Marx, Robin Hood, and Obama

“From each according to his ability; to each according to his need.” “Take from the rich; give to the poor.” “When you spread the wealth around, it is good for everyone”. It’s not like President Obama thought this up on his own.

At least Karl Marx recognized that people have different abilities, an objective reality that American socialists today can’t seem to grasp. But at the end of his life, after observing his theories put into practice, Marx renounced them, writing “I am not a communist”. He came to realize that exclusion of private property was a fatal flaw in his theories, because self-interest, not the need of others, is what motivates humans to produce.

And everyone has heard the story of Robin Hood, but most retellings omit the crucial detail that changes the entire point of the story; the money he took from the rich was stolen from the poor in the first place. The real moral of the story is that money rightfully belongs to those who earned it – we Libertarians have been trying to tell you that all along.

That leaves President Obama and Congress to be set straight about socialism. And let’s just call it what it is. How else would you describe a tax system that takes according to ability and an entitlement scheme that distributes according to need? How is “taxing the rich” not taking from the rich? When you claim ownership of the entire planet to “save” it, is there any private property rights left to infringe upon?

How does need justify taking? This is the morality of the rapist, the looter, the con artist, the cannibal. Who taught us it was enlightened, compassionate, and progressive? Why did we listen to them? Why do we let them teach our children?

Socialism fails because it rests on a false premise; namely that people of greater ability will continue to produce for the benefit of people of lesser ability. They don’t; they quit producing, and then they leave. Look around, many already have.

Each week, over 1,000 people leave our highest-tax states and relocate to lower tax states. These are rich people – the most able and most productive citizens of states like New York, California, New Jersey, and here in Wisconsin. Our “progressive” tax system will net 7.75% of zero once they leave, and hundreds of jobs go along with them. It’s not like we weren’t warned enough times that it would happen.

The capitalists in Texas, Tennessee, and New Hampshire are quite happy to welcome them, along with the wealth and employment these refugees bring. Who is surprised that those states are outperforming us economically? Did we learn nothing from the two Germanys, two Koreas, and two Chinas? Did we think it would be different here? Did we forget know how we came to be prosperous in the first place?

When Europe turned to socialism in the late 19^th century, the United States was the beneficiary of a massive wave of immigration. Who came here? The most able, the most ambitious, the most independent, and the most honorable Europeans left there to come here. They came because we valued Liberty, industry, charity, private property, honesty, equal opportunity, faith, and profit. They rejected entitlement and sought opportunity. That’s what people of great ability do.

Men of lesser ability remained to claim their entitlements and plunged Europe into economic collapse, war, pestilence, famine, and disease; hastening the evolution of their socialist governments into their most pure and brutish totalitarian forms – communist Russia, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Militarist Spain. It was not by accident that these regimes rose up there; the socialists were in charge. They have still not recovered.

And why now, do you suppose, that China and India are prospering? Do you think that two thousand rice farmers had a meeting one day and decided to build a toy factory instead of planting the paddies? Do you think a peasant woke up and simply guessed how to design an electric motor? How to construct a skyscraper? How to find deposits of ore buried deep underground? Did a billion Chinese people come over here to copy the secrets of American productivity? No, our most productive people went there. And can you blame them for leaving?

We drove them out. We taxed them and regulated them and told them they couldn’t do this and couldn’t do that. We stopped them from drilling, mining, logging, building factories, refineries, steel mills, power plants, ships, transmission lines, railroads, and dams. We told them they were less important than a salamander.

We seized the money they earned and chided them when they complained. We deprived them of energy, materials, and labor they needed to make the things that we needed even more. We called them exploiters, imperialists, polluters, greedy, immoral; we restricted their pay and forced them to pay us more. We called their profits “excessive”, while our claims on their wealth knew no bounds.

We told them in a hundred ways they were not wanted here; and then we blamed them when they listened to us and left. We got what we wanted; they are not exploiting us any more.

Our socialist government is not just bad, it is deadly. When all the producers are chased out of this nation, we will be left with only the cannibals and parasites that lived off them, and a government that has no means to keep us alive.

That GS-9 over there at the U.S. Department of Agriculture can’t feed you. You need greedy capitalist farmers, imperialist corporatist agri-businesses, and politically incorrect truckers to have food to eat. My need didn’t put a single gallon of milk in the fridge; some unknown farmers’ desire for profits did that.

And why should he keep getting up at 4 AM when we take 46% of his earnings? Will he go back to tilling his fields by hand when we cap his energy use and shut down his tractors? No, he will quit farming and we will starve.

Even then, Tammy and Nancy and President Obama will not admit they are wrong. It is not important that they do; it is important that they are removed from power before we reach that day.

This campaign is not about gaining control over the levers of government power; it is about dismantling that machinery before it is too late. It’s about you reclaiming your Liberty from the socialists in both parties who have taken it away, bit by bit, over the past 50 years. It is about returning the greatest nation the world has ever known to greatness, so that the worlds most able come here again and we all prosper.

Vote Libertarian. Vote for Tim, Not Tammy.

Tim Nerenz is the Libertarian Party Candidate for U.S. House of Representatives from Wisconsin’s 2nd District. To support Dr. Tim’s campaign, please visit the campaign website at www.timnerenz.com.

A Woman’s Right To Choose

Democrats assume they will win a majority of women’s votes with a few noisy proclamations of their support for “a woman’s right to choose”. Not so fast.

What about a woman’s right to choose what schools her children will attend?

What about a woman’s right to choose her own health insurance?

What about a woman’s right to choose what kind of gun to own? How to carry it?

What about a woman’s right to choose what kind of car she drives? How many? What she tows behind them?

What about a woman’s right to choose whether or not to smoke, what to smoke, and where to smoke it?

What about a woman’s right to choose whether or not to join a union?

What about a woman’s right to choose whether or not to recycle?

What about a woman’s right to choose how much energy she consumes, and what she uses it for?

What about a woman’s right to choose which charities she gives her money to?

What about a woman’s right to raise and discipline her children as she believes proper?

What about a woman’s right to choose what substances she puts into her own body and for what purposes?

What about a woman’s right to choose how much of her income to save, spend, invest, gift, and pass on to her heirs?

What about a woman’s right to choose which radio and television stations she will listen to and watch?

What about a woman’s right to choose to start a business and operate it the way she thinks best? To hire who she wants? To pay them compensation she believes to be fair?

What about a woman’s right to choose to access energy sequestered on public lands?

What about a woman’s right to choose what medicines to use and what medical treatments to seek out for herself and her family?

What about a woman’s right to choose between a public pension and private retirement saving plan?

What about a woman’s right to choose not to invest in GM, Chrysler, AIG, and the Wall Street banks?

What about a woman’s right to choose what bumper stickers to put on her vehicle without being labeled a terrorist suspect?

What about a woman’s right to choose to trade with people from any nation on earth?

What about a woman’s right to choose whether or not to increase her indebtedness?

What about a woman’s right to choose whether or not to enjoy an adult beverage at 18?

Empty slogans don’t fool anyone – you can’t be for choice but against choices. And what high principle instructs that a woman’s right to choose applies only to abortion? Do Democrats think women can only be trusted to make reproductive choices? What are they saying – that the rest of life is just too complicated for a female to manage on her own? That is a demeaning view of women, if you ask me.

We Libertarians hold women in much higher regard. We think women should be free to make economic choices, health choices, moral choices, family choices, career choices, school choices, entertainment choices, security choices, travel choices, drug choices, energy choices, charity choices, and pension choices. We trust women. We respect their judgment. Apparently, not everyone else shares these views.

Libertarians are pro-choice on everything, not just one thing. We are pro-choices plural, not just pro-choice singular. We are for choice from A-Z, not from A – Ab.

We trust both women and men to make the best choices for their own lives and families. We think that all issues are “women’s issues” – not just one or two as designated by Democrat elites.

We oppose the very idea of group-think; we know that each individual person – male or female – will make choices based upon their own conscience and beliefs. We respect those choices; that is how you show respect for the person who made them. Respect is the basis of civil order, not involuntary compliance.

Libertarians are the genuine advocates of equal rights; we do not differentiate between men’s Liberty and women’s Liberty. Liberty is the absence of government in choice – all choice.

Tim Nerenz is the Libertarian Party Candidate for U.S. House of Representatives from Wisconsin’s 2nd District. To support Dr. Tim’s campaign, please visit the campaign website at www.timnerenz.com.

Katrina Kare

Tammy Baldwin has made nationalized health care her legislative priority. My response can be summed up in two words: Katrina Kare.

Before we turn over another 17% of our GDP to the government, we might reflect on how they are doing with the auto companies, banks, and insurance companies we have recently placed in their custody. That should be the end of it; but alas, advocates for more government deal with intentions and theories, not consequences and realities.

Health care is different than cars and banks. If GM goes under, you can still buy a Hyundai; if you can’t get angioplasty, you die. We want the best care available and we want it fast. “Best” and “fast” are adjectives not used often to describe government – think FEMA, IRS, TSA, HUD, Medicare, and the VA. Would anyone think the probabilities of breakthrough drugs for things like cancer or autism would improve with Barney Frank telling the pharmaceutical companies what to do?

Democrats are bound and determined to nationalize health care. Why? Probably because the Europeans do it – this seems to be the socialists’ equivalent of the capitalists’ keeping up with the Joneses. Where’s mom when we need her: “and if the Danes and Belgians jumped off a cliff…………..?”.

President Obama is delivering on his promise of hope; we are all hoping somebody else will pick up the tab. In February, his budget requested $650 billion to extend health insurance to 47 million uninsured Americans. A month later, the Congressional Budget Office revised the cost of the plan to $1.5 trillion. It is a sad commentary when the doubling in cost of a government program is no longer newsworthy. By the way, that is $12,000 for each job in the private sector – that’s who picks up the tab.

Massachusetts mandated universal compulsory coverage in 2006; this is the template for the Obama/Baldwin first step towards government-run healthcare. In less than three years, costs there have gone up 42% and now the Governor is threatening to impose rationing of care if the bureaucrats running the system don’t do it themselves. Tammy wants to impose this misguided plan nationwide. Bad idea.

The rationale du jour for imposing socialized medicine here in the U.S. is that we spend more than other countries on healthcare. So what? We also spend more on Hip-hop music, so should we create a Department of Rap? The music would suck, and 50 Cent would be $1.50 Cent after just a couple rounds of earmarks.

Other countries keep their cost down by rationing health care and paying their doctors and nurses less. 5% of Americans consume 50% of healthcare; if spending less is the goal, we could just withhold treatment and let them die. That would cut our cost in half – take that, Sweden. That is a ridiculous way to measure healthcare quality.

Every few years, some international agency (always headquartered in Europe) issues a report that finds (surprise, surprise) that our healthcare system is worse than the socialized systems in Europe. They are self-serving, self-important, and dead wrong. It is not difficult to determine who has the best healthcare system in the world – follow the people who need treatment. Europeans come here; Ted Kennedy did not go over there.

I can walk today thanks to some of the best neurosurgeons and nurses in the world. They work here – in the United States – because they make more money here and they have better equipment and facilities. I had immediate access to CAT scans and MRIs because they are far more plentiful here – one of the chief reasons U.S. healthcare costs more.

True, a free government wheelchair would have been more affordable, but it is not an upgrade. And in economic terms, society is far better off with me producing and paying outlandishly high taxes than collecting disability checks. The taxpayer didn’t pay for my surgeries, my employer did. So I say no thanks to Tammy’s Katrina Kare.

I don’t want the next heart surgeon available, like at Cost Cutters. I don’t want cheaper nurses who got their jobs through a civil service exam. I don’t want the government deciding what I can and can’t be treated for. What I do want is a simplified billing system that does not take an army of clerks to make incomprehensible. The guy who invented the phrase “explanation of benefits” should be prosecuted for fraud. It is a non-explanation of why benefits were denied.

A recent Harvard study reported that nearly 1/3 of U.S. “healthcare” costs are administrative costs – all the paperwork driven by government regulations on providers and insurers. That is what’s wrong with health care in this country – accountants and lawyers and bureaucrats who regulate the living crap out of it.

$2 to provide a service, and $1 to bill for it? No other industry would stand for its costs of billing services to be half of the cost of providing them. You can only have this kind of foolishness in an industry where there is too much government intervention. If it were not prohibited, providers and insurers would have streamlined these non-value-added functions years ago. We are paying 50% more than the cost of the care itself – and not because every single provider thinks this is a really great way to run a business.

Democrats want government to run health care. Republicans want to improve healthcare by making the tax code more complicated – I never did understand that one. Both want to tax your employer-provided healthcare benefits.

Libertarians support deregulation of healthcare and health insurance, and we would never tax your benefits. Deregulation would increase quality, reduce cost, and allow for innovation in treatment, service, and pricing – just as it has done in the telecommunications and transportation industries. There is no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We have the best healthcare in the world; it’s our record keeping that is all screwed up.

Why don’t you go to work on that, Tammy?

Mr. Obama’s $6,800 Free Lunch

When a telemarketer promises something for nothing, we hang up on him. When a Presidential candidate does it, we give him the job.

Remember when Candidate Obama promised health care, education, alternative energy, infrastructure, mortgage relief, AND a tax cut for 95% of us? How cool was that? That wasn’t just a free lunch; that was a free smorgasbord. Those of us who suggested you can’t get something for nothing were drowned out by the thundering chorus of “Yes, We Can!”

Well, as it turns out – “No, We Can’t!”. Milton Friedman (and my Dad) was right; there is no such thing as a free lunch. It was bad enough that those honkin’ big tax cuts turned out to be only a couple bucks a week; this week Mr. Obama told us they will expire after two years. The timeshare guys must be kicking themselves for not thinking of that one first.

And those free Obamaburgers are getting downright expensive.

Last month, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the President’s cap and trade energy tax would cost $1,600 per household annually in higher energy and transportation costs. Last week, the administration corrected “a mistake” in its budget materials, and revised the cost of cap-and-trade – tripled it to over $2 trillion. So make that cost $4,800 per household.

CBO also revised its estimate for extending health care coverage to the 46 million uninsured last week; that number was doubled, to $1.5 trillion. In case you missed it, the administration is now thinking about taxing your employer health care benefits to pay for it. The average employer provided insurance premium is $12,000 per year, so if you are in the 15% tax bracket, you will pay $2,000 more in federal and state income taxes.

Somehow spreading THE wealth around seemed like a better idea than spreading YOUR wealth around, didn’t it? Do you have $6,800 laying around for the Democrats to take and spread around?

We don’t need government to spread our wealth around. When people spend, save, invest, or give to charity, they are spreading their wealth around. The issue isn’t whether wealth should be spread around; the issue is who is going to spread it around – those who earned it, or those who didn’t. Each day, we are reminded how important that choice is.

Did you know that AIG gave $43 billion of your bailout money to Germany’s Deutsche Bank? Yup – $43 billion. How’s that for spreading your wealth around. Would you have done that with your money? Isn’t it enough the Germans get to use our army for free? Can’t they bail out their own banks?

And how come the Y-team – Harry, Nancy, Barney, Obey, Tammy, Chucky, and Timmy (the other one) – are willing to torch our Constitution over millions in pay to Americans but won’t lift a finger to stop tens of billions going make their socialist banker buddies in Europe rich? And if that socialism is such a great system, how come the Germans aren’t bailing us out?

Libertarians will not insult your intelligence by promising a free lunch. You wouldn’t need one if the government would just stop stealing your groceries in the first place.