On March 17, 1780, General George Washington granted the Continental Army a holiday “as an act of solidarity with the Irish in their fight for independence.”
Categories
Solidarity with the Irish
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan insists that his “TrumpCare” plan to replace ObamaCare will decrease medical insurance rates. Others argue that his American Health Care Act will increase those rates. Likewise, he expects it to reduce strain on federal budgets; others deny this outright. The “coverage” issue is just as contentious.
TrumpCare is a mess because it is isn’t “DumpCare.” What’s needed is not yet another regulation-plus-subsidy system. We need repeal and then . . . more repeals.
Unfortunately, President Donald Trump has never really been on board with this. He has promised that no one would lose “coverage,” assuming that “coverage” is “health care.”
It is not. State charity programs like Medicaid (upon which ObamaCare relied way too much) are merely ways to pay for services. Dumping a gimcrack payment system is not the same as decreasing medical services. “DumpCare” wouldn’t dump care, only insane government.
For example, we know that health care outcomes for poor folks without Medicaid turn out to be better than poor folks with Medicaid.* Increasing the number of people on formalized subsidy programs is no panacea.
Besides, ObamaCare severely under-delivered on “coverage.”
New programs, nevertheless, are traps, regardless of demerit: once you provide a benefit, folks come to rely on it and demand more — objecting when it’s taken away. Which is why few programs are ever repealed, despite failing to meet original expectations.
So far, the “small government party” hasn’t found the courage to actually limit government. Do Republicans really believe what they say, that fewer regulations and subsidies will lead to lower costs and better service?
It seems Republicans won’t take their own prescription.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Oregon’s 2008 Medicaid “natural experiment” provides reasons to question the merits of the program. As the initial, randomized, controlled study found, “Medicaid coverage generated no significant improvements in measured physical health outcomes in the first 2 years, but it did increase use of health care services. . . .”
Categories
Madison and Freeing the Slaves
On March 16, 1995, the state of Mississippi formally ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, becoming the last state of the Union to approve the abolition of slavery. The Thirteenth Amendment had been officially ratified in 1865, one hundred thirty years earlier.
James Madison, fourth President of the United States and “Father of the Constitution,” was born on this date in 1751.
To study and not think is a waste. To think and not study is dangerous.
Master Kong, The Analects, second chapter.
The Dutch were among the first to witness Islamic extremist violence against free speech. The November 2004 murder of Theo van Gogh by a Dutch citizen of Moroccan descent — a man whose first name, Mohammed, almost no one thinks is merely coincidental — stirred the nation.
And the world.
Van Gogh made a short film, with Somalian émigré Ayaan Hirsi Ali, about the unjust treatment of women in Islamic countries. The film criticizes Islam as well as the Muslim majority countries, and was considered an affront by many Muslims.
After van Gogh’s death, Ms. Ali fled to the United States.
This event is only the most famous of many similar conflicts between free-speech Dutch values and regulated-speech Islamist ones. The fact that the country has anti-blasphemy and anti-insult laws on the books, and these have been directed against a popular politician, has exacerbated the growing antagonism.
That very politician is today’s big news. According to The Atlantic, the “center-right People’s Party (VVD) for Freedom and Democracy is projected to win 24 seats in [today’s] election, slightly ahead of Geert Wilders’s far-right Dutch Freedom Party (PVV), which is expected to gain 22.”**
The Dutch center-left, like similar ruling groups in Britain, Germany, France and Sweden, often seems weak and timid before the rising illiberalism of Islamist terrorism and Sharia law.* Many suspect that the recent decision to block Turkish ministers from speaking at rallies in Holland, before Turkey’s referendum next month, is designed to counter this narrative.
Meanwhile, though Wilders is generally liberal (not “far right”) on most cultural issues, his “de-Islamization” program seeks to close mosques and outlaw the Quran***.
One extreme to another.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* This is not just a bugaboo. In 2006 the Minister of Justice floated the possibility of incorporating Sharia law into the constitution.
** The projection is within the margin of error, and with mass immigrant Turkish protests taking place over the weekend, the chance of a Trump-like upset is more than possible.
*** Geert Wilders compares the Quran to Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.
Categories
Two Men, Two Republics
March 15 was “the Ides of March” in the Roman calendar. On that date in 44 BC, Julius Caesar, Dictator of the Roman Republic, was stabbed to death by a handful of prominent senators.
On the same date in 1783, General George Washington eloquently entreated his officers not to support the Newburgh Conspiracy. His plea was successful and the threatened coup d’état never took place.
Categories
Ludwig von Mises
Neither as judges allotting praise and blame nor as avengers seeking out the guilty should we face the past. We seek truth, not guilt; we want to know how things came about to understand them, not to issue condemnations. Whoever approaches history the way a prosecutor approaches the documents of a criminal case — to find material for indictments — had better stay away from it. It is not the task of history to gratify the needs of the masses for heroes and scapegoats.
Ludwig von Mises, Nation, State, and Economy, Leland B. Yeager, trans. (1919, 1983).
Michael Brown is dead. No video can bring him back.
As the world remembers, Brown was the unarmed 18-year-old black man killed in a violent 2014 altercation with Officer Darren Wilson, who is white — making Ferguson, Missouri, famous.
Or rather, infamous.
With little information, folks quickly picked sides. Some claimed Brown was gunned down in cold blood with his hands up, yelling, “Don’t shoot.” After seeing footage from a convenience store surveillance camera, which showed Brown seeming to strong-arm an employee and steal cigarillos* mere minutes before the fatal police encounter, others placed the blame on Brown.
Subsequent rioting left dozens injured, seventeen businesses torched and millions in property damage. Meanwhile, President Obama’s Department of Justice found Officer Wilson’s actions justified.
However, had Wilson been equipped with a lapel camera, that footage would have enhanced finding justice. Moreover, the knowledge that the public could see the truth of what happened might have prevented the riots and recriminations.
More information is better.
That’s why the best news of all is this: on April 4, three weeks from today, the people of Ferguson will vote on The Public Video Recording Accountability Amendment to Ferguson’s City Charter. The charter amendment mandates that officers wear lapel cameras while on duty and sets sensible rules for allowing maximum public access.
The campaign needs your help to alert Ferguson voters about the election by mailing information on the ballot measure. For instance, studies demonstrate that not only do police behave better when wearing cameras, but so do the citizens with whom they interact.
Would you give five dollars for Ferguson?
Please help bring a better day for justice and transparency.
It’s Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
* Over the weekend, more video surfaced from the convenience store as part of a documentary entitled, “Stranger Fruit,” which suggested Michael Brown had made a drug deal at the store, and not stolen anything. A St. Louis County prosecutor disputed the filmmaker’s interpretation, and released more footage.
Categories
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindicaton of the Rights of Woman (1792), chapter 4.
Men . . . submit every where to oppression, when they have only to lift up their heads to throw off the yoke; yet, instead of asserting their birthright, they quietly lick the dust and say, let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. Women, I argue from analogy, are degraded by the same propensity to enjoy the present moment; and, at last, despise the freedom which they have not sufficient virtue to struggle to attain.
On March 14, 1900, the Gold Standard Act was ratified, ending the long practice of bimetallism by placing the United States Treasury — and banking and currency — on the gold standard.