Author: Redactor

Categories
free trade & free markets national politics & policies too much government

A Fraudulent Pill to Swallow

If you’re like me, you often rub up against common opinion and find little sense in it — or, as I like to put it, popular opinion with the common sense bled out of it.

On Monday I reported on an anti-Obamacare lawsuit against the federal government for mandating the purchase of medical insurance that included “free” contraceptive drugs (including “morning after pills”). I took on the obvious problems, but neglected to mention that it’s not insurance.

I guess you can call turnips “rainbows” and politicians “angels,” but, based on accepted meanings of terms, it is not “insurance” when benefits include regular maintenance or common preventive (“prophylactic”) products.

One doesn’t insure against dandruff by buying a policy that provides you with “free” shampoo or against sunburn by purchasing a policy that offers free SPF50 sunscreen. One doesn’t insure against obesity with insurance that provides “free” healthy foods according to This Diet or That Diet.

For instance, it would be absurd to have an insurance policy to pay for one’s vitamins.

In a sense, the vitamins are the insurance. Think of them as a separate, medicinal form of insurance, which you pay for at purchase.

Same for contraception.

One buys insurance for unexpected and irregular needs. Calling Obamacare’s “contraception benefit” mandate “insurance” is a fib.

Much of what we think of as insurance actually amounts to confused (and confusing) methods of savings (at best) or a confidence game to get some people to pay for the regular goods and services other folks use (at worst). By force and fraud.

The force is the government mandate. The fraud is calling this whole program “insurance.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes.

Categories
government transparency

Hidden Taxpayer Treasure

If I found $54 million I didn’t know I had, I’d be ecstatic. Yet, when California taxpayers discovered $54 million stuck in secret state parks system bank accounts, they were miffed.

California parks, constrained by the state’s multi-year budget crunch, were facing closure. Meanwhile, these funds went unreported to the Department of Finance. Ruth Coleman, who has led the parks system for the last decade, resigned. Her second-in-command was fired.

A spokesperson for California’s finance department admitted that, historically, the department had relied upon “accurate and correct accounting being reported to us by the relevant departments.” The San Jose Mercury News called it, “The little-known practice of trusting — and not verifying . . .”

Seems there are 500 “special funds” accounting for supposedly $37 billion about which California’s Department of Finance doesn’t have any real clue.

Jonathan Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, says this is hardly “an isolated incident,” and points out that it must be piled “on top of the High Speed Rail fiasco, pay hikes for legislative employees, having to pay $34 million in penalties for overdue bills, raids on special funds to pay for Legislative malfeasance, etc.”

Meanwhile, Governor Jerry Brown continues to push a tax increase. One of his arguments for the tax hike has been that parks were being closed due to the budget crunch — er, well, rather, due to state officials hiding $54 million dollars.

The Governor’s tax initiative is in trouble. Coupal notes that fiscally prudent Californians have defeated the last eight tax increases on the ballot.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

F. Byrdsall

The great object of a constitution is, to prevent the officers of government from assuming powers incompatible with the natural rights of man; and it is certain that our present constitution does not accomplish this paramount design. If the powers of public agents under it are distinctly limited and clearly defined, why should their political principles be a matter of such solicitude at elections? If the constitution contains a plain guarantee of the rights of the people, whence the necessity of pledging legislators not to violate those rights? The plain truth is, that constitutions in these United States have been constructed in the spirit of compromise. . . .

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First Amendment rights Ninth Amendment rights too much government

The First Isn’t Enough

The First Amendment isn’t enough.

Because its provisions have stronger teeth than most other amendments in the Bill of Rights, it gets put into service quite a lot, to bolster other freedoms. It’s a pity there’s no general “right to freedom” — or even “freedom of contract” — amendment.

A Western Pennsylvania Christian higher education outfit, Geneva College, joined by Seneca Hardware Lumber Co. in Cranberry, has sued the federal government over the new “Obamacare” requirement to provide morning-after “contraception” to employees, saying that the provision violates their religious freedom. The Justice Department argues that the case should be thrown out, on grounds that public entities like the college and the lumber company do not possess the legal right to “impose” their religious values on others.

As noted at reason.com, this is a weird misreading of the crucial negative right/positive right distinction: Under the “negative right” to freedom, an employer not providing a benefit to employees imposes nothing. Quite literally. The imposition lies entirely with the government forcing its way into contracts between businesses and employees.

One could construe a positive right to contraception, I guess, but that positive right would also be an imposition. “Imposition” belongs to the language of positive rights.

The government’s lawyers also object to the hardware company seeking sanctuary (so to speak) in the First Amendment to oppose the contraception mandate. If just anyone can appeal to the First Amendment’s freedom of religious exercise clause, then the government could hardly enforce conformity.

Well, yes.

That’s the idea of limited government. The problem, today, is that we citizens don’t have enough legal oomph to protect ourselves (either as employers or employees) from the federal government’s vast overreach.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
Thought

Equal Rights Party, 1837

Government is but an agent to exercise such powers as are expressly delegated to it by the people.

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Thought

Equal Rights Party, 1837

Man’s natural rights of person are, his right to exist, and to enjoy his existence; and the right to exercise those physical and mental faculties with which nature has endowed him. Man’s natural rights in relation to things are, his right to the things produced by the exercise of his personal endowments, and his right to participate in those bounties which nature has equally given to all. Right, as relates to action, is that principle of equality which teaches man to do to others as he would that others should do to him. Those acts are naturally, politically, and morally right, which may be done by all without injury to any.

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Thought

Thomas Paine

The true and only true basis of representative government is equality of rights.

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individual achievement video

Video: A Truly Great Olympian

A great sports event held greater-than-usual significance:

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Thought

C. S. Lewis

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.