a Free Market Can Fix Health Care

Yes, Mr. President, a Free Market Can Fix Health Care no Cato@Liberty:

1.Give Medicare enrollees a voucher
2.Reform the tax treatment of health care with “large” health savings accounts
3.Free consumers and employers to purchase health insurance across state lines
4.Make state-issued clinician licenses portable
5.Block-grant Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program

Socialism Kills

Socialism Kills: The Human Cost of Delayed Economic Reform in India:

What would the impact on social indicators have been had India commenced economic reform one decade earlier, and enjoyed correspondingly faster economic growth and improvements in human development indicators?

.... with earlier reform, 14.5 million more children would have survived, 261 million more Indians would have become literate, and 109 million more people would have risen above the poverty line. The delay in economic reform represents an enormous social tragedy. It drives home the point that India's socialist era, which claimed it would deliver growth with social justice, delivered neither.

it can’t happen here

Obama declara guerra à Fox News e lança debate sobre liberdade de expressão (Público):

Este domingo, David Axelrod, o principal conselheiro político de Obama, disse na ABC que a programação da Fox News “não é verdadeiramente de notícias” mas sim “promoção de um ponto de vista”. No mesmo dia, o chefe de gabinete de Obama, Rahm Emanuel, dizia na CNN que a Fox News “não é uma empresa noticiosa”, mas sim tendenciosa. Quando a directora de comunicações da Casa Branca, Anita Dunn, disse ao "New York Times" que a Administração vai tratar a Fox News “da mesma forma que tratamos um adversário” e afirmou à "Time" que o canal faz “opinião mascarada de notícias”, alguns analistas começaram a preocupar-se com a atitude da Administração Obama. A Casa Branca declarou a Fox News sua inimiga, isto depois de ter anunciado que ia ser mais agressiva na sua reacção a notícias com imprecisões ou desfavoráveis em geral.

Business Community’s Suicidal Impulse

Net Neutrality, Slippery Slopes & High-Tech Mutually Assured Destruction por Berin Szoka no TechLiberationFront:

Ten years ago, Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman lamented the “Business Community’s Suicidal Impulse:” the persistent propensity to persecute one’s competitors through regulation or the threat thereof. Friedman asked: “Is it really in the self-interest of Silicon Valley to set the government on Microsoft?”

After yesterday’s FCC vote’s to open a formal “Net Neutrality” rule-making, we must ask whether the high-tech industry—or consumers—will benefit from inviting government regulation of the Internet under the mantra of “neutrality.”

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Net Neutrality

Dos mesmos produtores de Series of tubes, aí está a legislação sobre Net Neutrality, que estabelece um commons para a internet. Mais um caso de flagrante estupidez económica dos reguladores federais:

"I reject the notion that we must choose between open Internet rules and investment by service providers in their networks," Genachowski said during the meeting.

Eis a gente que quer "regular" a Internet:


Series of Tubes

BÓNUS: Series of Tubes Music Video

Self-Defense is not a Crime of War

UK Commander Challenges Goldstone Report

IESE #1

IESE's MBA ranked 1st in the World by The Economist

Citação do Dia

They say that when you meet the love of your life, time stops. And that's true.

But what they don't tell you is what once time starts again, it moves extra fast to catch up.

A crise esquecida de 1920

Warren Harding and the Forgotten Depression of 1920 por Thomas E. Woods, Jr.:

The economic situation in 1920 was grim. By that year unemployment had jumped from 4 percent to nearly 12 percent, and GNP declined 17 percent. No wonder, then, that Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover—falsely characterized as a supporter of laissez-faire economics—urged President Harding to consider an array of interventions to turn the economy around. Hoover was ignored.

Instead of “fiscal stimulus,” Harding cut the government’s budget nearly in half between 1920 and 1922. The rest of Harding’s approach was equally laissez-faire. Tax rates were slashed for all income groups. The national debt was reduced by one-third. The Federal Reserve’s activity, moreover, was hardly noticeable. As one economic historian puts it, “Despite the severity of the contraction, the Fed did not move to use its powers to turn the money supply around and fight the contraction.” 2 By the late summer of 1921, signs of recovery were already visible. The following year, unemployment was back down to 6.7 percent and was only 2.4 percent by 1923.

Why You've Never Heard of the Great Depression of 1920

Barack Obama Prémio Nobel da Paz 2009

Notas de um dia comprido:

Depois de um mês de emprego, vou ali ao meu chefe pedir o prémio de melhor empregado do ano.

Obama played the Facebook quiz "Which Nobel Prize are you?" and the result was "The Nobel Peace Prize. You care about strengthening international diplomacy and cooperation between people."

Nobel WTF? - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine:

Among many other things, this selection illustrates the United States' way-too-oversized role in the world's imagination. And it shows how people–almost touchingly–remain suckers for likeable politicians who replace guys they hated, investing in them a kind of faith mere mortals usually don't merit. As Chili Davis famously (and presciently) said about Dwight Gooden, "He ain't God, man."

O Prémio Nobel da Esperança não deveria ter sido dado à Oprah?

Primeiro Nobel da Paz em que se pode responder a quem dele discorda - "só estás chateado porque não ganhaste tu"

Obama passou com distinção o exame de Nobel Técnico

Can any of us have the audacity - nay, the HOPE! - to win the Nobel Prize? yes we can!

The US have Weapons of Mass Destruction and are planning to use them -> strike first !!! -> slam them with a Nobel Prize!

Youtube: SNL Obama Do Nothing Skit 10 3 09:



How to Win the Nobel Peace Prize In 12 Days - FOXNews.com:

President Obama has broken new ground here. Nominations for potential winners of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize ended on February 1. The president took office only 12 days earlier on January 20.

Obama Will Go Naked to Stockholm « Antiwar.com Blog:

Quick. What do Barack Obama, Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Kissinger and Egas Moniz have in common? All won the Nobel Prize, the first four for “peace” either as sitting presidents, or in Kissinger’s case, while his bombs were falling on innocents in Vietnam. Moniz won the prize in Physiology or Medicine for his invention of the lobotomy. Of these five he wrought the least carnage.

Who did Obama beat to win his Nobel Prize? — BenjaminBradley.com:

Sima Samar
Ingrid Betancourt
Dr. Denis Mukwege
Handicap International and Cluster Munition Coalition
Hu Jia
Wei Jingsheng

R.I.P. Nummi

A Nummi, uma das fábricas mais famosas do mundo - e certamente a mais representativa da revolução lean production - está para fechar.

The Meaning of Nummi no Wall Street Journal:

Toyota is not doing away with just any auto factory, but with a landmark joint venture between Toyota and GM until GM bailed this year amid its bankruptcy ordeal. Nummi, short for New United Motor Manufacturing Inc. and born in 1984, was heralded as a way to introduce GM to Japanese-style "lean production" while introducing Toyota to the doughty U.S. auto worker.

Never mind that it never made much money, Nummi starred in countless business school studies as an example of "transformation," "collaboration" and "win-win."

There you have the still-unfolding disaster of the developed world's auto market writ small. Protectionism is never about "saving jobs," but about saving specific jobs of politically useful groups. Ms. Merkel's steps may well cause a blow-up in the EU, given her insistence that Opel's German plants be protected at the expense of plants in Belgium and Spain. Likewise, California is not up for grabs politically, unlike other states where the UAW is powerful. So the union, having already received countless favors from the Obama administration, chooses to spend its ammunition elsewhere, partly because it never liked the Nummi idea of "lean manufacturing" in the first place.

sobre a TAP e a crença da superioridade da gestão estatal

Compreende-se que política e psicologicamente "custe" vender a TAP no buraco, porque ninguém no seu perfeito juízo ofereceria o que o Governo na sua imensa loucura acha que aquela empresa vale. "Investir" na TAP para aumentar o seu valor no mercado é um erro crasso. Porque se assume que a equipa de gestão que está instalada conseguirá criar mais valor que uma equipa de gestão privada, livre de calculismos políticos que destroem qualquer possibilidade de implementar best practices. Por outras palavras, ao não privatizar hoje a TAP, ao preço que o mercado a avaliar, o Governo está a destruir valor económico.

Milton Friedman - Health Care in a Free Market

Milton Friedman - Health Care in a Free Market

Whole Health (3)

No seguimento de Whole Health, A Four-Step Healthcare Solution por Hans-Hermann Hoppe:

It's time to get serious about health-care reform. Tax credits, vouchers, and privatization will go a long way toward decentralizing the system and removing unnecessary burdens from business. But four additional steps must also be taken:

• Eliminate all licensing requirements for medical schools, hospitals, pharmacies, and medical doctors and other health-care personnel.
• Eliminate all government restrictions on the production and sale of pharmaceutical products and medical devices.
• Deregulate the health-insurance industry.
• Eliminate all subsidies to the sick or unhealthy. Subsidies create more of whatever is being subsidized. Subsidies for the ill and diseased promote carelessness, indigence, and dependency. If we eliminate such subsidies, we would strengthen the will to live healthy lives and to work for a living.

two plus two equals five

Is 350 the New 450? por Marlo Lewis:

That’s inconvenient if the only way to sell energy rationing to a reluctant populace is to claim, over and over again, that climate change is “even worse than scientists previously predicted.”

So the new rhetoric emphasizes the alleged damages of global warming — melting Arctic sea ice, drought in Australia, species migration. And we’re told that these impacts are occurring faster than climate models have predicted.

All of which is obviously question-begging, because if the world isn’t warming, how do we know that, say, drought in Southern California is due to CO2 emissions rather than to ocean cycles or some other factor not related to the greenhouse effect? Indeed, if a change in weather or climatic conditions occurs faster than greenhouse climate models project, that is prima facie evidence that the change is not due to greenhouse gas emissions.

Climate sensitivity is thus redefined to mean climate impacts per a given increment of warming rather temperature change per a given increment of CO2. In short, we’re supposed to believe that less warming than the IPCC predicts leads to worse impacts than the IPCC predicts. Hence the need to make 350 ppm the new 450 ppm.

Whole Health (2)

The Conscience of a Capitalist

"I honestly don't know why the article became such a lightning rod," says John Mackey, CEO and founder of Whole Foods Market Inc.

"President Obama called for constructive suggestions for health-care reform," he explains. "I took him at his word." Mr. Mackey continues: "It just seems to me there are some fundamental reforms that we've adopted at Whole Foods that would make health care much more affordable for the uninsured."

Bónus:

Whole Foods Founder Sketches Future of Capitalism (Yale University)

e dizem que a política é uma actividade nobre

Anteontem Mário Soares esteve nos Gato Fedorento. Questionado sobre Ramalho Eanes e Cavaco Silve, respondeu que tinha como prática não pronunciar-se sobre os seus antecessores ou sucessores. De facto, não há memória que Mário Soares alguma vez se tenha pronunciado sobre algum deputado, ministro, primeiro-ministro ou presidente da república, depois de ter ele próprio [Soares] ter exercido tal cargo. No dia seguinte Mário Soares voltava a dar mostras da sua incrível coerência e superioridade republicana.

Referendo na Irlanda

O mais absurdo não é os irlandeses terem decidido alienar soberania política sobre o seu próprio país - nem é terem votado para que terceiros percam soberania política sobre o respectivo país - é os terceiros terem ficado tão contentes com o resultado.

End the Fed

Ron Paul "The Fed Can Create Money Out Of Thin Air! Just Last Week They Created 50 Billion Dollars!"
###

Ron Paul on Russia Today " Audit The Fed"

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Ron Paul
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Ron Paul Interview

Ron Paul no Daily Show - End the Fed

local conditions & the housing bubble

How Urban Planners Caused the Housing Bubble by Randal O'Toole:

Some people blame the Federal Reserve for keeping interest rates low; some blame the Community Reinvestment Act for encouraging lenders to offer loans to marginal homebuyers; others blame Wall Street for failing to properly assess the risks of subprime mortgages. But all of these explanations apply equally nationwide, while a close look reveals that only some communities suffered from housing bubbles.

... restrictive growth management was a necessary condition for the housing bubble.

ensaio sobre a ’fadiga mental’

We Can’t Get There From Here

We Can’t Get There From Here Sharon Begley no Newsweek:

The world used 14 trillion watts (14 terawatts) of power in 2006. Assuming minimal population growth (to 9 billion people), slow economic growth (1.6 percent a year, practically recession level) and—this is key—unprecedented energy efficiency (improvements of 500 percent relative to current U.S. levels, worldwide), it will use 28 terawatts in 2050. (In a business-as-usual scenario, we would need 45 terawatts.)

Simple physics shows that in order to keep CO2 to 450 ppm, 26.5 of those terawatts must be zero-carbon. That’s a lot of solar, wind, hydro, biofuels and nuclear, especially since renewables kicked in a measly 0.2 terawatts in 2006 and nuclear provided 0.9 terawatts.

Are you a fan of nuclear? To get 10 terawatts, less than half of what we’ll need in 2050, Lewis calculates, we’d have to build 10,000 reactors, or one every other day starting now. Do you like wind? If you use every single breeze that blows on land, you’ll get 10 or 15 terawatts. Since it’s impossible to capture all the wind, a more realistic number is 3 terawatts, or 1 million state-of-the art turbines, and even that requires storing the energy—something we don’t know how to do—for when the wind doesn’t blow. Solar? To get 10 terawatts by 2050, Lewis calculates, we’d need to cover 1 million roofs with panels every day from now until then. “It would take an army,” he says. Obama promised green jobs, but still.

Crises comparadas (2)

No seguimento de crises comparadas, e via Young Americans for Liberty,

O efeito Obama

Obamas Make Emotional Appeal for Olympic Games

Tóquio e Chicago eliminadas, Madrid e Rio de Janeiro são finalistas

Peter Schiff seeing it coming

Peter Schiff Mortgage Bankers Speech Nov/13/06

gaucherie

Word of the Day for Wednesday, September 30, 2009:

gaucherie \goh-shuh-REE\, noun:

1. A socially awkward or tactless act.
2. Lack of tact; boorishness; awkwardness.

The Hockey Stick Is Dead

Quote of the week #20 – ding dong the stick is dead:

One of the most notorious and phony pieces of data underlying global warming alarmism -- the “hockey stick” graph -- has been shattered in a posting today on the World Wide Web.

Having the tree-ring data in complete form, McIntyre replicates it and plots it, and the infamous hockey stick graph disappears. Not only does it disappear, it goes negative. The conclusion is inescapable: The tree-ring data were hand-picked to get the desired result.