Obama’s Mythical Defense Cuts – 9% higher defense spending
posted by Josiah Garber on April 30, 2009
in Economics, Politics
One of the problems with liberals, as conservatives know, is that no matter how much money they are given to spend, it’s never enough. The social and economic problems they lament are impossible to eradicate entirely, so more spending is always in order. After all, it is bound to do some good. Spending less? Never an option.
But it turns out conservatives are not immune to that impulse. They just apply it to the programs they like instead of the ones liberals like. And their favorite of all is defense spending.
The Wall Street Journal’s editorial writers fear that any day, we will be naked unto our enemies. President Obama, they warn, wants to lavish money on everything but the military. America faces an array of threats, and “Obama’s budget isn’t adequate to those challenges.”
Really? Cindy Williams, a defense scholar at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and former assistant director of the Congressional Budget Office, points out that Obama wants to spend 2 percent more in the next fiscal year than President Bush allocated for this year, and 9 percent more than we spent last year.
Government Vaccines – Bad Policy, Bad Medicine
posted by Josiah Garber on April 30, 2009
in Health
by Rep. Ron Paul, MD
“Simply put, it is not ethical to give a medicine that will kill and maim persons for no demonstrable benefit. Assuaging fears about vulnerability to a potential disease is not a benefit any physician should accept.”
~ Dr. Jeffrey S. Sartin, MD
A controversy over vaccines, specifically the smallpox vaccine, is brewing in Washington. The administration is considering ordering mass inoculations for more than one million military personnel and civilian medical workers, ostensibly to thwart a smallpox outbreak before it occurs. Yet dangerous side-effects from the vaccine – ranging from mild flu symptoms to gangrene, encephalitis, and even death – cause many to question the wisdom and need for such inoculations.
As a medical doctor, I believe mandated smallpox vaccines are bad medicine. The available vaccine poses significant risks, even though the more serious complications affect only a statistically small number of people. As with any medical treatment, these risks must always be balanced against the perceived benefit. Remember, not a single case of smallpox has been reported, despite the near-hysteria that characterized recent news reports. Even if some individuals became infected, smallpox spreads only with very close contact. Those in the surrounding community could then decide to accept vaccines based on a much more tangible risk.
As a legislator, I believe mandated smallpox vaccines are very bad policy. The point is not that smallpox vaccines are necessarily a bad idea, but rather that intimately personal medical decisions should not be made by government. The real issue is individual medical choice. No single person, including the President of the United States, should ever be given the power to make a medical decision for potentially millions of Americans. Freedom over one’s physical person is the most basic freedom of all, and people in a free society should be sovereign over their own bodies. When we give government the power to make medical decisions for us, we in essence accept that the state owns our bodies.
Helicopter at my house.
posted by Josiah Garber on April 29, 2009
in Fun
Pretty cool considering i always was interested in aviation.
Obama’s First 100 Days: The Madmen Did Well
posted by Josiah Garber on April 29, 2009
in Politics
by John Pilger, April 29, 2009
The American soap Madmen offers a rare glimpse of the power of corporate advertising. The promotion of smoking half a century ago by the “smart” people of Madison Avenue, who knew the truth, led to countless deaths. Advertising and its twin, public relations, became a way of deceiving on a scale imagined by those who had read Freud and applied mass psychology to anything from cigarettes to politics. Just as the Marlboro Man was virility itself, so politicians could be branded, packaged, and sold.
It is 100 days since Barack Obama was elected president of the United States. The “Obama brand” has since been named Advertising Age’s “marketer of the year for 2008,” easily beating Apple. David Fenton of MoveOn.org describes Obama’s election campaign “an institutionalized, mass-level, automated technological community organizing that has never existed before and is a very, very powerful force.” Deploying the Internet and a slogan plagiarized from the Latino union organizer Caesar Chavez – Si se puede! – “yes, we can,” the “mass-level, automated technological community” marketed its brand to victory in a country desperate to be rid of George W. Bush.
The Judgment on Vaccines Is In???
posted by Josiah Garber on April 29, 2009
in Health
by Jim Carrey
Recently, I was amazed to hear a commentary by CNN’s Campbell Brown on the controversial vaccine issue. After a ruling by the ‘special vaccine court’ saying the Measles, Mumps, Rubella shot wasn’t found to be responsible for the plaintiffs’ autism, she and others in the media began making assertions that the judgment was in, and vaccines had been proven safe. No one would be more relieved than Jenny and I if that were true. But with all due respect to Ms. Brown, a ruling against causation in three cases out of more than 5000 hardly proves that other children won’t be adversely affected by the MMR, let alone that all vaccines are safe. This is a huge leap of logic by anyone’s standards. Not everyone gets cancer from smoking, but cigarettes do cause cancer. After 100 years and many rulings in favor of the tobacco companies, we finally figured that out.
The truth is that no one without a vested interest in the profitability of vaccines has studied all 36 of them in depth. There are more than 100 vaccines in development, and no tests for cumulative effect or vaccine interaction of all 36 vaccines in the current schedule have ever been done. If I’m mistaken, I challenge those who are making such grand pronouncements about vaccine safety to produce those studies.
News Reporter Gets Detained By A Police Officer
posted by Josiah Garber on April 25, 2009
in Politics
Scary. Thank goodness this is not normal for police officers.
Important Bill HR 1207 – Federal Reserve Accountability Act
posted by Josiah Garber on April 24, 2009
in Politics
HR 1207 has now been introduced to committee. This bill could be one of the most important bills in getting our country back on track. It would allow the Federal Reserve to be audited by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
If you want to contact your representative, here’s the easy way.
Use the zipcode search on the left of the above site.
Call the congressional switchboard and ask for the office of your representative in Congress.
Here’s the Number: 1-866-220-0044
For more details about the bill click here.
Hillary Clinton congratulates Ron Paul – Wall Street Journal
posted by Josiah Garber on April 23, 2009
in Fun, Politics
Who could’ve seen it coming? 
More than likely Hillary did this to poke fun at Ron Paul. But there was truth in what she said: Ron Paul did have the most enthusiastic supporters. I am proud to be one of them. 
Read More in the Wall Street Journal
Gen. Petraeus Predicts Worsening Violence in Afghanistan War
posted by Josiah Garber on April 23, 2009
in Politics
US Central Command head General David Petraeus said today that he believes that the situation in Afghanistan is “going to get worse before it gets better.”
“When you go into the enemy’s sanctuaries, they will fight you for it. There will be tough months ahead, without question,” Petraeus conceded while defending the 20,000 plus additional US troops being sent to Afghanistan as part of the Obama Administration’s planned escalation.
Gen. Petraeus is just the latest in a growing chorus of US military officials who, while cheering on the so-called “surge” into Afghanistan, have expressed a belief that it will make violence even worse than the record levels seen in 2008. Last week, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Michael Mullen said he too expected violence to escalate as the US adds more troops.
Though violence generally does not peak until the summer, this winter’s violence has already been considerably higher than normal. US officials have attempted to pass this off as a result of “really good weather,” yet if worsening violence is already a trend and they anticipate adding more soldiers will make it even worse, the situation in 2009 should be tumultuous, to say the least.
The Case against “Smart Taxes” on Carbon
posted by Josiah Garber on April 22, 2009
in Economics, Politics
Today is Earth day, and a week ago we “celebrated” tax day. It is fitting, in a sense, that Earth Day and Tax Day are only one week apart. Those who blame global warming on human activity see taxation as an effective and desirable means of preventing environmental global catastrophe. In a recent publication, former Bush advisor Greg Mankiw has extended an “open invitation to join the Pigou club” by embracing the idea of regulating greenhouse gases with corrective taxes.[1]
The idea behind corrective taxes is relatively simple. British economist A.C. Pigou explained how markets need correction: the use of goods we buy in markets generates external costs. The price we pay for goods are internal, but any type of pollution (noise, air or water borne) imposes a real cost on other people outside the transaction. In such instances the amount of goods that consumers buy will be excessive because they do not bear the full costs. Taxes on goods that generate negative externalities internalize costs to consumers, provided that they are set at the right level. Hence taxes can correct markets that oversupply goods, in theory.