It's just my opinion, I could be wrong

Bill Maher had a marginally amusing, if not highly partisan and inaccurate, rant about the people marching on Washington to protest the liberal destruction of the US ideal. Putting aside his swipes and vitriol, he does raise an interesting point: we should find some way to tie the costs of not taking care of one's own health to the cost of getting health care. After all, subsidizing health care doesn't help overall if everyone gets less healthy along the way. Now, like many liberals, Maher's knee-jerk idiotic reaction is to echo the calls for taxing foods which are bad for people. Sure this might help the immediate problem, but at the unnecessary cost of big government, big regulation, stifling of freedoms, and precedent for more wrong-headed approaches. I would suggest that there's a much better way to tie the amount paid for health care to the magnitude of the care required, based on how you maintain your own health, without all those nasty side-effects. I propose t...

I was struck with an interesting thought on the way home yesterday, while listening to a radio ad "brought to me" by the California Teacher's Association. Every advertisement, promotion, lobby effort, sponsored message, etc. which is paid for, even in part, by the CTA is being bought directly or indirectly with my taxpayer dollars. Moreover, that's money ostensibly allocated to educating our children, which is being diverted away from our children and to lobbying efforts to enrich the union and its members. That's worth keeping in mind, I think, the next time you hear about over-crowded class sizes, underpaid teachers, miserable education rankings, or other updates on the state of public education in California. Think of it this way: every CTA-sponsored ad/message you hear is directly taking some tax money away from educating our children, and directly and intentionally contributing to the miserable broken failure that is the California public education system. Th...

Something I have observed among the people I know: intelligent people like to be well-informed. This principle seems to extend beyond philosophical and political differences, and across various spectrums of communication. It's what leads people to explore new avenues of communication, seek out dissenting opinions, and generally favor unbiased information presentation. Indeed, it's probably largely the reason people read blogs like this one. It's rare that an opportunity would arise to clearly and unambiguously judge whether a news organization or source is presenting all the important information in a clear and unbiased way; many people argue about this very topic in relation to various news sources, with no clear criteria. It's fortuitous, then, when events come along which offer a clear differentiation, a litmus test of veracity and integrity for news sources. Fortunately for us, 9/12/09 offered just such a test. As you, a blog reader, are probably already aware, ther...

In his most recent speech to Congress pushing his vision of socialized medical care for the United States, President Obama said the time for debate is over, and the time for action is now. Now, it seems to be there's still quite a bit of difference of opinion over what health care "reform" should constitute, and I would personally contend that rash action without consensus is probably worse than no action at all, but on one point at least I can agree with a socialist leader: there's not much left to debate health care reform. Let's look at the largely undisputed facts. Health care in the US is expensive, painful, and getting worse. Lack of consumer protections in the insurance industry have allowed the process to become painful even for people "fully" covered. Tying insurance tax incentives and group plans to employment has made it difficult and painful to have private insurance, and stifled competition. Medical liability laws have made health care very ...

So it seems like every time I read anything about the government these days, it's one abject failure after another. Whether it's bailouts, handouts, encroaching socialism, corruption revelations, or other malignancy, each day brings new reasons to feel disgusted with your "representatives" in the Obamanation. However, every once in a while they plumb a new low, and indoctrinating school children could just be the new bar-setter for utterly despicable actions which bring my hatred for Obama and the misguided people who elected him (and/or the few remaining zealots who still support him) to entirely new levels. Maybe I'm over-reacting. I mean, surely the Obamanation is doing more destructive things to the United States in general than force-feeding liberal propaganda to impressionable school children. Destruction of the national currency has got to be worth more overall "evil points" than brainwashing poor Richard and Jane. Achieving the end-goal of full ...

I had a somewhat amusing conversation yesterday, talking about government oversight on a defense project a while ago, and it was mentioned that because the government was spending $40 Billion on a project, they demanded some oversight (which naturally led to complications and waste, but that's beside the point). I was struck with a kinda sentimental nostalgia for the times when $40 Billion was considered a significant amount of money, something which required some oversight and planning before spending, and an amount which would appall people if the government squandered or flushed. It wasn't too long ago when that amount was considered a lot of money for the government to spend; yet now, it seems almost insignificant. Consider recent government wastes: - $180 Billion to bail out AIG, so they could pay off gambling debts of other banks - $700 Billion for TARP, so the taxpayers could absorb the losses from the banking industry as repayment for causing the economic meltdown - ~$6...