The entrepreneur in the garage wants absolutely nothing to do with the government, except that his liberty and property be defended and protected, say, with patent protection or with the “takings clause”.  And Joe or Jane with the garage start-up is the engine that propels the American economy. It’s innovation and invention.  It’s high-risk, some succeed wildly, some modestly; many more either languish or crash and burn.  It’s free-market capitalism.  Capital cannot work effectively unless it’s put at risk.

 Bill Gates was a garage start-up guy, and so was Sam Walton.  Each was brilliant.  Each took huge risks time and again.  Each was fiercely independent.  Each was an innovator and a sea-changer.  Each faced stiff competition.  Each sent someone – a scout – to Washington D.C. to keep an eye out for trouble.  Neither was a political contributor.  Neither wanted anything from the government; neither wanted to invest in it.

 Garage start-ups don’t make lots of enemies lists.  Wal-Mart, however, grew and grew.  It became possibly the world’s all-time-most-effective welfare program, both with its cheaper prices and its employment and outsourcing. When it bought property and sought to come into Smalltown USA, it now made enemies lists.  Lots of local stores just couldn’t compete with the now-big boy.

 Microsoft as well became the two-ton gorilla in the room, and other software companies just couldn’t compete with the now-big boy.  Bill Gates and his company now made lots of enemies lists.

 Liberal fascists have always loved big business.  Presidents Wilson and FDR liked it when a corporation started to achieve monopoly status.  Ditto Hitler.  Then, it was time for cooperation.  The government would keep all the Davids away from the Goliaths while the Goliaths would do what the government instructed.  In reality, when those garage start-ups became corporate giants, their leaders no longer thrived on risk.  They wanted security.  Later, JFK, LBJ and Jimmy Carter worked on co-opting corporate America to the common cause.  Want the Cliff’s Notes version?  Read Hillary Clinton’s It Takes a Village.

 If I go to a doctor, pull out a pistol and demand free medical care, most Americans will call the cops, have me arrested, and thrown in the clink.  If I go to my neighbor, pull out a pistol and demand money to pay for my medical care, ditto.  If I lobby the government to force my doctor and neighbor to pony up for my care, most Americans will think that just fine.

 A bunch of software companies went to their congressmen to complain about Bill Gates.  A bunch of mom-and-pops went to their congressmen to complain about Sam Walton. Bill Gates was hauled before the Senate Judiciary Committee.  The scene was ala Detroit’s auto titans recently. In the aftermath, Gates hired hoards of lawyers, lobbyists and consultants in D.C. to both protect and influence, aka “cooperate”.  In 2000 Wal-Mart ranked 771^st in direct contributions to politicians.  In 2004, Wal-Mart was #1.  “Cooperation”.  Who's more powerful, the world's richest men or the gubmint (ignoring the Constitution)?  You wanna see “cooperation”?  Check out the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Archer Daniels Midland Company.

Does the Obama Administration liberal-fascist oligarchy want to own General Motors?  No.  Does it want to run Chrysler and the auto industry?  No.  Does it want to run Wall Street?  No.  What the liberal fascists have always wanted to do is to have big government and big business striving toward the same “common good”.  President Obama will continue to define what that is, the czars will continue to monitor and communicate to businesses and industries where they are on-track and where off-track, and “encourage” corrections.  GE (General Electric, including its NBC), and now ABC are poster children, models, if you will, of the “new partnership”.

 Most Americans think that big business is right wing, conservative, Republican.  That’s because most Americans have been indoctrinated in government schools, programmed by liberal mass media – whether tv, NPR, Hollywood, popular music books, both fiction and non-fiction – and “educated” by leftist college professors.  Most Americans are wrong.  American big business is overwhelmingly liberal-fascist, wanting protection from stiff competition, the comfort of stability, the absence of innovation, the safety of big-government “cooperation”.  Try to imagine how many “multiculturism” and “diversity” and “affirmative action” and “harassment” and “sensitivity” seminars these corporate execs have had to suffer through during the last few decades, post-college.

 Companies like GE will promote “green” technologies, as are most of today’s “oil companies”.  It’s for the “common good”, so they should be appreciated and praised, we’re told.  The government will then give them subsidies and outright grants to help them.  Many, maybe most, of today’s state universities receive more than half of their total budgets from such federal government grants.  I wonder why research results almost always point to bigger government, government intrusion, and government solution.  I wonder why college faculty are leftist.

 The entrepreneur in the garage wants absolutely nothing to do with the government.  Today, the symbiotic relationship between big business and big government, jointly focused on “the common good”, both throw individual liberty and small business under the bus.  Government’s protection of those “too big to fail” from free-market capitalism and targeted regulation of smaller entities not too big to fail mean that capital can not be used effectively because it’s not put at risk.  Today, a young Bill Gates or Sam Walton or Henry Ford would be stepped on by government agencies like bugs . . . with Microsoft, Wal-Mart and Ford lawyers, lobbyists, consultants and executives acting as cheerleaders.

 When the Tea Party movement grows and gains momentum, my point is that no one should look to Lipton as a corporate sponsor.  It’s a subsidiary of Unileaver Global, totally committed to global sustainability in its products and operations, including “living wages” wordwide for “the common good”.  Furthermore, something called “BiG TeA PaRty” has already co-opted the name to fight AIDS, encourage composting, and other causes for “the common good”.

 What I expect to see in a couple years is that proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, now closer and in a shorter tunnel, indeed the train, speeding us inexorably toward becoming 20^th-century Argentina, stopping in Venezuela to take on fuel.  Rather than huge and enthusiastic gatherings at Tea Parties, what I expect to hear is the sound of one hand clapping.

Have an exit strategy?

Here at gumballs this pundit blogger has put out a rather steady stream of  castigation at American citizens -- Republicans particularly  -- for their seeming devotion to the likes of American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, Entertainment Tonight, CSI Somewhere/Anywhere, Sudoku, People, steamy tabloids, and myriad other mindless diversions.  Okay, so it's their unalienable right to pursue happiness.  And it's certainly not my place to define what happiness is for them.

That said, I remind that freedom isn't free.  Liberty, if it is to be retained as an unalienable right, must be protected and defended.  There are always and evermore those who don't want you to have it.  Included right now in those who want you to not have liberty, not have a right to life, not have a right to pursue happiness (for you) are President Obama, his cabinet, his czars, his chief-of-staff, the Speaker of the House, the Majority Leader, Senators Kennedy, Durbin and Dodd, Congressmen Frank, Waters, Conyers, and a long list of other  liberal fascists.  No, that's not my opinion or view; it is explicit in their speeches and writings.  Find and listen to an Obama commencement address from just weeks ago.

If you want "freedom" -- as in freedom from want, freedom from stress, freedom from working long hours, freedom from worry, freedom from decision-making, freedom from responsibilities, a guaranteed job, a guaranteed "living wage", guaranteed health and medical care, guaranteed leisure, guaranteed home with air and cable and two cars in the garage, etc. -- it's coming your way, sorta.  When President Obama and his liberal-fascist oligarchy say "freedom", it's followed by "from".  When I think "freedom", it's followed by "to".

To those who I see daily fixated on mindless diversions and who have been that way their whole "adult" lives, I want to point out that it's summer, the time when all of your favorite shows are on hiatus and you've seen the reruns that are filling in.  Take a rainy afternoon, when you're not sunning and splashing, and click on the U.S. Constitution.  It's really not such a bad read; not sexy, not lurid, not titillating; but with some brie and chardonnay, passable.  When today's Sudoku is a Level 5, this read will exercise your brain without the self-esteem risks.

Viscount Willie Whitelaw -- for years deputy to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher -- once accused Britain's Labour Party of traveling the countryside stirring up apathy.  I read -- and thus learned of -- this in a recent piece by the ever-insightful, -inciteful, and -entertaining Mark Steyn.  When President Obama's teleprompter-in-chief tells us that some matter is so difficult and so complex that only the federal government or one of his now-many czars can begin to comprehend it, much less deal with it; when a bill before congress is so important that it must be passed before breakfast, but is too lengthy to be read; that's "stirring up apathy."  When the country needs acknowledged tax cheat Tim Geithner to be Secretary of the Treasury, because no one else is up to that job, a task way beyond mere mortals, that's "stirring up apathy."  I mean, what's the point of trying to understand and challenge, when every bill is longer than Atlas Shrugged and every presidential speech is longer than Gone with the Wind.  If my senator can't read it before voting or stay awake for the whole speech, what am I supposed to do?

To those who succumb to my invitation to take rainy afternoon to read our founding document, and to those who have been dropping out, having had your apathy intentionally and sysematically stirred, I offer simplicity that even a Tim Geithner could understand.  The key is individual liberty, the right to do anything you want if, and only if, you don't in the process infringe on anyone else's right to same.

The authors and signatories, and the ratifiers of the U.S. Constitution provided a document which was all about liberty.  The federal government's sole responsibility was, and should now remain, to protect and defend individual liberty.  It is why national defense (against enemies foreign and domestic) is an enumerated power, and why the government has absolutely no enumerated power other than to protect and defend liberty.  The founders feared -- yes, feared -- a powerful and overreaching federal government.  The Constitution is written so as to constrain, limit and proscribe that government.  It may do only that which is explicitly enumerated in the document, nothing else, by design.  Every authority or power not so enumerated is reserved to the people or the states.

It is not the job of the federal government to take care of the people or to provide for them, any of them and in any way.  The federal government has no money, no assets, unless it takes it or them from individuals.  To do so, the federal government must violate individuals' unalienable right to liberty and property.  That's unconstitutional, and is what's called "slavery".  Slavery is when one is forced to work for someone else, against one's will.

My assessment is that as of 2006, when the Bush 43 Administration lost their majorities in the house and senate, two-thirds of what the federal government did and spent was unconstitutional.  As of today, the Obama Administration, with help from Democrat majorities in both house and senate, has us at 75% and plans on passing 80% during 2009.

Mandatory union membership?  Collective bargaining?  Minimum wage?  Social Security?  Medicare?  Medicaid?  War on Drugs?  War on Poverty?  U.S. Military Academy at West Point?  Federal Reserve Bank?  Fannie Mae?  Freddie Mac?  U.S. Courts of Appeal?  Affirmative Action?  Peace Corps? U.S. Department of Education?  U.S. Department of Agriculture?  U.S. Agency for International Development (AID)?  TARP?  Bailouts of GM and Chrysler?  Car czar?  Banking czar?  AmeriCorps?  Which two from this listing are constitutional?  Either read through the Constitution and check them off when you see that the power and authority to do is enumerated, or just ask yourself whether each protects and defends liberty or infringes on liberty.

If you're a "freedom from" person, you're a gimme, one riding in the wagon, not pulling it.  You are but a tiny fraction of your potential human being, should be ignored by the rest of us, and left to wallow in your own mess.

If you are a "freedom to" person, you need to leave your Sudoku pencil in its holster, skip the next mindless tv season (except for 24 for a sense of reality and one other for the pleasure of unreality),

• write to your congressman and two senators at least weekly threatening and praising,
  
• talk others into doing the same including the writing and the talking to others. 
  
• Create a group with a roster.  Begin writing with each member signing. 
  
• Begin pressuring the President directly with multi-signature correspondence. 
  
• When appropriate, find and recruit your congressman's or senators' replacement for the next election.
• Go to rallies to recruit members to your cause.
• Talk with people in other parts of your state to involve them with pressuring your senators and to ancourage them with respect to their congressman.
• Write letters to the editor, even send copies of your letters to government officials.
  
• Or do none of the above.  What do I know?  Do something better. 
  
• If you have both the talent and the nads, make up as an Obama caricature, stand on a soapbox in downtown or at the mall and speachify.  Explain how the individual isn't important; it's the collective, the whole.  Explain that's why you support card check.  Explain why the masses have to be led by someone smart like you.  Explain why those who have need to sacrifice so that those who "have not" -- say, people who don't work or who aren't married, but have eight kids -- have just as much.  Explain why you have a czar to run industries because the industry leaders thought they were to serve customers, employees, shareholders, lenders and the like instead of the common good, as defined by you. (By your third iteration, you'll probably get on the local tv news.)

It's time.  No, it's past time, way past.  Let's roll!

Today, President Obama spoke to the American Medical Association (AMA) Convention in Chicago about his healthcare plan for the nation.  I didn't watch or listen.  No reason to receive his words, since he lies.  Knowing that he was speaking to that group, one to which most doctors don't belong, incidentally, prompted me to put fingers to keyboard.

The problems with America’s “healthcare system” are two: (1) it’s a system, and (2) it’s not healthcare; it’s medical care.  The real problems with America’s medical care system are two: (1) government involvement, and (2) its resulting (from government involvement) financing.

 Without government intrusion, individuals and businesses would have a level playing field vis-à-vis tax consequences when buying health and medical insurance; both would be treated equally badly.   Currently, business can expense those costs, thus avoiding some taxes while individuals cannot tax deduct.

 Without government intrusion, insurance policies would be made available such that people didn’t have to buy coverage they didn’t need or want, and from any insurer, regardless of where located or licensed.   Currently, there’s a boatload of regulations, both from the feds and state governments, dictating what must be covered in any and all policies.

 Without government intrusion, healthcare and medical practitioners, pharmaceutical makers, distributors and dispensers would not need to be licensed.  Licensure is how professional associations now legally act in restraint of trade, much like unions do.  Physicians, dentists, optometrists, etc., via their associations limit schools allowed to have degree programs, and the size of those programs.  This restricts competition in the field.

 Without government intrusion anyone would be able to offer any or all organs and tissues, or their entire body for that matter, for sale on, say, ebay.  A free market would yield many times more transplant-ready organs.  In today’s system, everyone is remunerated except the donor.

 Absent government intrusion, Ajax Healthmed Insurance Company could offer policies covering an ala carte menu of maladies from A to Z, each priced individually.  I, as a male member of the chronologically-gifted set would probably opt out of buying P for pregnancy.  Like life insurance companies, Ajax’s price per malady might increase the older I am, given that medical costs rise with aging.  Like auto insurers, Ajax might offer me a low price, based on my behavioral history and current modus operandi.  No tickets and no accidents gets one lower rates.

 Others might pay excess premiums to Ajax, based upon excess weight, more yet for obesity, or on elevated blood pressure, or on lack of cardiovascular exercise, or because of tobacco use, or because of high cholesterol.  My smoking 30+ years ago would cost me because I now have permanent lung restriction.

 Sensible people wouldn’t ask Ajax to cover annual doctor visits, teeth cleaning, optical exams, eye glasses, and the like, any more than they would look for grocery insurance or ask their auto insurer to cover oil changes or new tires.  Company-paid exams, cleanings, glasses are compensation, not insurance.

 Without government intrusion, motorcycle helmet laws would disappear.  Ajax might charge extra for bikers.  It might refuse to insure anyone in a bike accident not wearing a helmet, or impose a $100,000 deduction, or whatever it chose to offer.  A biker would be free to be open-minded if he wished, but not at your expense, my expense or Ajax’s expense.

 An egregious anecdote: Nine persons, middle-aged, English-speaking, five men and four women, over a four-year period went to hospital emergency rooms for treatment 2,678 times, paying not a dime.  The cost to the taxpayers of Texas was $2.7 million. Without government intrusion, this scenario would have been different.  No word, incidentally, whether the nine called 9-1-1 to get paramedics or EMTs for transport, also without paying.

 Physicians – citing the Hippocratic Oath – refuse to turn away anyone, including those unwilling or unable to pay.  That’s why Texans got stuck paying for those nine freeloaders.  Without government intrusion, those physicians would either have to solicit funding from charities or pick up the tab themselves.  The docs would have to put their money where their oath is.  There is no right to medical care, to healthcare, or to health.

 What’s wrong with American healthcare and medical care today is price.  It costs a lot.  Government intrusion adds costs every time.  Government can help us all not by doing, but by undoing.  The more undoing, the better.  Zero intrusion would be ideal.  When the person receiving treatment is the same as the person paying for treatment, caveat (will) emptor, the buyer will beware . . . and negotiate . . . and evaluate trade-offs.

 Today, people call 9-1-1 for paramedics and EMTs to take them to an emergency room because ambulances will only take them there, not to clinics or private doctors.  The alternative would be to call a cab, but they don’t give away rides.  Today people call 9-1-1 for paramedics and EMTs because they absolutely cannot make a decision, take responsibility for themselves or a child or spouse.  If they had to pay $500, most might find themselves able and willing to make a decision.

With even more government intrusion, we can have for all of us the likes of Medicare – due for bankruptcy within five years – and Medicaid – due to bankrupt many states shortly – and Veterans Administration Hospitals, killing and maiming vets daily.  Then, where will Canadians go.

My bet?  Americans won't get the drpete plan, but they won't get the Obama plan either.  I lose regularly.  This'll be his first.

 

Over the incredible ride of the last 70 years, Republicans have outnumbered Democrats only once, and it was short-lived, 1995 during the Clinton administration.    The GOP got close – about 3 points down – during FDR’s final year of life, then again in the last two years of Reagan.  The two parties were tied briefly during Bush 41 until he flipped on his “Read my lips” pledge.  For most of the 70 years Democrats have had a clear edge.  Independents, however, have climbed from less than 20% to leading both parties for the first time just in the past couple of months.

 The GOP in 2009 is 88% Caucasian, 2% black, 6% Hispanic, and 4% other.  Men are 51% and women 49% of the party.  Evangelical Protestants comprise 35%, other Protestants another 23%, and Catholics 18%.  The party is increasingly from the South, and decreasingly from the Northeast and the West.  The party is more conservative than a decade ago or even five years ago, less moderate and less liberal.  During the first decade of the new millennium the GOP’s average age has risen by three years.

 The percentages identifying themselves as Republicans over the last six years have been

30    in 2004, 29 in 2005, 28 in 2006, 25 in 2007, 25 in 2008, and 23 in 2009.

 The percentages identifying themselves as Democrats

33    in ’04, 33 in ’05, 33 again in ’06, 34 in ’07, 36 in ’08, 35 in ’09.

 The percentages identifying themselves as Independents over the last six years have been

30 in 2004, 30 in 2005, 30 again in 2006, 33 in 2007, 32 in 2008, and 36 in 2009.

 As the Democrat Party has grown by almost 10% during this period, gaining either from the Independents or from ACORN creations, the 20% growth in self-proclaimed Independents has come mostly from the ranks of Republicans.  The effect on the Independent cadre has been that they have become more fiscally-conservative, but no more socially-conservative.

 Since the beginning of the second Bush 43 term, the Republican Party has shrunk by about  23-24%, that while keeping its social-conservative, religious fundamentalists, but jettisoning many limited-government Constitutionalists and Libertarians.  The young – including new 2008 voters – are mostly Independents.  They are more fiscally-conservative than Democrats, but much more closely aligned with them in social values and religiosity.

 The two positive periods during the seven decades for Republicans were the Reagan years and the Clinton years, periods led by a true-conservative President, then a true-conservative congress and its Contract with America.  There are lessons to be learned from history.

 Depending on the issue, at least a third of today’s Republicans look first to the government to solve problems, irrespective to whether there exists Constitutional-enumerated authority.  Among Independents some two-thirds look first to government, and among Democrats it’s near 100%.  My conclusion, then, is that, whether in our courts or our court of public opinion, the rule of law and U.S. Constitution have been rendered irrelevant.

(Statistics herein, compliments of Pew Research and Gallup Organization.)

 The GOP has become aging Bubbas with brains, and that’s a dying breed.  It’s not attracting anyone new.  The ubiquitous government schools and their teachers’ unions serve to guarantee the GOP’s demise.  When a rational thinker slips through, the hippie-liberal-fascist college faculty, along with the leftist “news” media are there waiting to pound that outlier into submission.

 When the last Republican lies on his death bed, in a whisper I expect he’ll proclaim that we need a federal law banning gay marriage, notwithstanding that it’d be unconstitutional.  After receiving last rites, a member of ACORN will sign him up as a Democrat and register him to vote.  As background, Madonna will sing “Don’t cry for me, Argentina . . .”