Animated as ever. It’s interesting that the grievances are more or less the same as the Ron Paul Republicans and libertarians. The causes for the problems and the solutions are different however. These statists seem to ignore the primary fact that it is government intervention which is the common thread which ties all those grievances together. Their monopoly of force is a honey pot for those seeking advantages and a breeding ground for corruption. By ignoring economic law and advocating larger government they are also asking for more wealth destruction, more corruption, more of the same failing policy we’ve had for the last 100+ years. You can’t “get the right people.” They don’t exist. The system is flawed.

http://www.time.com/…

At various times in American history, public service and private effort

went arm in arm. After Pearl Harbor, Rosie the Riveter and Uncle Sam exhorted people to help the war effort, and Americans responded. But since F.D.R., and especially since J.F.K.’s launching of the Peace Corps, national service has been seen by some as a Democratic or liberal idea. In the ’90s, Newt Gingrich argued that the rise of big government programs robbed people of their initiative to volunteer. After Bill Clinton signed the bill to create AmeriCorps in 1993, then Senator John Ashcroft called it “welfare for the well-to-do.”

But these days there is a growing consensus on Capitol Hill that the private and public spheres can be linked. Democrats understand the need to support programs outside of government; Republicans understand that voluntary programs can be helped by government. In his first State of the Union address after 9/11, President George W. Bush called for Americans to give 4,000 hours of service and established the USA Freedom Corps. One of the early critics of AmeriCorps, John McCain, has since become a devout supporter. “National service is an issue that has been largely identified with the Democratic Party and the left of the political spectrum,” McCain wrote in a 2001 Washington Monthly essay. “That is unfortunate, because duty, honor and country are values that transcend ideology…National service is a crucial means of making our patriotism real, to the benefit of both ourselves and our country.”

THE PLAN

So what would a plan for universal national service look like? It would be voluntary, not mandatory. Americans don’t like to be told what they have to do; many have argued that requiring service drains the gift of its virtue. It would be based on carrots, not sticks — “doing well by doing good,” as Benjamin Franklin, the true father of civic engagement, put it. So here is a 10-point plan for universal national service. The ideas here are a mixture of suggestions already made, revised versions of other proposals and a few new wrinkles.

1. Create a National-Service Baby Bond
2. Make National Service a Cabinet-Level Department
3. Expand Existing National-Service Programs Like AmeriCorps and the National Senior Volunteer Corps
4. Create an Education Corps
5. Institute a Summer of Service
6. Build a Health Corps
7. Launch a Green Corps
8. Recruit a Rapid-Response Reserve Corps
9. Start a National-Service Academy
10. Create a Baby-Boomer Education Bond

Voluntary? Really? How long would that last? How voluntary is the collection of funds to pay for all this proposed government expansion.

Read More…

http://www.lewrockwell.com/…

On NBC’s Today Show this morning Steve Forbes proposed forcing the taxpayers to “capitalize” ten or twelve “Fannie Maes” so that they can compete with one another, as opposed to the current government-sponsored duopoly.

In years past, free-market economists would riducule such proposals as being no different from the Soviets’ failed attempts at “market socialism,” i.e., pretending to play free market funded by billions of dollars of tax theft and rigid governmental regulation.

(Another Wall Street “economic expert” on the show instructed us to be patient and “let the Fed and the regulators get us out of this mess”). Stupid pills must be the drug of choice on Wall Street these days.

And some people still wonder why those who benefit the most from “free markets” don’t advocate them more. With all their wealth you’d think they could spread the message far and wide. Sure they could if they actually believed in free markets instead of corporatism. Few big businesses actually dislike regulation. In fact often time it’s they who push for it.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/…

The National Health Service is providing dying cancer patients with drugs that are five times less effective than those available privately and is refusing to treat them if they try to buy medicines themselves.

One drug for kidney cancer, routinely available through public health systems in most European countries but not to British patients, can reduce the size of tumours in 31% of patients, compared with just 6% of those prescribed the standard NHS drug.

The growing row over “co-payments” has prompted the government to reconsider the ban. Alan Johnson, the health secretary, has promised a “fundamental rethink” of the policy.

Research presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology found that kidney patients taking the new drug Sutent lived six months longer than those prescribed alpha interferon, the NHS treatment.

The failure of the NHS to make more effective drugs available to cancer patients has been condemned as “unethical” by leading doctors.

A woman with bowel cancer is fighting for the right to pay for a drug that could extend her life long enough for her to spend Christmas with her grandchildren.

Sheila Norrington, 59, a former NHS medical secretary from Maidstone, Kent, has been told by doctors that if she buys the drug Erbitux, which the health service will not pay for, she will lose her state-funded cancer care. Erbitux is the only drug capable of treating her advanced bowel cancer.

Norrington’s husband, Goff, 61, a former sales manager, said: “We have been told that if we pay for it ourselves we will be thrown off the NHS completely and we will need to pay for everything privately. We are devastated. This is not going to cure my wife, but if it keeps her alive a little bit longer, then we would pay for it.”

The couple say that although they could pay for a few cycles of the drug, which costs about £3,000 a month, they could not pay for all Norrington’s care, including scans, blood tests and consultations.

Goff Norrington added: “We have two young granddaughters and this could make the difference between sitting round the table with them at Christmas or not. We think it is deplorable that patients can get this drug almost anywhere in Europe but we cannot get it in the UK.”

A spokesman for Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust said: “We are governed by Department of Health policy on this issue.”

A poll for The Sunday Times shows strong support for allowing co-payment in the National Health Service, with 89% saying that people who buy additional cancer drugs should continue to get free NHS treatment.

Only 5% think allowing co-payment would create a two-tier NHS. Until now this has been the position taken by Alan Johnson, the health secretary.

Ministers had feared that allowing co-payment would upset less well-off patients, but the YouGov poll of nearly 1,800 people shows strong backing across the social spectrum and supporters of all three main parties.

Lee over at MooreWatch.com I think said it all: “This, of course, begs the question.  If compassionate free government healthcare can’t provide, y’know, actual healthcare to patients, and they are forced to paying massive amounts of money to buy their own treatments, maybe the solution to the problem is less free government healthcare and more private sector solutions.”

When will these people realize that the government can not negate scarcity? The only thing that can bring more and better healthcare to the masses is an increase in their wealth and the only way to do that is capital accumulation through free market capitalism.

http://www.examiner.com/…

Six parents of chronically truant San Francisco schoolchildren - each of whom missed more than 50 days of class - were arraigned Tuesday before a superior court judge on infractions that charged the guardians with failing to make sure their kids receive an education.

The infractions, pursued by District Attorney Kamala Harris, carry a $100 fine. If the truancy continues, the next step would be misdemeanor charges of neglecting a child’s education, charges that could land a parent in county jail for up to a year with a fine up to $2,500, Harris said Tuesday.

The parents - Connie Wilson, Jamelia Kellom, Shanae Seastrunk, Kenneth Reed, Chanell Brown and Joshua Pomar - were the first to be prosecuted under stricter enforcement guidelines announced by Harris at the beginning of the school year.

The number of students skipping school in San Francisco has long been above statewide averages and costs the already cash-strapped district more than $5 million in state funding every year. One absence costs the San Francisco Unified School District about $42, according to district data.

Among the most common reasons for truancies, especially among elementary school children, are child care issues, drug abuse by parents, lack of transportation, family abandonment and the students ditching classes, according to school district Superintendant Carlos Garcia.

“You know, little kids, what rights do they have? I think we as a society need to stand up for their rights, the right to an education,” Garcia said.

1. Education is not a right. You don’t have a right to other people’s labor. Your existence doesn’t create an obligation for others to provide you with anything. Taxation is theft, period. 2. The absence wouldn’t cost anyone anything if there wasn’t compulsory government schooling. This whole “your actions cost us all” “problem” only exists because these power hungry, megalomaniacs who think they know better than everyone one else use guns to force people into participating in things they could be doing voluntarily. If the service was so important as these people like to claim why then wouldn’t the free market be able to provide it? If you look at it historically it could… what has changed? Could it be that religious and socialist idealists wanted to control the populous? Could it be that compulsory education was instituted not for the children but those in power who wish to propagandize their utopian values?