Tag Archives: Control

News

Communist Venezuela introduces energy rationing in 2010

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Story here from Breitbart. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

Oil-rich Venezuela ushered in 2010 with new measures rationing electricity use in malls, businesses and billboards, as Hugo Chavez’s government aimed to save power amid a crippling drought.

The new regulations came into effect January 1, with businesses required to comply with reduced consumption limits and authorities warning of forced power cuts and rate hikes if the measures are not followed.

[…]The power crunch is expected to have an impact on a wide variety of businesses, including cinemas, casinos and bingo halls.

Establishments failing to comply with the measures could face outages for a period of 24 hours, and up to 72-hour suspensions “in case of recidivism,” according to the decree.

The regulation also orders businesses to institute savings plans aimed at shedding consumption by at least 20 percent, a measure that will be evaluated monthly by the newly-created ministry of electricity.

Tariff surcharges of up to 20 percent could be imposed on violators.

Rationing is also to apply to lighted advertisements.

[…]In 2009 there were four nationwide blackouts, with daily failures common in several cities.

Communism produces economic decline by encouraging entrepreneurs to flee or to stop producing, since the state views what these producers produce as something to be seized and distributed to buy votes. If no one wants to start any businesses, then there won’t be any jobs for the people. People end up depending on the state for bread, with all that that entails. The left wants equality of life outcome regardless of choices, (except for themselves).

I don’t see any difference between the intelligence and policies of Hugo Chavez and Barack Obama. Hugo is just further along the road to serfdom, in my opinion. Obama just has more capitalism and Judeo-Christian morality to undo. After Obama passes government-controlled rationing of health care, he’ll probably move on to government-controlled rationing of energy. By then, Chavez should be rationing births, housing, food and water.

Commentary

Dean of Harvard Medical School gives health care bill a failing grade

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Story from the Wall Street Journal, by the Dean of Harvard Medical School Jeffrey S. Flier.

Excerpt:

As the dean of Harvard Medical School I am frequently asked to comment on the health-reform debate. I’d give it a failing grade.

[…]Speeches and news reports can lead you to believe that proposed congressional legislation would tackle the problems of cost, access and quality. But that’s not true. The various bills do deal with access by expanding Medicaid and mandating subsidized insurance at substantial cost—and thus addresses an important social goal. However, there are no provisions to substantively control the growth of costs or raise the quality of care. So the overall effort will fail to qualify as reform.

In discussions with dozens of health-care leaders and economists, I find near unanimity of opinion that, whatever its shape, the final legislation that will emerge from Congress will markedly accelerate national health-care spending rather than restrain it. Likewise, nearly all agree that the legislation would do little or nothing to improve quality or change health-care’s dysfunctional delivery system. The system we have now promotes fragmented care and makes it more difficult than it should be to assess outcomes and patient satisfaction. The true costs of health care are disguised, competition based on price and quality are almost impossible, and patients lose their ability to be the ultimate judges of value.

Worse, currently proposed federal legislation would undermine any potential for real innovation in insurance and the provision of care. It would do so by overregulating the health-care system in the service of special interests such as insurance companies, hospitals, professional organizations and pharmaceutical companies, rather than the patients who should be our primary concern.

In effect, while the legislation would enhance access to insurance, the trade-off would be an accelerated crisis of health-care costs and perpetuation of the current dysfunctional system—now with many more participants. This will make an eventual solution even more difficult. Ultimately, our capacity to innovate and develop new therapies would suffer most of all.

In order to have an economy recover, you need people running government who actually understand health care and economics. My lunch-time book is Regina Hertzlinger’s “Who Killed Health Care?”. Regina teaches at Harvard University, as well. She talks about how we need to lower costs and improve quality by introduce elements of choice and competition. Her plan is similar to the Republican’s Patient’s Choice Act. Consumer-Driven health care is the right solution to the problem of rising health care costs. Obama’s plan just adds fuel to the fire.

The right way to reform health care without sacrificing liberty

Consumer-driven health care:

Health Care: Fostering Focus Factories
with Dr. Regina Hertzlinger
(8:46)

Choice, Competition Should Drive Health Care Reform
with Dr. Michael D. Tanner
(5:21)

The Republican Plan (“Patient Choice Act”) is consumer-driven:

Obama’s False Health Care Choice
with Rep. Paul Ryan
(10:39)

Ideas for Free-Market Health Care Reform
with Rep. Paul Ryan
(8:30)

What’s wrong with Obamacare, Medicare, RomneyCare and CanadaCare:

Competing with the Government
with Dr. Michael F. Cannon
(7:34)

Medicare: A Model for Reform?
with Dr. Michael D. Tanner
(4:34)

Lessons from Massachusetts Health Care Reform
with Dr. Michael D. Tanner
(4:18)

The Canadian Health Care Experience
with Sally C. Pipes
(7:45)

Puncturing the Myths of American Health Care
with Sally C. Pipes
(about 8 minutes)

Commentary

Does the Bible teach communism like Michael Moore seems to think?

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Neil Simpson has a wonderful post up analyzing whether Michael Moore is correct to think that Jesus’ teachings in the Bible are opposed to capitalism. My opinion is that Michael Moore is no more a Christian than Barack Obama or Richard Dawkins. In order to be a Christian, you need to accept the teachings of Jesus, and Moore doesn’t. And Neil explains why by referring to Moore’s own blog post.

Neil does a good job of analyzing Moore’s errors, and his incredible hypocrisy, so check it out. But I wanted to highlight a comment from Shalini from the comments to that post.

Shalini wrote:

Socialism discards the concept of ownership… by individuals and I see no passage or verse in NT where Jesus seems so against the concept of individual ownership.

Socialism gradually leads to communism and the very intention of communism is to separate people from God. Heck! If you have a government which says “I will feed you” and promises other pleasures of the world, but it never addresses the spiritual needs of a person, I don’t see God approving of it. The other problem about socialism is that one person works hard and the government/organization takes/steals from him and gives it to someone who works less harder. That results in laziness! So does God approve of laziness? I think God said we will have to work harder all our lives. He didn’t say ‘Some of you will have to work harder and the rest will just have to steal from you.”.

I think the passage she is thinking of might be 2 Thessalonians 3:6-12.

6In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, we command you, brothers, to keep away from every brother who is idle and does not live according to the teaching you received from us. 7For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example. We were not idle when we were with you, 8nor did we eat anyone’s food without paying for it. On the contrary, we worked night and day, laboring and toiling so that we would not be a burden to any of you. 9We did this, not because we do not have the right to such help, but in order to make ourselves a model for you to follow. 10For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: “If a man will not work, he shall not eat.”  11We hear that some among you are idle. They are not busy; they are busybodies. 12Such people we command and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to settle down and earn the bread they eat.

About 50% of Americans do not pay any income tax, whereas a tiny minority of the most productive people pay the vast majority of all income taxes collected. And yet still the poor clamor for more and more of their neighbors’ wealth! What they should be clamoring for is knowledge of how their neighbor acts in order to be productive and frugal. Or even better, they should be clamoring for a relationship with God through Christ, and not being so focused on acquiring worldly goods at all!

Moore and others on the left think that all religion is about making people happy in this life. So naturally, they are not going to read the Bible to incorporate it as an authority over their decisions – they are functional atheists. They will only use the Bible to trick people into adopting government-controlled wealth redistribution. They just want to feel good about themselves in this life by redistributing other people’s money.

Thomas Sowell calls this “the vision of the anointed”. The elites think they are smarter than you are – that they should decide how much money you earn and how you spend it, so that they can prove how morally superior they are to you by “helping” the “poor” with what they take from you.

Shalini continues:

In the Acts of apostles, there was collection and re-distribution of wealth. But under who’s guidance? The apostles who were God inspired and who did things God would approve of. So there was no problem there. But can we trust the government to do what the apostles did or to do what Jesus would do? A government which approves of all things God loathes? And given the power, who is to say the government wont act as greedy as the CEOs and wall street bankers? At least with a company I have the choice to quit. With the government I will be stuck for life or at least till the next elections. If one is so bent upon making atrocious stereotypes of all rich men why don’t they look at the atrocities done by socialist states? My CEO only had the authority over my intellectual skills. The socialist government would claim authority even over my moral rights.

What Christianity supports is the concept of private individual charity. What Moore supports is government-managed redistribution of wealth from those who produce to those who don’t produce. History has shown in places like Cuba, North Korea, Zimbabwe and Venezuela that this results of trying the communism that Moore seems to advocate results in more poverty, not less. A rising tide lifts all boats – and that is why the poor in capitalist America are richer than the rich in any communist nation.

Further study

To learn more about the relationship between Christianity and capitalism, check out this post (the second half is on capitalism).

Excerpt:

To understand what capitalism is, you can watch this lecture entitled “Money, Greed and God: Why Capitalism is the Solution and Not the Problem” by Jay W. Richards, delivered at the Heritage Foundation think tank, and televised by C-SPAN2.

[…]If you can’t see the Richards video, here is an audio lecture by Jay Richards on the “Myths Christians Believe about Wealth and Poverty“. Also, why not check out this series of 4 sermons by Wayne Grudem on the relationship between Christianity and economics? (a PDF outline is here)

And don’t forget about the course on economics from a Christian perspective taught by Dr. Ron Nash, or Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse’s lecture on basic economics that I wrote about before.

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