"Collective" health and individual value

Oklahoma City needs plan to improve its collective health

Oh really?

Here's the comment I posted:

"OKLAHOMA City needs a collective plan to improve its collective health."

If Oklahoma City residents had the chance to learn to value themselves as individual human beings, they would also value their own health. Apparently The Oklahoman thinks we only have value collectively - which makes sense, considering the anti-rational morality they're always pushing.

Did they consider that claiming Oklahoma City needs a "collective" plan to do anything is an insult to anyone who is confident of his competence to think for himself? Or would they simply respond that we should all be relying on a "higher authority"?

Need I point out that collectivists don't care if the "higher authority" is the government or God, as long as it's anybody but yourself.

All they care about is turning us into another Detroit.

You call this Independence?

If we're just going to do what Washington wants us to do anyway, how is that any kind of independence?

Today's The Oklahoman carries an op-ed by Tina Majors in support of FallinCare, Gov. Fallin's plan to create a health insurance exchange in Oklahoma. The timing is interesting considering the legislature ended its session last week.

A few excerpts:

"One of the great things about Oklahoma and Oklahomans is our fierce independence from the federal government. When we see a problem, we fix it ourselves. We don't wait for the big brother of the federal government to come in and over-regulate a problem. . . . "

"I support efforts to repeal Obamacare, but given the makeup of our federal judiciary and their penchant for liberal rulings, I have doubts about the lawsuit to stop it being entirely successful, regardless of its merits. I want Oklahoma to create every possible barrier to a federal takeover of our health care. And building our own network is another way to do this. . . . "

"Oklahoma isn't in the habit of letting the federal government keep us from doing what is right. Today, we can't let our anger at their attempted takeover of health care stop us from reforming our own system. The right solution is in creating and controlling our own Oklahoma-centric health care network."

Here's the comment I posted:

Romneycare.

Seriously, is Fallin still trying to push this on us? There is no difference between federal over-regulation and state over-regulation. A government run insurance exchange violates the rights of insurers, doctors and patients. We should reject a state-run exchange for the same reason we should reject the federal-run exchange. What difference is there between the state forcing people to buy health insurance and the federal government forcing people to buy health insurance? NONE.

And PLEASE stop with the scare tactics that do nothing but insult our intelligence: "Oh, we've got to do something or the feds will force it on us!" Well, of course they will if we don't STAND UP FOR OURSELVES! So why should we lay down just so you can run over us? Are you saying it's better if our own state government does it?

The ONLY way to address rising health care costs and lack of coverage is to get the government OUT OF THE WAY on EVERY level.

Set the health care industry free!

What's going on here?

Oklahoma Watchdog reported about an hour ago on Twitter @WatchdogOK that SB264 was signed out of committee AGAIN! this morning - which means there will be another floor vote soon.

The big question is - were changes made? If so, what were they & what impact do they have on our concerns?

One thing I've seen that may be new is a time limit on "opting out" of regulations: local school boards can do this for 3 years.

My concern is that "deregulation" is great for private industry but terrible for the government: a government NOT constrained by regulations is a government that has carte-blanche to do whatever it wants, regardless of anyone's rights or freedoms - which is the whole point of having written laws in the first place, a point which seems to be lost on those pushing this "local control" idea.

Does SB264 have a mechanism for subjecting local administrators to the rule of law or does it allow them to autocratically make things up as they go along? Are local school districts required to submit a local plan or set of rules to local voters before administrators can act? What happens to local students who disagree with the majority?

I wouldn't have a problem if this only applied to private schools which should be completely free to set their own rules, anyway, but when the government is running things, that's a whole different animal.

So, what impact will this bill have on private schools? Perhaps school choice advocates should be as concerned about this as supporters of government schools.

I think the presense of Speaker Steele at these committee meetings could be significant - is SB264 a pet project of his? If so, maybe we need to start contacting him as well as our own legislators. I don't think it would be a bad idea to add Bingman to that list, either.

Does the Chamber of Commerce advocate Capitalism?

The Oklahoman is running yet another editorial today attacking Tea Party activists. Thanks for the free publicity!

Here's the comment I left:

It is an unfortunate fact that in a mixed economy such as ours, some business owners may be forced to turn to lobbying in legitimate self-defense to keep the government's hands off of their freedom to run their businesses.

This is not the case for the Chamber of Commerce, which all too often pursues political favoritism for one business or industry at the expense of another, under the guise of "sacrifice". This not only makes the Chamber no friend of Freedom or Capitalism, it muddies the waters - leading the average person to equate Capitalism with corporate welfare and cronyism, when - in fact - true Capitalism requires the separation of state and economy, in the same manner and for the same reasons as the separation of state and church.

Remember this the next time you read about how many Oklahomans are going hungry every day. Ask yourself if that would be the case if Oklahoma had genuine economic Freedom.

Just how many Oklahomans are going hungry every day? Here's The Oklahoman's editorial about last weekend's food drive.

Make Them Pay . . . Less!

Tax Day, the day of the deadline to file your taxes, is normally on April 15th, but this year, President Obama decided to cut us all some slack and give us til the Monday after: April 18th.

Liberals, cheer led by Michael Moore, have cooked up a plan to scapegoat corporations who they claim are not paying their share of taxes, thus depriving the federal government of much needed income.

Obviously, that's only going to work if people really believe the government needs the money. The more money government takes in, the bigger it gets.

Of course, if smaller government is what you're after, then you would want it to have less money, not more. In which case, not only might you not mind corporations paying less taxes, you might weven want lower taxes for everybody!

Lower taxes means less money, so government has to make itself smaller! Well, that's the theory, anyway.

So here's the deal: on Monday, April 18th at noon, the "more money for bigger government" liberals will have a "Make Them Pay!" rally at the State Capitol - organized through MoveOn. After the rally, participants will drive to the Chase branch at NW 23rd & Western where they will "respectfully" ask Chase to pay its "fair share" of taxes.

Wouldn't it be fun if some people showed up with signs that read, "Lower Taxes for Everybody! Make Government Smaller Not Bigger!"

Just a thought.

ADDENDUM - 4/17: Mr. Moore needs to be reminded that 45% of Americans pay no income tax.

Washington returns to business as usual. Run for your lives!

The Senate has issued its report on the economic crisis and found that - aside from a few minor conflicts of interest involving agencies tasked with regulating the banking industry - it's all the banking industry's fault.

In other words, the government had nothing to do with making the banks hand out all those questionable mortgages in the first place.

No, the government had nothing to do with trying to get more people to buy homes and bullying banks into lowering their standards in the name of altruism. Oh no, absolutely not. Move along. There's nothing to see here.

And altruism had nothing to do with making the banks more compliant, more eager to do the bidding of their regulatory overlords. Or getting said overlords to look the other way while bankers made riskier and riskier loans because, after all, owning your home is good for the country!

Why, no. Of course not! Why would anybody ever even think such a thing?

So now, after

a two-year investigation . . . that included four public hearings and the collection of hundreds of internal documents

- according to the story on NewsOK.com - everything's all better now, it was all those nasty bankers' fault anyway, and if the government did do anything wrong it was only because it wasn't regulating the banking industry enough!

So now it's safe for Washington to go back to business as usual. All we need, if anything, is more regulations.

BULLSHIT!!!!!!!!!

First Principles: Freedom: For Whom and From What?

The second in the series of debates between Demos and the Ayn Rand Institute takes place Thursday, April 7th, and will explore the nature of freedom.

Debating for Demos will be political theorist Benjamin R. Barber and for the Ayn Rand Institute will be Objectivist philosopher Harry Binswanger.

The debate will be livestreamed starting at 5PM Oklahoma time on Facebook at the page of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights.

Notes on the event and preliminary remarks by the debaters can be found at It's A Free Country.

Ideas matter

One of the challenges faced by Objectivists wishing to capitalize on the Atlas Shrugged movie's release is how to explain Ayn Rand's philosophy to those who may experience only a smattering of the political implications of her philosophy while watching the movie, due to the inevitable compression Rand's novel will have undergone to render even a third of the book into a reasonable length film.

Yaron Brook, president of the Ayn Rand Institute, recently gave an excellent example of how the current political situation relates to Rand's system of ethics - showing how political ideas rest on a deeper foundation of ethical, metaphysical and epistemological assumptions - and he did it in only 30 minutes!

The event was "Ideas Matter: Ayn Rand's Message to Today's World" - a webcast streamed to several college campuses across the country, in addition to being available on the Internet. It was organized by The Undercurrent, a national newspaper published by Objectivist students for distribution on college campuses. (Not to be confused with the paper of that name at OU!)

Unfortunately the video now available of this event begins with about 15 minutes during which the camera was on but the event had not yet begun, but you can just skip right past that and get to the main event. After Brook's speech, he answered questions from the audience for another hour or so.

Watch live streaming video from ideasmatter at livestream.com

"Atlas Shrugged" movie coming to OKC

It's official: I received word from the folks at Harkins Theatres today that Atlas Shrugged Part 1 will be opening at the Harkins Bricktown here in Oklahoma City on April 15th.

Apparently the campaign by the film's producers to motivate fans to ask for the movie at their local theaters is working. In the past few days, bookings have jumped from about a dozen to over 80 theaters nationwide, and reports are already starting to surface of sold-out showings.

I plan to be there on opening night. You're more than welcome to join me! If you're interested, let me know on Facebook at Atlas Shrugged Part 1 in OKC!

Atlas Shrugged movie

Here's a clip showing the passage in which Dagny Taggart meets with a union rep about the John Galt Line:



This movie DEFINITELY needs to come to OKC! Do you hear me, theater owners?