Managed care was introduced during Nixon years. It brought PPOs, HMOs, and tax credits. Coorporate medicine developed from this. The drug companies, health management companies, and insurance companies who most effectively took over the government-mandated money ended up in charge of the system.

Don’t let anyone tell you that today’s high cost of medicine is caused by the free market. It was caused by government manipulations.

“Breaking: TVNewser has learned the CBS Evening News has once again set an all-time low last week with 4.89 million Total Viewers and 1.42 million A25-54 viewers. But it was also the lowest (since records began in the 1991-’92 season) for ABC’s World News with Charles Gibson. The Gibson program drew 6.42 million Total Viewers and 1.77 million A25-54 viewers.” (Read more from mediabistro.com)

ABCNNBBCBS: “Quick! Find anchor women with bigger boobs and shorter skirts!”

truth matters . . .

Another great Lew Rockwell podcast.

Scott Horton: What the Heck Happened to the Peace Movement? April 28, 2009.

Yes we can!

“Congress is expected to vote today on a $106 billion supplemental war funding bill. The White House and Democratic leadership have been trying to muscle through the bill, which would support escalating the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In May, fifty-one antiwar Democrats opposed an earlier version of the bill. Now House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been trying to pressure some of those Democrats to switch their votes in order to get the necessary votes to pass the bill.” (Read more from democracynow.org)

See Also:

I’m a big fan of Lew Rockwell podcasts. I often listen to them while preparing breakfast. These two interviews both touch on what’s a new idea to me: college as government intervention – guaranteeing loans, subsidizing student lending, eliminating free market disciplines on Universities. Suddenly I see in a new light the extravagant cost of tuition, the legions of people devoting thousands of hours to subject which they themselves do not care about.

Peter Schiff: You’re Better Off as a Renter. March 23, 2009.
Peter Schiff talks about the college in the last quarter of the interview, from 11:30 onward.

Gerald Celente: The Fed Has Wounded You. April 26, 2009.
Gerald Celente only touches on it briefly in this great interview, from 9:45 to 12:30.

Taleb: “Obama’s Attempts to Fight the Financial Crisis with More Cash is like Treating a Bad Tooth with Novocain Instead of a Root Canal”
“In the quote of the day, Nassim Nicholas Taleb told CNBC: The Obama administration’s attempts to fight the financial crisis with more cash is like treating a bad tooth with Novocain instead of a root canal… Do not delay a root canal. Don’t do piecemeal solutions to a problem that is fundamental.

Taleb’s previous one-liners include:
What is fragile should break early while it is still small.
No socialisation of losses and privatisation of gains.
People who were driving a school bus blindfolded (and crashed it) should never be given a new bus.
Do not let someone making an “incentive” bonus manage a nuclear plant – or your financial risks.
Counter-balance complexity with simplicity.
Do not give children sticks of dynamite, even if they come with a warning .
Only Ponzi schemes should depend on confidence. Governments should never need to “restore confidence”.
Do not give an addict more drugs if he has withdrawal pains.” (Read more from www.washingtonblog.com)

Nobel Economist: Government’s Response is WORSE than Socialism
“Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz says that the government’s response to the financial crisis is worse than socialism:

Some have called this ’socialism with American characteristics’. But socialism is concerned about ordinary individuals. By contrast, the US has provided little help for the millions of its people who are losing their homes. Workers who lose their jobs receive only 39 weeks of limited unemployment benefits, and are then left on their own. And, when they lose their jobs, most also lose their health insurance.

America has expanded its corporate safety net in unprecedented ways, from commercial banks to investment banks, then to insurance, and now to cars, with no end in sight. In truth, this is not socialism, but an extension of long-standing corporate welfarism. The rich and powerful turn to the Government to help them whenever they can, while needy individuals get little social protection.” (Read more from www.washingtonblog.com)

YES WE CAN!

The discussion that accompanied this photo in reddit’s business section was interesting. Some immediately recognized this as exploitative by the workers earning the money, evidence that government, unlike private enterprise is rife with inefficiency. Others rushed to the defense of labor – so what if workers are taking advantage of overtime pay to earn more money.

Even if the workers are merely “taking advantage of overtime pay,” this is still an indictment of government. There’s no reason a manager should allow so much time-and-a-half pay that workers get $100k for cleaning transit cars. It’d be more efficient to hire more people. Of course, government isn’t bound by market forces which demand efficiency. When a company is inefficient is loses profit or goes out of business. When a government is inefficient, taxes are increased and its budget goes up.

“Before the US House of Representatives, June 4, 2009

Madam Speaker, before voting on the ‘cap-and-trade’ legislation, my colleagues should consider the views expressed in the following petition that has been signed by 31,478 American scientists:

‘We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan in December, 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.

There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.’

Circulated through the mail by a distinguished group of American physical scientists and supported by a definitive review of the peer-reviewed scientific literature, this may be the strongest and most widely supported statement on this subject that has been made by the scientific community. A state-by-state listing of the signers, which include 9,029 men and women with PhD degrees, a listing of their academic specialties, and a peer-reviewed summary of the science on this subject are available at www.petitionproject.org.

The peer-reviewed summary, ‘Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide’ by A. B. Robinson, N. E. Robinson, and W. Soon includes 132 references to the scientific literature and was circulated with the petition.

Signers of this petition include 3,803 with specific training in atmospheric, earth, and environmental sciences. All 31,478 of the signers have the necessary training in physics, chemistry, and mathematics to understand and evaluate the scientific data relevant to the human-caused global warming hypothesis and to the effects of human activities upon environmental quality.” (Read more from campaignforliberty.com)

“Regrettably, the current focus on the causes of the crisis continually misidentifies its true source, resulting in prescribed cures that fall short of the necessary actions. Peter Gumbel writing for the December 4th, 2008, edition of Fortune reckons previous Prime Minister Oddsson’s free-market reforms during his 1991-2004 years in office are what ultimately gave rise to the bust. Likewise, the IMF’s mission chief sent to Iceland to survey the nature of the problem, Poul Thomsen, recently commented in an interview that the root problem in Iceland was an unregulated environment that allowed an oversized banking system to develop. Indeed, the post-privatization banking experienced in Iceland resulted in a banking sector that saw assets increase to over 1,400% of GDP!

What analysts and authors commonly miss is the reason the banking sector could expand so rapidly. Indeed, as we shall see, the incentive structure of the Icelandic economy was manipulated through government guarantees, artificially low interest rates, and monetary spigots opened wide, allowing liquidity to be flushed through the economy. In addition, Iceland’s homeowners were offered tantalizingly low interest rates through the ‘Housing Financing Fund’ (HFF), a state agency that enjoyed explicit government guarantees on its debt, resulting in reduced interest charges for homeowners. Interestingly, while the Fund’s merely implicitly guaranteed American counterparts – Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae – have been the center of much controversy, the HFF has remained relatively unscathed.

The policy prescriptions in the wake of the crisis have called for more interventions, which will prove to exacerbate the situation if put into effect. Only by gaining a true understanding of the unsustainable and artificial nature of the boom of the past decade may we arrive at effective solutions to navigate the bust that engulfs the country.” (Read more from mises.org)

“Last week saw more than 400 attacks, eight times the rate of January 2004.

Gen Petraeus said the numbers of insurgent attacks was expected to increase as troops target their bases and safe havens.

There are currently more than 70,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan, mostly under Nato command.

The Obama administration plans to send an additional 21,000 troops.” (Read more from news.bbc.co.uk)

More change we can believe in.

Schizophrenia is a euphemism. Hypocrisy and/or idiocy is more apt.

“As Hulsmann explains, the ‘leadership of the U.S. Federal Reserve is aware of this situation.’ (Page 233) OK. That’s reassuring. But if U.S. officials are concerned about the terrible consequences of a POSSIBLE dumping of dollars on the U.S. market, why are they UNCONCERNED about the consequences of their own efforts to stimulate the economy, which involves the same mechanism that they so fear from foreign actions; that is, massive expansion of the money supply?

The government has taken two actions that will expand the money supply every bit as much as possible foreign actions to dump the dollar–expansion of the monetary base by the Federal Reserve Bank and the Obama administration’s spending spree.” (Read more from patrickbarron.blogspot.com)