most of the following were originally printed by West Hawaii Today
“Experiment is not necessarily failure” (980931)
It is a mistake to call Oregon‘s experiment in socialized health care a failure. All experiments are successful if they tell us what does and does not work.
Britons and Canadians might criticize Oregon’s recent flirtation as being redundant, for they know all too well that a single-payer medical monolith is a boon for bureaucrats, a disaster for doctors, and plague upon patients.
The Libertarian solution to America’s health care concerns is not to further tighten the stranglehold of the government on the medical market, but a complete deregulation of medicine and pharmacology.
When employers receive tax breaks for providing group health insurance, and in many cases such coverage is mandated by statute, but employees receive no such parity for providing for themselves, individual choices are limited and many employees are locked into unsatisfying jobs because they are afraid of losing their coverage.
With group coverage picking up the tab, the point of consumption is removed from the point of purchase, and the incentive to economize is subverted. Unscrupulous doctors will eagerly order marginally justifiable tests and procedures, and complaisant consumers will blithely oblige.
Short of substantive and fundamental tax reform , a good interim companion to health care deregulation would be to level the playing field between employers, employees, insurers, and health care providers. Tax sheltered medical savings accounts for individuals would liberate workers and families from the tyranny of group coverage. Each would be free to find the right care for the right price, and no one would be locked into a job or a medical plan which doesn’t address their unique needs.
update 180131: Since the public exposure of the bankruptcy of the Oregon Health Plan in the late Nineties, it has since been bailed out and papered over by continued plunder funding. It was ultimately institutionalized as the Oregon Health Authority alongside the union wide implementation of the Deplorable Snare Act (RomneyCare 2.0, “This time it‘s Federal!”).
“Go back to metal monetary standard” (981131)
New quarters are scheduled for January. The new dollar follows the year after. Though exciting for collectors, this is bittersweet.
The Brass Buck will be as popular as the Susan B Anthony, if Congress stubbornly continues the one dollar bill. Dollar coins and dollar notes will not circulate simultaneously. The “Agony Dollar” showed this, and other countries learned from America’s error. When Canada introduced its Loonie, it discontinued its paper dollar, and the transition was relatively painless. For Sacagawea to become anything other than a collector’s oddity and a consumer’s nuisance, the Federal Reserve must stop printing singles and resume production of the two dollar bill. With singles gone from the tills, there will be ready slots for crisp new deuces.
If our government really wanted to create some excitement, it would mint the new dollars from silver.
In the past generation, thanks largely to the discipline imposed by Ronald Reagan and Alan Greenspan, inflation has been tamed, metal prices have restabilized and our currency remains the world’s standard of value. But Reagan is out of office, and we can’t count on Greenspan living forever.
Were I a member fo the Congress I would advocate a metallic standard as the guarantee of our dollar’s value.
Sooner or later, we’ll elect a populist president or an activist congress, and they’ll rediscover the power of the press to finance pet projects or foreign misadventures, and before long it will be 1979 all over again. Or 1929. Or worse still, Weimar Germany, with inflation outstripping anything we ever imagined possible.
The only thing securing our dollar today is political integrity, a commodity rarer than gold or silver, but less reliable. Let’s not push our luck. Within our grasp is the means to protect our posterity from political chicanery.
update 180201: Twenty years out and customers still look at Brass Bucks and Deuces and say, “What’s that?” or “Can I have a regular dollar instead?”
Meanwhile I ask if Americans are as smart as Canadians, and point out that the Maple Cent has been retired for a few years now, and the Loonie and the Toonie both circulate without the slightest fuss. Canadians seem to think the question is sweet, and agree that it is a shame about the Maple Cent, but what can you do when inflation reduces the unit to meaninglessness?
“Surrender to the Zinc Lobby,” I tell them. “That’s what our Congress does. That’s why I still have all these copper-plated offenses in my till! I‘d rather get used cents from Canada for a penny a pop than pay our stupid government two cents each to produce them here.”
“Census needs only numbers” (Monday, 3 April 2000)
In the midst of the editorial and public service storm about civic duty and “getting our piece of the pie,” and not leaving our future blank, it is important to remember that our government is authorized to collect a single fact from each household. That fact shall be a whole number, and a whole number only. The Constitution directs that Representatives be apportioned among the States according to their respective numbers, and that the actual enumeration be made every ten years.
This is the sum of federal authority to survey the people. It is not a license to evaluate plumbing, or Internet access, or the effect of ancestry on job opportunity. It may seem impersonal, but the Constitution treats every person as an identical number with identical rights and identical responsibilities. Every one of us is one. The Congress currently has 435 members, and the sole legitimate purpose of the census is to determine how many Representatives shall be allotted to each State for the next ten years.
I urge Hawaiians of all races and backgrounds to tell the Census Bureau exactly how many people live in each house. If you want to say more, go for it, but first, read the Constitution. The Constitution protects your rights. The Republicans can’t and the Democrats won’t.
update 180411: In light of the recent flap over the Census Bureau’s reintroduction of its citizenship question, let me emphasize this: they can ask what they want, but you are obliged to report only the number of live human beings in your house.
update 020704, breaking news from Make America Greigh Again:
Senior Policy Adviser resigns from campaign
in protest over staffing decisions.
Objects to smiling Drama Queen.
Declares that he “will not be [‘wrecked’] again.”