Author Archives: Quincy

A modest proposal

Following along the lines of Glenn Reynolds’ proposal of a 50% surtax on the earnings of former government officials, here’s my modest proposal for our elected officials:

For 10 years after leaving office, each elected official shall pay the highest income tax rate for which he cast a “yes” vote. Same goes for a president signing a tax rate into law.

If Nancy Pelosi cast a vote to raise the top income tax bracket to 75%, *she* would pay 75%. If Harry Reid voted for a top tax bracket of 55%, *he* would pay 55%.

Why should we allow our legislators to demand sacrifices of innocent citizens that they are not willing to make themselves?

Quote of the Day – Eyes wide shut?

In making the case for open and obvious centralized rationing, advocates claim that “we” must ration with “our” eyes open. From Beth Haynes at PJM:

That’s why Medicare needs the Independent Payment Advisory Board. Setting a cap on spending is the first step of rationing. The next is deciding who gets what medical care.

“Limited resources require decisions about who will have access to care and the extent of their coverage.” (Berwick, 1999)

As physician-blogger Dr. Richard Fogoros puts it: we can either ration overtly or covertly (“with our eyes open” or closed) — but ration we must.

The only problem with this is that a national central planner (or committee) can have their eyes wide open, yet will still be totally blind. No matter how hard you look, you can’t see a building that’s 3,000 miles away with the naked eye, can you? Centralized planners face the inevitable limitation of vision imposed by distance and the human being’s limited ability to comprehend information.

Technology increases the distance the planners can see, and allows them to comprehend more of what they see. But, contrary to the belief of the planners themselves, they’re still essentially blind. What the planners call careful, scientific decision-making I call groping blindly for solutions based on assumptions and personal preferences.

The fundamental truth forseeing the failure of Obamacare is that only individuals can ration well for themselves. Whatever centralized planners do, it’s with eyes wide shut.

The saving grace of federalism

Were it not for our federalist system, the debate over Real ID would have been over long ago. Fortunately, it’s still going:

The political problem for the GOP committee chairmen is that the 2005 Real ID Act has proven to be anything but popular: legislatures of two dozen states have voted to reject its requirements, and in the Michigan and Pennsylvania legislatures one chamber has done so.

That didn’t stop the House Republicans from saying in a letter this week to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano that “any further extension of Real ID threatens the security of the United States.” Unless Homeland Security grants an extension, the law’s requirements take effect on May 11.

Hopefully this comes to a head, and hopefully the Republicans pushing this get an education in federalism. It’s going to come in mighty handy in resisting Obamacare.

Unjustified self-righteousness

Apparently, a member of the Denver teachers union thinks she knows what work is:

That’s your problem. You’re an entrepreneur, so you don’t work. You don’t know what work is until you get into an educational area.

Warren over at Coyote Blog replies:

Yep, some day I will have to stop loafing around and take on a brutal assistant principal job somewhere. All I have to worry about is that every dollar I own (and more) is invested in my business and could disappear at any time if I make a mistake

Now, as an IT professional, my viewpoint on hard work is a little more extreme than most. Fifty hours, the point at which every teacher at that protest would be complaining bitterly, is a moderate week for me. My worst work week topped out at just under 100 hours. To put that number in perspective, remember that a week is only 168 hours long. My worst continuous stretch was 42 hours straight of emergency work. Why work so hard? Because I’ve got customers who are impacted if things aren’t working. Because development delays can cost companies thousands of dollars a day.

Compare that to the life of a teacher, and that’s pretty damned rough. Compare that to truly high-stress, high-demand professions, and it’s not that bad. I wouldn’t trade places with a power company lineman who has to labor under potentially-lethal conditions and extreme pressure to get people’s power back on in an emergency. Nor would I trade places with an ER doctor or nurse who works long hours tending to sick and shattered people. Nor would I trade places with a harbor pilot or air traffic controller, who run the risk of causing massive damage with a moment of inattention.

Millions of people in this country do jobs that make teaching look like a cakewalk. Now, in a perfect world, that quote from a teacher wouldn’t cause someone like me the least bit of offense. But it’s an imperfect world where this teacher is using completely unjustified self-righteousness as a weapon to stifle debate on the issue of public sector compensation. I find that offensive.

Now this is a call to violence

Even with all the crowing from the authoritarian left about violent rhetoric, I have yet to see a call to violence as clear as this one from leftist Sociologist Frances Fox Piven:

So where are the angry crowds, the demonstrations, sit-ins and unruly mobs?

[…]

Second, before people can mobilize for collective action, they have to develop a proud and angry identity and a set of claims that go with that identity. They have to go from being hurt and ashamed to being angry and indignant.

[…]

Third, protesters need targets, preferably local and accessible ones capable of making some kind of response to angry demands.

[…]

An effective movement of the unemployed will have to look something like the strikes and riots that have spread across Greece in response to the austerity measures forced on the Greek government by the European Union, or like the student protests that recently spread with lightning speed across England in response to the prospect of greatly increased school fees.

Piven is calling for the types of protests where rocks are hurled and molotov cocktails are thrown. She wants protests where property is destroyed and people are killed. She hopes that such moves will intimidate government at all levels in this nation into further forced redistribution of wealth.

As commenter Florida pointed out over at Althouse:

They [the leftists] want violence … as long as it’s THEIR violence.

As long as they are the ones bringing the thugs to the town hall meetings.

As long as they are the ones telling US what we must buy and who we can watch and what they can say.

That’s all they want.

Yeah, that’s all they want. Remember, Piven and her ilk are the kind who claim moral superiority to the rest of us. They arrogate to themselves the moral authority to regulate any aspect of our lives they choose. If we don’t cooperate with them, they are willing to intimidate us, hurt us, and kill us. The thought of a free society of equals is simply beyond their comprehension.

To the left, words in opposition to their cause are more violent than assault and murder in support of it. Never forget that.

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