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In the Supreme Court case Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the Supreme Court ruled corporations could limitlessly fund independent ads for political elections, but could still be restricted by how much they give to individual campaigns. Liberals feel this decision goes against their holy grail: no, not civil liberties, but democracy.
It angered Keith Olbermann so much that he stooped down to Bill O’Reilly’s level by coming up with a false analogy. He said this decision was the worst Supreme Court decision since the Dred Scott decision which upheld slavery.
Yes, a decision that would only make what goes on in Washington more transparent is the same as upholding slavery. I guess Olbermann forgot Korematsu v. United States, which allowed FDR to forcibly relocate Japanese Americans to internment camps in World War II. The liberals’ fear that this will somehow ruin democracy is unfounded because any Libertarian will tell you that politically connected corporations and the federal government enjoy a symbiotic relationship.
Michael Chertoff, head of Homeland Security during the Bush Administration, now runs a security consultant group whose clients include a firm that sells body scanners to airports. Regularly, officials in the Treasury or Federal Reserve will come from Wall Street firms like Bear Stearns and vice versa. Both gain from each other and therefore, when those Wall Street firms funneled millions into the Obama campaign, they were able to secure bailouts once the housing bubble burst.
All corporations had to do before was set up dummy organizations to send the money to political candidates. At least now people could observe more easily how much a politician was receiving from a corporation.
Liberals want to uphold democracy as the ideal, yet by decrying this decision they are implicitly stating that the American public is too stupid to weigh political decisions. If liberals believe that the American public is too dumb to think for itself, then it shouldn’t be allowed to vote for the president. That thinking is not conducive to freedom, but to totalitarianism.
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You are definetely correct the stimulus bill has not worked. The federal Reserve is afraid that with backs being given such excess reserves by the federal reserve and congress that with our current fractional reserve banking system it could definetely lead to hyperinflationary concerns. 3 trillion x about 5 or 6 equals to a doubling or tripling of the current monetary stock. You see according to the Austrian Business Cycle theory the finacial giants that overleveraged themselves need to liquidate this debt or go out business and free up capital and other factors of production to more efficient financial firms or other industries which will satisfy consumer demand. Government stimulus plans retard economic growth because instead of saving which is essential in a depression the government has followed keynesian economic practices and believed that spending needed to be kept up. According to the Obama administration the unemployment should have peaked with the stimulus bill at 8and 9 percent. Instead we see it at 10 and 11 percent. Any recovery that we will see in the future will be based on entrepreneurial decision making and the savings that the ordinary person saved during a depression. If i haven't mentioned it is not really the insurance corporations who control things but congress because they are the only form of legalized violence that can be afflicted on the public. What we have now in health insurance is economic fascism and not a free market system. ways to alleviate health care problems would be to end doctor licensing practices which prevent alternative medicine and restricts the amount of doctors allowed, end bans on foreign drugs, get rid of the FDA, end employer based health plans, get rid of prescription patents, get rid of medicare and medicaid, get rid of erroneous state regulations which prevent insurance competition i.e. requiring insurance companies cover men for ovarian cancer. Above all restructure the current system where insurance companies would be used for large scale operations and the individual consumer would pay for prescriptions and routine checkups. If the system sounds unfeasible to you then you can check out the health care situation in the fourties, fifties, and early 1960's. As Dr. Ron Paul stated the United States had far and away the best healthcare system at the time.
You are correct. I focused on the 2008 bill because your initial reference was to the bailout of Wall Street. Plus, that was was very poorly managed and simple gave the money to the banks with no constraints or oversight. They spent it on bonuses and buyouts and lent out very little of it, and still haven't. This bailout failed and is the major drag on the economy today.
The bailout under Obama was not so much bailout as a real stimulus package although it did bail out GM.
The major problem with the current insurance system and the focus of their well-funded opposition is the pre-existing condition exclusions and the elimination of anyone who is more likely to have major medical bills. Until this is fixed, the system is fundamentally flawed and they will spare no funds nor refrain from any lies to stop it from happening.
i refer to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 that was initially held up by the house of representatives but then passed in february 2009. there was two stimulus bills one under Bush and one under Obama. According to Austrian School of Economics economist Robert Murphy stated that the Federal Reserve also created 3-4 trillion dollars of new reserves without congressional consent during 2009. Actually Luther the powers that be i.e the insurance companies would welcome "health reform" because the current plan would force individuals to buy insurance plans. Of course they have made a Faustian pact will eventually be taken by the government and only symbolically remain private. You are absolutely right we need to change our health care system and that means allowing markets to efficiently allocate resources to this area which will lower costs and increase innovations. Look a Lasik eye surgery the prices have dropped dramatically in the past 10 years and the safety rates have also increased because of increased competition and the fact that for a long time this procedure was not covered under most insurance plans. This is a clear cut example of how the free market improves everyones lives.
I am also disappointed in Obama's rate of change. We should be out of Iraq by now, Bin Laden should be dead and we should be out of there, as well.
He bit off more that he could chem on the health care problem. And, there have been many other shortcomings.
Still, it is a big improvement over Bush. But, that would be true of the guy on the 14th tee.
The "Wall Street Bailout" aka the "Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008" was enacted on Oct 3, 2008.
The rest of your treatise is right on, more or less. Still, it is more that obvious that our medical care delivery system is very much in need of overhaul. The statistics are clear, and we are at or near the bottom in every measure of the quality of healthcare. Yet, the powers that be will not allow our idiot legislators to act.
-Continued corporate welfare
-Continued infringement of liberties (illegal wiretapping, secret prisons, etc.)
...and on and on and on.Hell, even Paul Krugman has written recently that Obama is now no better than the man he ran against (McCain). And Krugman loves him some Obama
So the $787 billion bailout was not enacted in february of 2009? The reporting of international statistics can be dubious. For instance international statistics also state Cuba has better health care than we do! Of course the politicians are happy with their healthcare plans. After all michael moore showed in Sicko how the cuban politicians received excellent care. he forgot to mention that ordinary citizens were not allowed into that hospital. So of course the politicians want to keep their plans it is all based on the theft of the ordinary citizen to pay for their fancy health care plans. If the so called "healthcare plan" were passed we would see a deteriorating healthcare not want the politicians currently have. Look at how wonderful a job the government does with the DMV, FDA, or post office and tell me that they can more efficiently allocate resources than a free market could. By the way our current health care is corporate-Fascist in nature and not indicative of a free market. So yes we do need to get rid of the government and realize that the vast improvements in life come from the marketplace and not a government agency. Why did western Europe surpass the world during the 1700s, 1800s, and parts of the 1900's, it was because citizens were allowed to own property and free trade which led to increasing marginal productivity of the workers and increased their living standards. As Mises predicted interventionist systems create unintended consequences the planners did not decide and leads to social disharmony. Economic law will always remain supreme over the wishes of politicians. Just ask the Soviets and the Roman Empire how well interventionism worked for them
No, the bailout was purely a Bush thing. It was done months before Obama took office. And, like most things under Bush, was done poorly.
Philosophically, I agree with your health care stance. However, health care is an exception in that there is no such thing as free-market competition and the entire system has been subverted by Corporate interests.
Even above Libertarian philosophy, I am a realist. We have the best technology, the best medical education system,and we spend the most money on health care. Meanwhile, our actual performance is the worst in the industialized world. Our infant mortatily rate is just below El Salvador!
It is pretty obvious that we have to change something.
Plus, the members of Congress seem pretty darned happy with their government-run health care. I guess that they just don't find it good enough for the rest of us.
I agree the bailout was a product of the bush and obama administrations. As a true libertarian i choose anarchy not democracy. If you are a libertarian why would favor another intervention into the health market as Ludwig von Mises stated there is no middle ground. each intervention will inevitably lead to another to correct the mistakes of the previous interventions thus eventually all vestiges of freedom will be thrown away to central planners. by the way is this decision really worse than plessy v. ferguson, or the legally putting japanese americans in concentration camps.
The sad fact is that the average person is really not capable of seeing through the propaganda that money buys. Proof of this is that most now believe that the economic crisis is due to Obama and that the insurance industry has successfully conned the majority of Americans into opposing reform of a health care system that is so clearly in need of reform.
Money talks, money corrupts, and money wins; every time.
As a Libertarian, I think Olbermann is correct and that this may well rank as the worst Supreme Court since Dred Scott.
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