Responsibility for Healthcare

The financing of healthcare in our country is a huge policy issue that is fought over on multiple fronts. Politicians, bureaucrats, giant corporations, lobbyists, big and small providers, vendors, nonprofits, you, me, and anybody else that pays for or mitigates the costs of healthcare. The battlefields are all over the place. The battlelines are constantly changing.

READ MORE on Masters of Healthcare blog

NRA and Bump Stocks

Is the NRA ideologically flexible?

I think it is . It appears that the NRA is playing practical politics by throwing the left a bone: Maybe, the NRA will support additional federal regulation of bump stocks. 

Wayne LaPierre's comeback to the "rumor" that the NRA would support banning bump stocks was like drunk-monkey kung fu. To paraphrase LaPierre, (1) bump stocks were not around 10 years agO, and (2) they make semiautos fullautos or something. The NRA needs to get its story straight and start every yarn it spins with:

     "shall not infringe"

The Road Ahead by John T. Flynn

This book was recommended on a Tom Woods podcast recently featuring Mises Institute fellow David Gordon (Ep. 956). I had started As We Go Marching a while ago, but it just seemed to be an airing of grievances and disintegration. This book claims to have solutions, but they don't appear until Chapter 13. I did a little skimming and then settled on starting with the end, since I feel we really need solutions now.

CONTINUE ON Blunt Freedom blog

AntiFa IS a Terrorist Org

I'm not big on petitions. But this one is worth participation - at least for entertainment value. The We The People citizens petition site pledges to respond to petitions that reach 100,000 signatures within 30 days. And boy has this one. It's at almost a-quarter-of-a-million signatures as of this posting. My money is on Trump personally responding.

We The People Terrorist AntiFa Petition

"We The People" is mostly feel-good fluff for marginal rageaholics, but I get giddy seeing a petition like this do so well (says my inner rageaholic). I'd like to see it hit 10,000,000 within it's 30-day reaction window.

Obama's Law

I love the "laws" that prove describe a trend.

The number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years. - Moore's Law

As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Hitler approaches 1. - Godwin's Law

Will this be Obama's?:

When you are incapable of initiating policy, and your every proclamation is stillborn, blocked or neutered, chum for crazy. - Obama's Law

When a politician is unable to initiate policy, and his every proclamation is stillborn, blocked or neutered, he will chum for crazy. - Obama's Law

https://pjmedia.com/trending/2016/11/17/obama-encourages-violent-anti-trump-protesters-i-wouldnt-advise-them-to-be-silent/

CRCobb on SteemIt!

An Online LIbertarian Education

Ever hear of The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History? Well, the author - Thomas E. Woods, Jr. - also teaches through his website Liberty Classroom.

If you want an easy libertarian education on an adult level, that you can experience online and is taught my multiple skilled instructors, then Liberty Classroom is the place for you.

Tom offers courses in:

• The American Revolution: A Constitutional Conflict 
• Austrian Economics Step by Step 
• The History of Conservatism and Libertarianism 
• Freedom’s Progress: The History of Political Thought 
• Introduction to Logic 
• John Maynard Keynes: His System and Its Fallacies. 
• U.S. Constitutional History 
• U.S. History to 1877 
• U.S. History since 1877 
• Western Civilization to 1500 
• Western Civilization since 1500 
• Trails West: How Freedom Settled the West 
• The History of Economic Thought 
• And more to come! 

Liberty Classroom is easy to sign up with, and Tom includes a 30-day, money-back guarantee.

Why I Use Ubuntu

I've used the Ubuntu version of Linux for a little over a year. Here's why:

I toyed with Linux a few years ago on a mini laptop that I had that had a corrupted hard drive. At that time Linux wasn't the easiest to work with, flash drives weren't that big, and the hard drive was half disk and half solid state, so the laptop was just toast.

CONTINUE READING on steemit.com

Basket of Deplorables

We many, we happy millions, we basket of deplorables;
For thee to-day that shed your votes with me
Shall be my compatriot, be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlepersons in utter shock
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not apart,
And hold their morals cheap whiles any speaks
That chose with us upon Election Day.

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"Basket of Deplorables" on SteemIt

Technocrats To The Rescue!

Or Not!

“nothing would be more fatal than for the Government of States to get in the hands of experts. Expert knowledge is limited knowledge, and the unlimited ignorance of the plain man who knows where it hurts is a safer guide than any rigorous direction of a specialized character.” - Winston S. Churchill    

Churchill was an avid fan of H.G. Wells, but he disagreed with Wells about humanities ability to adapt to rapidly developing technologies. Churchill felt that the generalist was much better able to determine the use of technology and run government than the focused technocrat. Wells favored the later. (Churchill's Bomb by Graham Farmelo)

In pop culture, especially in the 1950s science-fiction genre, the technocrats were seen as the saviors of the world. In the 1951 version of the "Day the Earth Stood Still," the alien Klaatu calls for a meeting of scientists, since world leaders would be impossible to assemble.

It seems nice to look to the experts on a topic to help solve a problem. But a problem arises, when one may think the expert on how to make a bomb or use a bomb is the right expert on when to use a bomb.

Robert Oppenheimer seems like a nice person to turn to, but his reservations about the nuclear weapons fell on deaf ears. And his reservations came after nuclear weapons were a reality. His discomfort with the use of nuclear weapons did not come with a convincing political argument, AND he possibly was revisionist with his timeline for concern over the bomb. (Wikipedia)

On the flip side, a generalist must be informed to make good laws. Even if he turns over all the details to bureaucrats and techocrats (which I think is a very bad idea), the lawmakers needs to, at the minimum, be able to articulate what he is trying to do while having a firm grasp on the facts.

U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette decided to exercise her God-given authority to rule us all by pushing for legislation to ban highstandard-capacity magazines. Either Rep. DeGette's knowledge is flat wrong, or it is limited to the original 20-round M16 magazine.

"I will tell you these are ammunition, they're bullets, so the people who have those now they're going to shoot them, so if you ban them in the future, the number of these high capacity magazines is going to decrease dramatically over time because the bullets will have been shot and there won't be any more available." - U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette (D-CO)

For some reason, our political system has descended into a reliance on experts that is so debilitating that our elected officials can't even direct them in an informed manner. This calls into question the direction of our huge bureaucracies - and not just the federal ones. This calls into question the ability of people to rule over us who's only qualifications are popularity.

And this is only one more example government should not be trying to control every minute part of our lives.

Private Dicks

Where have all the great (modern) private detectives gone? 

Remember "Remington Steele," "Magnum PI," "Rockford Files," "Simon & Simon," "Hart To Hart?"

Well, they weren't all "greats." But they gave us something more organic, something more cowboysish and individualistic - American - than police procedurals and Sherlock Holmes retreads.

Even "beacons" of freedom in Hollywood, such as Joe Montoya and Tom Selleck have sided with the state in their acting careers. 

Bring back the private dicks. They solved problems with less statist force.