You can Leave your Heart but not your Foreskin in San Francisco

If a proposed initiative gets on the ballot and passes in San Francisco, it will be illegal to perform male circumcision in the city.  ”Intactivists” as they call themselves, feel that circumcision is barbaric and violates the boy’s or baby’s right to choose to be circumcised or not.

First Amendment Freedom of Religion rights of Jews and Muslims not withstanding, opponents of male circumcision claim it is unhealthy and dangerous.  Granted, there is risk with any medical procedure.  You can choke on a toothpick while cleaning your teeth.  However, this practice is over 3,000 years old and there does not seem to be a shortage of Jews, Muslims, or any other group who has chosen to circumcise its male children, nor is there any reported lack of libido in the healthy and mentally stable males as well.

It’s so typical.  For religious reasons, parents may choose not to vaccinate their children or let them have blood transfusions.  For religious reasons, women may be required to wear thick veils over their heads that inhibit their seeing or hearing on-coming traffic.  That’s all well and good to these busy bodies, but don’t do anything that allows the boys to identify culturally with the other members of their societies.

Needless to say, the simple solution is that if you don’t want to circumcise your child, then don’t, but that’s too simple to these people.  This is simply yet another example of some people trying to dictate how others should live their lives.  Are they planning to go around examining little boys’ crotches to make sure they weren’t snipped?  Maybe they’ll use TSA gropers-in-training for the job.

In one respect, I tend to agree.  It’s the boy’s body, let him decide.  In similar fashion, however, when we consider abortion, it’s the baby’s life.  Let him or her decide, too, if the abortion should take place.

Funny, they want to stop the family from snipping a piece of skin but they’ll do nothing about snuffing out a life.

Broken Health Care, Broken Promises

Is health care fixed?  President Obama seems to think so.  He signed the bill.  Apparently the Senate didn’t think so, however.  Even before the ink was dry they were trying to “fix” some of the problems with the bill.  Remarkable.  If the bill was flawed, why did they pass it in the first place?

Apparently they didn’t think it was flawed until they found out that more than 50% of the American public wanted the bill to be killed and now the same more than 50% of the people want the bill repealed. When polled about the health care bill’s real costs, more people agreed that the bill was too costly than disagreed.

Do we need changes in health care? Most people think so, but there are some simple solutions.

Obviously, the Congress knows more than the people who elected them, otherwise they would not have pushed through a bill that is so unpopular, costly, and detrimental to our economy.  But then again, maybe they’re a bit scared.  We’ll see how they spin this.

This bill, and probably its “fixes”, too, pushes the country further down the road deeper into government-run socialism and totalitarianism, the logical, but hopefully unintended, consequence of taking over yet one more segment of the economy.  (Don’t forget.  The feds have already co-opted the banking industry and are now on the way to controlling the insurance industry.)

So, what has happened since its passage?  AT&T, AK Steel, John Deere, and Caterpillar, to name a few companies, have already elected to take the one-time write-off for health care that the Obama plan allows.  This accounts for billions of dollars in expenses they’re claiming due to this bill.  It’s a provision allowed by the health care bill that Obama pushed and Congress pushed even harder.  The White House response?  Denigrate these companies as being “extremist” and trying to embarrass the President.

But this writing is not just about a broken health care bill.  It’s about broken promises as well.  Which ones did Obama break?  Here are two.

Candidate Obama promised so much transparency in government that we were encouraged to call his current residence “The Glass House”.  He said that before he signed any legislation, he would put each bill on his web site for at least 5 days.  This one didn’t even make 5 minutes.

As to the content of the bill, Obama vowed that this bill would not to raise taxes on individuals making less than 200,000 and families making less than 250,000.   Maybe he meant 200,000 lira or something because it can’t be US Dollars.  There are 12 new taxes.  Some may be called “fees” but if you have to pay it to the government, it’s a tax.

This year, Social Security will be upside down, meaning that it will have to pay out more than it takes in.  Ever since when the Social Security “trust fund” was folded into the general budget, Congress has been spending that money.  Now they have to start paying it out.

Social Security itself will, by necessity, increase deficit spending if only because it must pay out money that it does not have.  Why insist on increasing our national debt even more with costly overhauls that aren’t needed?

The Populist Movements aren’t so Popular Any More

People can be fickle.  Popular opinion changes.

Global Warming is cooling off.

Universal Health Care isn’t universally desired.

What has happened?  Have the people become fickle?  Has apathy set in?

I truly believe that the American public is not as stupid as many politicians and ideologues want to believe.  As it has been attributed to President Abraham Lincoln, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”  Given time, truth will come out and people will have an opportunity to assess the facts.

We live in a day of sound bites.  The sound bites are chosen either to promote an agenda or to capture the audience’s attention and make the story more interesting than it really is.

We need to beware of quick actions by Congress whether it’s for the health care bill or anything else they want to pass.  All too often the details don’t come out until it’s too late.

The government doesn’t even have a clue about how much health care will cost. Even the CBO, Congress’ accountants, think health care spending for just the first 10 years will be at least $1.2 Trillion more than the Obama team estimates.  Are these people educated by the public school system and that’s why they can’t do arithmetic?  This is especially worrisome because the Obama plan has taxes and little spending in the first 5 years.  Expenses don’t kick in until six years out.  So, if all that money plus $1.2 trillion more is needed in years 6-10, how much more will we dig our grandchildren into debt in years 11-15?

If you need proof of bad arithmetic, take the government’s estimates for Social Security at any time in our history.  Take their estimates for Medicare, Medicaid, welfare, food stamps, or any other funding estimates for the War on Poverty for The Great Society.

The American people are increasingly suspicious and loathsome over back room deals to buy congressional votes at the expense of the rest of the country and they’re at it again. Why should Connecticut get a hospital and not the rest of us?  If you’re sick, will you fly to Connecticut for treatment?  Why should Florida senior citizens keep some medicare benefits the rest of us will lose?

Why do they have special money for Massachusetts?  I thought they had a model government-run health care program already.  Why do they need special money if their plan is so good?

The current bill is so bad that even the ruling party can’t get its own people to agree to vote for it.

I’ll ask the question again.  Can government really run health care? Look at the problems we have had (and still have) with the VA hospitals that are supposed to take care of the brave men and women who have sacrificed limbs and health to keep us free.  Look at the Swine Flu so-called “pandemic” that didn’t pan out.  Look at the government reports that say that women don’t need as many mammograms (but they’ll still pay for Viagra).

If the program isn’t good enough to stand on its own and you have to buy votes with special projects, the program simply isn’t good enough.  Kill it and start over, or maybe better yet, just kill it.

Stepping Stones to Totalitarianism

Technology is morally neutral.  Great advancements for humanity have come through technological advancements and no doubt, with some notable exceptions, the people who have worked to develop new technologies have done so with only the greatest of intentions or at the very least out of intellectual curiosity.

Although technology is morally neutral, I believe an argument can be made that virtually all technology came about as a result of what is called “a fallen mankind.”  Look at most of the technology that makes life easier today.  A great percentage of it came as a result of military research.  Even something like the wheel, it can be argued, was needed to move troops and materials into and out of wars.  For years the wheeled chariot was considered the ultimate weapon (assuming a relatively flat theater of war with little mud).  Time and again we see that given any technology mankind created, mankind can pervert it.

For the most part it has been evil people who have abused the use of otherwise neutral technology.  I doubt that Al Gore, when he invented the DARPA Net, now known as the Internet, technology that has enabled communication across thousands of miles and connected disparate institutions, businesses, government agencies and people,  never intended for this wonder vehicle over which you read my musings to be used by predators to lure small children into their clutches or by virus writers bent only upon making life miserable for the unsuspecting multitudes who simply want to use e-mail and communicate with friends and loved ones.  The same scalpel that can operate between the beats of a heart can stop the beating heart of an unborn baby.

So it is with technology that is being developed and coming into widespread use today for a myriad of other purposes.  For the most part developers envision machines, processes, and tools that, when used well, should make life easier, safer or more productive, and raise the quality of life for everyone.  Therefore, most of the negative consequences are unintended.

Many advances contain their own risks. Making grains resistant to disease through genetic engineering, for example, can help produce abundant food in countries where people are starving, but what kinds of new allergies might they produce?  High fructose corn syrup is considerably sweeter than the sugar we buy in the market but what are the health risks of taking in large doses over a prolonged period of time?  Artificial sweeteners reduce caloric intake but what are the long term effects that these chemicals may have on kidneys and livers?  Margarine eliminated a source of cholesterol in our diets by replacing butter but what harm have the transfats and heavy metals it contains done?  Ultrasound images of fetuses have diagnosed illnesses that have saved many a baby’s life but what effect do these intense sound waves have on the developing embryo?

Some advances can be manipulated. GPS in your phone helps you know where you are but so does anyone else who can tap into your phone.  Shoppers’ cards get you good deals at the stores while at the same time giving people access to you buying habits.  A chip in your arm may give you VIP access to your favorite club but it also lets your movements around town be tracked.  Buying items with your cell phone is convenient, until someone takes your phone or steals your identity.  Having government control your health care may be convenient until government starts mandating lifestyle choices for you and decides to tell you what you must and must not eat, which vaccines you must take, and where or how you will be treated.  It’s the “Golden Rule”: He who holds the gold makes the rules.

The list goes on.  How do you boil a frog?  Place it in water and slowly turn up the heat.

Implementing technology to control society will be done incrementally by way of several stepping stones.  Each step will introduce some labor-saving device or apparent convenience but all of which have some unintended consequences that fly in the face of their perceived benefits as they chip away at your freedom.  Most stepping stones are not dependent on the others but without due diligence on everyone’s part we’ll get to totalitarianism one relentless step at a time.  To borrow from Shakespeare, “All that glitters is not gold.”

Sometimes we need to do more than just follow the money.  We must judge both the intentions and the “un-intentions” of supposed advances.  I claim no psychic or prophetic powers here.  I simply look at society and technology and where they may be taking us if we’re not careful.

How much does convenience cost?  Probably not much more than your freedom and civil liberty.

Is What they’re Smoking Covered by the Health Plan?

It can’t just be the power.  Either something is infecting them or they’re on some kind of fantastic drugs, but Congress has to be out of touch with reality if the current debate on the health care bill is any indication.

The health care system can be fixed of its ills.  However, Congress just seems to make things worse all the time.  Is the “public option” (read that government-provided insurance) on or off the table?  USA Today reports that pork barrel politics are not dead when it comes to healthcare.  There is plenty of pork in there, pork that only adds to the cost.  Remember, the original bill was almost 2,000 pages long.  Has anyone who has to vote on it bothered to read this latest copy of the bill to see what was put in it?

However, the most amazing thing about this debate is the desire by some to allow younger people to buy into Medicare.  Think about it.  How many times have you seen “We’re sorry but we are no longer taking new Medicare patients” signs in your doctor’s office?  Will they be able to buy into Part A and Part B?  What about drug coverage?  And remember drug coverage was designed for people who are on long-term drug regimens.  It’s for people who need to take the same drugs every day for years if not until they die.  How many younger people are on that kind of drug therapy?  Could it ever work?  If you look rationally at it, I can’t see how.

There is good news, however.  Since the government also runs the establishments that decide if procedures are medically necessary, if they need to save money, suddenly you’ll find that some procedure or therapy is overrated and no longer necessary. Oops! Not gonna pay for it!  You hurt your arm?  Who needs an x-ray?  Suck it up and walk it off.  You’ll hear arguments like, “When I was young I didn’t have MRIs as I walked 3 miles through the snow to school uphill in both directions.  Why do you think you need them now?”

Remember these are the same people who warned us of the dire H1N1 Swine Flu pandemic that’s now been downgraded to a mere epidemic.  Why has it been downgraded?  Is it because they called it wrong in the first place? Did they run out of vaccine and don’t want people to think they need it any more? Is it because they just don’t want to treat the people? Are they embarrassed over the problems with vaccine distribution?

There’s a reason why the medical establishment is not the insurance industry (for the most part).  When the two become one through socialized medicine, the same ones who have to pay for your treatment will be the ones who decide if you get it or not.  Another way to say it is that the ones who pay the bills will decide if you live long enough to generate a bill for them to pay.

Is the coverage all encompassing?  They won’t pay for your mammogram but they will kill your baby for you.