that – Singapore has the 4^th highest life expectancy in the world (people live to age 82 on average), has the 6^th best health care system, and the government of Singapore spends only 3.7% of its GDP on health care! For the details on how they accomplish this, read here.

In this final section I wished to contrast Singapore, who literally is getting the job done, to that of another part of the world. In this part of the world, government leaders decided that instead of finding a way to focus on having healthy citizens while cutting unnecessary costs, they would instead focus on making sure the entire population had health insurance. Health insurance, they surmised, was the key to the population’s health, as well as the key to keeping down the health care costs for both the government and the citizenry.

What have been the results? Did this government achieve its objective of insuring the masses? And if so, has this brought the desired curb in health care costs? Are the previously uninsured better off now that they have this insurance? Is everyone enjoying the fruits of this initiative?

I am sad to say that this experiment took place in our very own state of Massachusetts, and so far, it doesn’t look good.

According to a March 2, 2009 article in the Boston Globe, healthcare reform in Massachusetts

has:

Failed to achieve universal coverage (200,000 are still without health insurance),
Failed to address the problem of health insurance being tied to ones’ employment,
Failed to make health insurance affordable for many citizens (including middle and low-income individuals and families),
Failed to shore in costs for the state (healthcare costs for the state of Massachusetts have doubled from $630 million in 2007 to an estimated $1.3 billion for 2009),
Failed to assure citizens’ access to healthcare.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2009/03/02/mass_healthcare_reform_is_failing_us/
A more recent Christian Science article from October 21, 2009 concludes that “a mandate on individuals to buy health insurance can work – just don’t expect it to reduce the cost of care.” http://features.csmonitor.com/politics/2009/10/21/what-lessons-massachusetts-holds-for-us-healthcare-reform/

There may be some residents of Massachusetts who are happy with the results of the healthcare reform that have been enacted there, but the problems remain paramount.

If Massachusetts is, at best, no better off for its healthcare reform that has doubled healthcare expenses for the state, then should we not take some heed as our entire nation appears ready to plunge onto a similar course?

Should our main focus as a nation be universal health insurance? Shouldn’t we find a way follow the example of Singapore and focus on:

Population wellness through disease prevention,
Enacting policies that put more healthcare decisions into the hands of individuals, and fewer into the hands of the government?

For a brilliant essay on healthcare reform by a Democrat who has come to some of the same conclusions that I have in my cursory research, check out -- http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200909/health-care .

In the meantime, I suggest each of us take actions to give us the best chances of having good health -- eating a balanced diet low in processed foods and high in minimally-processed plant-based foods, drinking plenty of clean water, getting adequate exercise and sleep, and using low-cost and oftentimes effective holistic means for taking care of problems when they first arise (such as herbs, essential oils, massage, acupuncture, reflexology, etc...), thus potentially using more expensive Western modalities more sparingly as a result.

To your health!

A Cautionary Tale -- Make SURE you Pay Your Taxes (unless you are Tim Geithner, Charles Rangel, or otherwise have connections) . . .

2009-10-18T18:05:00.005-06:00

In honor of last Thursday's tax deadline, I thought I would post a link to an interesting blog article I just came across depicting the harsh, Sovietesque consequences of tax evasion experienced by a couple in New Hampshire in 2007.

A thought-provoking juxtaposition is brought to the forefront in how Timothy Geithner, in the hearings for him to be instated as Secretary of Treasury earlier this year, received hardly a slap on the hand for his neglecting to pay Medicare and Social Security taxes for several years. Congressman Charles Rangel (D-NY), Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee (ironically, the very entitee that oversees the taxation of the American populace) neglected to pay taxes on $75,000 in rental income from properties he owns in the Caribbean. Was Rangel unaware that this income was taxable according to the IRS code?

Read more here.

I can't say I am an advocate of tax evasion, and the Brown's of New Hampshire surely could have anticipated severe government action against them (especially after the infamous attack on armed American citizens at Waco, TX in 1993) for their acts of non-compliance and out-right disobedience.

But why is it that we hear account after account of government officials, including cabinet members selected by President Obama, with "inconsistencies" in their histories of paying taxes, with no such harsh reprimands being levied? Why are raids, jailings, and seizure of property reserved for everyday Americans while those with connections are given the benefit of the doubt?

For some possible answers to these and more questions, I suggest you take some time to view the documentary America: Freedom to Fascism made by acclaimed filmmaker Aaron Russo.

Lastly, as I ponder the personal financial life of Congressman Rangel in all its fraudulent (and/or negligent) glory, I am not comforted in the least that he is the one of the very individuals overseeing the monetary aspects of the health care reform bill.

Are you?

Recover From CFS | Get Healthy | Live Well: What Is The XMRV Retroviral Study Really Going to Mean For People With CFS?

2009-10-16T10:45:00.000-06:00

In light of the recent discovery of the strong correlation between retrovirus XMRV and chronic fatigue syndrome, here is an interesting take that I tend to agree with:

Recover From CFS | Get Healthy | Live Well: What Is The XMRV Retroviral Study Really Going to Mean For People With CFS?

Chronic fatigue syndrome is a devastating illness that affects more than 1 million Americans to this day, and though I have never seen any statistics showing how many people have recovered, I have read that a complete recovery is rare. Check out my previous blog post on how I had a complete recovery from chronic fatigue syndrome four years ago. Though the exact things that worked for me may not be a complete answer for everyone, I believe the principles I outline here are applicable to many.

And although I support continued research on the link between XMRV and chronic fatigue syndrome, it is my hope that sufferers won't hold their breath waiting for an anti-retroviral drug to solve all their problems, but focus on receiving healing to their mind, body, and spirit with less expensive and less toxic means.

Happy healing! =)

Producing a Healthy, Long-Lived Populace on a Budget – Who in the World is Getting the Job Done? Part 2

2009-10-12T16:18:00.004-06:00

The debate on health care reform in Congress continues. Who’s right and who’s wrong? Are those who oppose some of the proposed reforms evil, selfish people who delight in seeing their fellow man suffer? Are those who staunchly support the proposed reforms living in a dream-world?

I am not qualified to give a definitive answer. But what I am qualified to do is poke around online and see who in the world is achieving the objective of health care reform explicitly laid out by President Obama – providing a way for all individuals to receive health care without fear that they are “one illness away from bankruptcy”, and reducing costs in the process.

So, who is doing the best job in the world achieving this goal?

The answer might surprise you.

In this relatively small island-nation, you can be treated to views of towering skyscrapers, mosques and temples of ancient Malay and Hindu civilizations, as well as innumerable Western-style shopping malls. Welcome to Singapore!

Singapore boasts the 6th best health care system in the world with an infant morality rate almost 1/3 of that of the U.S. (there are just 2.3 deaths per 1,000 live births in Singapore as opposed to 6.4 deaths per 1,000 live births in the U.S.). Its populace is the fourth longest-lived in the world, with an average life expectancy of 81.98 years.

And Singapore accomplishes this by spending only 3.7 percent of its GDP (only $381 per capita) on health, as opposed to America’s 15.4 percent expenditure!

What can account for Singapore being a shining example of a functional, frugal health care system? How does this system work?

In Singapore, individuals are required to set aside 6-8% of their income into what is essentially a health savings account (employers contribute to these accounts as well). This money earns interest, is tax-free, and can be withdrawn at any time to cover the health care expenses of ones’ self or family members. Unspent money accrues and rolls over from year to year. This program is called Medisave.

Citizens of Singapore may purchase additional coverage for catastrophic events with Medishield (or Medishield Plus which offers even more coverage), and their premium payments may come out of their Medisave accounts.

The government subsidizes the health care of those who cannot cover their expenses with either Medisave or Medishield through the Medifund program. For the elderly and disabled, government-subsidized ElderShield pays for health care expenses that the individual cannot cover himself.

http://www.moh.gov.sg/mohcorp/hcsystem.aspx

Here are some important points:

• Singapore’s vision as a state is “adding years of healthy life,” by focusing less on healing sickness, and in the words of the Singapore Health Ministry, more on “the more difficult but infinitely more rewarding task of preventing illness and preserving health and quality of life.”

• The people of Singapore willingly take responsibility for their own health by spending their own money to fund most of their health care costs.

• “The reason the system works so well is that it puts decisions in the hands of patients and doctors rather than of government bureaucrats and insurers. The state’s role is to provide a safety net for the few people unable to save enough to pay their way, to subsidize public hospitals, and to fund preventative health campaigns.”

• 75% of the populace of Singapore uses less-expensive holistic/complementary medicine at least once per year in preventing and treating illness. http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0965229904001189

• Complementary medicine is widely accepted by the medical community at large as an important contributor to the nation's health.

Phua Kai Hong, associate professor of health policy and management at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore gives the following reasons for Singapore's successful health care system:

• "the creation of incentives for responsible behavior and the efficient delivery of services;

• the discouragement of overconsumption through cost-sharing;

• the regulation of hospital beds, doctors, and the use of high-cost medical technology;

• the promotion of personal responsibility;

• targeted government subsidies;

• and the injection of competition through a mix of public- and private-sector providers.’”

http://www.american.com/archive/2008/may-june-magazine-contents/the-singapore-model

What can we in the United States of America learn from Singapore? Why don't we try to emulate some of the things that have worked in Singapore in our own health care reform?

Before I discuss this in a subsequent post, in my next post I will outline the health care system of a part of the world where a push to give health insurance to all is doing just that, but costs are continuing to skyrocket and hardships for middle class citizens in obtaining health care continue in full force.

Unfortunately, the latter is the system we are emulating, and it appears that almost no-one is paying attention!

The Swine Flu Vaccine -- WHO do you believe?

2009-10-06T13:37:00.010-06:00

The WHO (World Health Organization) is urging people to get their Swine Flu vaccine as soon as it becomes available in their area. Ignoring the fact that safety testing on this vaccine has been minimal at best, officials are calling this vaccine their "most important tool" against a pandemic. Pregnant women and small children are to be the first in line for the vaccine.

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSL626045720091006

So if the WHO is so sure that this vaccine is the answer, why would someone like me who has at least a reasonable level of intelligence and personal responsibility choose to decline?

Here are Ten Reasons I Won't Be Lining Up For the Swine Flu Vaccine --

10. While the Swine Flu appears to be more contagious than many other bugs running around out there, and certain populations may be at greater risk of catching it, it is no deadlier than the seasonal flu on the public at large. Actually, you have a 293% greater chance of dying in a car crash this fall/winter than you do of dying of the Swine Flu (1.2 million people worldwide die each year in car accidents. So far, 4,100 people worldwide have died of the Swine Flu).

9. Vaccine companies now have legal immunity against lawsuits should their vaccines be found to have caused injury, giving them little incentive for rigorous safety testing.

8. Vaccine companies have a HUGE profit incentive to rush vaccines to the market regardless of how much safety testing has been completed (and by the way, I've always wondered who in the world would volunteer to be a first-round guinea pig in these tests!!).

7. Look what happened with the Swine Flu vaccine debacle of 1976! Four thousand Americans sued the government because of damages from this vaccine, two-thirds of which were neurological in nature, and some quite severe --

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_9I1L_P370

6. Don’t think things like this happen today? Take a look at what has happened with Gardasil, the vaccine for HPV given to young girls to protect against some types of cervical cancer. Paralysis and death, two of its "minor" side effects, have impacted real Americans --

http://media.causes.com/510463?p_id=24935752

5. Chemicals such as thimerosal (which has mercury in it), squalene (causes severe autoimmune response when injected into rats), and ethylene glycol (anti-freeze) are in the vaccines as preservatives and "adjuvants", which are to shock the immune system into creating antibodies against the microbe. But what else do these chemicals do when injected into the body, especially that of a small child or pregnant woman??

Check out the following lovely assortment of potential side effects, and remember -- if you happen to be one of the unlucky who gets one of the more serious side effects, you will have no legal recourse --

*Local injection site reactions (including pain, pain limiting limb movement, redness, swelling, warmth, ecchymosis, induration)
*Hot flashes/flushes
*Chills
*Fever
*Malaise
*Shivering
*Fatigue
*Asthenia
*Facial edema.
*Immune system disorders
*Hypersensitivity reactions (including throat and/or mouth edema)
*In rare cases, hypersensitivity reactions have lead to anaphylactic shock and death

*Cardiovascular disorders
*Vasculitis (in rare cases with transient renal involvement)
*Syncope shortly after vaccination
*Digestive disorders
*Diarrhea
*Nausea
*Vomiting
*Abdominal pain.
*Blood and lymphatic disorders
*Local lymphadenopathy
*Transient thrombocytopenia.
*Metabolic and nutritional disorders
*Loss of appetite.
*Arthralgia
*Myalgia
*Myasthenia
*Nervous system disorders
*Headache
*Dizziness
*Neuralgia
*Paraesthesia
*Febrile convulsions
*Guillain-Barré Syndrome
*Myelitis (including encephalomyelitis and transverse myelitis)
*Neuropathy (including neuritis)
*Paralysis (including Bell’s Palsy)
*Respiratory disorders
*Dyspnea
*Chest pain
*Cough
*Pharyngitis
*Rhinitis
*Stevens-Johnson syndrome
*Pruritus
*Urticaria
*Rash (including non-specific, maculopapular, and vesiculobulbous) .

(*These are listed as potential side effects in the insert for the influenza A (H1N1) 2009 Monovalent Vaccine manufactured by Novartis.)

4. The swine flu vaccine (and many other vaccines, for that matter) also contains foreign genetic material from chicken embryos, since the H1N1 for the vaccine is cultured inside fertilized chicken eggs. The potentially negative effects of having foreign genetic material injected into your body are unknown, but even industry insiders have expressed concerns about this (see my previous blog post for details).

3. I have already personally experienced negative reactions to vaccines -- a tetanus shot at age 15 that led to pain, heat, and swelling in my arm and has caused a loss of range of motion in my left shoulder that persists to this day, as well as sickness after receiving a few vaccines before moving to Russia years ago. Did these vaccines protect me from illness or death? It is possible. But I subsequently had an autoimmune illness for 6 years and now I don't need any more shocks to the system. I'll take my chances with the Swine Flu.

2. Speaking of which, I did take my chances with the Swine Flu because I had it back in July. Although some have not been as fortunate as I have and the truth is some people have gotten quite sick and died, my experience with the Swine Flu involved a half a day of fatigue, fever, malaise, and cold chills. I got myself to my ND (naturopathic doctor) that day, and within 1 minute of taking the H1N1 homeopathy along with some herbal tinctures for the immune system, I was about 75% better. I went home, took it easy, used some of my anti-viral essential oils, and was up and running the very next day.

A healthy lifestyle and effective, natural remedies are the foundation of my healthcare plan. In my book, I'll reserve the doctors and the drugs primarily for emergencies!

1. Until the CDC and the WHO get honest with the masses and tell them how they can do some simple, natural things to boost their immune system and prevent flu (such as get adequate sun exposure to boost Vitamin D levels), allow natural remedies with clinical results be openly promoted as effective with certain issues, and stop promoting vaccines and Tamiflu as "the way, the truth, and the life", it's hard for me to believe that their close ties with the pharmaceutical industry are completely innocent.

When government authorities open their eyes to see the damage being done by a purely pharmaceutical approach in public health, and stop blackballing those things that have been used effectively for thousands of years, they will have my ear! Until that time, I'll get my health information elsewhere.

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Lastly, check out the concerns of some New York State healthcare workers who would rather be fired from their jobs than be forced to get both the seasonal and Swine Flu vaccines as was mandated recently -- http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/09/30/taking_liberties/entry5353611.shtml

Producing a Healthy, Long-Lived Populace on a Budget– Who in the World is Getting the Job Done? Part 1

2009-10-05T14:57:00.009-06:00

Are you familiar with the saying that if you want to become successful at something, find someone who has what you want and do what they do?

Applying this simple wisdom to the healthcare debate, I decided to see what I could turn up. Out of all the countries in the world, which nations have the populations with the best health measured by the highest life expectancy, and how is this accomplished?

I was hoping to come across a comprehensive study by some think-tank or prominent university giving detailed statistical analyses of factors affecting life expectancy and health, showing which nations around the world have the healthiest populations, and how they accomplish this, but I couldn’t find anything substantial.

I will attempt to provide some rudimentary findings in this article.

I started with searching for life expectancy rates in the different nations. I figured that life expectancy was the simplest measurement of the health of a populace. Here is the Top 10 List:

Countries with Highest Life Expectancy

Macau (part of China) -- 84.36
Andorra -- 82.51
Japan -- 82.12
Singapore -- 81.98
San Marino -- 81.97
Hong Kong -- 81.86
Australia -- 81.63
Canada -- 81.23
France (metropolitan) -- 80.98
Sweden 80.86

-- -- --

50. United States 78.11

Why do people living in these countries on average outlive the rest of the world? Does universal health care coverage play a key role? What about the lifestyle of these groups? What about factors that can’t be changed, but still play a role such as wealth and demographics of the populations?

Wouldn’t it be important to have an in-depth understanding of why these populations are so long-lived before undertaking any expensive, extensive, and potentially revolutionary changes to our own health care system?

As it turns out, each of the nations that made the top ten are relatively wealthy when compared with many other parts of the world, but those with the highest life expectancy are certainly not the wealthiest. From this, I must conclude that wealth may play a role in life expectancy, but there are clearly other factors involved.

Japan is noted for its extraordinarily low obesity rate – only 3% of Japanese citizens are obese (while in the United States, a full 32% of the populace is obese)! Since several of the top killers of Americans are chronic illnesses that occur with a significantly greater prevalence in the obese (heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes), it would make sense that America’s portly and out-of-shape populace is a literal drag on the nations’s life expectancy. Japan’s relatively lower rates of these chronic diseases gives further credence the significant role of obesity in life expectancy.

An interesting side note about Japan’s low obesity rate is how they avoid this modern plague – Japanese children are taught to eat only until 80% full, fresh vegetables and fish are eaten in abundance, sweets are eaten occasionally, and more people in Japan get exercise in their daily lives than in America. I think we can learn a lot about a healthy lifestyle from the Japanese!

In terms of demographics, some of the countries in this top-ten list have a tiny population size with a racially homogenous populace (such as San Marino, Andorra, Macau, and even Sweden). Others have larger populations, but still a very homogenous population such as Japan and Australia (92% of the Australian population is of European descent). But Canada, France, and Singapore all have a good degree of racial diversity.

A quick look at demographics reveals that having a small, homogenous populations may be positively associated with higher life expectancy, but it is clearly not the main player in the life expectancy game.

Next I wanted to look at the health care systems of each of the countries on this top-ten list.

Unfortunately, a complete statistical analysis of the health care systems of nations with high life expectancies is beyond the ability of my poor little brain, and beyond the scope of a blog entry. But here's what I can say so far:

Each of the nations and nation-states with the highest life expectancies appear to give access of at least basic health care to even the poorest of their citizens. If someone is having a heart attack, they won’t be turned away. If someone is mauled in an accident of some type, they will receive care. Any person with a chronic illness will receive at least basic care in a public clinic of some kind.

I have much more research to do to compare how this differs from what is currently offered to the poor in the United States under the Medicaid and Medicare program. I’m sure there are may be some significant differences, and I would like to know what they are.

In my research on health care systems, I made a very surprising find that I want to share. Did you know that in the list of countries with highest life expectancies that there is a country that is less affluent than the U.S. that has an infant mortality rate one-third less than that of the U.S., that spends one-seventh of what the U.S. government spends on health care for its populace, and its population lives an average of almost four years longer?

What country is this, and what are they doing right?

And did you know that there is a part of the world where a push to give each and every citizen health insurance has succeeded at insuring almost everyone, but has increased the cost of health care for many of its citizens while showing little or negligible increases in their actual health, while practically bankrupting its government in the process?

Stay tuned for the scoop.

Janine Roberts -- exposer of blood diamonds and genocide in the Congo reveals the dark side of vaccines

2009-10-01T10:01:00.004-06:00

I don't have a lot of time this morning, but I wanted to share an article I just read on vaccines. I have researched the potential negative effects of vaccine adjuvants (additives that shock the immune system) on the body, but this article looks at another aspect of vaccines that I believe every person ought to know before they allow themselves or their children to receive another vaccine:

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=15452

I share information of this type not to depress myself and others, but because the knowledge of truth will make us free!

You've Got Problems? We've Got Solutions!

2009-09-28T17:15:00.006-06:00

In the world of complex problems and economic instability we live in today, we all need a shoulder to lean on from time to time. Everyone needs help when sickness or disaster strikes. When we are down, we need reassurance from those we love that things will turn out O.K., and that we will somehow be taken care of.

In days past, families, friends, churches, and local communities in America have stepped in to help individuals and families with special needs. Thank goodness for the kindness and generosity given to us by those close to us!! And for those of us who believe in God, our gratitude toward him and the blessings he gives us in our darkest hour knows no limits!!!

These days, we have another friend in town. This is a friend who for the past several decades has come to our rescue with increasing zeal. This is a friend to whom we as a nation gave certain powers over 225 years ago – the power to protect our borders from foreign invasion, the power to regulate commerce between nations and between the states, the power to coin money, the power to appoint judges and ambassadors, the power to levy taxes.

This friend is Uncle Sam. Whether you trust this friend or not, whether you like him or not, his offers of assistance to Joe American are growing more and more frequent. He has long since looked upon the duties of families, churches, and local and state governments with jealousy.

He thinks he can do better.

You've Got Problems? We've Got Solutions!

Don’t have time to spend with your kids? No problem – America’s public school system will soon pick up the slack and baby-sit your kids from sunup to sundown so you don’t have to deal with your kids’ snotty noses, their constant need to be kept busy doing something, and those vexing questions on the meaning of life!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090928/ap_on_re_us/us_more_school

Don’t have any money to feed your kids because of unemployment or bills rising faster than your puny paycheck? We’ve got your back! Just send your kids to school early so they can be fed breakfast. Lunch – well, we’ve got you on that one too. And since the kiddies will soon be staying at school as late as 7 PM, we’ll throw dinner in as a bonus. You provide the kids with a place to sleep at night, and let good old Uncle Sam do the rest.

You’re sick? Poor baby! Don’t worry about your lifestyle – it’s not your fault! Soon enough, we’ll make sure you have health insurance (whether you want it or not). Because, you know, having health insurance is the key to good health!

Don’t know how to go out there and do something productive for society to bring in an income? Can’t think for yourself?? GREAT! You must be a product of public schooling and mass media indoctrination! And as long as you don’t question the system, we’ll find you a job. Whether you want to work in healthcare, education, or law enforcement, we’ve got a bunch of positions opening up shortly!

And we’ll tell you about some other problems you didn’t know you had, because we have solutions for those too

We will protect you from the dread disease of Swine Flu – we have worked with a few corporations to concoct a vaccine that contains:

Swine flu virus,
Aluminium (linked with brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s),
Ethylene glycol (found in anti-freeze),
Formaldehyde (a known cancer-causing agent),
Thimerosal (which contains mercury), and
Squalene (which causes autoimmune symptoms when injected into rats).

If you are pregnant or have small children, you should be first in line for this vaccine to protect you from an illness that has killed 600 people worldwide (most of whom had underlying health problems) out of millions of people who contracted the disease.

(And we’ll just leave out the evidence that you can prevent or reduce complications with this and other types of flu with adequate Vitamin D, which can be attained for free by getting 15 minutes of sun exposure per day.)

We will protect you from Global Warming, and we will do this by levying “green” taxes on such things as your monthly utility bill, cow flatulence, and even a proposed baby tax! Didn’t you know that having babies is damaging to the environment and puts us all at risk?!?

(Not to mention all the “problems” revealed to us on the pages of grocery-store magazines with the solutions provided within their pages: get rid of cellulite now, you need a bikini-ready body, the Top 10 Sex moves you MUST know to get a guy, the latest styles and beauty products you need to make a splash, etc… ad nauseum)

Pay no attention to the man behind the green curtain . . .

Don’t worry – it’s not all about problems out there. We’ll make sure you never know about the real threats that hang over you, because a few rich Americans own Hollywood and the mainstream media, and they will promote a steady diet of:

Fast food advertising,
Immortality masquerading as all that is good, glorious, and delightful,
Blatant immorality (for those of you so desensitized that you don’t need the sugar coating),
Sports rivalries and scores,
Contentions between the false split of the political “left” and “right”,
The latest gossip on Britney Spears, AND
Everything you ever wanted to know about Michelle Obama’s wardrobe.

Don’t you fret yourself about:

Impending food shortages,
Eroding civil liberties,
A consolidation of power at the level of the Federal government, and developing draconian global government, AND
Corruption, hypocrisy, and lies in high places.

No, don’t you worry yourself about these things. Because we’ve made sure you have so many other things to worry about that you have neither the time nor the space in your brain to concern yourself.

Besides, I bet they’ll come up with a new government program to deal with any of these types of problems should they become big enough. Because we have a true friend in Uncle Sam . . .

Communism Part 2: By Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Them

2009-09-02T14:23:00.004-06:00

Communism is practiced openly in just a handful of nations today, namely China, Cuba, Vietnam, North Korea, and Laos. Since Communism purports to bring such things as prosperity, literacy, equality to its people, I thought I would take just a little time to research how these nations compare with the rest of the world and post the stats here for all to enjoy.

Standard of living – 2008

(U.S. - number 15)
Cuba – number 48
China – number 94
Vietnam – number 114
Laos – number 133

North Korea – didn’t report its numbers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index

Literacy Rankings - 2005

North Korea – 9
Cuba – 23
(U.S. – 23)
China – 48
Vietnam – 50
Laos – 101

http://www.photius.com/rankings/population/literacy_total_2005_0.html

Gender Equality - 2008

(a ranking of 89 is highest, 29 is lowest)

(U.S. – 75, behind 18 other countries)
Vietnam – 71, behind 37 other countries
Cuba – 70, behind 45 other countries
China – 69, behind 55 other countries

North Korea and Laos unranked, over 150 nations ranked

http://www.socialwatch.org/en/avancesyRetrocesos/IEG_2008/tablas/valoresdelIEG2008.htm

Health Care Systems - 2000

(U.S. – 37)
Cuba – 39
China – 144
Vietnam – 160
Laos – 165
North Korea – 167

http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html

Global Competitive Index - 2008-2009

(U.S. – 1)
China – 30
Vietnam – 70

Cuba, North Korea, and Laos unranked (134 countries included in the ranking)

http://www.weforum.org/en/initiatives/gcp/Global%20Competitiveness%20Report/index.htm

Political Terror Index – 2007

China – 4 out of 5 (Amnesty International)
North Korea – 4 out of 5 (Amnesty International& U.S. State Dept)
Laos – 3 out of 5 (U.S. State Dept)
Vietnam – 3 out of 5 (U.S. State Dept)
Cuba -- 3 out of 5 (Amnesty International& U.S. State Dept)

Interestingly, the United States ranked at a 1 (little or no political terror) until 2001, and is now currently ranked by Amnesty International at a 3, presumably because of the tortures and renditions of "war criminals", etc…

A ranking of a 4 means: Civil and political rights violations have expanded to large numbers of the population. Murders, disappearances, and torture are a common part of life. In spite of its generality, on this level terror affects those who interest themselves in politics or ideas.

A ranking of a 3 means: There is extensive political imprisonment, or a recent history of such imprisonment. Execution or other political murders and brutality may be common. Unlimited detention, with or without a trial, for political views is accepted.

http://www.politicalterrorscale.org/countries.php

Lastly, I wanted to take a look at death in the 20th Century to see if I could find some reasonably accurate numbers tallying the deaths associated with Communism. I came across an incredible website and found the following interesting stats:

- Roughly 4,126,000,000 people died during the 20th century from all causes. If 185 million of these deaths were man-made, then one out of every 22 (or 4.5%) deaths during the 20th Century have been caused by fellow humans.

- Of these 185 million man-made deaths, a full 92 million deaths were caused by Communists -- that's almost half!!

Here's the Breakdown of 20th Century Deaths due to Communists:

• Genocide & Tyranny: 44 million (including intentional famine)

• Man-made Famine: 37 million (excluding intentional famine -- ie., including only famines due to government negligence and economic miscalculation as opposed to a desire to kill its populace)

• Communist-inspired War (for example the Russian Civil War, Vietnam, Korea, etc.)
- Military: 5 million
-Civilian: 6 million

The remaining 96 million non-natural deaths in the 20th Century took place in wars, massacres, slaughters, and oppressions not related to Communism.

A quick side note -- only 3.5 million people died from natural disasters in the 20th Century

http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat8.htm

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More to come . . .

What is Communism?

2009-08-31T19:06:00.005-06:00

There are few political ideologies that have simultaneously aroused such indignation and fervor as Communism. Communism has been touted with promising “Peace, Bread, & Land” to the underprivileged, bringing all of humanity into a place of equality, prosperity, and Utopian bliss.

Others have viewed Communism as the ultimate evil ideology to enslave and oppress the masses while a tiny elite enjoy unchecked power and an almost god-like status.

Last week, Glenn Beck of Fox News fame did an expose in which he showed that some of President Obama's picks for advisers are Communist. Van Jones, the "Green Czar" charged with creating "green jobs" in our country has admitted to his enthusiasm for Communism.

Jones, a graduate of Yale Law School, spent time in an L.A. jail in 1993 after being arrested during the Rodney King riots. About his experience in jail, he reminisced that he "met all these young radical people of color, I mean, really radical -- Communists and anarchists, and it was like, this is what I need to be a part of. . . . By August, I was a Communist."

At least four other advisers to the President openly promote agendas that smack of Communism.

Check out Glenn Beck's reporting on these issues here (in particular, scroll down to video entitled "Who is Van Jones"):

http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/29831/

Regardless of Van Jones or any other of Obama's special advisers, I believe that understanding what Communism is, how it comes about, how citizens living in Communism are impacted, and what influence Communist leaders and policies have in our nation today is a MUST for every American citizen.

Let's start at the beginning. So what is Communism, really?

Communism can be defined as “a family of economic and political ideas and social movements related to the establishment of an egalitarian, classless, or stateless society based on common ownership and control of the means of production and property in general, as well.” (Wikipedia -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism) This sounds innocuous enough, but let’s try to break this down into plain English.

You know you are living in a Communist society when:

- Your government abolishes the ownership of private property, including land, homes, businesses, and etc. (and seizes the property by force if need be) in the name of uplifting the poor.

- Similarly, your government seizes control of industry and agriculture stating it is in the best interest of the people, the poor in particular.

- Your government establishes and runs a central banking system, taking this duty away from privately-owned banks, for the good of the people.

- Your government takes control of transportation and communication.

- Your government controls labor, or is in the business of creating jobs.

- Your government engages in centralized regional planning.

- Ideals of equality among the classes, races, and genders are heavily promoted, with measures taken to institutionalize equality through:

o A graduated income tax to redistribute wealth – taking from the rich and giving to the poor.

o Government-controlled, free public education (with a government-approved curriculum).

o Abolition of inheritance.

- Your government implements policies that are hostile to a belief in God and religion.

Here's how I see it: Communism preaches power to the people while bestowing absolute power on the governing elite. This elite is charged with taking care of the people. Whether they do a good job of that or not is the next question to ponder.

(Stay tuned for my next article where I discuss how well the Communist Nations' elite make good on their promises to the masses.)

Let’s now take a look at the Pro's and Cons' of Communism for the average citizen:

PROS –

- Guaranteed a place to live (though in the initial stages, if your home is too uppity it might be confiscated by the State),

- Food to eat (unless you happened to get caught in one of those nasty government-made famines. No food for you!),

- Lots of jobs available,

- Free education,

- Free health care,

- Free abortions,

- Relatively low crime rate on the streets,

- As long as you follow the status quo, don’t rock the boat, and don’t mind the CONS listed below, you can have a quite pleasant existence.

CONS –

- Much lower standard of living than Capitalist nations,

- Grossly curtailed freedoms and civil rights for the masses (ie. Free health care, but no free speech),

- If you disagree with your government and you say or do anything about it, then you may not like the consequences. Tens of millions of people with dissident beliefs (ie. against Communism) have perished (and are still perishing) under Communist regimes at the hands of their government through executions and arrests with atrocious living conditions in concentration camps housing the arrested.

Check out this interesting article on the pro's and con's of Communism in Cuba, in particular.
http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/4984,opinion,pros-and-cons-of-communism-in-cuba

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Is Communism to be feared? Should we be alarmed if our current president takes advice from an avowed Communist or two, or is there a place in our government today for people of all political persuasions?

I'll let the facts I just outlined, and those that I will share in subsequent articles, speak for themselves, and you can be the judge!

Debunking the Health Care “Myth” Debunkers?

2009-08-26T00:08:00.004-06:00

This morning I got up, turned on my computer, and checked out the headlines on my Yahoo home page. This is a regular occurrence for me – not so much because I am dying to know what is going on in the world, but because I am curious about what is wanted for me to believe about what is going on.

I came across an article entitled “Majority of Americans Believe Health Care Reform ‘Myths’”. http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20090824/sc_livescience/majorityofamericansbelievehealthcarereformmyths .

I decided to open this article on up and take a look at what ridiculous “myths” people were believing now. We’ve all seen Sarah Palin and others mocked and ridiculed for their claims that Obama is trying to “pull the plug on grandma” with an Orwellian end-of-life counseling provision purported to be a part of the health care bill.

So I decided to take some time to check out the gargantuan 1,000-page bill itself to see what I could find.

http://waysandmeans.house.gov/media/pdf/111/AAHCA09001xml.pdf

Are all those health care “myth”-believers out there either shameless fear-mongers and/or jealous Republicans grasping at straws seeking defeat Obama in his lofty goals? Or is there some merit to their concerns?

I figured the bill itself would have the undisputed answers – what was truth, what was fiction – on any controversial points, or “myths”.

Thankfully, I was also able to draw upon a document written by some Dr. Stephen Fraser to Senator Bayh of Indiana in which he cites pages and lines that refer to certain contentious elements of the bill, giving me a great head start.

(see http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/note.php?note_id=123784720765 )

So, here it goes. “Myth” # 1 of this Live Science.com article is that wait times for health care services, such as surgery, will increase. Apparently 67% of respondents believe this will be the case. Why would anyone believe this?

Reality – Maybe because it is self-evident that when demands go up for any given service and the infrastructure to meet those demands stays the same, the service will become more scarce. I’m no guru of economics or economic theory, but this one is a no-brainer even for me!

“Myth” # 2 – Apparently about 80% of Republicans, 25% of Democrats, 56% of Independents (or 50% of respondents) believe the federal government will become directly involved in making personal health care decisions. I’m not sure how this could qualify as a myth, since:

Reality – According to page 30, Section 123 of H.R. 3200, there will be a government committee made up of between 19-27 individuals that decide which treatments and benefits are given for which illnesses. This committee is led by the “Health Choices Commissioner”, who is appointed by the President. Maybe it would be more appropriate to call him the “Health Choices Restrictor”, since the choices he makes will actually restrict the choices available to doctors and patients.

Further, page 42 of H.R. 3200 reaffirms that the Health Choices Commissioner will choose your health care benefits for you in the following delightful and engaging language:

“Sec. 142. Duties and Authority of Commissioner.
(a) DUTIES. – The Commissioner is responsible for carrying out the following functions under this division:
(1) QUALITIFED PLAN STANDARDS. – The establishment of qualified health benefits plan standards under this title, including the enforcement of such standards in coordination with State insurance regulators and the Secretaries of Labor and the Treasury. . . .”

Blah, blah, blah.

O.K. – this next one is big. “Myth” # 3 -- Roughly 60 % of Americans believe taxpayers will be required to pay for abortions on demand (78% of Republicans, 30% of Democrats, 58% of Independents).

Reality – There is no language in the bill that specifically forbids taxpayer funds to be appropriated to abortion. However, there is a piece of legislation called the Hyde Amendment that was passed in 1976 and which prevents Medicaid funds to be used for abortion except in cases of rape or incest. Some argue that the current healthcare bill would be subject to the Hyde amendment, and therefore abortions would not be funded except in extreme cases.

Others argue, however, that without specific language in the actual healthcare bill itself to disallow abortions on the government plan, an overturn of the Hyde amendment by abortion advocates would essentially make abortion-on-demand a state-funded benefit. Besides, the Hyde Amendment is specific to Medicaid and one could argue that it has no legal bearing on H.R. 3200. (See http://www.lifenews.com/nat5247.html)

This next part is what gets me. Another amendment proposed by Rep. Lois Capps of California, who incidentally has a strong pro-abortion voting record, was passed in July 2009 by Congress. This amendment specifies that abortion would be covered in a public option health care plan (using the taxpayers’ funds) should the Hyde amendment ever be reversed. Hmm – looks like someone in power has some plans for widespread government-funded abortion. (See http://www.lifenews.com/nat5306.html)

Here’s another biggie: “Myth” # 4 – 46% believe reforms will result in taxpayer subsidized health care coverage for all illegal immigrants.

The truth is that Medicaid already covers the health care costs for illegal immigrants with conditions that could jeopardize their lives, including the delivery of babies and emergency room care, at great cost to the taxpayers. With all due respect to illegal immigrants, it’s definitely true that expanding full coverage to these individuals would come at an enormous cost to American taxpayers.

Reality -- Page 50 Section 152 in H.R. 3200 has these elucidating words to offer: “All health care and related services (including insurance coverage and public health activities) covered by this Act shall be provided without regard to personal characteristics extraneous to the provision of high quality health care or related services.”

I have to be honest with you here. My 12 years of public schooling plus 8 years studying at an institution of higher learning did not prepare me to decipher such convoluted verbiage as this. If you can figure out what that means, please let me know, because the longer I look at it, the less sense it makes.

What I was able to gather from the bill is that nonresident aliens not having “acceptable coverage” are exempt from paying the 2.5% tax on income required of everyone else who is not suitably insured (Page 170, Lines 1-3), and that “individuals not lawfully present in the United States” are ineligible for affordability credits (Page 143, Section 246).

I looked up the term “affordability credits”, because I wanted to see if having them was equivalent to having health care coverage. I found that this is not the case -- ineligibility for affordability credits in no way equates ineligibility for any other benefits of the government-run health care system, and nothing else is specified about illegal non-resident aliens and health care coverage in the health care bill.

For a more detailed discussion of how illegal immigrants will likely be able to access the government-run health care system with few problems under the system being proposed by Congress, check out this document penned by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR):

http://www.fairus.org/site/DocServer/2009_07_24_Analysis_Section_246_is_Ineffective_vFINAL.pdf?docID=3101

Next -- “Myth # 5” – 54% of Americans polled (78% of Republicans, 28% of Democrats, 58% of Independents) believe the public option will increase premiums for Americans with private health insurance.

Reality – This can in no way be considered a myth to be proven or refuted, since it is merely a projection of a possible future outcome rather than a verifiable understanding about what the policy actually says. I did look around to see if I could find a precedent for private premiums either increasing, decreasing, or staying the same when a government system is introduced. I couldn’t find anything. I would be curious to know if such a precedent exists – let me know if you find something on this!

The truth is that an increase in the premiums of private health insurance due to the institution of government-run health care is a possibility at the very least. Check out what this guy has to say on the matter (scroll down about halfway to point number 2.):

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/07/the_failed_promises_of_governm.html

“Myth” #6 – Half of all Americans polled think cuts will be made to Medicare in order to cover more Americans (66% of Republicans, 37% of Democrats, 44% of Independents).

Reality – Page 341, lines 5-9 state: “. . . the Secretary may determine not to identify a Medicare Advantage plan if the Secretary has identified deficiencies in the plan’s compliance with rules for such plans under this part.”

I’m not quite sure what that means, but it does appear that there could be some restrictions to senior citizens using Medicare Advantage plans. With this type of plan, senior citizens retain their own private insurance while still utilizing the benefits from Medicare. It is conceivable that such restrictions would, at the very least, lead to fewer health care choices for some senior citizens.

This article would not be complete without looking into the claims that the health care bill would support government-sanctioned euthanasia. The LiveScience.com article reported that only 30% of respondents believe the government will “require the elderly to make decisions about how and when they will die.”

Reality – read pp. 425-430 of the bill and decide for yourself what it means for grandma:

http://waysandmeans.house.gov/media/pdf/111/AAHCA09001xml.pdf

It is interesting to me how much space is dedicated to regulating end-of-life services for senior citizens. For whatever reason, this is clearly an area of health care that the policy-makers want completely spelled out ahead of time.

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Conclusions – After spending hours pouring over the health care bill proposed by members of Congress, many things are still unclear to me. One thing, however, is as clear as day – transparency in the specifics of the policies they are proposing is not a top priority for these guys.

Second, the various news stories and reports in the media about the health care reform bill should under no circumstance be taken at face value. Just because someone who writes a widely-circulated article states that something is a “myth” or a “truth” concerning health care reform (or anything else either, really) does not make it so.

Lastly, if you found reading this article to be tedious, you should try reading the health care reform bill!

http://waysandmeans.house.gov/media/pdf/111/AAHCA09001xml.pdf