Americans don't need a shepherd

President Obama and his supporters see America in need of a Shepherd. Our nation is, in their mind, basically sheep. Some have coined the term “sheeple.” The mass herd that is the American population can be controlled by the barking dogs of Congress and government departments and regulators. Tax policy is used to bite the heels of different groups. Running from the left to right to left again, President Obama nips at the heels of stragglers and slow moving citizens. Even the President’s own words make clear he sees his role as Shepherd. President Obama has said the Constitution is a collection of “negative” powers. The Constitution is to liberals, a tool for herding the population into a protective pen, a pasture, where the elite will care for and protect (until sheared), the population. Recent major legislation reinforces this view.

Consider health care legislation. The 1900 pages just out from the House ignores real reform and establishes new taxes, regulations, fines and hundreds of managers and boards of review. The herd will be bitten, barked at and growled at until they comply and behave in a manner suited to liberal attitudes. Tax soda, tax fat, tax young people, tax small business and on and on. We are to be herded into compliance. No tort reform. No plan for purchase across state lines. No tax break for individual purchase of insurance.

The Cap and Tax plan promises a green energy future. How? Tax coal. Tax gas. Tax cars. Tax business as it uses energy and transfer that wealth into groups that suit the liberal view of the world. Where is innovation? Where is leadership? Where is trust in the American people? The debate is, we are told, over on climate change. Hiding from debate is not leadership. Hiding from debate is a barking dog at the heels of sheep.

President Obama sees as nearly divine his obligation as the great Shepherd of the people. His speeches reach out to groups, not individuals. His management style is one of listening, consideration then consensus. No where do we see leadership, individual excellence. The President seems to be a barking dog running behind the herd of shee-people, biting here and there, growling and stopping for a moment to rest then rushing off to bark again. The herd circles and moves around the pasture and spends some time grazing, some time drinking and then comes the culling of the herd. Just yesterday President Obama was holding another war group. He sits at the end of the table and listens to all the advisors and then he will bring everyone together. He will “Shepherd” the military into his vision and his plan.

May I be so bold, America does not want or need a Shepherd with sheep dogs. WE NEED AND WANT A LEADER. The problem for President Obama is free people won’t follow a Shepard. They will follow a leader and mostly they will make their world themselves. A very telling example from President Obama is his judgment of the capital gains tax cut put in place under President Bush. When Bill O’Reilly asked then candidate Obama about the increase in revenue the “tax cut” generated Obama disregarded the revenue and said it was just a matter of “fairness.” The President and Democrats in general have never understood that in America freedom equals discretion. The reason a lower capital gains tax rate increases revenue is simple, all first choices that may generate a capital gain are discretionary. No one has to invest or take a risk. When the tax rate gets too high, capital gain based choices will stop. Very simple.

We can apply the same truth to health care. Liberals simply cannot see choice as a good thing. Choice makes sheep herding more difficult. I believe health is the area of greatest personal discretion and when the free people of America feel the barking dogs and the bite of Congressional force upon their health care choices, the American people will revolt.

President Reagan was hated by the shepherds. The barking dogs hate freedom and they hate all things individual. President Reagan saw America as a nation of Eagles. I too believe we are Eagles. Some act as sheep, you can see them in their SEIU and ACCORN tee shirts. It is time for Eagles to fly again. Tell Obama we will not be herded into the pen and sent to slaughter. The United States Constitution leads America, leads the world to individual freedom and greatness. The liberal sees the Constitution as an obstacle to overcome. I see the Constitution as the gateway to freedom.

Kris Hager Gold Star Dad 941*587*9373

'Muslim Mafia' authors face censorship

The new book “Muslim Mafia” by Sperry and Guabatz, featured on Backbone Radio Nov. 8 at 530pm, reveals damning information on CAIR. Read it if you haven’t already! CAIR’s strategy is to ignore the book and work to stifle the revelations. It has friends in Congress and in the Media that are ignoring the issue. A judge has now joined the suppression effort.

Act for America, the citizens group led by Brigitte Gabriel, is pushing a petition to force the CAIR’s crimes into the national limelight, defeating efforts by Muslims and their dupes to sweep the whole thing under the rug.

Your call is to go onto the website and sign the petition. Then, forward this message to others on your mailing list and invite THEM to sign as well! This is a do or die for us. If CAIR, after such outrageous revelations about them, can still survive, what hope do we have of EVER stopping the Radical Islam Juggernaut?

Health care the capitalist way - 1

Obama is right up to a point. The status quo on health care is unacceptable. Too many people are without access to affordable coverage, and millions of people are uninsured through no fault of their own. We need change. But President Obama’s government answer is not the way to go. Capitalism has been the engine of prosperity for this country going back to its founding. As such, I am now proposing that Congress and the President consider the “Capitalist Manifesto for Healthcare Reform,” several specific, free-market fixes for the healthcare problem. The most critical aspect of reform, and the starting point, must be increased competition—something else President Obama claims to favor.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jimmy Sengenberger is a sophomore and conservative student leader at Regis University. This is the first in a series of columns proposing specific, free-market alternatives for healthcare. The next will center on empowering the individual through Health Savings Accounts and prescription drug importation.

The Human Face of Freedom

What the Berlin Wall Anniversary MeansBy Joe Gschwendtner

The Berlin Wall fell 20 years ago this week. Anyone in Central or Eastern Europe today, 70 or older, has spent over two-thirds of their life under Communism or jackbooted Nazis. That is, unless your courage and ambition made you willing to risk life itself like our neighbor, Emerencia Marton Kanan. Emi was born into impoverished, post-war, Communist Hungary in 1945. At age four, weakened by ingested chemicals, Emi was near death on a straw bed until a man with rare Rh negative blood offered an 11th hour transfusion. Finally off the grim reaper’s list, she then contracted TB and was removed to a hospice/sanitarium. Written off again, her mom brought Emi to her native village Nyoger at a higher, more beneficial altitude. In one of life’s outlying moments, Emi survived on curd from the churn in the milk house to sate her hunger. Open spaces, food of the earth, and perhaps the scent of more freedom put the tuberculosis into remission.

Rough hewn and semi-skilled, Emi’s Dad was a hunted man. A former government worker, he was punished with menial jobs—shoveling coal and building Budapest subways in the 50’s. He had narrowly saved his own life earlier by having escaped a forced shipment to post-war Russian labor camps. He taught Emi two things: Freedom is worth fighting for and to never give up.

At 21 Emi met Frank. He was heady with ideas, ambition and dreams of freedom, ever plotting to escape Communism. Their romance was epic in speed and intensity. They were married in 1967 and Frank Junior arrived ten months later.

Even as Frank Senior planned their Iron Curtain escape, he left the collectives to set up a welding shop with friends in an attempt to rise above subsistence level. His dreams died with him when he was electrocuted by a faulty transformer. Emi was now a widow at age 22. She worked at a local school but her attention was riveted by politics and economics.

After hearing other stories of escape, Emi engineered her own. With $140 and a Communist visa to vacation in Yugoslavia, she located a smuggler who ran human flesh across the Adriatic to Italy. On short notice she convinced her mother to join her, and, along with her sedated son, fled in the night (a story paralleling Disney’s “Night Crossing”).

During eight months in a refugee camp and refusing “easy” prostitution money, Emi survived by ironing clothes for $1.50 a day. On her own terms, she finally secured a passage for three to Chicago. Emi, by dint of her own courage would go on to self-educate, re-marry, and find her way to Colorado and the investment industry, subsequently attaining stratospheric levels of success for a female in the 1970’s. She and her husband Pat now enjoy a reflective life together as they teach photographic techniques and market artistic old world photography in Castle Rock, Colorado.

If there is anyone who can prove the case of America, as land of the free and home of the brave, it is she……….

Joe Gschwendtner is a Castle Rock businessman and writer.

Asking the trillion-dollar questions

First, why disguise these proposals as "health care reform" when they concern only the federal takeover of health insurance? True health care reform would extend the availability of service through, for instance, more facilities and medical school scholarships. Removing the proscription on medications from Canada would help, aswouldallowing us to purchase insurance from providers in any state.

(2) If the proposals are so wondrous, why make them mandatory, with penalties on those who choose not to participate? While claiming to promote competition, the bills' proponents are denying us any economical choice.

And why are the lawmakers themselves exempt? Will they pay that penalty for not participating?

(3) The bills' proponents tried to make their "reform" more palatable by allowing states to opt out. Will all the residents of the state then be penalized, even those who might view the legislation as beneficial? That's hardly democratic nor beneficent. (4) Why not allow us to opt out individually? Oh, yes, we'll be penalized.

(5) Among the powers and duties of the federal government, distinctly outlined in our precious Constitution, where is it stated that Congress or the Executive branch can control health insurance? (6) Or so vastly restrict our freedom of choice?

(7) Given all the complaints against the FAA, TSA, SEC, BLM and so on, why entrust health care to inept bureaucrats?

(8)In what way do these proposals promote competition when every taxpayer will already have paid for the "reform" insurance? Only competition among providers can ensure efficiency and minimum pricing.

And finally, the BIG question: (9) How can our already-overburdened economy generate yet another $1 trillion to finance this boondoggle?

Remember that the government has no money except ours. Governments' only income is our tax dollars. Governments never give us anything. Governments only return a small portion of the money they extract from us through taxes not efficiently nor at minimum cost.