Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Sunday, February 21, 2010
freedom and the left.
http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/12/02/freedom_and_the_left?page=full&comments=true
utopia vs. freedom
"Let's go back to square one. The universe was not made to our specifications. Nor were human beings. So there is nothing surprising in the fact that we are dissatisfied with many things at many times. The big question is whether we are prepared to follow any politician who claims to be able to "solve" our "problem."
If we are, then there will be a never ending series of "solutions," each causing new problems calling for still more "solutions." That way lies a never-ending quest, costing ever increasing amounts of the taxpayers' money and-- more important-- ever greater losses of your freedom to live your own life as you see fit, rather than as presumptuous elites dictate.
Ultimately, our choice is to give up Utopian quests or give up our freedom. This has been recognized for centuries by some, but many others have not yet faced that reality, even today. If you think government should "do something" about anything that ticks you off, or anything you want and don't have, then you have made your choice between Utopia and freedom."
http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2009/08/04/utopia_versus_freedom
unsustainable spending.
"The Obama administration's financial projections are extremely optimistic, yet even if they all come true, the U.S. debt will continue to grow unsustainably. The kind of alarm falsely placed in "global warming" would more usefully be directed towards the remarkable cooling effect this will have, as all our fiscal and demographic trends converge. For this is a predictable future; an issue where the numbers correspond to real things, not to mere speculation.
We can already see where the U.S. is headed, because Iceland and Greece are showing the way. Both have now passed a point of no return, and both are being followed down that plughole by Britain and several other European countries that will probably precede the U.S. into outright bankruptcy. The State of California also gives some clues."
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/02/21/unsustainable_spending_104503.html
blinded by science.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2010/02/21/blinded_by_science_104494.html
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Where U.S. Health Care Ranks Number One.
Last August the cover of Time pictured President Obama in white coat and stethoscope. The story opened: "The U.S. spends more to get less [health care] than just about every other industrialized country." This trope has dominated media coverage of health-care reform. Yet a majority of Americans opposes Congress's health-care bills. Why?
The comparative ranking system that most critics cite comes from the U.N.'s World Health Organization (WHO). The ranking most often quoted is Overall Performance, where the U.S. is rated No. 37. The Overall Performance Index, however, is adjusted to reflect how well WHO officials believe that a country could have done in relation to its resources.
The scale is heavily subjective: The WHO believes that we could have done better because we do not have universal coverage. What apparently does not matter is that our population has universal access because most physicians treat indigent patients without charge and accept Medicare and Medicaid payments, which do not even cover overhead expenses. The WHO does rank the U.S. No. 1 of 191 countries for "responsiveness to the needs and choices of the individual patient." Isn't responsiveness what health care is all about?
Data assembled by Dr. Ronald Wenger and published recently in the Bulletin of the American College of Surgeons indicates that cardiac deaths in the U.S. have fallen by two-thirds over the past 50 years. Polio has been virtually eradicated. Childhood leukemia has a high cure rate. Eight of the top 10 medical advances in the past 20 years were developed or had roots in the U.S.
The Nobel Prizes in medicine and physiology have been awarded to more Americans than to researchers in all other countries combined. Eight of the 10 top-selling drugs in the world were developed by U.S. companies. The U.S. has some of the highest breast, colon and prostate cancer survival rates in the world. And our country ranks first or second in the world in kidney transplants, liver transplants, heart transplants, total knee replacements, coronary artery bypass, and percutaneous coronary interventions.
We have the shortest waiting time for nonemergency surgery in the world; England has one of the longest. In Canada, a country of 35 million citizens, 1 million patients now wait for surgery and another million wait to see specialists.
Friday, January 8, 2010
Saturday, January 2, 2010
capitalism as a fiend.
"On the last day of 2009, that awful year, I was listening to a report on National Public Radio (yes, I’m a listener). Reporter Tamara Keith presented a by-now-familiar recap of the worst financial and corporate scandals of the decade, from Enron and Martha Stewart to Tyco and Bernie Madoff. It was a depressing slog of greed, venality, and theft. When the report was over,Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep summarized the report with a tart: “The decade in capitalism.” I don’t want to single out Inskeep, since he was doing what pretty much the entire media establishment has done, particularly of late: reducing “capitalism” to its alleged sins. And that’s the point. There are few areas of life where a thing responsible for so much good gets so little credit for it." |
